European civilization is crumbling, proving socialism doesnt work. Will America listen?

The foundations of European civilization are crumbling.This is not just about buildings set alight, monuments burned to a cinder, people rioting in the streets.

It is about something subtler, more visceral, a violence that has been wreaked on the innards of European society over decades rather than merely over the course of a 10-second TikTok short.To understand what is happening, you have to glimpse the trajectory of a once disciplined group of societies that dominated the world, but which also — through a process as subtle as it has become devastating — started putting the present ahead of the future, today above tomorrow, fast living over collective sacrifice.“Delay of gratification,” the psychologist Carol Dweck said, “is the route to all good things” — but this is what has been missing for a quarter of a century and more.France has been running fiscal deficits not for one year, or five, or 10, but for 52 straight years under parties of all colors.This always felt good in the here and now, because swiping ever more cash from bond markets permitted the state to spend beyond its means.Yet the cumulative effect has been ruinous: debt stands at almost 120% of GDP and interest payments are swallowing ever larger parts of the budget, which means public spending is at near record highs while people feel more squeezed than ever before.You see the same pattern in the welfare system.

France cut the retirement age in the early 1980s as life expectancy climbed, and started giving ever more generous handouts to those not working.Again, this appeased older voters and the unemployed but the piper always has to be paid in the end.Today, the parties that parade themselves as the “solution” are offering yet more profligacy.

Marine Le Pen of the populist National Rally wishes to cut the retirement age back to 60 from 62 and nine months, a policy that would all but guarantee national bankruptcy.There is a term for this and it has often been used by historians l...