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Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Scary Sentences

What would a Europeanized United States look like? Imagine higher taxes, vastly expanded public-sector employment, infantilized upper-middle-class men and women who live with their parents until their late thirties because their jobs don't pay them enough to buy a house of their own, illegitimacy rising toward 50 percent and a growing social services bureaucracy that steps in to pick up the slack, plunging birthrates as rearing children grows ever more expensive, and an ever-larger stream of immigrants being imported to fill the breach. For many of America's elites, this scenario might not sound so uncongenial. But a victory for this vision of the American future would be a defeat for everything that has been distinctive about American life.
That is from Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream by Ross Douthat & Reihan Salam.

4 comments:

J. Strupp said...

It's obvious that both of them don't know a darn thing about Europeans and/or their lifestyle.

....just a pile of nonsense.

Jeremy R. Shown said...

J. Strupp,

Which part is the nonsense? Doesn't Europe have a declining birth rate, increasing illegitimacy, and large amounts of immigration?

J. Strupp said...

This paragraph is an indirect attempt at portraying the European system as an inferior method of governing compared to ours. Thy're cherry picking as usual. We both have our problems, but the idea that GOP leadership knows anything about the way Europeans live and govern is laughable.

Remember that this is still the same group that thought it was cute to use the terms "new Europe" and "old Europe" as a slap in the face of the nations that didn't agree with our conquests in Iraq.

Jeremy R. Shown said...

J. Strupp,

From Reihan's blog yesterday:

"I'm in London, with my friend and co-author Ross Douthat, to meet with right-of-center thinkers and activists and friends, and I'm hoping to share thoughts and impressions once I get back on Sunday."

I wouldn't consider these guys "GOP Leadership".

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one, though you are welcome to have the last word if you like.

Jeremy