Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West. While I have been trying hard not to keyboard very much this summer, I have been doing some reading. This new book by Christopher Caldwell is hands down the most interesting and important I have read, all year – and given my interests in financial crisis and regulation reform and all, that’s saying a lot.
(Update: On reflection, I am not turning on comments on this post, because I would rather wait and see if we can get something directly from Christopher.)
I know Christopher well and have a high opinion of him and his writing, and if the Senior Conspirator says okay, and Christopher is amenable, perhaps I’ll ask for a guest post on this book. Here is a bit of Claire Berlinski’s review in the Washington Post:
“Reflections on the Revolution in Europe” — an allusion to Burke — is the latest in a series of pessimistic books, my own included, treating the conflict between a post-Christian Europe and a resurgent Islam. Christopher Caldwell, an editor of the Weekly Standard and contributor to the Financial Times, makes arguments that have been made elsewhere: Mass immigration has changed Europe’s demography and is rapidly changing its culture. Many immigrants to Europe have not assimilated; many retain or have developed an Islamic identity antithetical to liberal European values. But Caldwell makes these arguments unusually well, in a book notable for its range, synthesis of the literature, analytical rigor and elegant tone.
In 1968, Britain’s Shadow Defense Secretary, Enoch Powell, described Britain’s immigration policy as “mad, literally mad,” and warned of a day when native-born Britons were “strangers in their own country . . . their homes and neighborhoods changed beyond recognition.” He invoked the prophecies of the Sybil in the Aeneid: “I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood.’ ” Widely viewed as outrageously racist, this minatory speech destroyed his career.
In Caldwell’s view, “All British discussion of immigration has been, essentially, an argument over whether Enoch Powell was right.” The answer, he says, depends whether we mean right in the moral or factual sense. Caldwell agrees that the language of the speech was inflammatory and malicious, but he argues that Powell’s demographic projections and visions of blood were — factually — correct. The story, Caldwell observes, has been similar throughout Europe, an assertion he documents with a catalogue of ties between immigrants who do not seem to love their new homes and violence, crime, rioting and terrorism.
He does not argue that there is a monolithic Islamic identity or a single set of European values, although it is inevitable that he will be accused of this. He argues rather that there is enough of an Islamic identity, and enough left by way of European values — attenuated though these may be — that they are not easily reconciled and, if reconciled at all, will not necessarily be reconciled in Europe’s favor. He engages carefully with counter-arguments that there is no cause for alarm, and rejects most of them. He is particularly strong in dispatching the claim that, on balance, immigration is economically necessary and advantageous for Europe.
Comments are closed.