Europe -- going to H*ll in a handbasket

A few days ago, PalmTree Pundit did a post about the fact that, in Germany, parents can be denied the right to homeschool their children. Now, she follows with this:

Homeschooling is illegal in Germany, but this isn't: 'There is now nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the sex industry,' said Merchthild Garweg, a lawyer from Hamburg who specialises in such cases. 'The new regulations say that working in the sex industry is not immoral any more, and so jobs cannot be turned down without a risk to benefits.' -------- Prostitution was legalised in Germany in 2002 because the government believed that this would help to combat trafficking in women and cut links to organised crime. So, in Germany, you can't homeschool your children, but you can operate, work in, and visit brothels legally. And if that's the only job you can find, you have to take it or lose your unemployment benefits. Way to encourage 'responsible citizens', Germany!" (Hat tip: Drudge)

It is, of course, irresistable to couple this sterling example of decline in Germany with this Jonathan Rauch article attacking the current belief amonst left-leaning thinkers that Europe is the next big superpower. As Rauch points out, these same thinkers (or people of similar mindset), said precisely the same thing about Japan in the 1980s. You remember, don't you? Japan was set to rule the world with its perfect economic model. Well, it didn't happen. Fortunately, the Japanese have achieved a new, successful stability, but we're not speaking Japanese and bowing to the Emperor on this side of the Pacific. And Rauch makes the same point about the predictions about Europe. True, Europe is doing well now (and the Euro is high), but Europe has some deep problems (aside from legal prostitution and illegal home-schooling) that aren't going away. The main problem, of course, is that Europe is one giant social welfare state with an aging population that is not being replaced (and we think Social Security has problems). And this main problem leads to the second big problem Europe has: The only way to replace the vanishing European-born workforce is with immigrants and, in Europe, these immigrants are Muslims. As Theo Van Gogh's death in Holland shows, as the huge tensions in France show, as the death-spewing mosques in England show, these immigrants are not paving the way to social and economic success. UPDATE: David Limbaugh takes the same story and asks, "Given our culture's lurch toward Postmodern moral relativism is it too far-fetched to imagine that this could happen here in a few years?" I think it won't happen in our lifetime -- as long as we keep too many activist judges off the Court. UPDATE II: Found a great/depressing post at Michelle Malkin's website which highlights how degraded European culture -- actually, in this case, Dutch culture -- has become. The bowing and scraping to hate-filled Islamists is horrifying, and certainly doesn't bode well for the actually efficacy of the "tough talk" that came from Holland in the week or two after Theo Van Gogh's death.