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One of the fables that socialists like to tell is how wonderful life is in their peoples' paradises. From risible stories about how the Cuban people have world-class health care freely available to all and are 100% literate, to more plausible, but equally erroneous, tales about how our Scandinavian brethren manage to have a high standard of living, short work weeks, a benevolent welfare state, etc., these tales are inevitably spun by statists seeking to cast dust in the eyes of their more plebeian subjects the better to hide the failure of their grand schemes.

The received wisdom about economic life in the Nordic countries is easily summed up: people here are incomparably affluent, with all their needs met by an efficient welfare state.

Not so fast. Even in the notoriously socialist-freindly confines of the New York Times, hard economic truths have a way of making themselves felt eventually. What the Times has belatedly discovered about its beloved third way socialist-lite economies is that they are falling behind, shackled to the dead weight of the welfare state, the enervation it breeds, and the taxes it imposes.

All this was illuminated last year in a study by a Swedish research organization, Timbro, which compared the gross domestic products of the 15 European Union members (before the 2004 expansion) with those of the 50 American states and the District of Columbia. (Norway, not being a member of the union, was not included.)

After adjusting the figures for the different purchasing powers of the dollar and euro, the only European country whose economic output per person was greater than the United States average was the tiny tax haven of Luxembourg, which ranked third, just behind Delaware and slightly ahead of Connecticut.

The next European country on the list was Ireland, down at 41st place out of 66; Sweden was 14th from the bottom (after Alabama), followed by Oklahoma, and then Britain, France, Finland, Germany and Italy. The bottom three spots on the list went to Spain, Portugal and Greece.

Alternatively, the study found, if the E.U. was treated as a single American state, it would rank fifth from the bottom, topping only Arkansas, Montana, West Virginia and Mississippi.

While the private-consumption figure for the United States was $32,900 per person, the countries of Western Europe (again excepting Luxembourg, at $29,450) ranged between $13,850 and $23,500, with Norway at $18,350.

Faced with the undeniable economic reality that they have almost eaten their way through the economic seed corn laid up by their frugal ancestors, what do the current panjandrums of the welfare state do? Why, they lie, of course.

Meanwhile, the references to Norway as "the world's richest country" keep on coming. An April 2 article in Dagsavisen, a major Oslo daily, asked: How is it that "in the world's richest country we're tearing down social services that were built up when Norway was much poorer?"

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Being a casual and undisciplined surfer of the net means that I often get guided towards stories right in front of me, and very late, by somewhat circuitous routes. For instance, I only got to this as a result of Harry Hutton linking to a James Lileks piece in the Washington Times. But never mind, I got there:

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners – who must pay tax and employee health insurance – were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.

The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe.

She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her "profile'' and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.

Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job – including in the sex industry – or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990.

This is as classic a case of an ( I presume) unintended consequences as I have ever encountered, and it is an unintended consequence of two opinions both of which I hold myself. First, I do think that prostitution should indeed not be illegal, and second, in the absence of the abolition of state welfare, I do think that persistent welfare claimants should be obliged to lower their sights about what work they are willing to accept. Very unemployed information technology professionals should not lounge around watching day time television for year after year until such time as someone finally offers them a job in the information technology profession.

So, add to all of the above a tiny pepper shake of that Germanic manic logic of the sort that we all know about from our history books, and you get: be a prostitute, or lose your benefits. Amy Alkon, commenting on this post, explained why being a prostitute can be a fine and noble thing and can have very good consequences for society, but she surely did not mean this

That is the trouble with micro-managerially interventionist welfare (or attempted welfare) states. Arguments have a tendency to degenerate into whether any and every imaginable sort of human behaviour or employment or enjoyment should be either (a) illegal or (b) compulsory. (c) Take it or leave it/your choice/we do not care/enjoy it - shun it - it makes no difference to us/you decide . . . has a way of getting squeezed out.

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With all the understandable attention being focused on the dreadful situation in the lands skirting the Indian Ocean, there is always a danger that disasters of a different, more Man-made kind, get overlooked. Well this week the German statistics office reported a dreadful set of unemployment figures, showing the number of jobless in Europe's biggest economy to be at the highest level for seven years

A Bloomberg report on the story contains the following passage:

New measures cutting benefits for the long-term unemployed took effect on Jan. 1. Those without a job, including people previously registered as social-welfare recipients rather than as jobless, will also face increased pressure to accept job offers or risk losing benefits. The changes will add an as yet undetermined number of people to the January jobless total.

But it is clear that the German authorities are still tinkering with the issue. That 10.8 percent of the working age population of such an important country should be out of a job is a disgrace. What I find odd though is how little outraged commentary in the economics part of the press there is about this. It is almost as if the European chattering classes have come regard this problem in Germany, and also France, with an air of sullen resignation. Of course, dealing with it will involve lots of vulgar, Reaganite actions such as deregulation, tax cuts to spur business formation and the like, which of course goes against the grain of Germany's 'managed' form of business so beloved of leftist commentators like Britain's own Will Hutton.

Germany needs to get its act together. Some 15 years since reunification with the eastern part of the country, Germany has failed to live up its early promise. With so many young people, including those from immigrant backgrounds, on the dole, no wonder commentators wonder about the social fabric of that country. They should.

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Governments are now peddling myths to cover up their own inaction during the first few days of the catastrophe. They are stating that the magnitude of the catastrophe was unknown and, therefore, they did not feel compelled to set up the emergency infrastructure to supply information to distraught relatives. One of the first countries to feel the angry wind is Sweden, where the Foreign Minister attended the theatre on Boxing Day night, with appalling lack of judgement.

Der Spiegel's article highlights the comparison between government confusion and private sector organisation:

Swedes are fuming. Partly, they are unleashing their rage, horror and sense of utter helplessness in the face of a disaster felt by almost every family, directly or indirectly, in this tightly knit nation of 9 million. But they are also launching some very sharp criticism at a government that failed to absorb the magnitude of the Asian tsunami and took too long to respond. As many as 4,000 Swedes were swept into the tsunami's watery folds.

An editorial in the mass-circulation Aftonbladet lambasted Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds for not showing up to work until more than a day after she learned about the disaster. Even worse, said the paper, Freivalds did not sit worriedly at home like so many Swedes on Sunday night. Instead, she went to the theater in Stockholm. She did so knowing full well that, at that point, 10,000 people were already believed dead on Southeast Asia's beaches, which draw Swedes in droves each winter. And she didn't exactly rush to get to the office. "At nine o'clock the next day their chairs at the foreign office were still empty," hissed the paper. "Not until 10.30 a.m., 31.5 hours after the death wave, did the foreign minister arrive at work."

Is this grounds for Freivalds and Prime Minister Goeran Persson to resign? The paper thinks so, as, it seems do many Swedes. Since Wednesday, the Swedish Ministry has been deluged with thousands of nasty e-mails accusing the government of indecision, failure to act and not doing enough to help stranded and wounded Swedes get home. "You and your government's incompetence shines like a beacon in the night," wrote one Swede. "Today, Dec. 28, the government's weakness and indecisiveness surpassed my wildest and most terrifying fantasies," wrote another. Commentators, too, are lashing out. "I am ashamed of being Swedish when I have a prime minister who says that he can't get more people answering telephones because it is Boxing Day (Dec.26) and people have the day off," wrote Claes Thilander in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter.

This contrasts with the role of Lottie Knutsson, the information director at Fritidsresor, a travel company.

In fact, one of Sweden's unlikely new stars is Lottie Knutsson, director of information for the travel company Fritidsresor. Since Sunday, Knutsson has been working tirelessly to arrange flights home for Swedes and to get the government to ship more medicine and send more airlifts to get the injured home. "Let Lottie Knutsson from Fritidsresor change places with Göran Persson," one reader wrote to the Foreign Ministry. On Thursday, the headline of the daily Svenska Dagbladet screamed "Bring them home now," referring to Swedes still stranded in Thailand.

It takes a disaster to bring home to many that their political elites, having sold their mess of pottage to Brussels, no longer subscribe to the notion that they are servants rather than masters.

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London celebrated the arrival of the New Year in what was under the circumstances rather too flamboyant style last night, with a firework display in, over and around the Wheel. The trouble with a firework display celebration at a time like this is that you can either do them, or cancel them. You cannot tone them down.

I have more photos of how this looked on my telly here.

Huge firework displays fit very snugly into the Way We Live Now, and in particular into the Way We Are Governed Now. More and more fireworks shows are now collectively staged, and collectively viewed, including on TV of course. Meanwhile, free enterprise firework enjoyment is discouraged, allegedly because of safety, but probably also simply because it is free enterprise.

I wonder if there is an EU dimension to this? There usually is, after all. The EU is all about centralised power and the suppression of freelance activity. It is also all mixed up with Roman Catholicism. As is November 5th, otherwise known as Bonfire Night or Guy Fawkes Night. Are our continental rulers now discouraging us from celebrating the burning of a Roman Catholic terrorist, who was, like them, hell bent on reversing the defeat of the Spanish Armada?

Whatever the reason, and however much I hate what the new arrangements may or may not symbolise, I prefer the new firework dispensation. I recall being in Germany over the New Year some time in the eighties, and seeing the entire sky of Germany lit up at midnight on the dot. I thought to myself, we should do that, instead of the sputtering, long -drawn-out, chaotic, dog-scaring mess that our November 5th celebrations have degenerated into. (This year's, to my ears, were particularly feeble and pointless.) Having them all at one means that we can all enjoy them all at once, and then go back indoors and get stuck into the New Year. Which I hope is a happy one for all who read and write here.

None of which means that the inconsolable unhappinesses of many in the world just now, which for me have been most vividly and most gruesomely evoked by Amit Varma, should be ignored.

Who would have thought that the eastern coastal parts of India would, following the tsunami devastation, be afflicted by a shortage of kerosene, of all things and among many other things? Yet it is all perfectly logical. Burying the bodies is taking a long, long time, and by the time many are reached they have decayed and cannot be dragged. Grab hold of a leg, and you end up holding only a leg. Yet the bodies must be disposed of, to prevent disease. So, they must be burned. But for that you need... kerosene.

For the link to that piece I thank Instapundit, who I think has been outstanding in recent days, both with his abundant tsunami linkage – what is happening, what needs to be done, how to help, etc. - and for his abundant postings about and linkings to other matters. Update: as Instapundit again notes, there is now more Amit Varma reportage.

So a very unhappy New Year for many. If any of those reading this are personally afflicted in any way by these terrible events, please know that you have the deepest sympathy of all of us here and of all the other readers of this.

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On Saturday I found myself (as one does) in the "Freetown" of Christiana, an "alternative community" in Copenhagen in Denmark. An abandoned military barracks quite close to the centre of the city was inhabited by a large number of squatters in the early 1970s, and arfter decades of sometimes hostile, sometimes violent clashes between inhabitants and the authorities (often over drug use), the people of Christiana and the Danish authorities these days basically tolerate one another.

These days Christiana has become a major venue for such things as live music and other entertainment, and it contains an assortment of bars, cafes, art galleries, workshops selling a variety of craft goods, music related items, and a vast amount of cannabis also seems to be consumed in the area. Clearly the economy of Christiana is very largely funded by selling stuff to visiting people like me, but that is fine. (I am all in favour of people who want to sell stuff, and I am all for people being able to smoke or ingest anything they want). And like anywhere else, Christiana has a fair bit of municipal pride, with clearly demarcated signs indicating city limits.

(It is actually relatively difficult to document this post with pictures, as photography is discouraged in all of Christiana, and is prohibited entirely in the entertainingly named Pusherstreet, partly because of the questionable legality of some of the things being sold, and partly I suspect because this is a way of preventing Christiana from degenerating completely into a tourist circus, which is always a danger).

But clearly the local promoters of certain iconic pop-cultural properties believe that nearby walls are a good place to advertise.

But in a cultural or pop-cultural sense, there are certain issues that are clearly in dispute. For one thing, quite a few of the buildings in Christiana have satellite dishes on their roofs. Despite this, there are clearly theological issues about whether television is a good thing or a bad thing, and as someone who these days watches little television other than the occasional cricket or football match, I did find this graffiti and counter-graffiti amusing.

However. it was perhjaps most interesting to walk out of Christiana, and to look at the other side of that entry gate. Walking back into Copenhagen proper, I had my chance to Interesting though to see just which organisation the Freetown of Christiana most wants to be free of.

Fancy that.

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Last night I attended a fascinating talk about the libertarian movement in Spain, hosted by Tim Evans in Putney, and given by Gabriel Calzada, who had been known to me before last night only as the author (maybe – I was unsure) of this essay.

The message Gabriel delivered to a small but very attentive group of London libertarians can be briefly summarised as follows: the Spanish libertarian movement is extraordinarily big and is doing extraordinarily well.

Gabriel started his talk with some history, concerning the Salamanca school of Natural Law theorists, mentioning the names of Francisco de Vitoria, Francisco de Suarez, and Juan de Mariana. Here is a famous Mariana quote:

Taxes are commonly a calamity for the people and a nightmare for the government. For the former they are always excessive; for the latter they are never enough, never too much.

But that was a very long time ago, and that kind of thing only influenced modern Spain indirectly, via its influence on the Austrian school.

It became very clear as the evening went on that the enormous Spanish anarchist movement that flourished about a century ago is crucial to any understanding of the current Spanish libertarian movement. Anarchism as a political force in Spain was eventually decapitated by the supposed allies of the anarchists, the Communists, for being insufficiently obedient to Stalin, but the climate of opinion – what we here at Samizdata call the meta-context – of anarchism lived on in Spain. Whereas the typical political question in other countries is something like: How shall we govern ourselves?, in Spain the question is: How shall we be free? How, as it were, do you do freedom? With a question like that, it makes sense that the libertarian answer to that question (one word summary: property) would attract a mountain of enthusiastic attention, and it has.

Perhaps another reason for the dramatic impact of libertarianism in Spain is that Spain has, until challenged by the libertarians, been intellectually dominated by Communism. Anarchism having been wiped out, and anti-Communism having become so tainted by Francoism, that left the lefties ruling the media roost in Spain, in the form of such mass media giants as El Pais, the biggest national newspaper in Spain, which makes the Guardian seem to Gabriel like a centrist/liberal kitten by comparison. Lots of libertarians are converts from leftism, and Spain is very full of people who have been raised in a leftist manner but who are looking for different answers.

It may also have helped the rise of libertarianism, although this was not mentioned by Gabriel or in discussion, that Spain is now economically so vibrant, compared to earlier times.

Gabriel, interestingly, preferred to focus on the achievements of two individuals: Jesus Huerta de Soto, and Federico Jimenez Losantos. Huerta is the key scholar, and Jimenez is a key media performer, and both are men of "contageous enthusiasm", a phrase Gabriel used several times.

He also mentioned the vital role that the Internet has played in this story. Again, summarising brutally, whereas the Communists owned the old media, the libertarians own the Internet, to the point where the Communists are getting seriously worried.

Gabriel mentioned two internet sites in particular, liberalismo.org (scholarship) and Libertad Digital (current affairs). Both have astronomical hit rates, of the order of a million a month (sorry but I am bad at numbers). When those Communists type any Spanish 'issue' into their search engines, time and time again, the first few hits are libertarian analyses. No wonder they are so anxious, and have been saying that something ought to be done about controlling the Internet.

Jimenez is also doing extraordinarily well on the radio.

I could attempt to go on, on the basis of my scribbled and inadequate notes, but I will leave it at that for now, hoping that Gabriel will regard this report as better than nothing. (Antoine Clarke, also present, might like to comment about all the things I missed, and maybe clarify some of the numbers involved in this story, people, hit rates, etc.) I will add only that whereas there are now no Spanish libertarian sites which also present themselves to the English speaking world in English, this is apparently about to change. There will soon be an English language site devoted to Spanish affairs, written by Spanish libertarians. Gabriel has promised to inform us as soon as it gets going.

Altogether a fascinating, and most encouraging evening.

Afterwards we had a late supper at Tim and Helen's, which is where I took this photo of Gabriel.

Hayek (on the left in black and white) is saying: what is that greenery doing in front of me? Gabriel is a great enemy of greenery, having recently penned a denunciation of the Kyoto Treaty, so particular apologies for that blemish.

Oh, and did I mention that Gabriel Calzada has also just been made a Professor at the University of Madrid?

If ideas have consequences, and they definitely do, then Spanish libertarianism is going to have some very big consequences indeed.

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This is a very odd piece of reportage, from Spiegel Online:

Finally some news out of Holland that doesn't have to do with the religious violence that has gripped the country for the last 10 days: The Dutch cabinet has decided on a March 2005 withdrawal of the country's 1,350 troops in Iraq. Dutch Defense Minister Henk Kamp made the announcement on Friday afternoon.

What, not anything to do with it? Surely the Dutch cabinet at least hopes that Dutch Muslims will be slightly less angry about everything now, even if the actual decision to bring the boys home was made either before all the domestic rowing, or during it but for genuinely unrelated reasons.

And some will certainly argue that there is a connection, so there is your connection right there.

I do not say that the religious violence was the sole cause of the withdrawal, merely that these are definitely inter-woven news stories.

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The Vlaams Blok is the largest political party in Flanders, the Flemish speaking half of Belgium... and the Belgian high court has just in effect required it to disband. Now I hold no brief for an ethnic nationalist political party (though they are the closest thing to a free market party in Belgium, which I certainly approve of), but it is hard to see how the nation which hosts the key institutions of the EU can now claim to be democratic in any meaningful way.

To ban the Vlaams Blok because it is allegedly racist, and yet not ban communists or socialists from running for office, means that only certain types of enforced collectivism will be tolerated, namely the type which is imposed equally on all, but not any form which is only imposed on immigrants. Repression is only acceptable if everyone is repressed. Keep in mind that the Vlaams Blok is not some tiny lunatic fringe of neo-fascist moonbats like the BNP in Britain but are a major political party. Yet the political establishment have just used the courts to put there opponents out of business.

I eagerly await a series of fierce denunciations of the wholesale disenfranchisement of a significant proportion of the Flemish electorate. Given the importance attached to democracy by the Guardian and Independent, I expect at least a week of outraged headlines and calls to action to defend democracy in Europe by Robert Fisk and George Monbiot.

Ok, I am waiting .

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Blogger, film scriptwriter and novelist Roger Simon notes that there have not been many sounds of disgust from his Hollywood backyard at the murder of Dutch film-maker, Theo Van Gogh (a descendant of the artist) on November 2nd.

I must say there has not been a huge amount of noise from our own British film-makers, documentary producers and big shot journalists, either. I get the distinct feeling that a lot of folk in the artistic community are simply scared or uninterested that a man who made a film about the treatment of women in Islamic culture was shot in broad daylight in Holland, that most laid-back of nations.

I find that there is something rather shabby about this silence. I hope to be proven wrong and that all those who have cause to value freedom of speech and the right to challenge certain ideas will speak out at the brutal murder of Mr Van Gogh.

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Amidst all the kerfuffle over the US elections, I urge you to spare a charitable thought for all those American writers, actors, singers, poets, puppeteers, directors and musicians whose right to dissent will continue to be crushed in George Bush's Amerikkka - a country where it is dangerous to speak out.

Mind you, they can always decamp to tolerant, liberal Europe where they will be free to express themselves:

An outspoken Dutch film-maker was shot and stabbed to death yesterday by a Dutch-Moroccan man in apparent reprisal for his campaign against Islam, sending shock waves through a country that exalts freedom of speech.

Theo van Gogh, 47, a provocateur and enfant terrible of Dutch cinema, was ambushed by a bearded man in Arab clothing as he cycled through the heart of Amsterdam.

The Dutch media immediately linked the attack to the director's latest film, Submission, which highlights the repression of women in some Islamic cultures.

Well, after a fashion.

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Avant-Garde French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, has finally been deconstructed:

Jacques Derrida, one of France's most famous philosophers, has died at the age of 74.

Though to say that he has "died" is to, perhaps, impose a structural context defined by the ontology of Western metaphysics. In the grammatic, linguistic and rhetorical senses he has merely desedimented, dismantled and decomposed. Indeed, this is a grand narrative undoing in the egological, methodological and general sense, as opposed to a mere critique in the idiomatic or Kantian sense.

Er...or something.

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Alert readers will have noted that I often write here about education. What happens is that I dash off a piece for my Education Blog, and then say to myself: this will just about do for Samizdata. And since I now find writing adequately for Samizdata harder than for my private blogs, and since Samizdata has many more readers, here is another such piece which I hope will suffice for here, provoked by an essay I am in the middle of reading, by Paul Graham. (Thank you Arts & Letters Daily, a daily resource without which I could not now do.) The first few paragraphs of this esssay grabbed my attention, and I am now about half way through it.

In that previous reaction to Graham's essay, I made much of the idea of an essay being "persuasive".

I am right, and wrong, says Paul Graham. Yes, a lot of education is rooted in legal education, but, he says, too much. An essay, he says, is not – or should not be – lawyering:

Defending a position may be a necessary evil in a legal dispute, but it's not the best way to get at the truth, as I think lawyers would be the first to admit. It's not just that you miss subtleties this way. The real problem is that you can't change the question.

And yet this principle is built into the very structure of the things they teach you to write in high school. The topic sentence is your thesis, chosen in advance, the supporting paragraphs the blows you strike in the conflict, and the conclusion – uh, what is the conclusion? I was never sure about that in high school. It seemed as if we were just supposed to restate what we said in the first paragraph, but in different enough words that no one could tell. Why bother? But when you understand the origins of this sort of "essay", you can see where the conclusion comes from. It's the concluding remarks to the jury.

As I often find myself saying, to justify my enthusiasm for argument: my dad was a trial lawyer, and so were both my grandfathers. My family's basic activity when dining, when we weren't eating or listening to classical music on the Third Programme or Family Fun Chat on the Home Service, was arguing. And if no one was disagreeing with a dominant consensus, someone would, just for the fun of it. "Defending a position" is, I think, a pretty good way to get at the truth, provided more than one position is being defended, which is exactly what is happening when a jury is involved. The adversarial principle is, I would say, a whole hell of a lot better than a "necessary evil".

Think only of the clash of conclusions – of, in Dan Rather's words, "political agendas" – that recently got the truth of the Rather documents fracas out into the light of day in the space of a few hours.

In our legal world, the advocates start with their rival conclusions and defend them, and attack them, while the judge listens, occasionally asking a question, or insisting that a question already asked be answered. ("The witness will answer the question.") Also, the judge occasionally, sports umpire style, restrains the advocates if they get too rude, or if they use arguments that are too sneaky. ("I object your honour!" – "Objection sustained.") In the blogosphere, the 'judge' is other bloggers and other journalists, and the 'jury' is the people reading it all and buying things and voting for things on the strength of all that arguing and counter-arguing.

On the Continent of Europe their legal tradition is very different from the one shared by Paul Graham and me, and by most of you reading this. There, the judge takes the initiative. He does not merely endure the clash of the advocates and help the jury to decide. He decides, by doing just what Graham says an essayist should do. He searches disinterestedly for the truth. He walks, to use Graham's excellent metaphor, through the open door into the room where the truth of the matter is to be found, and he finds whatever he finds. Then he announces it, and that is what is true and what is to be done.

These contrasting traditions have a profound effect on the different ways in which education is done in the Anglo-Saxon world and in Continental Europe, or so I am persuasively informed by my continental friends). (By the way, in Scotland, they also have a 'Continental' legal system. They do not have judges. They have 'intendants' in Scottish courts. I think that is what they are called. That is, active investigators, as in 'super-intendant'.)

Anglo-Saxon schools are often experienced by their congregations as boring churches in which the God Almighty Preacher says what is what and they, the congregation, just have to suck it up. But it is the very things that these Preachers often say in these churches, to say nothing of all the things said outside of them, that do much to make the congregation so restive. On the Continent, the Teacher/Professeur (the Judge substitute) finds The Truth, and then announces it. Your job as a mere pupil is to learn it, not to argue about it. Anglo-Saxon schools are anarchic dog-fights compared to the average secondary school on the Continent of Europe.

The weakness of the Anglo-Saxon system is that the truth gets lost in the mayhem and din of battle. Juries emerge from trials wondering what the f*** that was all about and having chosen their verdict with a coin toss or because the prosecuting lawyer had a cute smile. We tune into the Internet, and retreat in confusion from the hubbub. School pupils just become confused and give up, steamrollered by their more confident and louder rivals. Or they do not know which is the right answer and hate having to decide it for themselves.

But the weakness of the Continental system is that the actual truth of this or that particular matter may be forbidden or ignored, with only lies or obsolete platitudes about it being taught by the Man At The Front, and these lies and platitudes may not be contested by the peasantry.

It is in the nature of educated people brought up in either tradition, but aware of the existence of the other tradition, that they often perceive only the vices of their own system and cast envious eyes over the fence, or in this case over the English Channel (known over there as 'La Manche').

No accident, then, that 'essay' is a French word.

So. On with Paul Graham's essay...

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An acquaintance sent me a link to an article about the future of Europe and asked me for my opinions in response. As someone with a reputation for having an opinion (usually a fairly inflammatory one) about everything, I find myself untypically, and perhaps rather annoyingly, equivocal. But this is entirely due to the fact that I am unsure whether or not this kind of thing can or should be taken seriously:

How quickly is Europe being Islamized? So quickly that even historian Bernard Lewis, who has continued throughout his honor-laden career to be strangely disingenuous about certain realities of Islamic radicalism and terrorism, told the German newspaper Die Welt forthrightly that "Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century."

Or maybe sooner.

I have heard such sweeping assessments before, courtesy (mostly) of some of the more intemperate conservative blogs and websites. But is there any substance to the claim?

On the face of it, it appears both alarmist and far-fetched. Just taking the EU countries alone, I believe that there are, at most, some 20 million Muslim people out of a total population in the region of 470 million. Less than 5%.

But, let us suppose that some profound demographic shifts over the next few decades result in Muslims outnumbering non-Muslims. Does it automatically follow that Europe will then be 'Islamic'? And, if so, what type of Islamic? Are we talking about the arid, monochromatic, repressive Saudi 'Wahabbi' version or the more secular and easy-going Turkish variety? Or could it be some newly-manifest and unique 'European' version of Islam?

Also, and given much of Europe's descent into post-modernist torpor, would any of these scenarios (assuming they came to pass) necessarily be a bad thing?

So many questions with no answers. Or no satisfactory answers at any rate. My own inclination is to regard the article with a high degree of skepticism. Human affairs are sufficiently fluid to make predictions about the next week seem foolhardy, let alone the next century. However, it is worth bearing in mind that North Africa (the Maghreb) was once as European as France or Italy is now and that fully two-thirds of what was once the Roman Empire is now a part of the Islamic world.

But the past is not necessarily a guide to the future, so that just leaves me back where I started. In short, I just do not know and I am hesitant to venture any sort of opinion more definite than that.

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Gibraltar remains a British colony to the overwhelming relief of its 27,833 inhabitants. Yet they are well aware that the reason Geoff Hoon, Britain's dismal defence minister, yesterday attended the 300th anniversary of Britain's capture of The Rock has little to do with any great enthusiasm for the people on The Rock or a deep commitment for retaining Gibraltar, but rather a disinclination to 'make nice' with Spain due to its policies regarding Islamic terrorism and Iraq.

In fact members of both the 'tranzi left' and 'paleo right' see Gibraltar as a weird anachronism and despite those groups fetishising their minor differences, both have a shared collectivist meta-context and think nothing of what the inhabitants of The Rock wish for themselves.

If the Gibraltarians were wise, they would let it be known that they are prepared to go all the way and exercise a 'dooms day' option of Unilateral Declaration of Independence if the political class in Britain ever decide to 'give' Gibraltar away: the battalion sized Gibraltar Regiment should simply take up arms with whoever will rally to the red and white flag, and man their border with bayonets fixed. Of course it is unlikely a militia army in Gibraltar could hold off a serious military move by Spain, though success against the odds is not without precedent, but would Spain actually be prepared to fight for 27,833 people who simply do not want to be Spanish?

I realise that is indeed what the Spanish state is doing in the Basque parts of Spain but this is a rather different proposition and unlike in the Basque country, there is no friendly constituency in Gibraltar who sees Spanish sovereignty as in any way tolerable. A Spanish takeover would be nothing less that a colonial occupation of an unwilling population.

People have to be prepared to literally fight for the things they value and if the people of Gibraltar made it clear that in the final analysis they would be willing to do exactly that, perhaps the chattering classes in both Spain and Islington Britain would stop thinking those people's fate is something that can be lightly signed away by people in a ministry building in London or Madrid.

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One of Spain's top banks, Santander, is making a bid to buy the British banking firm Abbey plc, the mortgage lending firm which used to be a building society (what Americans would know as a Savings and Loan).

I do not have much to say about the specifics of the deal. It is all a part of the merger, acquision and disposal process which is a healthy part of capitalism and the efficient allocation of scarce capital. Maybe the shareholders of either firm have strong views on the matter but I do not. However, what is interesting to me is what this deal says about Spain's development as an economic power.

Spain is one of the success stories of the past few years. When I went to the glorious city of Barcelona last year I was struck by how prosperous and dynamic the place was. I hear and read similar impressions from other sources. Much of this has to do with the determination of Spanish entrepreneurs to throw off the shackles of former failed socialist policies and embrace a more liberal economic culture, which former centre-right premier Aznar helped spawn. Let us hope the new socialist government elected earlier this year in rather shameful circumstances after the Madrid bombings does not mess it up.

It would be a grave error to infer too much from the acquisitive activities of a Spanish bank in Britain. But I get the feeling that this grand old nation is flexing its economic muscles again, and who knows, making a distinct improvement to the quality of Britain's economy while getting richer as well. Good. It feels appropriate somehow. There are hundreds of thousands of British expatriates living in Spain so it perhaps fitting that Spain's biggest companies are trying to get a piece of the action in the UK.

(As an aside, I would like to know what the Spanish-based blog Iberian Notes makes of this).

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There are many myths about Sweden and they go back a long time.

For example, in the 1930's various supporters of the 'Middle Way' (such as the future Conservative party leader Harold Macmillian) suggested that if Britain followed a policy of greater statism, Britain would be more prosperous - and they pointed at Sweden as an example of greater statism. Such folk did not tend to stress such things as Swedish levels of taxation being about half British levels at the time.

Sweden's great success was avoiding both world wars (and the capital consumption these wars involved), but this is not often talked about (the record of Sweden, in relation to Germany, in the 1930's and during WWII is especially not something people like to talk about).

Of course these days Sweden does indeed have very high taxes (although I doubt they really are the "highest in the world", as is often claimed - after all the stats for levels of taxation in many nations in the world are fantasy as they do not include the endless bribes one must pay and extortion one is subject to in these countries).

However, at least in recent years the Swedish government has at least managed to control its (very high) levels of government welfare-state spending (unlike the United States - see the Cato Institute for the Bush Administration's latest lies about the cost of the Medicare extension), and whilst not as well off as Americans ("Sweden most prosperous nation in the world" is an absurd myth one still finds being talked of from time to time) the Swedish people are not doing too badly.

Apart from the control of government spending (yes it is still very high - but at least it's growth has been controlled in recent years so government spending as a percentage of GDP has fallen - although, I repeat, it is still very high) which has led to a balanced budget, Sweden has also followed a policy of one of the lowest money supply growth rates in the world.

Now why is this? Fiscal and monetary conservatism is hardly what Sweden is supposed to be about - this is supposed to be a nation that has long worshipped the doctrines of Lord Keynes.

However, a theory does occur to me. The Swedish government has long wished to get the nation to join the European Union's system of money (the "Euro"). How would the people of Sweden be convinced to vote to join the EU currency?

According to the doctrines of Lord Keynes (at least as they are popularly understood) if a government follows a policy of balanced budget and tight control of the money supply then (at least at some points of the "economic cycle") such lines of policy will produce recession.

Could the intention of the government of Sweden have been to produce recession and get people to vote for the Euro as a possible "way out"? In short could the rising levels of GDP and industrial output in Sweden be not just unintentional, but the opposite of what the government wanted?

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Everyone is aware by this time that al Qaeda's attack on Madrid led to the election of the candidate who promised immediate withdrawal of Spanish forces from the coalition in Iraq. The Spanish electorate are acting like the child who, after getting knocked down by a schoolyard bully, cowers in the hope said bully will stop hitting them and just go away.

Based on this thought, I was going to do a cute 'appropriate' modification of the Spanish flag.

To my chagrin, I have discovered the Spanish flag already has a yellow stripe down the middle.

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The forthcoming Olympic Games which are to be held in the birthplace of this event, Greece, promise to cause a few headaches. In particular, security services around the world must be wondering what level of risk is being run in holding an event relatively close to the Middle East, and in which lots of Americans, Brits, Israelis and other parts of Dubya's great Zionist/Halliburton conspiracy are taking part.

So while I was chatting to a work colleague about Greeks' own views of the situation, I came across a corker of a quote from an unnamed Olympic official:

Greece hasn't hit the panic button yet. That is because it hasn't even installed the necessary wiring.

Brilliant.

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Just who are these people going around saying that a decadent, post-historic, senescent Europe is no longer capable of galvanising in response to dangerous threats?

Nothing could be further from the truth:

Jelly mini-cup sweets have been banned by the European Commission because of a risk of children choking.

The sweets are packaged in plastic cups and designed to be swallowed in one.

The commission said they were a risk because of their "consistency, shape and form" and that warnings alone were not enough to protect children.

Though I do think that diplomacy and negotiation should have been tried before embarking on such unilateralist and aggressive actions.

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The claim is being made (by various people) that the founder of the IKEA company, Ingvar Kamprad, is now the richest man in the world (supposedly Mr Kamprad has overtaken Mr Gates).

In the British media (both electronic and print) Mr Kamprad is described as 'Swedish'. Now he may well still be a citizen of Sweden, but Mr Kamprad has been a resident of Lausanne, Switzerland since 1976.

Sweden is not doing badly economically at the moment, but I do find it interesting that the taxes of Sweden mean that its most successful businessman is unable to live there.

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Fifteen suspected Islamic extremists linked to the Casablanca bombings of 16 May 2003 have been arrested this morning, according to the Europe 1 radio station which broke the news.

The bomb attacks last year killed 45 people, including 3 French citizens.

The arrests were made by the DST (French equivalent of MI5) and the RAID (elite Police unit) in two Paris suburbs, Aulay-sous-Bois and Mantes-la-Jolie. They come as Queen Elizabeth II makes an official visit to Paris, to coincide with the centenary of the 'Entente Cordiale' between the United Kingdom and France.

Over the week-end French police made a number of arrests of Basque ETA terrorists, including Felix Ignacio Esparza Luri, alias "Navarro", at Saint-Paul-lès-Dax in the Landes département.

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One of the very many arguments in which I was embroiled while I was a student in the 1980's involved one of my house-mates who steadfastly held that the government should pay students a handsome monthly salary in return for all the hard studying they did. Now this was at a time when, in fact, the government did pay most students an annual grant which covered the costs of their education and left them with a bit of spending money to boot.

But that was not enough for my protagonist. As far as he was concerned this was 'mere crumbs'; a demeaning insult from a skinflint Tory government. No, students were so precious and valuable that they deserved an 'executive' style pay package so that they would not be subjected to the indignities of having to buy second-hand clothes from charity shops.

When I explained (in some detail) why the government (Tory or otherwise) could not possibly afford such magnanimity, he responded by trying to convince me that arithmetic was but a political 'mind-trick' constructed to oppress the masses (and students, of course).

And, by jove, he was right. Well, after a fashion:

Hundreds of thousands of people across Europe, many of them elderly, have marched in protest at plans to reform welfare systems. In Rome, pensioners arrived on buses, special trains and even boats from the island of Sardinia to demonstrate against the rising cost of living.

Various German cities saw people march against welfare cuts introduced to combat economic stagnation.

And in Paris they demanded more jobs and social justice.

Across Europe governments are trying to find ways to pay pensions to ageing populations, or to cut back on expensive social provision.

It is always tempting to sneer at people who think that the dried-up wells of government money can be refreshed by the act of marching up and down waving self-pitying slogans. Mind you, that has generally been the means of opening up the state spigots in the past so I suppose I cannot really blame them for giving it another try. That is the thing about street protests: they are the modern equivalent of rain dances.

There is also an extent to which I feel quite sorry for these people. They have been took, they have been had, they have been sold a pup. They have been 'mind-tricked' by a post-war political class that has mesmerised them into believing that a river of easy largesse could be conjured out of nothing and made to flow forever by sleight-of-hand. Yes, you can vote to abolish the iron laws of economics and two plus two can equal sixteen thousand four hundred and thirty five if only you are willing to let your 'intellectuals' handle the mathematics for you.

But now the dwindling numbers of producers have been taxed down to the bone and there are simply no more sweeties to hand out. That was not supposed to happen but it has happended and it heralds an end to the days of milk and honey.

These trains of irate Italian pensioners may appear slightly pathetic. Comical, even. But they are part of a generation (and maybe the front-line of two or even three generations) that is not so much 'hitting the streets' as hurtling towards a big brick wall into which they will eventually crash with sickening thud. When that day comes, a lot of dazed and angry people are going to be looking for something or someone to blame for their pain and, given Europe's track record on these matters, I have little confidence that they will assign that blame correctly.