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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
March 21, 2004
Invertebrate Spain
A week has passed since last Sunday's general election in Spain in which the party of capitulation defeated the party of confrontation in the wake of a huge terror attack on Madrid. While the intricacies of Spain's post-modern electoral system will keep prime minister elect Jos? Luis Rodr?guez Zapatero out of office for many more weeks he immediately announced his intention to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq thus satisfying the principal demand of the Jihadis who murdered 200 of his countrymen. Then in his first radio interview the new leader of what had been the most steadfast ally of the U.K. and U.S. in continental Europe said Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush must do some reflection -- you can't organize a war with lies. Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush diplomatically ignored this contemptible assertion. "Apaciguamiento" as we have learned this last week is the Spanish word for appeasement. Mr. Zapatero will make a fine poster boy for it. A humourless charmless and rather stupid socialist ideologue his remarks were greeted with embarrassment by his more sophisticated colleagues throughout Europe. His Socialists were still remembered at home as the party that wrecked Spain 's economy before being thrown out of office in 1996. Since the Parti Popular under Jos? Mar?a Aznar had presided over a remarkable spurt of economic growth. It had a solid lead in polls on the eve of the terrorist attacks. Exit polls confirmed that the attacks had swung the election. Politicians are too easy to target. That Mr. Zapatero is a jackass is hardly news especially in Spain. There is no point in blaming him for continuing in character. Democracy permits free votes and the hard questions must instead be directed to the Spanish electorate. To be fair the Spaniards hardly had time to think; and if there is any potentially good news it is that others in Europe and elsewhere now have an opportunity to learn from Spain's catastrophic mistake. Certainly painting Mr. Zapatero as the "prime minister owing his position to Bin Laden" as Jonathan Eyal did from Britain's Royal United Services Institute will be helpful in this regard. But in the end we must look unflinchingly into the realities of post-modern Spanish society. For here is a nation that had already voted for suicide; which is passing through a demographic phase on a trajectory towards extinction. The birth rate which was still above three children per woman at the decease of the caudillo Francisco Franco in 1975 has plunged to barely one child per woman today -- the lowest birthrate in the entire world. It is a rate at which within several decades taxpayers and pensioners will balance each other one to one; unless by that time the country has been repopulated by much more fecund Moroccan and other Muslim immigrants. The historical Spain which rose against Napoleon's occupation; the Spain that in a former age became la madre patria to a New World and carried the standard of Catholic Christianity to the ends of the earth; is in the act of disappearing. The Spain of the Reconquista is itself being reconquered by fresh waves of immigrants from North Africa. This is a trend seen throughout Europe but nowhere moving so rapidly as in Spain. For the moment there remains a substantial "young generation" in their twenties and thirties but most without children. These are people passing through all the hormonal stages of late adolescence (which can continue until past forty) but without any of the responsibilities of parenting or of religious faith and commitment. They live in a narcissistic void in which their own personal comfort material advancement and sexual pleasuring consumes most conscious thought. Or to put it another way the ideal Socialist voting bubble. A "democracy" -- but like Germany France Italy one whose history through the 20th century was not edifying. In none of these countries has democracy the deep roots it has sunk in Britain and America the instinct to defend itself against its mortal enemies. This is the Old Europe that capitulated easily to fascism; which at the present day has eagerly transferred rights and responsibilities into the keeping of the increasingly dark profoundly corrupt and utterly undemocratic bureaucratic order of the European Union. Democracy in continental Europe was a hothouse flower which flourished under American military protection through two generations. (Once again I refer my readers to the work of Lee Harris.) It has never stood up to serious stress. And now it is under siege from the international Jihad. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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