With Friends Like These...

Imagine a circle of friends. They’ve known each other for a long time, they have a lot in common, they prefer to hang out with each other over other people they know.

Now, imagine that one of those friends is the rich guy. Most of the others have money, but one is clearly wealthier than the rest. The rich guy is a nice guy and a good sport, and likes to pick up the check when they go out.

But, over time, the rich guy’s finances erode. For many reasons, including picking up the check when they go out, the rich guy’s got a mountain of debt. Nevertheless, he still likes to hang with the circle, and starts hinting to everyone else that it’s time that they all kick in their share of the party tabs.

Meanwhile, many of the other friends - who have long had a habit of making fun of the rich guy behind his back - are changing. They don’t like things they used to like, they don’t behave the way they used to. They and the rich guy have been drifting apart for a while, and that’s their doing.

Still, they continue to tell the rich guy that they’re all still best buds... and resist his hints that they contribute. They figure that the rich guy will change his mind and go back to being sugar daddy if they just persist past what they see as a temporary moment of pique.

That summarizes the relationship between the United States and Western Europe.

The money aspect, aka individual defense spending and NATO guidelines, was just re-emphasized by Spain’s intransigence regarding Trump’s demand that her defense spending be increased to align with the rest of the bloc.

The ‘change’ aspect is the growing abandonment of the shared values born of the Enlightenment, including free speech and other liberties, by nations such as England, Germany, and France. Oh, and let’s not forget Canada, where a headlong rush into socialistic policies is having major economic and cultural repercussions - none of them good.

The UK “grooming gang” scandal, known to people who are paying attention for years, is emblematic of the broad cultural rot in that land with whom we supposedly have a “special relationship.” As are the 12,000 annual arrests for mean tweets and unacceptable speech. Germany is proud of its clampdown on free speech. Canada is convincing people to commit assisted suicide when their medical needs become too burdensome for the government’s health care system. France is slowly transforming into an Islamic state.

All this raises real questions about the friendship. Whether we should turn a blind eye to our friends’ departures from our (formerly) shared values, and continue being the generous rich guy who shrugs off the endless sniffs and snipes from “friends” who think they are better than us. Or, whether we should realize it is the friends who have changed, and changed so much that the reasons we were friends so long are no longer there.

Can these nations rescue themselves from their death spirals?

Can an addict break an addiction if an enabler continues enabling behavior?

While the simple answer is “yes,” the expanded answer is “probably not.” So, the enabler needs to stop enabling.

It took the very real threat of Trump turning America’s back on NATO to get the old guard to finally commit to honoring their promised spending goals, and even with that, some NATO nations are thinking “let’s slow play this until Trump is gone, and maybe the next President will reopen the spigot so we don’t have to actually spend what we promised.”

That’s the least of the problems, unfortunately. Nations that abandon principles of free speech and other traditional Western values cannot be cajoled back to sanity by mere dollars. Their multiculturalism-fueled descent into illiberalism can only be reversed by a population rejecting the leadership that took them down that ruinous path. That reversal is being - and will continue to be - vigorously and viciously resisted by the architects and their minions. Take note how anyone who decries the cultural collapse is dubbed “far-right” or some similar epithet, and you get the idea.

Within our borders, we have many who wish to continue the enabling behavior. Some think we need to preserve our ties, unaltered, because of common roots and tradition. Some think so because they reflexively take the contrary position to whatever Trump does. Some are suffering from battered spouse syndrome, figuring the Euros will actually start liking us if we continue to accept the fiscal and cultural abuse. Some still believe in multiculturalism, even as it rots away those other nations. And some think everything can be made dandy if they install the correct persons in the White House and other seats of power, so they reject the possibility that Europe is destroying itself from within.

I say, piffle to all of the enablers. It’s time to tell Europe “fix your ways, or we are done with you.” And mean it. Beyond being so deep in debt that it’s ludicrous to continue playing Globocop, there’s the matter of what such behavior accomplishes. How much harm, vs how much good?