Member-only story
The End Of Peace
Why Europe is sleepwalking toward potential catastrophe
Since 1945, Western Europe has enjoyed the longest period of uninterrupted peace and prosperity since the fall of the Roman Empire. Despite plenty of bumps and stumbles caused by various economic mistakes, and despite radical technological shifts that have seen some sectors shrink and others emerge seemingly from nowhere, the overall trend has been ever-upward. Although sensation-mongering journalists always paint a daily picture of disaster in order to attract monetizable eyeballs, the reality has been a Europe that is more safe and more prosperous than at any time in human history.
Unfortunately, peace and prosperity bring not far-sighted actions but self-indulgent posturing and the gradual erosion of everything that has made peace and prosperity the new norm. We humans have almost no capacity to grasp causal chains and so our inability to understand cause-and-effect leads us invariably toward policies that corrode the very benefits we depend on. Representative democracy (which is at heart a system that enables ignorant foolish people to vote for blustering cynical incompetents) combined with the endless trite sensationalism of the mass media, guarantees poor policies and worse outcomes. We need only think of Orban in Hungary, the near-triumph of Le Pen in France, Brexit in the UK, and the…
