I share Daniel Johnson’s concern about Europe’s future—although not always for the reasons he cites. In general, I believe he conflates Europe’s domestic pathologies with the effects on Europe of global events, not all of which are of Europe’s making and not all of which are as grave as he stipulates. He writes, for instance, that the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris mark a culmination so far in “a concerted campaign directed mainly at Europeans.” Those attacks are certainly the ones Europeans noticed, because they were the victims, but they are largely irrelevant to the main “campaign”: a vicious Islamic civil war and a superpower conflict by proxy. In that war’s real theaters, the death toll dwarfs, to say the least, anything directed mainly at Europeans.
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