Can We Learn From the European Migration Disaster?

Earlier this year, my column asked, “Will the West Defend Itself?” I pointed out that America’s leftists and progressives believe that the U.S. should become more like Europe (http://tinyurl.com/nfk2c4d). I wonder whether they also want to import European policies that created barbaric extremism among its Muslim population.

France’s recent tragedy is not surprising, given some of its policies that are not widely publicized abroad. France has no-go zones, which are officially called “zones urbaines sensibles,” or sensitive urban zones, where police are reluctant to go. Some of these zones are dominated by Islamic extremists. According to some reports, there is hardly a city in France that does not have at least one ZUS. It is estimated that there are more than 750 such zones in France. According to The Washington Times, “France has Europe’s largest population of Muslims, some of whom talk openly of ruling the country one day and casting aside Western legal systems for harsh, Islam-based Shariah.” It appears that much of France’s Muslim population has no intention of joining the French culture. Many French Muslims are hellbent on importing the failed components of their motherland, such as Shariah, the subjugation of women, suppression of free speech and honor killings.

Two of the terrorists who carried out the recent attacks in Paris were found to be from Molenbeek. Terrorist plots connected to this neighborhood include the 2001 assassination of anti-Taliban leader Ahmad Shah Massoud; the 2004 Madrid train bombings, which killed 191 people; the 2014 attack on a Jewish museum in Brussels; the January attack on a kosher grocery in Paris after the Charlie Hebdo shootings; and the August attack on a Paris-bound train, in which an Islamic terrorist was overpowered by three Americans.

There are zones where the government has lost control in Germany, England and most other European countries, too. Viktor Orban, prime minister of Hungary, explained the situation confronting Europeans: “For us today, at stake are Europe, the lifestyle of European citizens, European values, the survival or disappearance of European nations and, more precisely formulated, their transformation beyond recognition. Today the question is not merely in what kind of a Europe we would like to live but whether everything we understand as Europe will exist at all.”

Europe provides a valuable lesson for Americans. Most Americans, including me, welcome people to our country who come here, as immigrants have in the past, to become Americans. We don’t welcome people who wish to import the failed culture from which they fled. We could extend the welcome mat even further if we abandoned the welfare state. We have far too many Americans living off the earnings of others. We don’t need to encourage others to do the same.

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