Gone Forever

Here’s one statement from the Trump administration that’s guaranteed to get me angry:

The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence… if current trends continue the continent and its economic issues are “eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure.”

Back in 2004, after I returned from a trip to Paris, I posted this pic of an impromptu street concert by some students from the Sorbonne, taken in the little square just in front of the university:

The classical music was quite lovely, the musicians very accomplished.  I stood, entranced, and watched them for the entire time they played — well over an hour, as I recall.

I also remember commenting on the old website that if the Muslim theocracy and culture were ever to establish itself in France, joyful concerts of this nature would completely disappear, suppressed no doubt by some bullshit aspect of shari’a law, and a little bit of the joie de vivre  would be gone from Paris streets.

And that is precisely what the Trump administration means by “civilizational erasure”.