On some level the fear that Eurosclerotic Europeans nurture of the “Anglo-Saxons” is similar to the resentment that drives Islamists.

What to do if it is your watch and your economy is in such trouble that even your staunch supporters know it? Add to the problem that you cannot think of a way out of, except to abolish yourself? Or, naturally, you could shut down those by whose example you are failing.

If you are interested but in need of a French or a German translation, then the question and the implied answer has hit its designated customer. In the last decades French unemployment went from 4% to 10%, and Germany’s score rose from the statistically insignificant to about 12 percentage points. These figures hide the millions who are employed only because of the subsidies taken from the pockets of competitive earners. The reading of the tea-leaves suggests that more is coming. In case the magic word “elections” flashes in your mind you should turn off the switch. The alternative opposition parties and critical groupings within the still ruling majority are unlikely to become responsible for bringing much relief.

For this there are two reasons. First of all, they are intent to apply palliatives when an operation is necessary. Their policy only promises “to do better” what the Left, or the addicts of state intervention have done. Second, it is difficult to find a conscious majority for surgical intervention when new faith healers praising re-packaged snake oil are likely to underbid you. The conditioned reflex of large sections of the hitherto bribed electorate to expect a solution by “government” augments this danger.

The situation reminds me of a conversation I had. The healthy guy said that he is always tired and is therefore unable to exercise on the machines we bought for him. Do I know a way to change that? “Start to train regularly.” I can not train because I feel exhausted.

When they cannot think of anything, the interventionists of the Right and the Left here like to repeat their mantra about the “European Social Model.” Only the masochists who are out for rejection for criticizing the recipe that has provided so many with comfortable cushions, and those foolhardy enough to recommend medicine not for its (bitter) taste but for its effect, admit that it is the “social model” that caused the difficulties. This is, until it does not get much worse before it can get better, a suggestion that is as unwelcome as is talk about ham sandwich at a convention of pigs. The understandably more favored solution is one that promises to leave everything the way it is while hardening with political means the ground under the economic edifice that is folding.

Accordingly, the present crisis is attributed by the defenders of the status quo to the collapse of the hither rules that protected society inside the “house” from the “hurricane” of globalization that rages outside. Therefore, the solution is not to open the doors and the windows and to pump the water out of the basement. What the folks need is better protection. This means regulation. Part of it consists of more protection against imports representing unfair competition. (Oddly enough, this finds support even in Germany — which has one of the world’s most export-oriented economies.) The state — here is the point where the French Right connects — is to determine fair wages, distribute income and direct support payments to those whose jobs are threatened. It needs to be added here that support extended to those in declining industries is not, ipso facto, wrong. If the help given is designed to facilitate the gradual relocation of those effected, the policy solves a problem at a socially and economically justifiable price. What the redistributors here are talking about is not help to help those who help themselves trying to escape the quagmire. The traditional Left, the national-Left and the statist Right are united to give money in order to enable those otherwise in trouble to continue in their used-to ways. The consequence promises to be a numerical and qualitative accumulation of threatened existences that will one day burst the dam.

The case in point we find in the approaching local election in Germany’s center of her traditional coal and iron industries. Regardless of all the Social Democratic government’s efforts, unemployment is high and the dissatisfaction of the electorate that wants more effective support is even higher. To fend off the threat of losing power after 39 years, the “Sozis” came up with an old and tested idea that has not failed to fall short before. In want of something new to do they grabbed into their allegedly discarded Socialist tool box and out came, low and behold, the by now famous Kapitalismuskritik of Mr. Müntefering. He is the Chairman of the party whose Chancellor Schröder is. The division of roles between them seems to be that Schröder plays the moderate statesman — except in handling the USA — located left-of-center. Meanwhile Müntefering is the Red of the class struggle vintage, thereby making the party all things to all men. Acting accordingly, Müntefering called Capitalism — of which in fact Germany does not have enough — the problem and referred to transnational companies as “locust.” This latter boogey man brings the national factor into the picture, bolstering the cause of socialism as the blame of “blood-sucking” falls on “foreigners.” A cartoon on the cover of a party-controlled magazine makes more clear: the blood sucking mosquito sports an Uncle-Sam hat.

The election results from Germany’s North-Rhine Westphalia came in exactly when the essay reached this point. The good news is that a leftist state government is out of office. This prompts an early national election whose timing involves the hope that Schröder’s unprepared opposition might lose it. The foreign policy consequences of Chancellor Schröder’s removal will be considerable, as it will prove to be sand in the mechanism of the Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis. The bad news remains what it was. The Center-Right opposition will have to confront a backlog of missed opportunities and high financial burdens (a subsidized job in the mining industry costs almost $ 90,000!). It will also have to sell the electorate solutions that hurt and that society is not prepared to shoulder. At this juncture a suspicion must be inserted. Many of those who voted against the Sozis did so because they resented the feared consequences of the feeble alibi-reforms proposed by the SPD. Much charisma and great leadership is called for in Germany. This person is missing on her political stage. Angela Merkel might be a female but a Mrs Thatcher she is not. Therefore, regrettably, the planned concluding thoughts of this piece of writing remain not only appropriate but also pass as a background commentary on what moves Germany — and situations that are comparable to hers.

The societies and the sub-groups that are challenged by change have options. One is to bear the pain; confront the long-ignored challenge; overcome it while converting the altered situation into an opportunity. Scores of millions, for instance in East Asia, have accomplished this. The second choice is to dig in. Those who do so pray for protection and try to weather something that might hopefully go away. While trodding this course something to blame is needed. Here America as a proxy for the evils of the modern world might have a useful role to play.

Failure is always relative. When the (developmental) gap expressing it is perceived, the realization can provoke a catch-up-action. The other possibility is to combat politically the emerging new economic order that is proving its superiority over antiquated ways. If you fear that competing means losing, if you regard the adjustment needed to prevail as surrender, then you must try to smash the source of your humiliation by force. As you do so proclaim your way to be morally superior, and designate the way of life of the competition to embody an evil virus. On this level the fear Eurosclerotic Europeans nurture of the “Anglo-Saxons” is identical with the resentment that drives Islamists. The danger that emanates is serious as it unites, with a global potential, traditional Leftist elements with the chauvinism of the Right. The resulting sum is then multiplied with the mobilized resentment of the advocates of old style religion.