MISSION (NEARLY) ACCOMPLISHED:

Shot:

PALO ALTO, Calif.— At Stanford University, they still talk of the day nearly a year ago when some 500 students, on a march with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, came up with a slogan for the next generation.

The students were celebrating a new course at Stanford, one that would stress the contributions of minorities and women to Western culture, and, they chanted: ”Hey hey, ho ho, Western culture’s got to go.”

—”In Dispute on Bias, Stanford Is Likely To Alter Western Culture Program,” the New York Times, January 19, 1988.

Chaser:

Tens of thousands of migrants — reminiscent of the great southward and westward treks of Germanic tribes in the late fifth century, at the end of the Roman Empire — are overwhelming the borders of Europe. Such an influx should be a reminder that the West attracts people, while the non-West drives them out, and thus should spark inquiries about why that is so. But that discussion would be not only impolite, but beyond the comprehension of most present-day Westerners, who take for granted — though they cannot define, much less defend — their own institutions.

No one claims that such mass immigration into Europe is legal. No one wonders what happened to the fossilized idea of legal immigration, much less the legal immigrant who went through what has now been rendered the pretense of bureaucratic application for legal entry into Europe. Germany, which lectures others on law, is lawless.

In theory, Westerners have the power to stop the mostly young males from the Middle East from swarming their borders, but in fact they apparently lack the will. Or is it worse than that? Without confidence in their own values, much less pride in their accomplishments, are they assuaging the guilt over their privilege by symbolic acts of undermining the foundations of their own culture?

“Is the West Slip, Slip, Slipping Away?”, Victor Davis Hanson, yesterday, adding, “Infrastructure, the rule of law, and civility erode — and yet people are not sure why and how their own changing (and pathological) individual behavior is leading to the collective deterioration that they deplore.”

Whatever happens to Europe facing not just a massive influx of “refugees,” but also Vladimir Putin’s concurrent saber rattling, the battle-hardened image of Europe’s defense ministers certainly inspires confidence that they’re more than ready to face the Continent’s looming existential struggle.