TRUE: “The contrast between the moralistic lectures, finger-wagging, and ostentatious dedication to high values that mark the rhetoric of the European Union on the one hand, and the sleazy indifference to corruption that characterizes much of the shadowy transactions of European elites on the other, isn’t remarked upon often enough.”

Plus: “The decline in the willingness of large German companies to observe basic standards of business ethics, and what is clearly a collapse of individual morality, point toward a more profoundly spiritual crisis, rather than merely an institutional one. Yes, regulators missed some dubious transactions. But the more important fact is that so many people were willing to sacrifice their personal integrity to participate in ugly and illegal schemes. It is not just that these people aren’t afraid of the regulators; they aren’t afraid of the consequences of breaking the moral law. When a country’s elite becomes so arrogant and so shortsighted that morality doesn’t matter to them anymore, bad things are coming. And instead of feeling smug about Europe’s challenges in this respect, Americans need to take a long, hard look in the mirror. We are losing touch with the values on which our national success depends.”

We have the worst political class in our history. The Germans, at least, can say that’s not true for them. . . .