I was stunned by David Goldman’s “Parable for Germany“:

Once there was an old man who in his youth committed a terrible crime, the murder of many innocents. He no longer could remember what drove him to do this; he tried not to think about it, and his memories came to mind unwillingly and infrequently. Rage and guilt had faded long ago into a vague residue of disgust. He worked hard and found some distraction in the monotony of daily tasks. He sought diversion in tasteless entertainment…

One day the old man met a street urchin and on an impulse invited him back to his apartment…

Most Europeans, cut off from all transcendence, are hungry for something worth living for. In all the rest of Europe this is driving people to nationalism, which is awful enough. In Germany, the hunger for transcendence is greatest (guilt is always the root cause of this disconnection; where guilt is greatest, the disconnet will be strongest) yet nationalism is not an option in Germany. While everyone else in Europe is asking “how do we preserve our nation?” Germany asks “is our nation worth preserving?” And since Germany remains the root of what European economic vitality remains, this puts the whole continent in an even more precarious position.

I found Goldman’s article through a link from Mark Steyn, whose column on the eclipse of conservatism by nationalism in the U.S. is also well worth your time:

But what is “the Republican Party” in 2015? To a businessman, it looks like an unsellable product and an incompetent management…but with a useful mailing list and a functioning network of branch offices. Why not mount a hostile takeover and relaunch it as something else?

This is exactly what has happened.

Image HT