RUTHFULLY YOURS

European leaders talk about two things these days; preserving European values by taking in Muslim migrants and integrating Muslim migrants into Europe by getting them to adopt European values.

It does not occur to them that their plan to save European values depends on killing European values.

The same European values that require Sweden, a country of less than 10 million, to take in 180,000 Muslim migrants in one year also expects the new “Swedes” to celebrate tolerance, feminism and gay marriage. Instead European values have filled the cities of Europe with Shariah patrols, unemployed angry men waving ISIS flags and the occasional public act of terror.

European countries that refuse to invest money in border security instead find themselves forced to invest money into counterterrorism forces. And those are bad for European values too.

But, as Central European countries are discovering, European values don’t have much to do with the preservation of viable functioning European states. Instead they are about the sort of static Socialism that Bernie Sanders admires from abroad. But even a Socialist welfare state requires people to work for a living. Maine’s generous welfare policies began collapsing once Somali Muslims swarmed in to take advantage of them. Denmark and the Dutch, among other of Bernie Sanders’ role models, have been sounding more like Reagan and less like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.

Two years ago, the Dutch King declared that, “The classic welfare state of the second half of the 20th century in these areas in particular brought forth arrangements that are unsustainable in their current form.” That same year, the Danish Finance Minister called for the “modernization of the welfare state.”

For years, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has served as a welcome counterpoint to Barack Obama, and the object of wistful musings about what a fine President of the United States he would have been, if only he had been born south of the border: generally realistic about the jihad threat, determined to do what was necessary to meet that threat, and a strong supporter of Israel.

But now Canada at last has its own Obama: Justin Trudeau. And that means that Canada, like the United States, faces deep trouble ahead.

The new Prime Minister of Canada, like Obama, has consistently downplayed the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat and ascribed it to other causes. Christine Williams, a Canadian journalist and a Federally appointed Director with the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, has noted that in the wake of the Boston Marathon jihad bombing, Trudeau issued a bizarre statement: “There is no question that this happened because of someone who feels completely excluded, someone who feels completely at war with innocence, at war with society.”

“Refugees” plundered a train’s dining car and threatened the staff. Railroad employees had assured all “refugees from Syria” that they would not be thrown off any train if they lacked valid tickets. This led to thousands of people claiming to be from Syria in order to get a free ride.

The police have about 17,000 deportation cases piled up. Despite the government’s request for a clampdown on people staying in Sweden despite having received deportation notices, more and more people are staying in the country illegally. 54,00 people have refused to leave the country after being denied asylum since 2011.

Per Gudmundson of the daily Svenska Dagbladet questions the repatriation of ISIS combatants to Sweden: “Who is in charge of the security aspect? Anyone can pretend to be a defector.”

On September 3, a 37-year-old man with a serious criminal record was shot dead in a car in the Stockholm suburb of Hässelby Gård. His two small children were sitting in the back seat at the time, but were physically unharmed. A witness told the police that the youngest child screamed: “Help, help, they’ve killed my daddy!” A 23-year-old man, suspected of the murder, is now in custody, but vehemently denies the charges. Concern about safety is now growing in Hässelby Gård, which was the scene of another shooting in June, when two girls crossing the town square were wounded in crossfire.

The victory of Canada’s Liberal Party under Justin Trudeau in Monday’s election was only surprising to those who were keen to present the election as a close horse race. Writing a few days ago, I foresaw a Liberal near majority, while I feared what proved to be the actual outcome: a solid Liberal majority.

On the adage that governments defeat themselves, after almost ten years of Conservative government, 2015 was likely to be a Liberal year. This was only obscured by the anomalous result of the 2011 election, which saw the left-wing New Democratic Party installed as the official opposition and the Liberals as a third-place rump.

The election marks a return to form for Canada’s politics. A dominant Liberal Party, a strong Conservative opposition, and the New Democrats permanently in third place. The parties shifted places almost exactly from 2011. In popular vote in 2011, it was roughly Conservatives 40 percent, New Democrats 30 percent, and Liberals 20 percent. In 2015, Liberals won 40 percent, Conservatives 30 percent, and New Democrats 20 percent. The 2011 outcome was almost entirely due to the volatile Quebec electorate; this time they gave Liberals a majority of the province’s seats, but again showed their eccentricity by giving the Conservatives twelve seats, up from five in 2011. The Conservatives lost seats in every other province and were wiped out in four.

“Convert or Die” — Graffiti on a restaurant, Gothenburg, Sweden.

“Very religious Muslims are spreading the following idea throughout the refugee centers: Sharia law rules wherever we are.” – Gottfried Martens, pastor of a south Berlin church.

“You have a cross on — then you are also a Christian f***ing whore. Do you know what we do to people like you? … You get stoned [to death].” — Muslim threats against Christians in Denmark, documented by TV2.

A British Christian family that was attacked says both police and the Anglican Church have failed to provide any meaningful support and are “reluctant to treat the problem as a religious hate crime.”

Christian residents of Europe continue to be persecuted, often by Muslims allowed into Europe on the grounds that they are being “persecuted.”

As Muslims grow in numbers, so do their demands — assimilation in Europe is falling by the wayside.

“Before we put on a show of unity with Muslims, let’s have them begin by respecting our civilization and our culture.” — Giuseppe Berlin, Municipal Councillor of Cinisello Balsamo, Italy.

Last April, police in Sicily reported that Muslim migrants hurled as many as 53 Christians overboard during a recent boat crossing from Libya. The motive was that the victims “professed the Christian faith while the aggressors were Muslim.” Another report cited a boy seen praying to the Judeo-Christian God. Muslims commanded him to stop, saying “Here, we pray only to Allah.” Eventually the Muslims “went mad,” in the words of a witness, started screaming “Allahu Akbar!” [“Allah is Greater!”] and began hurling Christians into the sea.

Every ruling party in a democracy eventually wears out its welcome, and on Monday Canadians tossed out the Conservative Party after nine years in power under Prime Minister Stephen Harper. They’re now taking a gamble that the winning Liberals, led by 43-year-old Justin Trudeau, won’t return to the anticompetitive economic policies of the past.

Mr. Harper resigned as Conservative leader and said in a gracious concession speech that “the people are never wrong.” They’d clearly had enough of Mr. Harper, who governed sensibly but in his later years had grown increasingly insular and autocratic in stifling party debate. The Conservatives also suffered from the global commodity bust, which has sent Canada into a mild recession after years of outperforming most of the developed world.

The popular desire for change vaulted the Liberals to a surprisingly large victory with 184 seats in Parliament. They were also helped by the collapse of the hard-left New Democratic Party, which won only 44 seats compared to 103 in the 2011 election. The Conservatives will settle for 99.

Putin says Syrian government has ‘achieved significantly positive results’ against opposition forces.

MOSCOW—Syrian President Bashar al-Assad arrived in Moscow on an unannounced visit Tuesday, the Russian government said Wednesday, in the leader’s first known trip outside his country since the start of conflict there in March 2011.

In a statement issued by the Kremlin, Russian President said the Syrian government had “achieved significantly positive results” in its fight against an array of opposition forces.

Russia began an aerial-bombardment campaign in support of Mr. Assad’s forces in late September. Mr. Putin said Russia was willing “not only to take the path of military action in the fight against terrorism, but to take the path of a political solution” to end the conflict in Syria.

“It worries us as well—Russia, I mean—that unfortunately a minimum of around 4,000 people from the republics of the former Soviet Union have taken up arms against the government forces and are fighting on the territory of Syria,” Mr. Putin added.

According to the Kremlin statement, Mr. Assad expressed gratitude for Russia’s support.

“Surely no statesman in modern times … has been as revered and then as reviled as Henry Kissinger.” So begins Niall Ferguson’s commissioned biography. But reverence and revulsion for Kissinger have never been sequential. Instead, for sixty years, Henry Kissinger has been a paragon of of America’s bipartisan ruling class, whose evolving identity he has reflected.

Ordinary people, however, sensed that he cared less for them than for his own career and ideas, and that he has served America badly. In 1976, as Democratic and Republican Party elites were celebrating Secretary of State Kissinger’s 1972 deals with the Soviet Union, his 1973 “Paris Peace Accords” after which America’s naval bases in Vietnam became Soviet bases, and were looking none too closely at the substance of the newly established relationship with China, the insurgent faction of the Democratic Party that nominated Jimmy Carter made rejection of Kissinger the winning issue of that year’s presidential campaign. Meanwhile Ronald Reagan was doing the same thing on behalf of the Republican rank and file, and continued to do it through his landslide victory in 1980.

Henry Kissinger’s luminous career was punctuated by one great disappointment, namely his failure to foresee the collapse of the Soviet system and the downfall of the foreign-policy system to which he devoted his life. That’s on par with the old joke: “Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” Kissinger was more hedgehog than fox: The fox knows many things, said Archilochus, but the hedgehog knows one important thing. Kissinger knew one important thing, which had the sole defect of being wrong. Like the Bourbons, Dr. Kissinger has learned nothing and forgotten nothing, as he showed in an Oct. 16 essay for the Wall Street Journal entitled, “A Path Out of the Middle East Collapse.” Kissinger bewails “disintegration of the American role in stabilizing the Middle East order” and wishes to restore it.

As Angelo Codevilla argued on this site in his review of a new Kissinger biography, the great man took as dogmatic truth that the Cold War was unwinnable, and thus “’the goal of war can no longer be military victory,’ but rather to achieve ‘certain political conditions that are fully understood by the other side,’ and that to this end, the U.S would ‘present (the enemy) at every point with an opportunity for a settlement.’”

Ronald Reagan, by contrast, told the first meeting of his national security team, “Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose.” He and his advisors–Richard Allen, William Clark, William J. Casey, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and then-younger men like Angelo Codevilla, Herbert Meyer and Norman Bailey–saw a sea-change when it stared them in the face.

President Obama had several key opportunities to put pressure on the ruling mullahs in the Islamic Republic to free the three American citizens (pastor Saeed Abedini, journalist Jason Rezaian and US Marine Amir Hekmati) who have been held for years in one of Iran’s notorious jails on bogus and baseless charges.

Last week, Jason Rezaian, the Tehran bureau chief for The Washington Post, who has been behind bars in Iran since July 2014, was convicted. An Iranian court has finally handed down a verdict, but it is vague. The verdict comes after 447 days of Mr. Rezaian being in jail — that is three days more than the 444 days that American diplomats were held hostage. For those who argue Iran of 2015 is far different from the revolutionary Iran of 1979, this is a clear-cut example that the Islamic Republic is still the same: Islamist, anti-American, and oppressive.

The Iranian Students’ News Agency quoted Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, a hardliner who is a spokesman for Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, as stating that Rezaian had been found guilty. Interestingly, Mr. Mohseni-Ejei, who was the minister of intelligence from 2005 to July 2009, insisted that he did not know the details of the sentence. Really?