RUTHFULLY YOURS

The killings in San Bernardino have once again led to predictable criticism of U.S. culture. “Just another day in the United States of America, another day of gunfire, panic, and fear,” a BBC reporter tut-tutted. ​Obama incorrectly opined: “This just doesn’t happen in other countries. . . . [We need to] take basic steps that would make it harder — not impossible, but harder — for individuals to get access to weapons.”

Many foreigners and President Obama don’t understand that our Bill of Rights and the existence of 350 million weapons in this country make gun control a non-solution for most aspects of the problem. Dealing seriously with terrorist threats and mental-health-system failures would bear more fruit.

So before we launch into another cul-de-sac debate on gun control, let’s note that, when it comes to acts of real terrorism, the U.S. has had an enviable response record since 9/11. No major attack against the homeland has been mounted, and in cases such as that in San Bernardino our law-enforcement forces have responded magnificently to kill the suspect and prevent further violence.

European countries have not had as enviable a record. Take the terrorist attacks that have swept the continent in the last few years, from London buses, to a Spanish train station, to two deadly attacks in Paris in just the last year. Despite all the carnage, Europe has a whole has not yet woken up to the terrorist threat.

Take Belgium, the country where the small, impoverished borough of Molenbeek in Brussels has become a hotbed of jihadism. In just the last two years, Molenbeek residents have been linked to the 2014 shooting at Brussels’ Jewish Museum, the Charlie Hebdo attacks this January, the Paris massacres of last month, and the failed attack on passengers on a Paris-bound Belgian train in August.

In the aftermath of all that violence linked to Brussels, the capital not only of Belgium but of the European Community, the Belgians finally reacted by putting the city in effective lockdown for six days. Subways were closed, soldiers patrolled the streets, and public buildings were shuttered. The “imminent” terrorist threat that prompted the lockdown abated, and the city is back to normal.

But while Brussels was suffering under a form of martial law not seen since World War II, Belgium’s King Philip and Queen Mathilde were on private holiday on the French coast. A photograph of him in a bathrobe and sipping orange juice appeared in the Belgian media. Belgian prime minister Charles Michel said he was aware of the royal couple’s whereabouts but that “we could not force him to come back.” A royal spokesman said the excursion had been planned in advance and “What they did is a private matter.” The Marie Antoinette of historical legend (“Let them eat cake”) could not have expressed the sense of royal privilege better.

Belgium’s desiccated elites — along with those of several other European nations — have for too long pushed away pressing problems created by the twin disasters of a fiber-sapping welfare state and an immigration policy that has failed to assimilate a growing number of restive minorities living in their lands. Patriotism has been derided, history is rarely taught in schools for any reason other than to promote the interests of “diversity,” and the country’s security services have been allowed to wither. (The Belgian secret service is short an astonishing 150 officers of its planned complement of 750 officers.) Small wonder that Daniel Hannan, an NRO contributor and British member of the European Parliament in Brussels, concludes that “the lack of national feeling makes Belgian politics unnecessarily remote, corrupt, and self-serving.”

The U.S. still has a great deal to do to control gun violence. Ditto with the threat of terrorism. (President Obama might start by being willing to identify the evil at the heart of the current terror threat: “radical Islamic terrorism.”) But we should not simply take lectures and admonishments about the U.S. — from either foreign commentators or President Obama — without accurately noting that Europe’s response to the terrorist threat has been inadequate to date. In the United States, even Obama’s record, though seriously flawed, has been better.

I’m not sure that the supremely serene Obama is capable of altering his thinking and doing as well as he should on terrorism. But as for Europe, there are signs of hope. Bart De Wever, the leader of the largest party in Belgium’s coalition government, has declared, about last month’s Paris attack: “This is Europe’s 9/11. It changes public opinion.”

– John Fund is national-affairs columnist for National Review.