Small blog this morning. I spent all last evening at an AEI lecture and dinner in honor of my old college friend, the historian Niall Ferguson. He gave a challenging talk – essentially about the implosion of Europe. Perhaps the most striking statistic he provided (and there were many) is that, on current demographic trends, there will only be 67 million Germans in 2050 – down from over 80 today and slightly more in Hitler’s day. And their average age will be close to 50. More significantly, the economic stresses on Germany, Niall argues, will make it unlikely that German subsidies can keep the EU afloat indefinitely. And that’s always been the central reality of the EU: German largess toward other member states in return for political legitimacy and economic union. He doesn’t argue that the EU will collapse (although he wonders whether the euro will survive long term as a currency). Like many other exhausted institutions, it may simply wither. The big question therefore is when and if German voters will balk at being further milked dry by their poorer neighbors. Who knows? But if their economy continues to sink into inactivity, it may be sooner rather than later.
AEI: I have to say that the American Enterprise Institute is an amazing place. There are plenty of people there with whom I’d disagree on many issues, but it’s wonderful to be in a place where ideas actually seem to matter. It confirms in my mind that Washington really is becoming an intellectual capital as well as a political one. I’ve been to many events, dinners and lunches there and never fail to be stimulated. At dinner this time I got to meet and chat with Jeane Kirkpatrick, a woman I’d never met before; as well as listening to Michael Barone, Mark Falcoff, Chris DeMuth, Geoffrey Smith, Radek Sikorski, Steve Hayward and several others. We chatted at one point about Allan Bloom. How I wish I’d had the chance to meet him – the ultimate Nietzschean conservative. The novel, Ravelstein, by Bloom’s friend, Saul Bellow, made me long to have been at some point within Bloom’s world. But hearing Kirkpatrick reminisce made it worse.
The Dish 