The polls here regularly show between 60% and 80% in favor of limiting immigration. (I dont remember the exact number, and it varies a bit regarding what the exact question is.)

The politicians here make a point of never ever letting this become an issue in any election, and to paint anyone that tries to raise a debate as a bigotted racist.

There is no open debate about it here, and there never will be if the politicians have their way.

Since the system here is based on voting for a party rather than a person, the parties can agree to keep an issue out of the debate. (Anyone that raises it in a debate then will simply find themselfes on an unelectable spot on the party ballot.)

Actually, just before last election here, there was a hitjob done by national TV. They sent undercover reporters with hidden cameras out to the parties information huts and pretended to be anti-immigration, and tried to get agreement from the party members there. A few fell for it, and was promptly displayed as bigots on TV a few days before the election. The opposition parties dropped maybe 5% in some areas as a result.

It will take a viable political party to bring the issue up, and risk the labeling, or that people get so upset with this single issue that they will vote for anything that supports it.

Austria has seen it, Sweden had a brief period with a party that was labeled as bigots, France almost got LePen as president, Holland had Pim Fortyun, and Denmark has a government now that has brought it front and center.

When the people get a viable choice, and are allowed to choose, they will make their voices heard.

The post war levels of immigration into the UK for example is greater than that of the Angles,Saxons and Jutes,The Roman Conquest,the Viking invasions,the Norman Conquest,The Hugenots,the Jewish Diasporas in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Our politicians know that they are presiding over a simmering and deep seated discontent,what is happening here is they are trying to keep a lid on it.Since they cannot, for reasons on racial discrimination suppress Islam,politicians use the other option and suppress the natives.

The elite know there is a problem but cannot acknowledge it for fear of appearing to give support to the extreme right.So the charade continues and the elite hopes that given a couple of generations things will settle down or at least lurch on until their watch is over.

What they’re practicing is not tolerance. Letting people practice their religion in peace — even though your own beliefs say they are wrong — is tolerance. Accepting that others will have different political beliefs is tolerance.

Letting people get away with violence, with murder is not tolerance.

It’s surrender.

More money for intelligence, more powers for law enforcement, possible closing of radical mosques. The question is how far they are willing to go. When the government tried to enforce immigration laws by expelling asylum seekers who had been rejected, there were mass protests.

Huge outcry of course, but still, are we insane or what?

The latest rumor is that islamist extremists have a death list (killfile?) of prominent politicians marked out for assassination by brainwashed Morrocan youths.

Incidentally, for the curious, you can probably download Van Gogh’s short film Submission on E-Mule. It’s English spoken, 11 minutes.

Or is it, Thou Shalt Not Kill except the infidel in time of jihad, which is all the time?!

Van Gogh’s murderer is a second generation, Dutch-speaking citizen (though some of his co-conspirators are immigrants). According to an op-ed piece in today’s WSJ, his parents adapted well and achieved a fair bit of economic success. Their son, however, has a record of violent radicalism and aggressive tendencies.

What does this say for the proposed “solution” to Europe’s burgeoning jihadi crisis, namely to teach them how to be more European (language classes, promoting tolerance, ending racial discrimination, etc.)?

I am not suggesting that assimilation and/or integration of Muslim immigrants cannot be achieved (obviously, not only did this monster’s parents succeed, so too has the Somali politician whose life is now on the line). But that alone will not solve the problem Europe now faces, and until they acknowledge this obvious fact, they cannot hope to even strategize against the threat, let alone defeat it.

That Dutch politicians are even now talking about protecting vulnerable public figures RATHER THAN rounding up hundreds, if not thousands of suspected terrorists and their sympathizers, closing down their meeting places, deporting illegal residents, etc., tells me that they are still not even close to seeing the daunting task ahead of them. Maybe they don’t need a John Ashcroft, but they could sure use a Nicholas Sarkozy to take the situation in hand.

If history is any guide here, I’d have to say the portents are not good. Europeans have always had a tendency to allow things to get way out of hand, descending even into anarchy, then reap a whirlwind of savage violence. They have mislearnt their own history. It is by denying early warning signs like this one, by failing to stem the tide of radicalism, that societies are pushed into all out war and madness.

I realize that many of you here (including our fine host) are advocates of gay marriage. But only a blind partisan could fail to see that by giving its opponents a chance to (peacefully, constructively) express themselves this week, we have likely averted a much worse outcome one or two years from now, when an angry populace comes face to face with a radical social change of which they never approved.

Today we see the seething rage of (some) Blue Staters and not a few foreigners who cannot BELIEVE anyone with a brain could vote for the other guy. How much worse would it be, however, if they actually got their way against the wishes of at least 51% of their fellow citizens, then had to face the wrath of all those (well armed) folk?

Americans are like a bickering couple who vent their spleen on an ongoing basis and will (probably) manage to live more or less happily together forever. Europeans, however, are like a picture perfect family where (unbeknownst to the wife) the husband is actually screwing the maid, the wife is a drug addict, and sooner or later the teenage child does a Lizzie Borden on the whole lot of them. Which family would you rather belong to? I thought so.