WHAT HATH MERKEL WROUGHT: German Right-Wing Party to Adopt Anti-Islam Manifesto.

Germany’s growing far-right party is likely to adopt a platform that calls for the banning of Islamic practices from public life. . . .

There are obvious parallels in the 2009 Swiss decision to ban minarets and the 2010 French ban on the veil. However, taken together, this is one of the more full-throated rejections of Islam to emerge from European politics. And unlike, for example, the French decision, it does not appear to be part of a broader, equally enforced tradition of laïcité in public life; this appears to be a forthrightly anti-Islamic manifesto.

To paraphrase Joseph Fouché (Napoleon’s chief of police), adopting this wouldn’t just be wrong, it would be a blunder. It’s hard to think of a series of steps that would more antagonize and alienate the refugee/migrant population, however you feel about the circumstances in which they arrived, from their new homeland, while delivering little practical gain.

Yet when responsible politicians fail to take responsible steps to keep immigration and integration within the bounds of public opinion, inevitably irresponsible people will advocate irresponsible measures. And while the AfD is not challenging the centrist parties in Germany for dominance yet, in other places in Europe that’s not true.

Stay tuned.