More dust settling, this time in Rotterdam

Sometimes, you have to be poised on the edge of the volcano to realize the threat you face.  Until you get there, you might just think you’re climbing a beautiful mountainside.  Bruce Bawer, a gay man living in Europe, reached the edge of the volcano and wrote While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within.  Now, Paul Lucre, a gay American man of Puerto Rican descent also realizes he’s not just on the side of a pretty European hill but, instead, is gazing down into a boiling cauldron of Islamist anger, this time in Rotterdam.

What’s fascinating to watch is Lucre’s struggle to understand why the combination of Islam and European welfare, instead of leading to happy Muslims, leads to angry Islamists.  He finds it bizarre that the Muslims continue to live in segregated communities, instead of realizing that, from the Muslim point of view, they’ve achieved jizya without any effort:  the non-believing community voluntarily works and pays to support the (in Muslim minds) Muslim overlords.

Nevertheless, as the victim of a physical anti-Gay attack, Lucre is beginning to realize that the European model is not working.  Perhaps European anti-immigration forces are not necessarily White Supremacists and perhaps the American notion of a melting pot is a good thing:

This [the chaos and Muslim violence in Rotterdam] angers working-class white friends of mine, who admire Geert Wilders. These aren’t jack-booted, shaved-head racists — these are people who have given me shelter. These are people who have taken me, an openly gay Hispanic, all over the Netherlands as their guest so that I may learn more about this country I adore. They’re what we call “good people” back in Brooklyn, and they’re responding to Wilders.

My sympathy for the young Dutch Muslims then only goes so far. My parents were born in Puerto Rico. My mother insisted we not speak Spanish at home, and she refused to enroll us in bilingual education programs. We embraced American values in return for a share of the American dream. That Muslim immigrants here don’t aspire to become Dutch — and live according to Dutch rules and values — shocks me.

People are starting to figure things out.  Their Leftist hypotheses don’t work in the reality.  True, Europe chugged along for decades under a socialist model, but it was able to do so only because (a) a strong dollar and strong American military supported it and (b) it had a primarily homogeneous population.  Take away those two factors, and you have a looming disaster.  The only question remaining is whether a sufficient number of Europeans will be able to stare down into the volcano’s heart and then have the wisdom and ability to pull away from that abyss.

Hat tip:  Bald-Headed Geek