Everything has a half-life, and the half-life of socialism is only slightly greater than that of the fruit fly. The pendulum, when it starts to swing, never stops at the vertical, but always continues until it reaches the opposite extreme. The Common Market was a good idea, but not enough for the socialists, and so they gave the people of Europe the European Union, run from Brussels by unelected bureaucrats. If almost half of Europeans under the age of thirty are unemployed and have no prospect of employment, how long does anyone believe this condition will continue? The answer is clear. It will not be long before the young look about for political alternatives, as they are now doing. Nationalism is not so quietly gaining ground, and the EU has no power to prevent the collapse of the socialist model. The only question is, Will the swing from the soft Left ultimately lead back to the hard Left, back to totalitarianism, or will it lead to free market democracy? Given the history of Europe, at the moment it’s a flip of the coin.

And so it ends, a man, a horse
With cheering crowds and joy of course
The motorcades, the throbbing drums
The doling out of misers crumbs
The strong in charge, the weak on knees
With bird pecked bodies hung from trees
The rule of law a notion scorned
No memory, the past unmourned
But all was calm, the old way gone
The continent the strong man’s pawn
But then, by chance, the coin may light
On heads and all may be all right
But socialism, when it dies
Has always led to whimpered cries