Are we at war with Islam?

[x-factor]

That Dutch movie story may be a very bad omen. You've got a far right party about to butt heads with radical Islam. Radical Islam needs to be careful what they wish for. They're going to mess around and push Europe too far and wake up/strengthen some of the old European fascist ideas in the popular discourse.

On the immigration thing, the beginnings of Europe's immigration problems started during the post WWII reconstruction when they brought in huge amounts of cheap labor from their colonies (or from Turkey in Germany's case) to rebuild. Those workers stayed brought their families, etc. While that might sound alot like our issues with Mexican and Latin American immigration, I don't think it is.

The problem (at least in terms of the concerns TR brings up) really isn't immigration, its integration and in this respect, I don't see alot of parallels between the US and Europe. One of the US' greatest strengths is the way we integrate immigrants. Alot of that has to do with the fact that our country is based on an idea rather than an ethnicity. Lately you're seeing alot of countres (Canada, France, Britain, etc) trying to redefine their national identities as culture-based rather than ethnicity-based. For example, defining "being British" as loving "Shakespeare, cricket, and a proper sense of decorum" rather than having Anglo-Saxon, Welsh, or Scots blood.) This is something we do naturally because we're a nation of immigrants.

As an aside, its interesting to note that the 9-11 terrorists didn't become radicalized until they moved to Europe (Hamburg, Germany specifically) for school where they were isolated and ostracized from mainstream German culture and consequently backed into a kind of psychological corner where the only thing that provided a sense of identity or pride was radical Islam. That's central to the reason that Europe's homegrown terror threat is so much higher than the US'.