Germany’s Perfect Storm of Social Decline

Everyday life has become a pressure cooker. The question is when that pressure cooker is going to blow up, and what forms that explosion will take. Two dangerous trends are coalescing in Germany: the deterioration of private life and the tyrannization of politics. The latter comes to light in the persecution of any political opinion marginally different from that of the government. Private life deteriorates under pressure from a stagnant economy with its withering welfare state. Unending tax hikes are coupled with the erosion and increasing unreliability of social benefits. There is another aspect of the regress of private life...