Hi Cockerel, I agree with most of what you say and, frankly, I also think the European project is a nearly impossible venture right now, in the early 21th century, while national identity is still so strong and the economic crisis is deepening. Civil unrest in Europe looks often worse than it is, because there is always a hard core of anarchists, which dominates the violence you see on television, but in fact that is considered part of the game and most people protesting are non-violent. That might change though, when time really gets rough in the coming years.

Like you, I find most politicians disgusting, but I don't see Government and bureaucrats as a threat by itself, as long as they are controlled by the electorate and the electorate is educated enough to fight for its democratic rights and to remove a Government, when it doesn't serve the public cause.

Regarding what happened in Norway the day before yesterday, I consider that as a Columbine kind of event, that can happen anywhere as long as there are disturbed people that want to draw mass attention in unorthodox ways. However, I don't consider that a structural threat, but rather a consequence of the increased individualism and lonelyness of people in today's world.

When you evaluate where we are today, you cannot ignore that the world is in many ways a safer place than it used to be. For many centuries the population in Europe and elsewhere hardly increased, because (among other reasons like development in health care) large part of the population perished in wars and those same wars were so expensive that it didn't allow people to progress materially. Generals have been replaced by politicians and I don't think that has always been a negative thing. That doesn't mean that we are living in an ideal world, but hey, we are only animals with a genetic disorder, so it could be a lot worse.