Every time you think you are to hit the bottom you realize it has been moved downward.

I think I can beat either of you.Take a look at this,from today's Mail on Sunday,"Qoutes of the week":
 
'It's illegal to sweep the street if you're not qualified'.
 
Somerset County Council,stopping Richard Ferris from brushing up litter outside his Minehead guest house.
 
 

And people in my country have to hide to kill home grown pigs.
A thing we used to do even before romans settle here.

"we have a gigantic, bureaucratic organization that even regulates the size of condoms we use." When Hitler and later Stalin ruled in my Poland, Polish mountaineers  could without problems produce home-made  cheese  called "oscypek" . Today they cannot, because EU bureaucrats forbid them!     

They want to bring Muslims here and in the same time impose on ordinary Ukrainians or Belarusians draconian conditions to visit EU member countries. This destroy near-border business as well. So ban Eastern Christians and allow more Muslims, dumb euro-left in the way of self-destruction!  

At some point I think that the yeoman with pitchforks crew
all over Europe are finally going to have had enough, they’re finally going to
realize that they are about to lose everything and then all hell is going to
break loose and it won’t just be peaceful demos like this one but, rather,
civil war in country after country all over Europe; it might be five years down
the road, it might be ten or more but, I am afraid, it will happen.

Your analysis brought a quote on the spirit of the 20th century by GK Chesterton to mind:

"When a religious scheme is shattered it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful."

@ Atheling

That is a very difficult question you are raising about "the role of dwindling christian influence" in this context of European backsliding. 

First, I do not think that "totalitarianism" is the correct word to use in this context.   There has been significant backsliding into forms of unhealthy  'authoritarianism', but the next round of totalitarianism in Europe is some way off, I believe.  Indeed, it is not unreasonable to assume that potential future major geopolitical events may shock enough Europeans back into their senses, discredit the ruling cultural naive-left orthodoxy in media and education, and expose the fallacies of some of its major underlying assumptions.   The possiblities are endless: an Iranian nuclear bom on a western major city, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, Putin crushing Georgia, etc.... But, Hugo Chavez grabbing the islands (Dutch Antilles) off Venezuela's coast is not going to do it.  Their freedom today is already in Washington's hands (so they better pray that Obama does not win the 'Democratic' primaries!).  There is no Churchill left in Europe today, nor a Thatcher (Falklands) to convincingly voice the need to resist evil in time. 

Second, I think that the "dwindling christian influence" is more a result (or effect) rather than a cause of the contemporary European backsliding into authoritarianism.   Major christian 'churches' have been themselves often in the forefront of the cultural decline by distorting the original christian message, which was about individual salvation (personal morality or the virtuous life) and not about political theories or societal arrangements.   In essence, the naive-left orthodoxy preaches ONLY one side of the old christian two-sided coin.  It preaches compassion without responsibility, or if you will it preaches 'rights' without concomitant duties.   This has become increasingly obvious in recent decades in many areas, e.g. in matters of criminality and 'justice', of governmental welfare arrangements and redistributional policies, and especially in extraordinary naive external policies concerning matters as immigration, so-called 'international law', and generally ignoring genuine 'evil' in the world.       
 

"and a strong belief in coercive state power."
This was the ultimate touch in the making in fascism, the dicovering of the coercive power of state during WWI.
To put it clear: EU IS BECOMING A FASCIST STATE!

Do you know that carrot is a fruit?
It is because because in Portugal we do a kind of stewed fruit with carrots.It would be ilegal to sale it because it is not from a fruit so carrots have been promoted to be a fruit.
The problem is not having a standards intitute, it is needed I agree.
The problem is when this standtardization began to inrfere with our private life. And there are places were this already happens.

Thank you for the history and analysis. Insightful and intelligent as always.

Do you think there is a factor involving the dwindling Christian influence in Europe's society which gives rise to totalitarianism?

Your analysis with regard to the origins and subsequent development of the EEC/EU is spot on.

Condoms.I would have thought the last thing Europeans need is condoms!

@ Atheling

I remember very vividly, as a child in Western Europe after WW2, and benefiting from the 'Pax Americana' (like other Europeans), that European 'integration' started as an ECONOMIC project. First, there was the European Coal and Steel Community, and then there was the European Economic Community (EEC).  The underlying purpose was essentially to integrate more the economies of various European nations, to promote trade, capital movements, greater currency convertibility, and to reduce the negative economic impact of a variety of either 'public' or 'national' monopolies, etc...  This was all very rational from an economic perspective, and in view of previous destructive forms of nationalism in Europe, was also rational from a broader perspective.  In those days, 'conservative' parties were stronger in Europe than today, and the goal was economic integration and not to erase nationalities nor cultural identities.  By the way, it certainly was NOT described as "a racist idea" by anybody serious, despite Armor' s assertion to the contrary.  

In subsequent decades, the nature of the European project changed, in tandem with the gradual ideological changes occurring in European (western) academia and media.  By the time the EU replaced the former EEC, the European project had become much more ideological in nature.  Specifically, it showed increasing tendencies of:  (1) autocracy (anti-democracy if you will), in conflict with established constitutional values (still deriving from earlier struggles for democracy in Europe); and tendencies of (2) Anti-Americanism. The latter resulted from illusions about possible great power status (on the cheap, without making the necessary military investments, and still ultimately relying on the US to keep totalitarianism in the world in check) and deriving from the 'leftist' consensus that had developed in media and education.  Some of the major features of that 'consensus' are:  moral relativism, multi-cul illusions, a lack of concern for individual freedom, and a strong belief in coercive state power. For a while (particularly in the 1990's) it appeared that the European project was also becoming increasingly illiberal in an economic sense, and thus almost the opposite of what the original 'founding fathers' of European integration intended. However, this danger seems to have somewhat receded, under the pressures of global competition, and in view of the manifest successes of economic liberalisation in China and (somewhat later) in India. However, the main threat remains the loss of genuine democracy at the 'European' level. It is therefore imperative that European institutions do not get misused for further suppressing freedom of political 'speech' (anywhere) in Europe.

@Geraldo

"we have a gigantic, bureaucratic organization that even regulates the size of condoms we use."

It makes sense. We don't need each European state to make up its own standards. In the USA, they do not have a Standards Institute in every different state.

Have a look here: ANSI

Excerpt: "The Institute oversees the creation, promulgation and use of thousands of norms and guidelines that directly impact businesses in nearly every sector: from acoustical devices to construction equipment, from dairy and livestock production to energy distribution, and many more."

How come the Americans are not up in arms against the Ansi bureaucracy?

I googled "hijacked by radicals", and here is the result :

President Bush has called Islam a great “Religion of Peace” that has been hijacked by radicals.

It that is what you meant, the comparison doesn't work very well. Frattini is not a radical European-Unionist, he is a traitor to Europe.

Islam has never been a religion of peace, but the will for peace certainly played a part in the beginning of the EU.

I would have liked the European Union to look like Switzerland. Not that I know a lot about Switzerland, but it looks like a nice country, and their political organization seems to work.

Muslim terrorism will only disappear if Islam disappear.
Getting ride of muslims just turn much dificult to realize attacks in Europe.

The European Union would have been an excelent idea if their forefathers where not some paternalist socialists that from the very begining sought making it a paquiderm that would squezze us.
 
(I lost the reference to this). There is an economis who fly away from Austria in the begining of WWII and later went to USA (Von Mieses or someone related to him) who, as soon as 1955(?) predicted what is happening now with EU in a book about european Common Market (the antecessor of UE). Unsteed of a small body of economical coordination in Europe we have a gigantic, burocratic organization that even regulates the size of condoms we use.
The leftist circles and governements of members states are the same ones who rules UE. It is not so recently they become crazy. what we see is the worsening os an old desease. In 1974 they sold europeans for oil."http://reformjudaismmag.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=1113" And around 1982 (with victory of fascist François Miterrand) they became completely nuts and open completely europeans borders and started paying imigrants to come in.

So.... you're saying that the EU was a good thing and was "hijacked' by radicals?
Hmmm... where have I heard that before? And regarding whom?

Fjordman: "The key to ending Muslim terrorism should then logically be to end and preferably reverse Muslim immigration."

Muslim terrorism doesn't matter. Many more westerners are killed by immigrant thugs than by muslim terrorists. In fact, immigrant crime isn't the worst problem either. Our real problem is the population replacement.

"The entire European Union has been created by such lies, repeated year after year. The gradual destruction of formerly independent nation states was carefully planned and executed, and the introduction of mass immigration from non-Western countries has been and still is a crucial component of this plan."

This isn't true. The European Union was initially a good idea. It had nothing to do with encouraging immigration. On the contrary, it has probably been described by some as a racist idea.

The mass immigration ideology was embraced by the media, leftist circles, and governments of EU member states well before it was embraced by the EU. The EU has now become a favorable environment for political irresponsibility, but the same can be said of EU member states. Until now, the EU has played little part in the destruction of Britain, France, Belgium, Sweden, the Netherlands, and so on, by mass immigration.

It is only recent that the EU leaders have become crazy.

Munich Olympics in 1972.

There was no Islamic Terrorism( as there is no any other Terrorism) before The Anglo-American Islamization of my country Iran and here we are now.

The Terrorism as we know it now is just small production of that huge miscalculation in 1979.

 
Islam is a warmonger religion.
All terrorists are islamists and, as far as I now, any muslim can be a terrorist.
It was muslims who made 9/11, 11Madrid and London bombings and many of them were recruited in mosques.
For some reason prisons have several times the percentage of muslim as inmates.
What more would these craps to do, forbiding non-muslims to read Koran?

Newspeak, they who must not be named, repression of information, this is truly Orwellian.
We have the Democrats in the United States who seek similar forms of repression: an email tax;  a "Fairness Doctrine" in which Big Brother imposes airtime restrictions and delegation instead of the free market, etc...
It's strange that we thought that totalitarianism was defeated in the 20th century in WWII and the Cold War. But instead, a more virulent form has infected our society from within.
Extracting it will probably be painful and violent.