I'm sorry, but I don't think this is "Europe's shame." It's one of the few glimmers of stark rationality I've seen in their political behavior. As sad as it is (and it is sad), overloading boats and heading for countries that clearly don't want you is actually a form of coercive manipulation. These folk are depending on Europe's "Christian charity" to save them...essentially trying to force Europeans to do something they would rather not do. In short, it's an aggressive act, and their plight is their own damned fault.

And, more importantly, if Europeans start to "rescue" these people, it will quickly turn into an industry. We all know this...so stop with the hand-wringing. Life is hard, and as any lifeboat captain could tell you, trying to save everyone means you end up killing YOURSELF.

The clear implication is that it's Europe's moral duty to provide haven and home for those people. Where the "rescuing" should be going on is in Africa. For it is there that the pathologies and poverty, for centuries, has been allowed to continue.

Let islam get its house in order. Let muslims put away their seventh century fixations. Let them burn their filthy, morbid, disgusting, oppressive burqas. Let them burn the manacles they forcibly place around women. Let them embrace the 19th century, if not the 21st. Let them embrace the market; let them entomb once and for all shariaa, and all the demonstrably evil vestiges of shariaa. Let them put an end to satanic jihad. Let them stop dividing the peoples of the earth into muslims and those that are "less than apes and pigs." Let them do those things, and you'd be surprised how rapidly their societies would change.

Europeans have a duty to themselves and to their civilization, which supersedes any responsibility they might have to those that flee from areas where muslims dominate. The foremost of Europe's duty right now is the supreme obligation not to allow shariaa and islam a place in Europe.

The West must remain completely free from the moral stain of islam and shariaa.

The article would have far better described the situation had it been entitled "islam's shame." But islam has no shame. Their idea of shame is the fact that the Christian West left them in their dust long ago. Their idea of shame is the fact that they were rightly and properly driven from "andalus."

As for the people in the water, they should be lifted out, and immediately returned to point of departure.

No Dan, actually rescuing them is a political non-starter. Once such people are in your territory, the special-interests come out of the woodwork claiming this or that right for a given group of people. The UN weighs in...etc. Pretty soon you are granting asylum, and the next year the number of people needing rescue doubles, triples, or worse. And then you have a diasporic community, a bitch of a chain-migration problem, and involuntary multiculturalism that grows less managable by the year.

No, it is a sad commentary on the state of modern politics that the most rational response is to ignore these people. It really is the only way a modern government can resist coerced immigration.

Dain, we can thank science for this.

And the development of global mass culture. The more people you govern, the more those people become expendable numbers in an ever-growing emotionless, "objective" beaucracy. It may be more rational, but I'm not sure that makes it right (even if it is the only plausible option for the EU in our contemporary political climate and era). Actually, I'm almost positive it's not right.

And is forcing your way into a place that doesn't want you right? No, I don't think so...it shows a fundamental disrespect for other people. No population should be forced to abide by a system of morality that is so riddled with double-standards. It may not be "right" to ignore them and leave them to their fate, but the initial (criminal and aggressive) act that placed them in that situation was not "right" either.

Robert, what's with all the cryptic posts? What does science have to do with this? Yea, science created the disparity in wealth that attracts illegal immigrants, but so what? People have been crashing gates since before writing.

It's not just that they are forcing their way into a place that doesn't want them, nor need them.

It's more than that.

It's an attempt to impose a culture, it's an attempt to overthrow an existing culture, not through reason, nor through dialogue. But through intimidation, numbers, in a word, force.

It's the continuation of CENTURIES OF JIHAD.

That's what we're talking about here.

This isn't a question of immigration, in the abstract. We're not simply talking about people, who come from a cultural, religious, political vacuum, who don't carry with them any baggage from their points of origin.

This is a matter of war, of national security, of the defense of state, nation, culture and civilization. The defense of Christendom.

It doesn't get any more serious than this.

Just because they aren't holding a scimitar in their blood-soaked hands, as they were wont to do in their past, looking to rape, pillage and conquer, doesn't mean that what's occurring is not an invasion. Europe is being invaded by the greatest enemy they ever had. They are being invaded by a people overflowing with pathologies, overflowing with scorn for Western Civilization and the glories of Christianity. They are being invaded by a people who scorn the very concept of assimilation. And that description is rather mild. I'm pulling my punches here. The true details are so shocking they can't even be stated. The truth overwhelms the mind.

There are websites out there that show pictures of European Churches that get vandalized every week. Not a week goes by in France where a Church isn't being attacked in some fashion or other. Just a couple of weeks ago, some Danish teenage tourist asked a group of "youths" for directions on a Parisian bridge, they grabbed her, whisked her out of sight and gang raped her then and there. They did her, as they say, "Leb style," {"Lebanese style," THEIR TERM, NOT MINE, that's how they describe it amongst themselves, and that phrase has been heard in Europe, and as far south as Sydney, Australia}. These are just little anecdotes, little stories, that don't garner much news attention, but they cast a lurid light on what is occurring in Europe, and elsewhere.

Mohammad said "First Constantinople, then Rome." Those were his words. And centuries later, though the West may have forgotten the essence of islam, it doesn't mean the muslims have forgotten. And it doesn't mean they've abandoned the obligation of jihad. Christ's final words were: "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do...." What were the last words of Mohammad? Anyone care to guess? Allow me: "I have been commanded by Allah to fight until all men confess that there is no God but Allah, and Mohammad is his prophet." Quite a sharp distinction there, don't ya think?

Ratzinger himself said that the West is confronting a malevolent mind behind the policy of dumping SCORES OF MILLIONS of muslims on to Europe. HE said that there is clearly a conspiracy behind this policy. So even the Pope perceives an evil will behind all of this, which exists in the shadows, but nonetheless can be discerned, by one with the mind and will to do so.

So what's it going to take for the State Department to get a clue?

Neocons are soft terrorists to the West, which is why they all hate Europe, the heart of Western Civilization. Deep down, they hate the real West, with its real European past. For example, Strauss wallpapers over the real Greeks, and their real ethnocentric pride, with left-wing jacobin universals. Strauss wasn't too bright, so he didn't do it convincingly, but his motive is what's important. Neocons are no friend to Western Civilization. They are soft terrorists.