Politics

Angela Merkel is destroying Europe

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's celebrated open-door policy encouraged the migration of more than 1 million refugees in 2015, and hundreds of thousands more in 2016. It was lauded as a courageous triumph of humanitarianism. Even in 2016's year-end accolades, Merkel has been given hosannas for "keeping the doors ajar."

But after last week's Berlin attack, in which a man — suspected to be a Tunisian migrant — intentionally plowed an 18-wheeler into a crowded Christmas market, killing 12 and injuring dozens more, it's fair to say that Merkel's celebrated policy has actually been a disaster. After all, "keeping the doors ajar" is precisely how a naive person learns of the bad intentions of an intruder. And Merkel is learning a hard lesson, indeed. She said that welcoming this enormous wave of refugees was the only way to be true to "European values." But the current wave of terrorism and the enormous fear of crime and disorder in European cities is proving mortally dangerous not just to her own party, but to the European Union itself.