Europe's great immigration failure

Christopher Caldwell is a brilliantly cold-eyed observer of the pieties of European multiculturalism. His essay in this month's Prospect—an adapted extract from his new book—is a meditation on what happened when mass immigration collided with Europe's postwar liberal universalism and its playing down of national tradition.

The answer is, of course, a great deal of confusion. "The range of opinions that Europeans can express has narrowed dramatically in recent years," Caldwell writes. "Have Europeans acquired manners or lost their liberties?"

He is not just sneering at political correctness, although there is some of that too, he is trying to understand where it came from. And unlike so much commentary in this area Caldwell, an American, has a truly pan-European eye on these events.

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