Are you looking for a sign of how Western civilization is
faring? Consider Germany’s new policy for those seeking
unemployment benefits. Citing an article from The Daily
Telegraph, Stefan Beck reported on our weblog that
in an effort to address its high unemployment, Germany is now
requiring those receiving benefits to take any job
available—even in the so-called “sexual services” sector.
And why not? Prostitution is legal in Germany. Ergo, if you’re out of
work and the local brothel has an opening, you are obliged
to take the job. “The government had considered making
brothels an exception on moral grounds,” the Telegraph

wrote, “but decided that it would be too difficult to
distinguish them from bars.”
Now, it turns out that
this particular report may have been an exaggeration. But
everyone rushed to believe it because it was rooted in an alarming set of truths.
Yes, there is a comic element to bureaucratic idiocy,
real or imagined. But beneath the comedy is a somber point that
Mark Steyn summed up in a recent column:

The waitress forced into prostitution by the government pimp
is, at one level, merely an example of the unintended
consequences that follow every legislative initiative. But,
at another, it’s the logical reductio of the modern secular
welfare state… . When you cede to the state the
responsibility for feeding, clothing, housing yourself, for
your parents’ retirement, and your own health care, it’s
hardly surprising they can’t see what the big deal is about
annexing your sex life as well.

The real issue
is the state of a
culture that can no longer manage the most elementary moral
discriminations. It expects
emancipation from civilizing civilization. What it gets is decadence.