Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.... Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Asylum seekers tripled in Italy in the last three years(here the link, only in Italian) and there are no reasons whatsoever to expect it to be an Italian prerogative.
I cannot prove it but it seems unlikely that such a spike will not be matched by an increase in economis migrants.

More and more people, in the EU especially, worries about the deterioration in welfare's qualitity as a consequence of migration, too few seems to be concerned about civil liberties and democracy, not only in the EU but also in the US(here's a paper from CIS -Center for Immigration Studies).

Asylum seeker are not the only migrants that comes from illiberal, undemocratic if not openly repressive regimes. It's a lot harder to get out of poverty without an decently open society(although the meteoric ascent of China may have lead us to forget it).
These people are not reaching vibrant thriving and vital democracies.
They are reaching fragile systems, where political parties(the true intermediaries between institutions and citizens) have been loosing the critical mass of militans that either controls them and provide them a meaningfull feedback. Too many people never came to appreciate what use they could eventually give to many of those civil liberties.

Here is a scheme that illustrate the principal patterns of international migrations included the brain drain problems that face Europe.



Democracy is built unto small daily choices, not great battles once in a while.
It's a use-it-or-loose-it process. A process that begin within each and any individual.
We cannot prove that religion is indispensable to democracy(let alone Western Monotheism) what we certainly know is that our ancestors used the idea of men created equals as an image of God to get rid of some economic privileges that had been there for centuries.

Since then we have experienced democracy in the form of a sense of entitlement, of collective ownership, in a moral way but also in according to private law, with different degrees of intensity according to the cultures and traditions.

The transparency and the openness, the shared belief that informations are there to be shared for public interest and not hidden and exploited for cliental purposes.

And yet it's yesterday news that the Mob in Italy use the constructors workers that they hire to influence the internal life of political parties wherever they bring them to work.
NeverEnding National Corruption Tour.
But that again is possible only because citizens spiritual strength has been weakened and their common sense of purpose wiped out.
The terms anomy has since long been a pathetic euphemism, a jargon for mandarin that hiddens more than it reveals.

Again that is typical of a society that is getting old.
I'm not being ageist. I agree with the African proverb. when an old man died a library is burnt.
But if we are all library, who will take the dust away from the books, who will read it, and, most important, who will write the new one?

The coming years of sluggish growth(here's Stephen Roach most recent outlook) are likely to further increase that historical migration trend.
A rapidly ageing population(median age above 40, fertility rate between 1.22 and 1.7, population growth rate 0.11) is likely to perceive it as a threat and not only accept but call for a kind of moratory in some individual liberties in exchange for an increased sense of security.

Again, an ageing society may not find especially bothersome that the government meddles in his sexual life, especially if they no longer have one.
Here's is an article about Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act.
I've never thought I'll see the day in which I'd have spoken out in favour of Britain's BDSM (bondage, domination and sado-masochism) community.
For a person that chose IbnBattuta as a pseudonym it's quite an astonishing call, isn'it?

Again, a society of old tech-illiterate, the kind of controls on the web that Labour recently tried to implement are likely to be tolerable and even urgent. Here's the FT techblog

The recent arrest of MP Damien Green, shadow immigration minister was also unprecedent.
William Buiter makes clear points here, and have another important post here(sleepwalking into a police state)

As that great conservative, Barry Goldwater said:
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.... Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.