In recent years, many of America’s leading lights have embraced Europe as the model for America. Books like “The European Dream” and “The United States of Europe: The New Super-power and the End of American Supremacy”, both published in 2005, as well the 2010 “The European Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age” reflected a broadly progressive view that Europe represented the essence of an enlightened future. Many Western journalists, horrified by Donald Trump, have designed Germany’s Chancellor Merkel or France Emmanuel Macron as “new leaders of the Western world.”

Simply put, this is delusional. America under Donald Trump may be polarized and somewhat out of control, but Europe is in clear and imminent decline. The continent is lagging economically, demographically and even culturally, as Politico noted recently, these oft-underappreciated United States.

A generation ago Europe’s cities seemed safe, well-maintained and glorious while ours were often dangerous, debilitated and dying. Today Paris, arguably the most beautiful city ever crafted by humans, is graffiti-scarred and, in the wake of terrorist attacks, struggles to attract enough tourists. Crime, particularly property crime, is palpably worse — my wife’s Parisian relatives warned about not wearing nice jewelry or watches for fear of them being snatched. Once ultra-peaceful London, meanwhile, once the paragon of safety, in some months now has a higher murder rate than an increasingly safe New York.

The Migration Crisis

Uncontrolled and mounting migration drives divisive political discussion on both sides of the Atlantic. Here this is still largely a border control and jobs issue, but in Europe it has become a civilizational one. At a recent conference held at the chateau where Alexis de Tocqueville wrote “Democracy in America,” the biggest issue repeatedly was migration and cultural identity.

Many leading European intellectuals and former political office-holders suggested that, under an assault from predominately Muslim immigrants, the continent was losing both its “soul” and cultural heritage. Europe’s immigrants are mostly poor and unskilled, unlike Arab or Iranian populations here, which tend to be relatively well-educated and entrepreneurial.

Many liberally minded Europeans fear the imposition of Islamic morality — hostile to women’s rights and homosexuals — on their communities. The great EU-sponsored experiment in multi-culturalism is collapsing everywhere, with anti-immigrant parties either in power or in ascendency. Even Germany’s Angela Merkel is losing her battle for open borders inside her own coalition while her closest ally, French President Emmanuel Macron, fighting depressed popularity, has embraced a very hard line against future migration.

In the United States, progressive Democrats may see the new immigrants as cogs for their political machine, as well as a decisive weapon against brutal Trumpism. But, once they are settled, Asian or Latino newcomers seem unlikely to impose their own theology on the country, but instead concentrate on improving themselves.

The Democratic Deficit

Most Europeans find themselves ignored by the EU bureaucracy and by a broad globalist consensus among the continent’s media, political and academic leadership. Most identify primarily with their nations, not the trans-European notions pedaled by the Brussels apparat. They also have different priorities. More than three times as many Europeans worry about terrorism and migration than climate change, which, as Walter Mead explains, is far more important to the EU bureaucracy and its supporters. Nicolas Baverez, writing in the conservative Figaro, likens the current leadership to somnambules, or sleepwalkers. Like leaders in many parts of blue America, Europe’s rulers have refused to address issues like unemployment and underemployment, particularly among the youth. Many in the poorer southern and eastern parts of the continent see the EU as a device to assure low currency rates for German exporters and to drain their own countries of young talent.

America, too, is deeply divided, but only a few extremists favor severing their states, for example California or Texas, from the union. The struggle carried out here is largely over who will control the national government, not whether control should be ceded to a post-national authority.

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Of course, Americans can learn still from Europeans, notably such things as the Germany craft education system, some form of national health care and opposition to the tech oligarchy’s pervasive tracking and control of information. But America’s economy seems far more resilient overall, growing new industries at a far more rapid rate.

Like Europe, America has poor cities, but it also creates boomtowns as well. Europeans in distress cannot migrate to a continental version of a burgeoning Phoenix, Dallas, Orlando, Nashville or Inland Empire. The closest thing to a real high-tech hub comparable to the West Coast is Tel Aviv, which is actually located in Asia and settled by a people largely expelled from Europe.

Europeans, unsure of their civilization, are deserving more of concern than emulation. Trump may be making his drive to make America “great again” in an ugly and incoherent way, but Americans as a whole are more optimistic, according to Gallup, than at any time since 2005. European media complains they have “lost faith” in America under Trump, but maybe they would be better off if they found some way to restore faith in themselves.

Joel Kotkin is the R.C. Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism (www.opportunityurbanism.org).