Costumegate?

Mark Steyn is brilliant and witty in his column on the uproar over Prince Harry's choice of costume. Steyn observes:

But a good indication of societal decadence is when it prefers to obsess over fictional offences rather than real ones.

I suppose it's possible that, should fate bring Harry to the throne, he'd turn into a Victor Emmanuel or King Carol of Romania and lend a constitutional figleaf to some Fascist regime. But worrying about a minor Royal schoolboy's alleged Nazi bent seems something of an indulgence at a time when the neo-Nazis get as many votes in Saxony's elections as Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democratic Party; when from Marseilles to Paris, Jews are being attacked and their homes, schools, kosher butchers, synagogues and cemeteries burnt and desecrated in a low-level intifada that's been going on so long the political establishment now accepts it as a normal feature of French life; and when the Berlin police advise Jews not to go out in public wearing any identifying marks of their faith. It's not just Nazi insignia you don't see in Germany these days; Nazi wise, the uniforms are the least of it.

Prince Harry acted like an idiot to be sure. But what he did is by no means appalling compared to the increasing level of anti-semitism that plagues Europe--an anti-semitism that will only grow in strength as Europe's Muslim population increases and European society becomes increasingly indifferent or willfully ignorant of Islam's fascist-extremist leanings.