On the BBC's Question Time, in the week itself, and only a few days after the story had broken, a Hammersmith audience booed my suggestion that the death of bin Laden was a good thing. Panel and audience members declared themselves "depressed" by the jubilant American reaction. And inevitably the illegality of the action morphed into the subject of most concern, until the debate was overtaken by a discussion of whether the exact proprieties of Muslim burial rites had been accorded to the terrorist's body. The near-universal agreement was that they had not, and there was much lamenting of the same.

Of course, this being the UK rather than the US, the people who did take to the streets were not those happy at bin Laden's demise. On the Friday after his death, a group of Islamists associated with the banned group Al-Muhajiroun, and now calling themselves "Muslims Against Crusades", marched through London to the US Embassy. About 150 bearded men and their shrouded, invisible wives conducted a funeral procession and prayers for bin Laden. Outside the embassy it turned into that fixture of modern Britain: the Islamists waved placards, insulted America, called for the immediate implementation of Sharia law and promised revenge attacks, with the police ensuring that they were safe doing so.

Writing soon after 9/11, Kagan memorably identified those nations that remain in history (having to act and behave in the way that historical states act) and those who believe they have gone beyond history, indeed surpassed it. The fulfilment of the Kantian dream of universal and perpetual peace is presumed to have come to these countries. Sweden, Ireland, Belgium and many others: these are countries which have entered an era in which they believe themselves to be beyond the temptations and pitfalls of the past. To these people it is not just an idea, but an inevitability, that warfare and conflict are behind them. Admittedly, dispute and conflict do arise, but where they used to be resolved by war, now they are resolved by international law. Conflict is just so 20th century. And of course it's just as well, because we don't have the money to pay for it anyway.

For hand-in-hand with the belief that war is behind us is the wish to provide as many people as possible with as much welfare as possible. Defence budgets are cut to a bare minimum, hovering around the one or two percentage mark as a proportion of public expenditure. This allows the vast bulk of available (and unavailable) funds to be splashed out on welfare budgets, producing a populace as physically obese and morally decadent as it is possible to be. In such a state, if a person exists who declares war on your country, your  civilisation, who orders the flying of planes into your buildings and the blowing up of your trains, then that man should be found, handcuffed, read his rights, and led away to speak with lawyers.

There are a number of obscenities at the heart of the British response to bin Laden's death, but one thing stands at its core. As Kagan puts it, Europe has long inhabited a "post-historical paradise", while America still lives in the historical world of power and conflict. Britain, having wavered on the brink of history, has now clearly and unmistakably tumbled over the edge, into Europe's post-historical paradise.