Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, is in the news. He is urging the European Union to improve its border protection. “As we all know from the Roman empire,” he said about the refugee crisis, “big empires go down if their borders are not well protected.” What he failed to say was that it was the German tribes, including the Dutch, that brought down the Roman empire. He also failed to mention that it took about a millennium for the German invasion to make its mark. Finally, he failed to say that it was the Germans again who brought back the Roman empire under Charlemagne. In other words, the current refugee crisis hardly amounts to a parallel worth mentioning. All it shows is that history repeats itself, most often as a farce. And Rutte’s comment is nothing if not a farce.