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Posts Tagged ‘European Union’
July 1st, 2016 at 12:56 pm
Perhaps the Funniest Post-Brexit Tantrum Yet, Courtesy of The New York Times
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So this apparently passes as intelligent commentary among The New York Times set and tantrum-throwing “Remain” pajama boy voters in Britain.

Namely, a perpetual adolescent who acknowledges:

Since my late teens, every effort I have ever exerted has been with the intention of escaping Alresford.  And yet, I am an early-career academic and so I am forced to move back, every summer, to live with my parents because I cannot afford to pay rent elsewhere after my temporary teaching contract ends.”

Nevertheless, he openly fantasizes about its utter obliteration and return to a state of nature, lamenting the area’s “Brexit” vote to declare independence from the European Union:

Sometimes, in the summer, I walk up the hill and I look out over it, the housing development on one side and the Georgian town center at the bottom of the other, and I have this fantasy image of how it once was, before Alresford was founded in the Middle Ages, when all of this was untouched:  just the wild, untamed nature that it keeps wanting to turn itself back into.  And sometimes, I think:  I wish that would happen.  Because all that humans have ever done here is ruin things.  Alresford is my personal hell.”

The poor soul.

Conspicuously, however, he doesn’t volunteer himself to stand first in line in his little return-to-nature scrubbing of humanity from the land.

‘Twas ever thus with leftists, of course.  Always let someone else endure the consequences of their dystopian visions.

June 6th, 2012 at 2:36 pm
Europe: In For a Penny, In For a Pound
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Pity our poor friends in Europe. They just can’t seem to stomach the lesson that the faltering state of the continental monetary union has made all but impossible to ignore. Rather than making a clean break from the common currency, it now appears that the smart set wants to double down. This item, appearing earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal, is nothing short of chilling in its implications:

Germany is sending strong signals that it would eventually be willing to lift its objections to ideas such as common euro-zone bonds or mutual support for European banks if other European governments were to agree to transfer further powers to Europe.

If embraced, the move would deepen in fundamental ways Europe’s political and fiscal union and represent one of the boldest steps taken by the bloc since the euro was launched. Germany has never before been willing to discuss the conditions it believes necessary to move toward assuming common risks within the euro zone. Now, although the end may be a long way off, it appears willing to discuss those conditions.

“The more that other member states get involved with this development and are prepared to give up sovereign rights to get European institutions more involved, the more we will be prepared to play an active role in developing things like a banking union,” a German official familiar with the discussions told The Wall Street Journal. “You can’t have one without the other.”

Translation: the Europeans are seriously considering throwing the car in reverse and seeing just how far they can push the speedometer. It’s true that an economic union without a matching political consolidation was always doomed to fail (the practical effect has been Southern Europe living off the North), but the move towards a true United States of Europe brings to mind James Madison’s observation from Federalist #10 about destroying liberty in order to cure the problem of political faction: the cure is worse than the disease.

A continent-wide government will destroy all pretense of national sovereignty throughout Europe, leaving the bureaucrats of Brussels to steer a bold new course that will vanquish the national character of some of the world’s proudest nations, perpetuate a failing economic model, and cede previously democratic powers to unelected technocrats.

Let us pray that Europe doesn’t go down this road. If it does, the burden of Western leadership will fall even more disproportionately on American shoulders than it does already.

March 25th, 2011 at 11:03 am
Portugal Likely to Seek Bailout; Warnings for US Federalism?

When every opposition group voted down his austerity budget earlier this week, Portugal’s prime minister resigned.  Now, the European Union is preparing to bail out a third member nation in just over a year.  (The other two are Greece and Ireland.)

While the Portuguese mess probably won’t have an immediate fiscal impact on the United States, the EU’s crisis of federalism could soon be felt over here.

States like Illinois and California are teetering on the edge of insolvency after spending like a bunch of reckless European countries.  Because of the EU’s shared currency and the effects a default would have on the rest of the federation, the EU feels pressed into covering the costs of some members’ excess.

The same thinking seems likely to migrate across the Atlantic.  Members of Congress are mulling options like bankruptcy for failing state governments, though that risks undermining state sovereignty.  Also, bailouts run the risk of prolonging hard decisions, as well as deepening the dependency of states on the feds.

There are no easy answers, but there are some necessary decisions.  Time will tell if those in Sacramento and Springfield can come to better resolutions that the parliament in Lisbon.

August 18th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Immanuel Kant, Anti-Semite?
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For decades, philosophy buffs have argued over whether Adolf Hitler’s appropriation of Friedrich Nietzsche was a logical extension of the German philosopher’s work or a bastardization of his core themes. Now, a new wrinkle in the debate about how philosophy informs international affairs comes courtesy of the Middle East Forum’s Daniel Pipes (full disclosure: Dr. Pipes was a professor of mine in graduate school) writing in today’s Jerusalem Post.

In a piece titled “Lion’s Den: Immanuel Kant vs. Israel”, Dr. Pipes argues that the post-nation state ideology advanced by the legendary Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant in his 1795 work “Perpetual Peace” is now being used to advance a new paradigm of perpetual war against Israel. In relevant part:

Under the old nation-state paradigm, the lesson of Auschwitz was “Never again,” meaning that a strong Israel was needed to protect Jews.

The new paradigm leads to a very different “Never again,” one which insists that no government should have the means potentially to replicate the Nazi outrages. According to it, Israel isn’t the answer to Auschwitz. The European Union is.

That the old-style “Never again” inspires Israelis to pursue the Western world’s most unabashed policy of self-defense makes their actions particularly appalling to New Paradigmers.

Need one point out the error of ascribing Nazi outrages to the nation-state? The Nazis wanted to eliminate nation-states. No less than Kant, they dreamed of a universal state. New Paradigmers mangle history.

The lesson — in Israel’s case, as in all others — is simple. As the monopoly of legitimate force, government is a necessary evil requiring the vigilance of free citizens to keep it in check. In order to protect human liberty and maintain responsiveness to the citizenry, that means government should be as limited and decentralized as possible. And nothing is more threatening to that goal than the “benevolent” internationalism envisioned by Kant, the United Nations, and all their fellow travelers on the post-nationalist left.

May 10th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
Fueling the Greece Fire

“Beware Greeks bearing gifts,” the Iliad-inspired saying goes.  Perhaps now we should amend it to add “especially those bought with on sovereign credit.”  Fresh off a visit to ground zero in Athens, Bill Frezza makes his contribution on how to handle Greece’s imploding debt crisis:

Throw Greece out of the European Union. Let them default on their debts. Teach buyers to beware before they invest in sovereign bonds. Dare Greece to print Drachmas by the wheelbarrow. Put the whole country on the public payroll then challenge them to demonstrate what a truly egalitarian society looks like. Maybe a dramatic spectacle of what a workers paradise looks like under the media’s glare will teach us what’s in store if we don’t change our ways.

Democracy is broken. You can’t mix Freedom and Free Lunch. One or the other has got to go.

Like the Trojans, it’s time for the Greeks to reap the consequences of some very poor decisions.

H/T: RealClearMarkets

November 27th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Another Obscure Community Organizer Bursts Onto The World Stage

In what may be a lesson for budding progressive politicians, the career paths of President Barack Obama and the new European Union foreign minister offer insight into how to position oneself for stardom while ascending in darkness.  It turns out that like Obama, Lady Catherine Ashton has a dodgy past full of close ties to political radicals on the Left.  As a paid organizer for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), then Ms. Ashton rubbed shoulders with a group that Russian Communist leaders found helpful during the Cold War.

Yet the fact remains that the Kremlin found CND and other “peace movements” useful ways of undermining the unity of NATO, weakening the West’s defence posture and stoking anti-Americanism. The ex-dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, an expert in Soviet penetration of the West, says: “the worldwide disarmament campaign in the early 1980s was covertly orchestrated from Moscow. To a substantial extent it was also funded by the Soviet bloc”.

Like Obama’s well-documented connection to ACORN, though, the row over Lady Ashton’s past affiliation with folks proclaiming “better red than dead” probably won’t be enough to force her resignation as the embodiment of European foreign policy.  Who knows; maybe she’ll be able to broker a deal with a resurgent Russia to help combat the rise of an Islamic Republic inside the continent.

October 26th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Tony Blair for Holy Roman Emperor?

Although the official title would be “President of the European Union”, Tony Blair’s private campaign to become the face of the European bureaucracy recalls the mid-level horsetrading and indeterminate power structure of the Holy Roman Empire. According to Newsweek, no less than 27 heads of state will meet to confer the prestige of speaking on behalf of Europe to the world. As with the Habsburgs, Blair’s Catholicism, fluency in French, and ability to please several ethnic and geographical interests at once are smoothing the path towards becoming the next in a long line of Continental potentates.

As for the actual job description, it’s still unclear what Blair would be expected to do with the post. Who knows; perhaps he could find work for that other politician of the Baby Boom Generation that refuses to go away…