Europe as King Lear
“No, no, no, no!” Thus quoth Lear to Cordelia near the end of the grimmest play Shakespeare wrote.
As my friend John Allison observes, Europe is acting a lot like Lear on his way to prison:
“No” said the Irish on February 25, 2011. They ejected Fianna Fail, the largest party in Ireland since 1927 and replaced it with Finn Gael.
“No” said the Italians on November 12, 2011. They sent away Silvio Berlusconi who served on and off for a cumulative 10 years from 1994 through 2011 and was Italy’s longest-serving Prime Minister ever.
“No” said the Spanish on November 20, 2011 to the Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, two-term Prime Minister from 2004-2011, replacing him with the conservative People’s Party led by Mariano Rajoy.
“No” said Geert Wilders, Party for Freedom leader on April 21, 2012 to his coalition partner, Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Liberal Party, sending Holland to a likely caretaker government and election on September 12.
Ditto the French and the Greeks. And this procession of negatives means —what?
One thing it means is that the gulf between the European people and the elites who presume to govern them is growing wider by the month. On the one side you have the Italians, Greeks, French, Germans, Dutch, Spanish, Irish, etc., etc. — particular peoples living in particular places with individual identities. On the other side you have Europe. Or rather, “Europe.” That airy abstraction, a brainchild of elites who think the term “country” is an atavistic abomination and that the facts of history, tradition, custom, and national identity are disposable holdovers from a discredited and discreditable past.
If only the Europeans would take up Lear’s words haunting accumulation of trochees a few lines down: “Never, never, never, never, never”. . .
It is salutary to look at the elite European responses to the Industrial Revolution, following fast upon the French Revolution. It was the precursor to today’s social democratic regimes that Kimball is writing about. See http://clarespark.com/2011/07/16/disraelis-contribution-to-social-democracy/.
“Well said, old mole!” Hamlet
– has sinned more than been sinned against.
Indeed, Europe has sinned far more than it has been sinned against. And for its greatest sin – the Shoah – for which it is completely unrepentant – no punishment for the degenerate savages who inhabit that continent is severe enough.
Depression, poverty, unrest, civil war, enslavement under Islam — the scum who populate that continent deserve it all, ten times over.
…..thanks for the nice literary allusion.
Maybe we could get the voices and diction of Lawrence Olivier and Richard Burton as the Chorus in the wings chanting the People’s “No”.
The Euro-elite is impelled by the very same motives as have propelled the American political elite: they want power over others, and their fictions about the superiority and inevitability of a “US of E” are merely a means toward it. Quoth Mark Steyn:
Is it even imaginable that persons who respect popular sovereignty and sincerely, selflessly desire only the good of their nations would say such things?
One would think that the Europhile elite would remember that constantly, consistantly ignoring the will of your own people didn’t exactly end well for people like Louis 16th.
>>>One thing it means is that the gulf between the European people and the elites who presume to govern them is growing wider by the month.
Not only is the size of that gulf considerable, it’s exacerbated by the faux EU nationalism that stands in the way to solving the problem. To fix things individual dissatisfied European populations would have to overthrow their current rules, and their elites, and then go on to reverse the legislation on which said governance is predicated. Doing this would require a massive shift in how public influence is meted out by each country’s respective national media, most of which are gubmint controlled.
>>>One would think that the Europhile elite would remember…
A central element of the modern globo-socialist movement is the lack of memory replaced by a fictive version of things, even recent events. This has always been common in East Asia, but it’s taking over in the West now. The only problem with the whole scam is that socialism doesn’t work, always leaving the smart guys with a mess on their hands.
Apparently the elites forgot nothing and learned nothing.
We’re hardly ones to talk – freedom and the ideals our country was founded upon lasted only a short while, until the Whiskey Rebellion.
Since that, we’ve been living in a country no different than the EU dictatorship. The TSA is a great example – does anyone like it? Does anyone think it works? Did anyone say “I want this?”.
No, it was forced upon us by the elites. And we have no choice but to take it.
Writing from England, I can tell you that the EU has been forced on people by trickery. Take England, before most of the population was born, in 1975, there was a refeerndum on joining the then Common Market. Firm assurances were given that it was nothing more than a customs unions which would allow cheaper wine in Britain (it has not) and permit British citizens coulto travel around Europe without passports – they cannot. Once the trap was sprung, year after year the oppressive laws and mad economics of Europe have increased. All three main political parties have promised a referendum on Europe but not one has kept the promise for the obvious reason that the British people would vote to leave. The present Prime Minister – who bears the same relationship to Winston Churchill that Mickey Mouse does to Abraham Lincoln – before the election gave what he called a “Cast-iron” guarantee that there would be a referendum. There has not been a referendum, of course, and Mr Cameron has no intention of having one. However, he is trying to push through a bill for so-called “gay marriage”, something he forgot to mention in the party mainfesto. And these are the ones who call themselves “Conservatives”.
There is really no need to slander Mickey that way!
Theodore Dalrymple dismissed Cameron as a rank opportunist (my words, not his) when he first started mentioning him several years ago. I have been hugely impressed by Dalrymple’s wisdom in these matters over the years and have never found a reason to doubt him yet.
I actually send him an email the last time the leadership of the Conserative Party became open suggesting that he run for leadership of the Conservative Party. Obviously, he declined the suggestion. Too bad! I think a principled man like Dalrymple would make an outstanding Prime Minister. In fact, I’d be hard pressed to think of a better candidate.
Unlike the British elites, Dalrymple has direct first hand experience with the reality of life in Britain after more than 20 years practice as a doctor in both an inner city hospital and as a prison doctor. His runins with the bureaucracy of the National Health Service suggest he has the moral backbone to know how the bureaucrats are damaging his country. His extensive foreign travels suggest he would have the insight to form a wise foreign policy.
If only there was a way to get the good people to run our countries!
The EU never has been a static organisation, it changed forms quite often. Britain could have been a founder member of the ECSC(Coal and Steel Community) but everybody in Europe remembers Winston Churchill’s remark back in 1952: “I love France and Belgium, but we must not allow ourselves to be pulled down to that level”. In 1963, British application for entry was vetoed by the French who argued that Britain would function as a Trojan horse for the US. Britain joined the EU in 1973. However, for the Brits, the EU was nothing more than a common market. The aim was to reduce the EU to a free market place. Greece joined in 1981, Spain and Portugal in 1986. In the 1990s, the Brits managed to convince the EU to accept the global market system. That was the end of the EU we had known and loved. American and Asian investors forced our companies to move to Eastern Europe or even to China. That means the EU cannot control her own market but the so-called world markets control Europe. And everybody in Europe blames Germany. The answer of the “German elite” hunted by the EU is “more Europe”. The answer of the average tax-paying Germans might be:”We no longer accept that the markets and the EU rules our government”. Yes, they all might hate us. They hate us at present too. So what.
“Europe.” That airy abstraction, a brainchild of elites who think the term “country” is an atavistic abomination and that the facts of history, tradition, custom, and national identity are disposable holdovers from a discredited and discreditable past.
That’s well said but not complete. These same elites and their bag-carriers also see the EU as a personal fiefdom with full grazing and troughing rights for the illuminati, often tax free. Any outsider who’s encountered the bureaucratic plunderers of Brussels can only gape at the sense of entitlement, waste and unreality — the Beltway looks like a model of thrift and decency by comparison.
Belgium itself is a nearly ungovernable mess, a country defined by grim looking motorists trying to get the hell out and past the nearest border crossing as soon as possible. Yet the unelected and unaccountable EU (and NATO) — aristocracy maintain the pretense. And it will continue until stopped.
Any outsider who’s encountered the bureaucratic plunderers of Brussels can only gape at the sense of entitlement, waste and unreality — the Beltway looks like a model of thrift and decency by comparison.
It’s the producers vs. the takers, an old story that goes back to the very beginning of civilization. Then along came the notion of communards, but that ideal only seemed to work somewhat in an agricultural setting, where everybody could plainly see who was producing what, and that was with scant overhead involved. Not so with the modern regime. Looking back, it seems that Karl shoulda worked on that arithmetic instead of the fake macroeconomic numbers he ended up pushing (with great success).
“One thing it means is that the gulf between the European people and the elites who presume to govern them is growing wider by the month. On the one side you have the Italians, Greeks, French, Germans, Dutch, Spanish, Irish, etc., etc. — particular peoples living in particular places with individual identities. On the other side you have Europe. Or rather, “Europe.” That airy abstraction, a brainchild of elites who think the term “country” is an atavistic abomination and that the facts of history, tradition, custom, and national identity are disposable holdovers from a discredited and discreditable past.”
Well, sort of. The thing to remember is that almost all of the Europeans are socialists and were content to wallow in their western European-style socialist utopias while the money was pouring in. During the good times, by all means lets have the Euro, the European Union, and the European Central Bank. You didn’t hear many complaints about this during good economic times, with the Europeans saying that the Euro would eclipse the dollar some day.
Well, that was then and this is now. The socialists in Europe have finally run out of spending other people’s money and they are flat broke. Worse, given all of the enormous bills they have run up because of their massive entitlements, there is really no way out of this hole for them. Their economies are in a death spiral of debt and more debt even with all of these “austerity” measures. So long as Europe is in a deep recession and clings to socialism, there is no way to pay back any of this money. Countries like Greece are finished because their welfare states are too expensive to maintain. So no matter what they do, they’ll still have a massive debt and their economies will continue to go broke trying to fund that debt. And with constant high taxes and high unemployment, even by taxing people to death these governments will not get out of their economic hole.
Sorry, but the smug Europeans had it coming. For years they lectured us on how “barbaric” we were towards our own people, telling us that we needed to spend more on social-welfare programs and far less on defense. And now look at where they are right now. They couldn’t even wage a war against Libya, a tiny country where half of the people were on NATO’s side. Without massive American help, the Europeans never would have been able to succeed in Libya, and they know it.
So now the Europeans are all sad that they have over 20% unemployment, huge taxes, massive government debts, and bonds that are about as worthless as tissue paper (notice I didn’t say toilet paper because toilet paper is actually WORTH something). Best thing that could happen to that sorry lot of whiners is that they would all break up into their own small squabbling little countries again. Then lets see them actually have to stand on their own two feet. Unfortunately, after over 60 years of being welfare states, it may be too late for that.
One problem: they want a “United States of Europe”, but they don’t want to follow the ideas or practices of the actual united States – they want to follow our example without actually following our example (which is impossible by definition). Meanwhile, some of our own leaders seem to want to follow THEIR example (which is even dumber).
Unfortunately the U.S. politicans have followed just about every bad idea that Europe has come up with. All the social spending, the high taxes, and the anointed elite. How long can the U.S. last, spending a cool $1 trillion more than we take in. And the legislation doesn’t end. Its more, more, more. Oh, can’t cut one darned thing. So laugh at the Euros if you want. We are right behind them. You know our per capita debt is worse than GREECE? The last laugh is on us, as in U.S. taxpayers. The debt will bring us to our knees and hobble us for decades. So prepare for your own retirement and health care. There is NO money. Oh, and stock up on food as the U.S. gov’ment regulates the food supply. Get some canned goods, while they are still on the shelves.
Agree 1000%. The economic situation in Europe is beyond any repair in the short term, and we’re not far behind; in fact, we’re racing as fast as we can to catch up to them! The bankruptcy of the Eurozone is going to drag us down to the seventh level of Hell right along with them; Margaret Thatcher’s maxim has proven emphatically true, “The problem with Socialism is that, sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money.” That day of reconing is here. Now. It’s going to be long, hard, and painful, and there will be blood in the streets of Europe and America, but there is a bright side. It’s a creative destruction that had to happen sooner or later; the current system is, and always has been, unsustainable, and it has to be crashed and burned to the ground before we can get back on track, and the US Constitution gives us a blueprint on how to restore our nation, if we can get back to paying attention to what the document says.
” Like all those on a mission and with an agenda, the educated, professional elites of Europe are not really interested in people who might slow them down.”
Sounds just like Obama. He couldn’t care less about the individual on his way to establishing the ‘greater collective’.
“Oh, can’t cut one darned thing.”
Not true! The Democrats are more than happy to reduce spending on Defence. After all, we’re reset our foreign policy and the world loves us now. There’s no need to have a strong defence. Or so they would have us believe.
Europe’s problems seem to affirm Eric Hoffer’s observation that intellectuals, or the self anointed elite as Thomas Sowell refers to them, are the enemies of the people. They can be described as the untalented seeking power by creating stifling bureaucracies and then taking over their management, obtaining power and prestige they could never obtain if they had to rely on their abilities as businessmen or professionals. In fact creating a dictatorship of the bureaucracy: unelected, unaccountable and unmovable, serving those who have no wish or need to be so served.
De Tocqueville describes such a bureaucracy in The Old Regime and the French Revolution. I wonder how much it will take for the European public to produce another Bastille?
The last time that some Euro-Elites had trouble grasping what the Hoi-Polloi were going on about, it took a one way ride in a tumbrel to open their eyes.