Europe in the Rearview Mirror
The Dream and the Nightmare
The European Union was always a paradox. Its existence was predicated entirely on the notion of German guilt, translating into massive cash transfers east and south. Just as Versailles was supposed to have restrained Germany, then a divided, postwar Germany, then NATO integration and the common Soviet enemy, and then the EU — and now what next?
There was quite a EU veneer placed over the politically incorrect “German Problem.” Most of us listened in disbelief as we were lectured that veritable disarmament, subsidized windmills, reach outs to a Syria or Libya, easy anti-Americanism, and sermons about cradle-to-grave socialism were the way of the new Europe. And always came the grating condescension, that a self-appointed bureaucratic class in Brussels might lecture Neanderthals what was good for them, without worry over democratic checks and balances.
In understandable fear of cannibalizing Europe yet a third time within a century’s span, European academics and elite functionaries had taken a perfectly understandable notion of a European common market and transmogrified it into an anti-democratic, utopian, and utterly unworkable European Union. Was the euro supposed to trump the laws of Economics 1A, simply because it was constructed as something moral?
Was it not ridiculous that Germans would sell their wares to poorer southern Mediterraneans, who would then borrow the money for payment from EU banks, which then in turn would supposedly guarantee the debts by appeals to a transcontinental collective to share risks? (Where did the blown $400 billion plus to Greece actually go? The answer is not hard to find: just look at the new bridges, freeways, subway, airport, vacation homes, hotels, cars, buses, etc., and then look at the manner in which a Greek bank is staffed, cars are driven in Omonia Square, or how construction workers erect apartment buildings — and then again sigh that the latter elsewhere in the world do not lead to the former.)
Gauleiters and Greeks
Who was more culpable, the efficient German companies and banks who tried to draw on the guarantees of an entire continent to legitimize loans that empowered a German mercantilism, or duplicitous Mediterraneans who wished to live like Germans but not to produce like them? After all, two daily commutes, siestas, tax cheating as a national religion, and 9 PM dinners do not otherwise add up to a life of sophisticated brain surgery, Mercedes buses, and Bosch dishwashers. Did the CEOs of Audi and Siemens think that they did? Read the Greek newspapers and Merkel appears as a cartoonish Hitler; read the German and Greeks seem beach-going untermenschen.
From Paradise to Purgatory
Did Euro visionaries not see that the efforts at utopian pacifism on a continental scale were not merely doomed to fail, but destined to a failure of such magnitude that the resulting acrimony would be far worse than had the silly project never been tried in the first place? The Greek and German papers now engage in a level of stereotyping, caricature, and national hatred not seen since the 1930s, and far in excess of anything in the pre-EU days of the 1970s and 1980s. History’s antidote to a failed utopianism is not merely a return to nationalism, deterrence, balance-of-power alliances, and all the ancient methods of keeping the peace, but more to pandemic disgust and eventually to strife. A strong proactive alliance of the United States, France, and Britain in 1934 would have stopped Germany; a weak and pretentious collective League of Nations would facilitate it.
Munich and Athens in California
I drive each week from one of the poorest areas in the U.S. to one of the wealthiest. A man from Mars after walking in west Selma and then downtown Menlo Park could tell you exactly why the gap is not three hours, but more like three centuries. One-quarter mile from my house about 30 people live in wrecked trailers behind a farmhouse with an assortment of barn animals wandering about the premises; about 100 yards from my tiny studio apartment in Palo Alto, Facebook zillionaires bid upwards of $2 million for a tiny house worth about $70,000 in Fresno.
But both these extremes at least share common laws — in theory a common language, the same constitution, and an identical popular culture. In contrast, when I go from the Peloponnese to the Rhine I see about the same vast economic divide, but one in which different histories, languages, cultures, and ethnicities acerbate — not mitigate — the gulf. In fact, if I were to dream up a way of having central, rural California go to war against the wealthier coastal strip from San Diego to San Francisco, I would simply have them first craft a EU-like arrangement for a few years.
Europe is not the EU
But all that said, the EU is not quite Europe; the parts are far better than the sum. Britain, Germany, Scandinavia, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the rest, for all their elites’ hatred of the U.S., are still admirable places, especially in comparison with societies in most of Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Life is humane, and the poorest in resource-poor Europe are not poor like those in oil-rich Mexico or Venezuela. The food and water do no make one sick; medicine is advanced. The rule of law largely prevails. Competency ensures things work. When I travel, I look for the small irrelevancies that are not so irrelevant: in Libya, dogs looked tortured; in Britain, they are humanely treated. There are no billboards of Great Leaders in Europe in the fashion of the monotonous ubiquity of an Arafat, Mubarak, or Assad on nearly every wall. In Mexico, people toss trash out the car window; in Munich, I see strangers stoop to put someone else’s litter in trash baskets. Getting in line in Egypt or Kuwait is governed by the sharpest elbows; in Holland, there is a system of order. I don’t drive any more in most countries other than northern European ones. As a general rule, if you go to the emergency room south or east of Crete, pray that you are in Israel.
Yes, I know Europe is sick, ill with loud secular agnosticism and atheism, aging and shrinking, wedded to an unworkable redistributive socialism. But it still works because Europeans for centuries have remained highly educated, skilled, lawful, and talented as the creators of our own Western system.
Letting in self sufficient immigrants does not conform with the Democrat Party’s culture of dependency ethos. They only want pauper’s who will sign up for food stamps and Medicaid, in return for their loyal votes.
Wow! Prof. Hanson’s post explodes with history, philosophy, socio-economics, politics, and, above all, reason, unmatched in the blogosphere.
I agree with everything he says, but the examples make no sense to me. At the time of Homer, did the Greeks even have a written language? There was a complex civilization in the Near East 4,000 years ago, and it is unarguable that the Greek alphabet was taken from the Phoenician (that is, the Canaanite). (Even if every encyclopedia didn’t start with this fact, you can line up the Greek and Hebrew alphabets and see the correspondence; the Greeks just made the vowels into letters.)
Regarding the other issues, I am on shakier ground, but weren’t Athens and Sparta 90% slave?
Of course, coming from a people who fought (and won!) a war against Hellenism, I tend to prefer the Hebrew antecedents of Western civilization to the Greek.
The Mycenean Greeks who were the Acheans named by Homer had a written language, known in the “Linear B” script. That style of writing was forgotten during the Greek Dark Age, and was replaced by letters derived from the Phoenicians. Homer memorized and delivered his verse as a performance because it was expected of poets at the time. His poems were written down later, as the foundation stories of the Classical Greek civilization.
Athens and Sparta had slaves in their cities, but they were not the majority of the population. Only the wealthy citizens could afford many slaves to do the scut work. Most citizens of the Greek city-states were freemen who worked their own farms with the help of tenants. Athens’s police force was composed of government-owned Scythian slaves, who were permitted to make arrests and drag citizens to jury duty if needed, in order to prevent charges of assault from citizen against citizen. The Spartans had a serf population of Helots, who were neighboring Greeks the Spartans had conquered, and forced into serfdom so they could train in warfare uninterrupted by the needs of agriculture.
The Hebrews had slaves, too! Slaves, and the treatment of them, and their relationship to their masters are mentioned many times in the Scriptures. These days the Bibles all say “servants”, but many of those Old Testament “servants” were prisoners of war, imported labor shipped from the Phoenicians, or fellow Hebrew debtors sold to pay their debts, repaying their buyers with their labor.
Hanson’s usual brilliance! I send more links to his writings to friends family and colleagues than to any other writer.
so do we!!..Along with reading posts on “PJM”, we use to go to “the Blaze”…it was common sense also.
However, in the past couple of months it seems filled with nonsense stories. Maybe Beck no longer monitors it or he’s gone mushy..
“PJM “is one of the FEW place we can find relevant news, events going on without the inevitable liberal tilt..places with a straight forward agenda are getting harder to find..we don’t always comment but we do stop by and read up …We don’t always agree..but,that’s okay..
…..Thanks PJ Media and Dr. Hanson
The Blaze has gone mushy since Beck hired the editor from the
Huffpo. The negative story on Sarah’s special needs child? What was
with THAT???
Beck better wake up and smell the coffee.
“So we live two lives; the counterfeit one that we declaim loudly in a politically-correct fashion, and the real one we live by but do not dare articulate.”
vdh always has an insight nobody else has. The economy isn’t really the problem. That can be fixed with relative ease. Willful blindness is the real problem. And no amount of economic common-sense fixes that.
This time though, vdh has two unique insights:
“A small suggestion: given that we have let in 11 million illegal aliens without legality, capital, education, or English, why not announce that we will fast track into citizenship 100,000 Europeans a year who speak English, have a BA degree, and can come with $50,000 in capital? Set the immigration at exactly the same number we do for legal immigrants from Mexico—and then listen and watch what happens!”
Poor Mr. Hanson. He is insightful, but in one short paragraph he tramples on three of our marxist rulers most beloved assumptions: there are no illegal aliens, insisting on the English language is essentially a crime, and capital is poison. Can you imagine the mocking and abuse, esoecially by the ruling class commentariat who come to PJM, if Newt Gingrich had said such a thing?
You really hit the nail on the head with your statement about “willfull blindness.” I’ve noticed two completely different trends that seem to be leading to the same end. Here in the U.S. Americans are failing to study history (and not just our history, history in general). In Greece, people are becoming more and more steeped in their own history and are failing to apply it to their current situation. They are so convinced that their system must work that they refuse to study it honestly, citing their ancestors’ accomplishments as if they can excuse the current mess. It’s as if the entire world is determined to plunge over the side of the cliff by any means possible.
VDH has really hit it out of the park with this article but, of course, he does that on a regular basis.
Ancient Greek accomplishments have nothing to do with modern greeks. They are only greek in the sense that their religion is Greek Orthodox, and they happen live where ancient Greece used to be. Most of them are descendants of the
Greek Orthodox (Melkite) christians of Byzantine, and later Ottoman empire of various ethnic origins: Slavic, Albanian, Vlach, etc. Population exchanges with Turkey in 1920s also brought in a bunch of middle easterners. In many ways modern greeks are a 19th century invention similar to Palestinians in the 20th. Check Jacob Phillip Fallmerayer for more on the subject.
You make a good point and it’s absolutely true but good luck getting the modern Greeks to admit it. They gloss over that element in their history. It really is a “willfull blindness” for which there is no excuse. There’s also a widespread adherence to some of the most farfetched conspiracy theories you can imagine. There are a lot of comparisons being made between Greece and California but they don’t take into account the different mindsets. California, as dismal as its economy may be, has a lot more potential for recovery than does Greece simply because there are still people there, like VDH, who are willing to study the problem with honesty rather than emotion.
So far has Athens left the rest of mankind behind in thought and expression that her pupils have become the teachers of the world, and she has made the name of Hellas distinctive no longer of race but of intellect, and the title of Hellene a badge of education rather than of common descent.
Isocrates 436–338 BC
Nonsense. Fallmerayer’s work has been discredited and few historians take him seriously although the Nazis believed him apparently and they used his theories as an excuse to commit atrocities on the Greeks. And if the Greeks are an invented people, how about today’s Egyptians? Or the Italians? Are they invented also given that Egypt is a shadow of it’s former ancient self? I think your post is offensive.
Currently living in the Veneto (N. Italy) amongst the descendants of the Venetian Republic and yes, they say modern Italy and thus Italians are an artificial invention. An abstraction forced upon them by proto-fascists and are now over taxed to support the indolent southerners that even have a different language.
Don’t forget the Khazars, Cumans, Bulgars, Normans, French (the ‘Latin Empire’) and many actual Latins, mix in a few Avars, Visigoths, Teutons, ‘Varangians,’ and a whole lot more. Romanians have a better claim at being Roman than modern Greeks do at being Greek. Constantinople was the original melting pot, much more than Rome.
“So we live two lives: the counterfeit one that we declaim loudly in a politically correct fashion, and the real one we live by but do not dare articulate.”
That line hit me hard, as I’ve been “studying up” on Narcissism. This is what a narcissist does. They live in a fantasy world, and it doesn’t mean a damnn thing that all the data around them does not support it. And if you tell them thier fantasy world doesn’t exist… watch the rage!!
you clearly talking about yourself, right ? Because all data around (if you get out of downtown melting pot to suburbs where majority whites live ) will tell you that the author is correct.
Newt would never say such a thing – he is busy painting Romney as a evil capitalist.
Are capitalists, by definintion, virtuous? Make your case for George Soros, to begin. Then make your case for Goldman Sachs and Michael Milliken before commenting on Bain Capital’s business practices. You might also comment on such businesses as pornographers, legalized prostitution, and abortion clinics.
Just so we can put Gingrich’s comments in the full context of your perspective on business morality.
America is lost and gone: it’ll totter along on the momentum of its own success, as do many inherited companies, for another century or so and then will fall down under the weight of political correctness that ensures that failure from the Third World is simply bad luck that will be straightened right out once imported into a magic land where I.Q.s jump sharply once on shore.
To see perhaps the greatest culture that ever was subsumed and tricked into suicide by a simple children’s taunt of “racist” possesses its own grim irony.
…And when all is done and the former United States lies in ruin and the masters of this destruction stand and look upon what they’ve done, while will they not be happy? Why will they not cheer?
For they will have destroyed the very thing that gave them the freedom to think and act as the spoiled miscreants that they are who value neither character nor honesty and instead built their very existence and purpose upon an enormous lie; That humans can master nature.
As they go about their daily toil of national destruction, they see not the end result, thinking instead they are fighting ahead towards that Utopia, that perfect society with themselves as the masters. Sadly, they are mistaken.
OBAMA & CO. DUG A BIG HOLE, NOT FOR ”WE THE PEOPLE” FOR THEM, THAT IS OBAMA, HIS CZARS,CONGRESS, SENATE, BUT NOT ”WE THE PEOPLE” AS WE WILL GET AMERICA BACK AND BUILD ALL OVER AGAIN….SO WE MUST PUT OUR MINDS TOGETHER BEFORE NOV. 12TH. IF CONGRESS WON’T DO IT, ”WE THE PEOPLE” WILL
GOD BLESS THE U.S.A. GOD BLESS ALL.
Make that a godless utopia of science, technology, terror and death. mmm mmm mmm
VDH … a timely, mature and encouraging post.
Thanks.
The good Dr. Hanson has taken the vital signs of the United States and summarily deduced the prognosis.
Another splendid and accurate biopsy, as always.
The Obama Enterprise intends to stratify the tribes for political manipulation. And the tribes acquiesce.
I think there are several issues that require clear and tough decisions. They are different for Europe and America.
1) With regard to Europe – it has to see, clearly, that socialism as an economic mode, cannot support a population. Socialism is focused, not around Investment and Production of goods/service/wealth, but around the Consumption of goods and services. The problem is that Consumption is the final phase of an economy and without the two robust, ever-growing Investment and Production phases – the economy collapses due to ‘over-consumption of unfunded entitlements’.
There is no Magic Cauldron producing wealth. There is only Investing in businesses that Produce goods and services for Consumption…and this must produce a profit. This profit must be retained by the private sector and not taxed away by the govt…to be ‘redistributed for Consumption’.
Europe has taxed profits away from Investment and Production…and these have ground to a halt. There’s no more wealth being produced to redistribute! So, Europe switched to borrowing this money – and has entangled itself in massive debt.
Europe has to confront socialism and the utopian myth of a no-growth perfect redistribution of ‘goodies’.
2) America has a different problem but it is as dangerous if not more so than that of Europe. America has TWO problems.
First, under Obama, the US is being moved into socialism. All of Obama’s policies and programs have divested the private sector, the middle class small and medium businesses, of wealth, freedom to set up businesses, freedom to hire and work. Furthermore, Obama’s policies have increased the redistribution of wealth and increased entitlements – thus, removing wealth from the Investment and Productive sector and moving it into strictly and only Consumption.
Just as in Europe, Obama is reduced to massive borrowing to fund these Consumption Entitlements.
Second, under Obama, the infrastructure of democracy, is being destroyed and removed. That is, Obama rejects the right, the duty, the will of Congress, (ie the People) to legislate laws. He governs by executive fiat without concern for the will of the people. Whether it be his insistence that Congress pass his bills without reading them; his setting up of czars and committees to carry out work rejected by Congress (Cap and Trade;EPA); his rejection of Congressional budgets; his appointments when Congress was not recessed, etc…Obama rejects Congress.
The US infrastructure of democracy, which consists of Congress/the People, also consists of the Rights of States. Obama is destroying this infrastructure as well, ignoring State Rights, suing any State that dares to reject his Will. His abdication of federal duties, such as securing the border, and his refusal to allow States to deal with the massive costs of illegal aliens implodes the financial and legal orderliness of the States.
And, the US infrastructure of democracy, which consists of Congress, the Rights of States, and the separation of church and state, is further being destroyed as Obama moves in to demolish the laws of the basic religious background of the US – Christianity. That is, Obama is marginalizing religious axioms by insisting that His Laws override these religious axioms.
This deliberate destruction of the democratic infrastructure of the US by Obama – must be confronted and rejected.
Otherwise, America will be not only a fiscal disaster because of Obama’s socialism, but, a chaotic dictatorship where the legal infrastructure, deliberately destroyed, no longer functions to uphold the rights and protections of a democratic order.
Rabbi Hillel’s axiom: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am for
myself alone, what am. I? And if not now, when?”
yes.
The problem is even more fundamental than the economy. Controlling the economy is just one element of total control, the ultimate objective. So the marxists don’t pass a single day without subverting another institution. Last week alone, they sent a Supreme Court justice to slam the Constitution itself in a foreign country and little lenin aimed a broadside at freedom of religion. And those were only the things so egregious that pravda could not completely hide them from public view.
This isn’t slowing down, it’s accelerating. It’s more stunning than anything that has happened in this country, certainly at least since the Civil War.
Meanwhile, there are two candidates who recognize that we have a serious problem that goes well beyond what some economic tinkering can correct, and one who just wants to get his buddies back in the drivers seat to grab a few more eggs from the golden goose. I hope the two who aren’t captives of minor league statists have the guts to make it absolutely clear to the public how massive the real problem is, because if they don’t soon, the election will be absolutely meaningless. (note: I would include Ron Paul with Gingrich and Santorum except for the fact that he is as blind about foreign affairs as the republican ruling class is about what is happening to the country right in front of their eyes.)
The Republican nominee will have perhaps the last platform to state the severity of the problem directly to the American people. It’s now or never.
Yes, Ron Paul is – I can only say – dumb, dumb, dumb about foreign affairs.
To believe, as he does, that the only energy driving the Islamists is reaction, is retribution for ‘what the US has done to us’ – is so naive and so ignorant, it’s beyond belief. Does he have the arrogance, (yes, I’ll call it that) to actually believe that these people in the Middle East have no emotions, no reasoning, no agenda of their own – and all they are is hapless robots who can only react-to-others?
Why doesn’t he attribute these same characteristics – of acting ONLY in reaction to someone else – to Americans? Hmmm.
Again, there are TWO serious internal attacks on the US being carried out by Obama. The first is his transformation of the economic and societal mode from capitalism to socialism. The second is his destruction of the democratic infrastructure of the US – to a dictatorship.
Take note: these changes have happened in other nations before, while ‘we watched’ so to speak. They are happening now, ‘while we watch’ in the USA. It’s our choice – to resist and stand up for freedom and democracy and the USA.
Precisely, ETAB.
But resistance must come from a unified voice. A splintered voice, behind an erratic or marginal banner…will be crushed.
Greece is the poster child for Gimmee Gimmee Government. When the system is gamed to its own extinction.
The small c communists are different from the democratic socialists in the use of tyranny. The large C communists are different from the small c communists in the use of disguise.
All three…first seize the cultural communication streams. Media, entertainment, academia. Where people go to get facts, information, news, opinion and analysis.
In order to overcome that seizure, one must not only combat it with resources, but be able to win the “message war”. Leftists have been cheating this “message war” with propaganda and distortion.
Having a lead “message warrior” who can’t string together two coherent sentences or who has such crazy ideas pop out of his head and into his mouth as to beclown himself every other day…does not a whit of good and an immense amount of harm.
Spouting vacuous platitudes and canned homilies replaces bumbling or erratic…with smarmy.
Not much of a trade off there.
We are not Greece or the EU…but we are caught in their slipstream.
Resist we must, ETAB. In unity…not futility, however.
Pro, you’re right.
This mission, which Obama has clearly accepted, is to subvert BOTH the economy and any institution that supports either freedom of thought and action or thought/action contrary to the Obama’s dictates.
Every few weeks from now until the election, fresh business, economic and institutional targets (states, churches, etc.) will be identified, demonized and subverted by Obama and the minions.
We’re in really deep yogurt.
You are correct. As an Illinois state senator (not so long ago), Barack Obama lamented that the Constitution was a “charter of negative liberties” (what the government could not do to you) as opposed to specifying what “the government must do on your behalf.” To give his idea flesh, he went on to note that the [Warren] Suprem Court had not been active enough in “retributive issues” (i.e. wealth redistribution.) I reject the common notion that he is incompetent. What we see playing out is exactly the “fundamental transformation of America” he had in mind. We are all in grave danger.
I think we’re ignoring the massive costs of immigration both legal and illegal as well as foreign aid which debase a currency. Surely it is no coincidence that my favorite hotel in Rio de Janeiro was $4 in 1988 and $91 now. Convert that to Euros or pre-Euro currency and it’s the same.
If you import non-productivity that is what you get and if you throw currency into the black Third World hole that non-productivity emanates from it is worse. Where does the money the G8 spends on aid come from – thin air?
How much does the Third World spend on the West despite all the crying from the liberal West? $0?
“So we live two lives: the counterfeit one that we declaim loudly in a politically correct fashion, and the real one we live by but do not dare articulate.”
Yesterday, I watched Andrew Breitbart’s speech at CPAC. He said, in essence, that it’s time to stop doing what you’ve described. I whole-heartedly agree.
So I’m going to take that whole paragraph and use it as the basis for articulating the truth. After all, I’m tired of people not understanding The Gods of the Copybook Headings.
Note: I am not proofreading because it seems to make people mad. Why, I cannot imagine, but if it’s going to twist people’s knickers, I will refrain.
Dianna,
Please do continue to proofread.
I appreciate it & I will continue to pass your findings on to VDH for everyone’s benefit.
Thanks again.
Yeah, keep proofing. I see it as a bit of a refresher course, and I’m sure Hanson doesn’t see it as anything but proofing.
……please continue to refrain from your unneeded public proof reading. It’s petty, snarky and just plain too much prissy “Miss Manners” for the likes of this website.
mr prissy hissy fit charley griffith, go take a hike yourself, why don’tcha
The day I’m mistaken for Miss Manners, I shall be certain to lean my elbows on the table.
Untwist your knickers.
I believe people take your proofreading as an attempt at criticism where you cannot conjure a good point of rebuttal on the merits of the subject related rather than pure proofreading. That would be because many others resort to forms of nitpicking in other ways but for this reason. When that happens its annoying because all it can lead to is off point argument. That’s something we’d like to refrain from And not be goaded into.
I say that as long as you provide an occasional statement of clarification of intent you should proofread. Accurate transmission of ideas through written forms demands it.
Good luck and good hunting.
Do continue to point out grammatical errors and ignore the whiners. Good writing is becoming a lost art and we should all practice.
Yet sometimes, if you will excuse the play, some people need to be squeezed. :-)
The people who work the hardest in america are the people who are by law supposed not to work. The rest of the country is living on the high thanks to Chinese and Arab money. The wall street every day comes up with another hundred clever ways to pass the buck. The unfortunate fact of life, though, is that all bubbles burst. The taxes you do not pay today will come back with interest.
“How high’s the water, momma?
Six feet high, and rising.”
Or—
“The river runs down,
But the stream runs dry.”
There’s seemingly NO WAY to avoid the “rising water” known as the Islamic demographic time bomb, to wit, the way Muslims are making more babies in EUROPE than the natives.
And, on the flip side, the “river” of Europeans who still exhibit all those great Western Civilization qualities that birthed the USA is running down—maybe Greece is the first “stream” to run dry.
One way or the other, humans appear to me to be getting back to basics—that is, DESPITE the extreme MATERIAL wealth those of us living in America enjoy, it’s the Muslims who are able to “invest” for their future in a MORE BABIES fashion, and there’s NO EXIT, a la Sartre.
Here’s the essential truth—most people in the USA and Europe are deluded. They are living in a bubble of lies, which is at once a bubble about to burst—illusions can only last so long.
There’s going to be a time of terror, a “gnashing of teeth”, when all the fatsos learn the truth!
The physical AND mental truth must arrive!
Think of the state of civilized westerners like a rubber band. Both physically AND psychically, there’s a whole lot of stretching going on!
Indeed, has there ever been a time when the TRUTH has been so stretched? For so many? Without YET breaking?
SNAP!
Really???
Good article; and the last paragraph is a great idea. But it runs counter to way the party that thinks it runs the US—the Democratic Party—traditionally has seen fit to allow immigration here to proceed. The dems wants immigration first and foremost to benefit them; the rest of the country can go hang. This is why Obama and crew have come down on Arizona’s attempt to control its immigration problem. A normal State Department would be more than miffed at a foreign country suing a US state over the ‘right’ of its citizens to enter that state without permission. But as Dr. Hanson notes in this article and others: these are not normal times.
The ‘European Idea’ has failed. They need to move on and decentralize as badly as we need to get rid of Obama and his crew of similarly motivated nation-wreckers.
“A small suggestion: given that we have let in 11 million illegal aliens without legality, capital, education, or English, why not announce that we will fast-track into citizenship 100,000 Europeans a year who speak English, have a BA degree, and can come with $50,000 in capital? Set the immigration at exactly the same number we do for legal immigrants from Mexico — and then listen and watch what happens!”
- I have a Ph.D., four scholarly books published, but I own only 50.000 Zloty. (That’s the currency in Poland.) May I come with my wife (a teacher) and two sons?
– law requires for you to own land here you have to be baptized a Catholic.
The latter is already accomplished. As a good Pole, I’m a Catholic. :)
Interesting, but tell us more:
Ph.D. – What specialty?
Books published – What topics?
Current profession – ??
50.000 Zloty – $15,500+/- US
If you relocated to the US, how would you support yourself and your family?
Hey, Wallenrod, Doctor Hanson’s last paragraph made me think about my cousins in Poland! Poles are very industrious, but they’re also tough-minded and stubborn. In other words, ideal immigrants.
A lot of Muslim Somalis are flying into Mexico and sneaking over the border into the U.S. Then they go up to Seattle and live happily ever after. In theory, Polish Catholics could do the same…
Can we set up an Underground Railroad for hard-working Eastern and Mediterranean immigrants?
Dobrze, dzieki! (Fine, thank you.)
I appreciate your nice words.
Yes, my countrymen are stubborn and tough-minded. You need those qualities, being placed by God between the Germans and Russians:) – Industrious they are as well, that is, sometimes.
To answer the GDI’s questions:
Ph.D.: Philosophy.
Topics of the books: Philosophy, theory of the liberal state, critique of anti-liberalism (Popper, von Mises, von Hayek), German intellectual history.
Current profession: lecturer at a university in Poland.
How I would support my family and myself: Teaching, if that would be possible; maybe languages: I’m a native speaker of Polish and German, I know Russian and a bit of English. I could translate articles and books, as well.
Maybe there’s a place for me in a Departement of German Studies somewhere. So you would have at least one sturdy non-liberal in that Departement!
Chicago. There you’ll be close to the excellent food you’re sure to miss. And the mother tongue.
What a wonderful turn of phrase: “one sturdy non-liberal…” Clearly you grasp the fact that most US universities are liberal to the extreme.
Don’t wait for US politicians to implement Dr. Hanson’s policy, if you want to come to America, start the paper work today. In spite of all the bad press about the US, there is still great opportunity for those who are highly motivated and willing to work hard.
Meanwhile, you might want to learn a bit about Milton Friedman, a remarkably practical and articulate US economist (along the lines of Hayek and von Mises).
Best of luck to you and your family, Wallenrod.
I read two weeks ago in the Chronicle of Higher Education that Departments of German Studies are being eliminated. I seem to remember that Philosophy is getting scarce, as well.
Linguistics might save you, but the fact that you wrote critical books, you might be in a lot of trouble.
On the other hand, there are a number of private college preparatory schools that might hire you.
Try Notre Dame- they have a large enough alumni base and athletic program that their budget should still be holding its own even in this economy, and since they’re officially Catholic, you should have an easier time getting in the door than at a secular university.
Sadly, departments Germanistik have been shrinking over the past few decades in favour of “gender studies” and other bits of nonsense propagated by the silver ponytails of academia. Though I think the University of Pittsburgh still have a good Slavic studies division.
Viel gluck i czesc!
you would be welcome
I was sent this in an email just today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVh75ylAUXY&feature=player_embedded
The Europeans were too busy in 1948 to pay attention to it. Pity.
My, how Hollywood has changed…you’d get blacklisted for making that today.
A good campaign ad for any Republican candidate.
“And always came the grating condescension, that a self-appointed bureaucratic class in Brussels might lecture Neanderthals what was good for them, without worry over democratic checks and balan
I always hated this about the Europeans. Always. Those smug, self-righteous, socialist Europeans who always laughed at us saying how “backwards” we were and how cruel we were because we didn’t supply every benefit under the sun to everybody in this country. Well, now that Greece has gone bust, how do they feel about that? Actually, they don’t care one bit. Did you ever notice that although they’re talking about loans to Greece, nobody is talking about dismanteling, let alone eliminating, the social welfare state? All they are doing is saying that the social welfare state is still fine, only that it has to be run more efficiently. Sure, and pigs fly. That is the worst, most horrible thing about the Europeans. They just can’t admit when they are wrong. All the “restructuring” or “austerity plans” in the world won’t help Greece right now. The country is broke and they just won’t admit it. They have no hope of paying back their old debts, even with a 70% “haircut” to their current bond holders. What about the billions of euros that have recently been thrown into this bottomless pit of debt? Nope, Greece is done, as are Portugal, Ireland, Spain, and probably Italy too. But you’ll never see any of them admit it. I think the Europeans have just about run out of spending other people’s money.
Trouble is, if we can survive the Soros Junta’s coup and restore a legitimate government, all the crap in Europe is on our plate. With the downfall of the USSR and its Empire, I once believed that we had returned to the Edwardian Era’s dynamic of multiple “Great Powers,” but that didn’t turn out; nobody really was up to the job, so we Americans became the one Great Power. Soros and his cabal are trying to eliminate us as a singular power capable of acting unilaterally, but I’m still optimistic that the Whites can defeat the Reds in the US, unlike Russia.
But then, we’re not back in the 1880s, we’re back in the 1580s and the places that form our frontier against radical Islam are the places that in the 15th and 16th Centuries formed Christendom’s frontier against Islam: Greece, The Balkans, Southwestern Russia (kinda), Italy, Spain, and Portugaul. If the Obamunists win, it won’t matter, they’ll just sit by as Islam recaptures its old conquests and strike out for the gates of Vienna again, and Paris, and London; Obama would be happy to see a Crescent replace the Union Jack especially.
But, if we are to prevail, stopping all that will be our duty as a civilized people and inheritors of the Western Tradition.
@”Islam recaptures its old conquests and strike out for the gates of Vienna again..”
now there is no Polish King Jan III Sobieski to defend the Austrians again. Actually they are actively working for their own (and the continental) demise themselves.
The European Great Experiment toward unification has failed.
The whole idea behind the E.U. and the euro was that economic union was supposed to be a steppingstone to eventual political union. Why they thought that could work, I have no idea.
But it didn’t work. It turned out to be a giant bait-and-switch: The economic union and the euro happened, but Europe never even came close to political union.
The Europeans are now suffering through an economic crisis caused by fealty to a common currency (the euro), but without a central government able to enact and enforce common fiscal policies. It would be like America having a Federal Reserve Bank without a Constitution.
And just like America had to ditch its weak political union (the Articles of Confederation) and start over, I predict the Europeans will be forced to do the same. For a regime that is so remarkably weak that it’s little more than a forum for the European powers to thresh things out by diplomacy, the European Constitution is truly gigantic. A bureaucratic boondoggle.
Europe will never be unified. This is only the latest in a long series of failures. The various empires were more successful than this silly EU because they had the sword behind them, but even the most successful of them couldn’t root out the ethnic and cultural differences among the numerous peoples, even after hundreds of years in the case of the Hapsburgs.
Rome has been, by far, the most successful entity at unification, but it broke down as well.
You would think that people would understand after a while and work within reality, but somebody or group always comes along with even more arrogance than all of the predecessors.
Decades ago, in a rare moment of insight, I recognized and started pointing out the fatal flaw for the EU was that it was conceived, designed and destined to be implemented by … wait for it … academics and politicians. Those who worshipped theory over reality, abstractions over rubber meets road.
Thanks to them and their policies, Europe’s in the rearview mirror. The question is, how long before the US is too?
Wallenrod, I would love to have you as my neighbor, any time. As long as you leave any socialist leanings in Poland.
Funny how we insist good people have to have a sponsor, but if you swim well, and/or don’t mind being raped well, not so much!
If you haven’t read Hannan’s speech at CPAC – here is the link:
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/02/12/video-daniel-hannans-warning-to-cpac-and-america/
Thank you very much indeed for your kind words!
As a matter of fact, I’ve lost all my socialist leanings about 20 years ago, when I have been several times as a translator in Russia. Now I am more on the Hayekian side.
Wallenrod: Why don’t you write one of our senators – such as Orrin Hatch or Mike Lee. If you explain all that you have told us and more, well, just maybe one would be willing to put in a good word, especially if we get this idiot out of office in November.
In fairness, “any socialist leanings” were imposed on Poland in the nineteen-forties by Russians… and FDR.
FDR, quite right. But Churchill too.
Don’t forget old Winne laying matchsticks on a map, down the (currently eastern border) middle of Poland, while Uncle Joe Stalin sat at the same table and smiled.
Roosevelt was a cad, a fool, and worse (seriously). He let his Leftists howl when Eisenhower made a deal with the Vichy in North Africa for them to surrender. We should have never said “Unconditional Surrender” to the Germans at the Casablanca conference, but rather, “Unconditional Surrender of all Nazi leaders down to local party organizers. If the German people and military overthrow the Nazi regime, stop persecuting Jews, and return to their 1919 borders…” etc etc.
But NOOOO! We had to fight to the very very very last death of the very last of them, and in the process allow the damned Russian into Central Europe (which includes Germany and Poland–Eastern Europe is to the East of Poland, folks).
And Winston Churchill was a HUGE reason it worked out this way. Had Churchill encouraged the American to invade France in 1943, like we wanted, and stay the hell outta Italy, we could have ended the war before the Russians had take much (if any) of (what was then) eastern Poland.
The West has been failed by its leadership since, I dunno, the death of the last American Founding Father?
What a miserable world we live in.
An Préachán
Victor why so cheap? I believe Canada puts the bar at 1 Million to become a citizen and don’t believe they need to be fluent in the language. If Canada sets the bar at $1 million why not set it at $2 million and we can adjust as needed.
Facts, facts, facts, Flaming Liberal. Facts are rather important – and you are ignoring FACTS.
First, Canada does NOT require any such sum in order to become a citizen. There are, however, several classes of IMMIGRANTS to Canada. An immigrant is not a citizen; that’s another step and not necessary.
1) You can be sponsored by a family member. No money requirement, and a basic knowledge of English or French is not required.
2) Skilled worker – a job offer or record of experience in various disciplines is required – as well as a working knowledge of Eng/Fr.
3)Ahh, Investors, Entrepreneurs – Here, you must have a net worth of at least 1,600,000 and must be willing to invesst 800,000 into setting up a business. Naturally, you must be able to speak Eng or Fr. The govt works closely with this Investor class to see that the monies are put into a business and kept in that business for at least five years.
And Canada is moving more to the Australian model, for it clearly states that immigrants must abide by Canadian laws and values. Australia makes the applicant sign an ‘Australian Values Agreement’ where you agree to accept Australian values (laws, gender equality, English language)…
There is no monetary threshold and you don’t have to speak either English or French. It is all posted at the federal (where federal still means federal) government website out of Ottawa. Takes less than a year to apply and be approved.
Not from what some ex-South Africans have told me.
At least a quarter of a million to get in.
VDH, brilliant suggestion: “…fast track into citizenship 100,000 Europeans a year who speak English, have a BA degree, and can come with $50,000 in capital? Set the immigration at exactly the same number we do for legal immigrants from Mexico—and then listen and watch what happens!”
What happens? Conservatives would applaud the arrival of self-funded immigrants who not only spoke/read English but were also educated, capable, motivated and goal-oriented.
The bonus? Liberal heads would literally explode.
Quick note: For several years, a capable, motivated young No. European woman worked for me. She was great. Shortly before she returned home, however, she confessed she was shocked to discover first-hand that contrary to what she’d been told, Americans worked hard, set high expectations and cheerfully logged grueling hours “to get the job done.” Her assessment: No European would routinely tolerate such “killer” demands.
“The European Union was always a paradox. Its existence was predicated entirely on the notion of German guilt, translating into massive cash transfers east and south”
OK, but who implemented this union on us?
“June 5, 1947
In a commencement speech at Harvard University, Secretary of State George Marshall announces a new European Recovery Program. In return for financial investments, the Marshall Plan required close economic cooperation between European nations. This helped lay the groundwork for the European Union. The program distributed $13 billion of U.S. aid to 16 European countries before it ended in 1952. The Plan included West Germany, which was thus reintegrated into the European community. The Marshall Plan also institutionalized and legitimized the concept of U.S. foreign aid programs, which have become an integral part of U.S. foreign policy”.
August 11, 1952
The ECSC begins work with Jean Monnet at its head. The United States was the first country to recognize the European Coal and Steel Community. On his first day on the job as President of the Community’s High Authority, the forerunner to the European Commission, Monnet received a diplomatic dispatch from Secretary of State Dean Acheson on behalf of President Truman – the first formal diplomatic note addressed by a foreign government to a European institution.
http://germany.usembassy.de/eu_presidency/milestones.htm
“DECLASSIFIED American government documents show that the US intelligence community ran a campaign in the Fifties and Sixties to build momentum for a united Europe. It funded and directed the European federalist movement.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/1356047/Euro-federalists-financed-by-US-spy-chiefs.html
and there’s also Churchill speech in Zurich 1946, who was advocating for such a union
I am OK with the Krauts & the bohunks, just don’t let any more Irish in!!!
“Aw, prarie shit! Everybody!”
That’s ‘micks’, honky.
You will not be helping Europe by trying to lure its best and brightest to America…..
And your point would be …?
I’d love for Dr Hanson’s opinions to prevail here in our evolving America….evolving…that is, away from our European heritage. His guidance is badly needed in Washington. I don’t see that happening.
Demographics with its fearsome energy and force already in motion is indeed forcing us away from our European origins…..we won’t be able to change that without a lot of vasectomies or a Chinese Wall along the complete width of our southern border. Neither are likely.
So, we should emphasize restricted muslim immigration in order to to keep the number of their subversives already underground here at an absolute minimum. They are the looming enemy of our present condition. Then, when we wean ourselves from Arabian/Central Asian oil while exploiting our own known reserves, we’ll be in a better position to bicker with the ever-evasive Chinese, also breeding like fish, in spite of their “one child” attempts. Good grief, even the number of their existing productive couplings is prodigious.
I hope we wake up unified and rise to our needs before it’s too late. First we need a regime change in Washington.
Step 1: Replace the current White House occupant with one that respects the rule of law and the will of the people.
Step 2: Fully recognize that the Left – including their footsoldiers in the legacy media – view us as the enemy and this is a war.
Step 3: Escalate our activity and involvement in the congressional political process. Our elected representatives cannot be trusted to instinctively do the right thing, but WILL do the right thing if strenuously led.
Step 4: Focus on the grass roots. Elect conservatives to every local office, particularly school boards.
Step 5: Recognize that the principles in which we believe must be continually articulated.
Step 6: recognize that this will be a long process. It’s taken the Left eighty years to get to this point. We’ll not undo it all in a single election cycle.
#2 has been fact for decades. It’s being fought a the highest levels of administration in the U.S.
OWS and La Raza are their “soldiers”.
#1 has a very slim chance. Since the dunce now occupying the White House has lowered the qualifications and requirement for any candidate from his coronation forward.
Until the parasitic demographic changes, expect more of the same. We shall be inundated in parasitic feces before it’s all over and any turn for improvement commences.
Yet another wonderfully illuminating and broad ranging article by one of the wisest public intellectuals currently working in the western world. As a Brit., I am also constantly struck by the superior calibre of commentary and the excellence of debate manifested in the comments sections on Dr Hanson’s articles.
Brilliant, as always, but I must say this. Western Culture is not tied to Europe. Yes, it originated there, but it crept up here after it was abandoned in Europe. It will creep up someplace else if it’s abandoned here. The whole of human existence is a fight between liberty and satism, with statism the regular victor, because unfortunately, humans seem to have a hard time with freedom. Many want to rule and many more want to be ruled. “They will lay their freedom at our feet and say, “make us your slaves, but feed us.”" The Republic of Rome existed only so long before it fell back into a new monarchy.
While I make no pretense to be an expert on early 20th century Europe, it seems like little has changed since its country’s rulers were all cousins.
re: cheap. I’d settle for them being pre-qualified to buy a home (and put that service out to bid – for a few winning banks to offer the service – with their investors on the hook if the immigrant defaults and is deported). And in general find solutions to all these issues like New Zealand did after their socialism crashed and burned in the early 80s – solutions that got their government out of all these businesses and the private sector in, against goals that measured things like “moving people and families out of dependency” rather than what the U.S. does when we define success as increasing “food stamps” or children enrolled in various government health and education services, etc.
Import more “makers” and reduce the housing surplus. A win-win.
I can’t speak for anyone but myself but I am not sure that immigration to the U.S. is seen as a goal by many in the U.K. Yes,go and work there for a few years but the long term prospects don’t look good to us. It is such a big place that even those of us who have visited several states can’t say we know the place.
I know many PJ readers are convinced Britain is soon to be part of the caliphate but from where I live it seems unlikely. Mark Steyn is an amusing writer but rather unreliable in his predictions.
Canada is a much more attractive option to the Brits and Oz,NZ of course.
You can have our underclass though if you are desperate.
We love you,we just don’t want to be you!
This is the best blog.
Professor:
I rarely if ever disagree with you; but here I must, and strongly. Let me explain:
- Europe brought us Naziism, Communism, Socialism and Fascism. It brought us the death camps and the gulags.
- Europe brought us 2000 years of fanatic, irrational Jew-hatred, culminating in the Shoah. But wait, the Europeans are not done yet with exterminating Jews; they have merely outsourced and subsidized the final Shoah to the Arabs and Iranians.
- Europe has never really been democratic, with the possible exception of the UK. It has only had the trappings of democracy; but the nobility have always run it — today that nobility is called the EU bureaucracy.
- In citing the inferiority of the non-European world, you forget the advanced societies of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore. Where are they in your survey of advanced societies? I have not been hospitalized in either, but I bet I’d be better off getting sick in Japan rather than Greece.
- Bring in MORE Europeans? Professor, are you #$@! crazy? Any European you bring in will be a Jew-hating statist or socialist. Why give the Democrats more votes? No thank you – give me Chinese, Koreans and Hindu Indians any day over them (make an exception for Jews fleeing persecution).
- Obama anti-European? Is that why he wants to imitate their failed socialism? Is that why the Europeans thought of him as a Messiah?
Professor, re-read and re-think this one. You misfired.
Mr. Eric:
Europe has got its portion of socialism, communism, nazism or, to put it as Ayn Rand would: collectivism.
However, ALL these diseases were (and are) present all around the world. You think the pre-Colombine America was some illustrious continent without dictatorships, theocracies, enslavement, torture, human sacrifices, etc? All the world have got the same illness, maybe not the label “nazi” or “theocracy” yet the same phenomena.
But it was the enlightenment of european thinkers, lawyers, theologists, philosophers that brought us the solution to all that. The rules of Logic were not discovered between the Mayas. “Abolition” was not something Incas thought very hard. The arabs had some “kinda golden” age only when they were studying Aristotle and Plato.
The good in Europe -and what we now loosely recognize as “western”, largely surpasses the evil within.
exactly
essentially, this is the ageless battle between good/evil right/wrong etc…
the “clingers” would say this was put into motion the moment eve took the bite from the forbidden fruit
we could be more specific and suggest that it was the idle and arrogant lives of comfortable “well-to-do” spoiled children that evoked the dreaded curses of “collectivism”
Absolutely, the good Europe we hear about is mostly a fiction. It is the result of a few thinkers spread over centuries. The other Europe is the Europe of violence, tribalism and the luck of having the seafaring trade favor them. If China could have sailed around the world history would be very different but due to the direction the earth rotate’s they could not. They were essentiall y landlocked. Europe had a unique historical position and it abused it.
If not for the United States, if not for the Marshall plan I doubt Europe would look much different from Asia or South America.
….Thank you for mentioning that survival-enabling Unites States Marshall Plan. That massive aid program of ours has been swept under the European [...and British...] rug; from Europe’s viewpoint, the less said about it the better……oh, how they must’ve hated depending on us uncouth Americans during and after those two World Wars….remember de Gaulle wanting all Americans out of France, and then Dean Rusk’s famous quip….”Does he mean from the American Military Cemeteries also?” …and whatever benefits [no pun intended] had been obtained by it seems to have been superceeded by that Islamic/Muslim wave of infiltration and subversion, ghettos, no-go areas…all the rest.
They’ve got no one to blame but themselves, they’ve voted these socialistic governments in themselves, can’t blame George Bush.
Those of us of a certain age remember this stuff from seeing the headlines as these things happened….hence Dr Hanson’s “Rear View Mirror” title is so very tersely apt…….and poignant.
Gone with the wind, as it were.
The advanced societies of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore are all based on the American/British model. The first becasue of WWII, the second because of the Korean War, the third because of our opposition Mao, and the last because of British influence.
As to my educational background I studied when America still considered itself a part of the European heritage. I learned German French and I had to read Latin and Greek. I also read and covered most of Shakespeare’s play and had a graduate course in Tudor/Stuart England. I also had courses in early English etc. I carried a load that included oraganic chemsitry and calculus. Nowaday I dare you to ask an alleged student in the New American World State what they study and they will tell you things like Communications, Sociology, Queer Studies, Marxism etc. Our youth are totally uneducated in our European background. The fact that my parents were immigrants and I still had relatives back in the old country and the fact that I spent two years living in Germany as a Gymnasian teacher also kept me as a European. If I have to choose between the land of my birth USA and the land of my heritage I find myself reluctant to call myself an American especially in the new America which worhsips at the altar of Obama. I regret that I did not stay in Germany but choose to return home. America has become a truly anti European culture as described by Doctor Hanson. Obama and his democrat handlers come across as barbarians because they are.
With cultural identity becoming vogue many years ago, I decided to answer a jury summons with my cultural identity as Russian, since my father was born in Kiev.
I sent the inquiry back to the court, and it was more than 20 years before I got another jury summons. This time with no query as to cultural identity.
The usurper in chief is only half black, but he is accepted, and promoted, as a native “Afro-American”, and is provided benefits commensurate with that identity. There are multitudes of individuals with smaller percentages of black/other heritage granted the same privilege.
Current legislation cultivates stratification of cultures, and is ultimately antithetical to a heterogenous society. The current administration at the highest levels of government, is using this stratification philosophy to their advantage.
Is there any reason I should not do the same?
Draft Hansen for President!
I suspect he’d go the Full Sherman on us.
I cannot say we do not deserve it.
New Bumper Sticker Slogan
BARACKUS SPENDICUS OBAMAKUS
IS GRECIFYING AMERICA
I’m not sure if I share Prof. Hanson’s enthusiasm for contemporary Europe. What remains of what he praises is declining so fast it almost leaves one dizzy. When I roved around the UK and Europe in the late 1970s, the English told me that parts of London were no longer English in the traditional sense. Now I get the impression that vast swaths of the country are no longer populated by the sort of courteous and yet brave English whose ‘stiff upper lip’ refused to yield to the Third Reich.
The decline is particularly obvious in the Mediterranean culture of which Prof. Hanson is an expert. Europe did benefit enormously from the ethical code of Judeo-Christianity, the thought of Greece, the organization skills of the Romans and, although little mentioned by historians, the fierce independence of Europe’s northern races.
But today’s European constitution refuses to recognize the historical contribution of Jews and Christians. The economic woes and rioting in Greece suggests that few there think anymore, nor would anyone turn to Italy for structure and order. And the fierce independence of those Germanic, Celtic and Nordic races? It’s been swallowed up by the welfare state. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the recent mass murder in Norway, was the inability over two hundred teens and young adults to do anything to stop one man from killing and killing. If half a dozen of them had rushed him at once, he might have been able to get off a hurried shot at two or three, but the rest could have pounded him to a pulp. Clearly the Norwegians are no longer a race of Vikings.
Yes, Northern Europe still works, after a fashion. But how well and for how long? The garbage problem in Britain, I’m told, is getting as bad as it is in North Africa. Soccer riots seem to be as common in Northern Europe as in South America. Even the hard-working Germans in what used to be called Prussia and the Rhineland must be growing tired of carrying the European economy around on their backs. They may begin to demand retirement at 60 with 90% pay.
I do agree that the U.S. is hardly a light in this spreading darkness. When the best the Republican party can come up with to counter Obama is Romney –Obama Light if you look at his political record–then we’re in sad, sad shape ourselves. In his depressing look at events closer to home I fully agree with Prof. Hanson.
–Michael W. Perry, author of Chesterton on War and Peace
If it weren’t for “salt of the earth” individuals like Dr. Hanson, you would have no essay to ponder and respond to.
The concise condensation of eons of history are very evident in this discourse. Few can claim this level of mental acuity.
He may have the title of professor, but it’s clear he is a life long student.
I enthusiastically, wish to join him in his journey to the wisdom that elevates us to improved intellectuals.
I would agree with the suggestion with some caveats:
In europe, there is a lot of people also living the high life while despising money, capitalism and wealth. The same two lives are being lived here.
I think that every immigrant would be ok as far as you promise them ZERO welfare. Then, only the braves and hardworking would come.
Being the left/PC/multi-culti disease very spread all around Europe, I’d suggest new immigrants to be accepted but not made citizens ( somehow the vote should be denied) which will be awarded to their descendants instead.
Really. Europe is going through bad times but it was the people that voted for it.
I can’t read VDH and not think of Pat Buchanan.
I am beginning to wonder if one of the biggest problems is the entwining of capitalism and crony capitalism; understanding that the second is parasitic. What it wants are two things from the host. First, legitimacy. Second, a power source for steering public policy.
I think Greeks and OWS and recipents of the welfare state all view the perks of crony capitalism, understand its workings, recognize that its illegitimate, recognize they can’t stop it but that they can ally with it for a portion, essentially bought off by the steering committee for crony capitalist. That steering committee would be the government.
Capitalist around the world are going to have to cleave with the parasites by first recognizing that what appear to be as peers in many regards are in fact parasites.
If this seems off point, I apologiize. I think its fundamental to Hanson’s article in addressing a bedrock root cause.
Exellent as usual Dr. VDH. I would suggest an alternate solution to begin saving the USA. Stop ALL imigration both illegal and legal , and stop All foreign aid until US debt is paid off and the budget is balanced. Of course this will never happen thus the downward spiral continues to oblivion and/or until the entire country becomes like Dr. VDH’s neighborhood.
I live in Hungary these days. The Magyars are a lot like other Europeans nowadays, but still, enough of their national spirit remains that they produced this new Constitution of theirs.
It has its bad points, such as being against genetically modified crops. And it certainly isn’t Madisonian, haha.
But it is its stand on Nationalism, God, marriage, and (perhaps most importantly) the central bank, that has the EUcrats in a blind rage.
My sense of it, and I am no expert, the other Europeans here (the Poles) can give a better idea, is that underneath the PC-elite BS upper-crust, most average, everyday Europeans are about like their American cousins. Love of country, language, all that comes with the ‘patria’ is deep.
Perhaps if this gawdawful EU Imperial quasi-state can be overthrown, Europe can make a comeback.
We’ll see.
But it’ll be close–for them, and for us.
Pray.
An Préachán
The Obama administration may very well be, “the most anti-European administration in our history”, however they have imported European antisemitism widely and well. The distaste for Israel and the disrespect towards all things jewish have a definite continental air. When the good Professor reminds that these times most resemble the 1930′s he is more correct than he is aware.
I spend a lot of time on my blog simply saying “Yeah, what HE said” when it comes to Hanson. He gets it. I predicted the E.U. would take a dump years ago. It was inevitable as the European elitists thought pounding a two thousand year old nationalist square peg into the ultra modern theory of continental statism round hole was a good idea. And I’m sure they were convinced beyond any doubt as they stood around at parties drinking wine and eating snails. But the truth is all nations, like individual people have a sense of self and that is what will be the final element considered when dealing with the critical “it is either you are me” choice.
As I said in my post, this is where Romney or Santorum would shine. Sadly, the man at the wheel is akin to a drunk swerving all over the road while turning to you and saying, “Hold my beer and watch this!”
Too bad. We’d be able to steal trillions from Europe and most likely be as nearly as dominant as we were in the fifties.
Freaking liberals…
I’m almost sure the author meant exacerbate rather than acerbate, but one never quite knows, does one?
A rare disagreement with the professor. I agree that the right Europeans would be a benefit to America as immigrants. But I don’t think we can pull into a shell over here. Europe needs to recover her groove, if America is to be able to prosper. The North Atlantic is not that big a pond, and Europe is adjacent to Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.
What Europe turns into matters tremendously. Her infrastructure alone makes her worth turning around, but it’s ultimately our shared heritage of ideas and history, of faith, philosophy, and ethics that most strongly compels America to interest herself in Europe.
I’m not sure the greatest benefit would come from Europeans immigrating here. That would be an excellent thing, but imagine if 100,000 of the right kind of Americans emigrated to Europe. People who would, for starters, laugh heartily at the idea of the maximum 35-hour work week.
There are a lot of good people in Europe (I’ve lived among some and met and worked with lots more), but the 20th century European model of life is unsustainable. You can’t actually keep your civilization going by making it too expensive for young people to breed and discouraging your ethnic immigrants from assimilating.
Europe has a bad habit of seeking to institutionalize patterns of habitation, commerce, and employment; the continent has had it for centuries, and it fosters a constant tendency toward sclerosis and overmanagement. That doesn’t work anywhere it’s tried; wherever it’s in force, it’s a lurking economic failure waiting to create a political crisis.
Europe needs fresh ideas and energy. They’re not going to come from Brussels, or the outposts of Brussels in the capital cities. Who knows — if Obama is reelected, the outflow of Americans, which has increased in the last few years, may deposit a lot more of them in Europe. Not just Americans, of course: with Canadians, Australians, Japanese, and Indians, among others, a critical-mass inflow to Europe might just tip the balance of bureaucratic sclerosis and economic freedom. Just as European immigrants would bolster the political fortunes of hard-working Americans, so immigrants TO Europe would bolster the political fortunes of the Europeans who already see the need for less utopian mangerialism and more individual initiative and enterprise.
“I’m not sure the greatest benefit would come from Europeans immigrating here. That would be an excellent thing, but imagine if 100,000 of the right kind of Americans emigrated to Europe. People who would, for starters, laugh heartily at the idea of the maximum 35-hour work week.”
Not true. Compare the work ethic of the German auto workers with that of their UAW counterparts: behavior that would cause a German to be kicked out of the union would result in the worker being championed by his union leaders in Detroit.
Also, the French tend to be more productive than their US counterparts, in part because the prohibition on long hours means that busywork, endless revising of the powerpoint preso and so forth isn’t tolerated in French multinationals. It was Alcatel that took over Lucent, and Capgemini that acquired Ernst & Young.
I’m not denying that there are plenty of life artists and slackers across Europe, but the picture is more complex than you make it out to be. THe northern Europeans are doing very well, and have been for many years. We could do well to be a bit more humble and bit more willing to learn from, say, the nordics’ and Canadians’ success in reforming and reining in their bankers in the 1990s, or the German model of corporate governance that reins in both union excesses and CEO/boardroom banditry.
In short, we could do with more of the nordic and Germanic (and Canadian) sense of balance, of restraint and frugality, of high education and high culture, of consuming less and behaving more responsibility toward each other. Seems that once upon a time, those were considered yankee virtues.
if Iroquois meeting in loose tribal counsel were the political equivalent of a Swiss canton. It was Ben Franklin who first said that
The italian, british an german elites dont hate the USA.
Japan is the main partner of the USA. Both economies are one. The best made in America cars have japanese brand.
Europe is the past
Americans in states outside of California might be less smug after hearing that, having wrecked California, many liberals are moving to more fiscally prudent states, and that the rest of America will be taxed to bail out the remaining Californians.
To each according to his wants; from each according to his prosperity.
Another wonderful article by Dr. Hanson. This is exactly the type of perspective our kids need to be taught in High School, but no longer are, except in all-too-rare instances and mostly in private schools. Ergo, we need vouchers!
It’s not surprising that one can graduate High School these days without any sense of the long hard slog that Western Civilization endured to arrive at increasingly benign forms of governance, nor of the improvement made on European models by our founders when the formulated our Constitution. But it is quite shocking that this Constitution should be so ill-respected and ill-understood, and even more the insult when that ignorance and disrespect comes from a sitting Supreme Court Justice. Justice Ginsberg should resign her seat on the court.
It’s always such a privilege to read Dr. Hanson’s pieces. It’s serendipitous that he chose this particular subject within a few days of Daniel Hannan’s wonderful address at CPAC (well worth searching out and watching, just as VDH is always well worth reading). Daniel Hannan is a British journalist and conservative politician who is a member of the European Parliament.
Dr. Hanson’s post and Hannan’s speech could be bookends; unique perspectives on the same subject, but sharing many similarities. They both express affection and exasperation for their native countries and their cousins across the ocean and issue warnings about where America is headed.
Hannan employs an image of Europeans driving full-speed toward a cliff as they look in the rearview mirror and see Americans in reckless hot pursuit; Dr. Hanson reverses the metaphor and asks us to contemplate the EU disaster in our own rearview mirror. Both Dr. Hanson and Daniel Hannan lay out in stark terms the looming disaster facing the United States and Europe and urge us to avoid it before it’s too late.
Points-based immigration, on the Australian or Canadian model. Privilege those with, in order of importance, advanced STEM degrees and capital for investment. Illiterates and semi-literates to the back of the line.
Easy, objective, fair, color-blind. Works for Canada, Australia and, if i understand correctly, Singapore as well. It can and should work here.
Victor,
Is the husk of NATO needed or able to keep Germany down? Do you think the Germans will try to re-militarize once again?
“Do you think the Germans will try to re-militarize once again?”
I doubt that would ever happen. The have virtually no military, training is minimal and their capabilities are small outside of the GSG9/ KSK units.
Visit a maternity ward in any German hospital and you will find half of the kids are not German. Driving into work I heard that there is political debate about raising income tax by 1% on childless couples above the age of 25. As a third of german women of child bearing age opt out on kids, the tax base shrinks. The socialist state needs future tax payers and will punish those who don’t comply with state dictates. This isn’t just a German phenomenon, but all of Europe.
A little perspective is in order.
We did not “let in” the undocumented immigrants. They snuck in in response to exactly the same stimuli that sent waves of poor, uneducated Europeans to these shores years ago — wars, famine, lack of economic opportunity, incompetent governance in the mother country.
It’s not all that hard to immigrate here from anywhere if you’ve got a higher education and money to invest.
Our problem is, we need people to pick fruit and cut meat, and do it at a price where we can be competitive in the global market. And to care for our children at low cost so educated American moms can be productive contributors in the workforce.
I really hate to see the people who do these things for us denigrated, because it tells me we haven’t really come very far from the days when the hiring signs said ‘No Irish need apply.’
And don’t try to give me that old song and dance about it being their illegal status that’s the issue. Legal and illegal are just words on a paper. Any sane society would recognize that it needs these folks and figure out an orderly process to make them legal. The only reason we don’t is because they have brown skin and speak Spanish, and that scares some people.
“we need people to pick fruit and cut meat, and do it at a price where we can be competitive in the global market”
96% of the illegals work outside of agriculture. I don’t know what % work in the meat packing industry, but it’s not really relevant anyway, because the availability of sh$t-wage labor is what prevents those industries from making the capital investments in labor-saving equipments, technologies and technologies that would truly increase profit margins and productivity, hence competitiveness, for US producers.
So the system we have now – importing a proletariat – not only devastates social services, schools, hospitals/ERs, and the criminal justice system. It also retards American industrial progress and productivity growth. This is the opposite of progress, and the opposite of “progressivism.” I understand why each party races to claim the favor of this new proletariat and their children and relations, but I do not see any benefit to US productivity, or competitiveness, or public budgets, or communal provision on any level.
Please tell me again – and keep in mind that only 4% of the illegals are employed in agriculture: Why are we importing an underclass?
Friend Thibaud,
I’d like to see a source on your statement that only 4 percent of undocumented persons are employed in agriculture. But be that as it may, most studies range that 30 to 60 percent of farm laborers are undocumented.
Fruit and meat are particularly large sectors of agricultural labor because they are highly resistant to mechanized solutions (machines bruise the fruit and mix bone fragments in the meat).
In the interest of brevity, I left out low level jobs in hotels, restaurants, retail, drywalling, roofing and dozens of other jobs that require hands and skills but that Americans just don’t want to do.
I notice you didn’t address the larger point, that these folks came here voluntarily, to survive — any human’s first and most important priority.
The first generation might indeed be an underclass, at least by our standards, although not by world standards. But their children will go to our schools, learn our ways and grow up to be indistinguishable from any other Americans, if we let them.
Just like the Irish, and the Poles, and the Chinese, and every other immigrant group that’s bootstrapped itself up in the face of nativist prejudice.
A _bracero_ program would address any shortfalls in agricultural labor due to border enforcement. Nonetheless, with a 20%+ unemployment rate in California’s central valley, it seems extremely unlikely that labor shortfalls would result.
We do not have a shortage of low-end labor in this country; we have a surplus.
If you believe otherwise, then here’s a riddle for you: (ie real low-end wages have fallen in this country since 1970. On what planet is it the case that the price of a good FALLS when there is a shortage of said good? How does that work, exactly?
How can someone as trite as Dr. Hanson make a living? Who pays him for this historic balony? He’s as big a bull Sh#$ artist as President Obama, not an easy feat to accomplish
VDH thinks “Europe is sick, ill with loud secular agnosticism and atheism,…”. So, the US is healthy because 30-40% of the population believes that redemption comes only if one accepts Jesus as one’s savior, that God created the world 6,000-10,000 years ago, that all living species (including those recently discovered near hot vents at the ocean floor!) fit in to Noah’s arc? And, of course, evolution is a “theory” propounded by amoral atheists. Oy! Americans are SO full of themselves! The dysfunctional system of government, based on “checks and balances” is to be admired as a gift to humanity. Actually, the “checks” go from lobbyists to enhance the “balances” of election funds for all politicians, including the President. Americans are committed to “freedom and liberty”! Oh yeah? Tell that to those who fought for civil rights as recently as the 1960s. Americans are for “justice”. Really? Owners of privately-run prisons contribute to the election funds for judges – who repay the favor by sending youth to jail for minor offenses. Why do we chide the mullahs of Iran when our TV evangelists would love to impose biblical law in the US? I do not disagree with all of Hanson’s article, just to his ludicrous and pointless allusion to atheism and the implication that religiosity (preferably Christian?) would be so enlightening. I watch in despair as the unbridgeable political divide and self-deluding hubris about “a return greatness” leaves the US paralyzed; unable to improve its physical or mental infrastructure.
Not out of place at all. atheism corresponds with statism, everywhere. Those who don’t believe in a divine law have human law as the highest power.
Since we already have a surging sociological trend of evangelical atheists, as your comment is one of a million examples, there is really no need to import more in from Europe. In fact they already believe we’re “behind Europe” and will look more like them in a generation.
Where does “divine” law come from? Do you think of Sharia law and the caste system in India as divinely inspired? For all their religiosity and supposed belief in Jesus’s teachings, Catholic priests in several countries have violated the most basic of human values. I am sure you will agree that the Vatican’s initial response was outrageous. Anyway….
What if the majority decides the Bill of Rights should be abolished? Do you have a scientific reason to stop them?
reribane says: “What if the majority decides the Bill of Rights should be abolished? Do you have a scientific reason to stop them?”
Technically speaking, yes. “Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.”
—
When we take the example you provide, the abolishion of part or all of the bill of rights, we can clearly posit from past data (see: America under the Articles of Confederation) that the bill of rights does, in part or totality, contribute to an elevated state of morality in the United States of America, by law or virtue.
Based on this assumption, we can therefore state that the first ten amendments contribute to the general wellbeing of the population of the United States of America, and therefore that they should not be abolished (from the position of the executive, for example).
If the majority henceforth wish to rise up and abolish them by force, that is both their perogative as provided for by the United States of America’s constitution and their downfall, as in such a situation it would be unlikely that the USA is still a state capable of holding itself together -anyway-.
—
Considering that the provision for the amendment and cancellation of amendments to the United States of America’s constitution both exists and is relatively regularly exercised to some success, it amazes me that this needed clarification.
God has as little place in your laws as in the hearts of your lawmakers, and thinking otherwise might lead observers to believe that you had not, in fact, read the materials you were making statements about; which would be disappointing.
The guy has a lot of good points, and is knowledgeable. I just wish he was easier to read, without those convoluted sentences.
Superb essay.
Just one small point: Brits in general are not anti-American. Don’t take your view on this from the The Guardian, the BBC and “chattering classes of Islington”, nor may I say, the Bishops. They are the PC crowd, wandering aimlessly amid their inane notions.
Mexico gives preference to citizen immigrants from Spain, as we used to give preference to european immigrants. In Mexicos case they do it as immigrants from spain share closely the history,language and culture and values and ethnicity of mexico. In America, to allow a preference for europeans would simply be called to “racism’
the native born population of America is being ethnically cleansed by the multiculturalism and diversity nazis. When I was born in 64 we were 88% white, we are now 64% and headed to below 50% in a few decades. Thgis is due entirely to the 1964 Immigration act shoved down our throats by progressives and cheerleaded by cheap labor open border anti american Globalists.
“Multiculturalism in our schools insists that we are not all that privileged by Western civilization, as if a pyramid of human sacrifice at Tenochtitlan in 1520 must be seen as architecturally and civically impressive as the Parthenon circa 440 B.C, as if Iroquois meeting in loose tribal counsel were the political equivalent of a Swiss canton, as if a pictograph from the Near East was just “different” from Homer’s Odyssey.”
If you hadn’t put this superfluous and insulting sentence in the essay, I would have actually kept reading it!
“As Greece implodes, as southern Europe goes into default mode, and as the entire European Union totters”… Obama’s administration sleeps.
What a fabulous essay, Dr. Hanson! Your clarity of thought and depth of historical knowledge is unique among any political or historical commentator I know.
Good article.
It is particularly interesting how Obama simultaneously disdains our European heritage, while embracing the only bad thing Europe left us, socialism.
the Marshall Plan was conditionned on European counties would have the will to form a union. The EU was wished by Roosevelt, and Churchill (Zurich discourse 1946, and declassified documents from CIA revealed that funds were financing the EU federalists in early fisfties
Bizarre that my former post wasn’t edited !
What I don’t understand is how you can claim that “Europe’s elites are anti-american”. They don’t like some of the government’s policies (starting a war against Iraq was not the brightest of ideas and the ‘permanent warfare’ of the present regime is hardly calculated to win over support in Europe, especially when there are shouts for an attack on Iran. Europe is not undemocratic and does not relay upon a totally outdated electoral system as you do in the States. The future of Europe is in the hands of competent, responsible politicians, which is more than I can say about the possibility of a Republican win in November!
Caution: Politically Incorrect Opinion follows:
We Americans are not wired the same way as Europeans.
European “elites” (they like that term applied to themselves) exhibit a condescension and disdain for most things American, except when it comes to expecting our cash spigots being readily opened, and American troops dispatched during two European wars…….and presumably expected to continue in this current war against Islam….a war the Europeans have yet to recognize as being cultivated on your doorsteps by permitting – democratically – the infiltration of Islamic elements developing into No-Go zones for your local law enforcement in your major cities.
Would you have preferred that Saddam remain in power?…to develop and further apply in-country his poisonous gases and, in time, his spiffy new nuclear weapons as some of your friends in Iran are apparently accomplishing?
Have you forgotten de Gaulle’s wanting all of us Americans out of France?
Europe being now “in America’s rear-view mirror” is sadly apt, for a variety of reasons, in this American’s personal view.
Our “outdated electoral system” may, or may not, be changed at our discretion, we need not heed the advice of non American tax paying Europeans whose ideas of Democracy are at some variance with our own.
Benjamin Franklin….R.I.P.
“Have you forgotten de Gaulle’s wanting all of us Americans out of France? ‘s a serious reason why :
-http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-original-dollar-crisis-and-how-it-led-todays-crisis-part-1
….this short paste is interesting, though not necessarily politically correct as times and personalities change….de Gaulle in the 1960′s was prickly and jealous of the U.S. and Britain’s affect on NATO presumably placing France at a perceived disadvantage….in de Gaulle’s eyes.
….”Is it true that Dean Rusk answer to Charles De Gaulle was “the ones in the cementary too”, when De Gaulle wanted all American troops removed from French soil?
In 1966 upon being told that President Charles DeGaulle had taken France out of NATO and that all U.S. Troops must be evacuated off of French soil President Lyndon Johnson mentioned to Secretary of State Dean Rusk that he should ask DeGaulle about the Americans buried in France. Dean implied in his answer that that DeGaulle should not really be asked that in the meeting at which point President Johnson then told Secretary of State Dean Rusk:
“Ask him about the cemeteries Dean!”
That made it into a Presidential Order so he had to ask President DeGaulle.
So at end of the meeting Dean did ask DeGaulle if his order to remove all U.S. troops from French soil also included the 60,000+ soldier buried in France from World War I and World War II.
DeGaulle, embarrassed, got up and left and never answered.”
Google, of course, has lots more on that subject, and you can pick something perhaps more in line with your sentiments.
Frankly, I don’t see how the American leaders of those times coped with French intransigence. I’d guess that in private briefings they probably let their tempers loose.
Slightly off topic here, but only slightly, is the earlier example of quiet American aid to the French by our Civil Air Transport airdropping desperately need supplies to the surrounded French troops at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. This was accomplished at great risk from American C119 cargo aircraft with French roundels to disguise that they were in fact American aircraft piloted by American civilians. This tragically heroic episode can be researched in further detail by visiting the website [air-america.org].
Such a short time between 1954 and the 1960′s.
Hence, this American’s personal opinion is that Dr Hanson’s Title is supremely apt.
Times change, indeed.
De Gaulle jaelous of the US and of Britain?
you didn’t read the zerohedge article, did you? you can only can remind the joke !
BS, De Gaulle wanted to get rid of any power that wanted to monitor France. The NATO events happened because the US and UK were plotting attacks on french lefty parties though secret cells, and wanted to impose their candidate. De Gaulle was himself under a threat of a terrorist attack, not plotted by the “Arabs” like it was commonly read in the medias, but by the CIA !
-http://www.scribd.com/doc/58155246/Terrorism-in-Western-Europe-An-Approach-to-NATO%E2%80%99s-Secret-Stay-Behind-Armies-by-Daniele-Ganser
scroll down until “France” page 79
Of course some american volontaries did a great job in Viet Nam for helping the French, but the war itself was subsidied by the Americans, imagine that we were fighting the “commies”, that the americans had previously helped for getting rid of the Japanese though !
-http://www.allempires.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=27827
-http://tinyurl.com/84ezbx5
Want to get real depressed? Read Heather MacDonald’s latest in City Journal about California’s Demographic Revolution. The article ends with a hint of hope. She says that at least young Hispanics kids aren’t angry–they are generally nice kids who “don’t walk on cars.” ………..Whoopee!
We are a new America in California NOW and the old one is DEAD. It was suicide. Too late. It is over. Our children better get used to it.
PS Among all the other billions $$$ of benefits given to Hispanics…try this one. Tell the pharmacist you have no insurance and get your prescription for cheaper than with insurance (no questions asked). I did it with a prescription from my eye doctor. $45.00 without insurance, $25.00 if I had insurance and $11.00 without insurance. Sick.
Id rather the Europeans of Europe hold on to our European heritage sites.
Lets face it Latin Americans are European, they are just a bit more Southern European Iberian Penninsula than Northern European Anglo-Germanic….and Christians to boot. Good enough to work with, but we must enforce English as the official language.
I read somewhere that it is claimed to be easier to see the speck of dust in your neighbours eye, than the pole sticking out of your own.
If the US had spent a fraction of what Germany has spent to save Greece, to help the Southern States,then amongst other New Orleans after Caterina would have been rebuilt from one end to the other several years ago.
http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2012/02/it-is-all-greek-to-me-and-you-toois.html How can Paul Krugman seriously suggest we will never have to pay the bill for all the debt we are in. Austerity is painful but I cannot see how you cannot eventually face that pain. Sooner or later it is going to come. And we cannot tax our way out of it. And given the conditions, we cannot grow our way out. We need to spend less.
This Greek tragedy is a preview for what we all will be facing.
change the immigration offer to anyone who speaks Spanish. Spain would be empty next week.
Between myself and my partner we’ve bought more wise phones over the past few years than I care to recollect, to include the iPhone, Motorola Backflip, and lots of other HTC products. But, for the previous few years We have settled as a result of one line of phone. How occur Because many of us were thrilled to found out there how amazing and fun to own the HTC Invigorate 4G is actually.