Quote of the Day: Political Speech & Political Act in the EU

Food for thought by a French political scientist.  Here's a bit of it:

In Europe, what we say as citizens no longer has any importance, since political actions will be decided at some indeterminate place, a place we cannot situate in relation to the standpoint from which we speak. Everyone knows that the most solemn speech that a people can formulate, a vote by referendum, is a matter of indifference for the European political class, which charges itself with the responsibility of leading the necessary process of the “construction” of a united Europe. The supposed necessity of this process discredits and invalidates all political speech in advance. 

If this process continues—the financial crisis of the euro has put extraordinary pressure on it—we will soon leave behind the regime of representative government and return to one of speechless commandment. The commandment will no longer be that of the state, which at least occupied a place of a certain elevation, but that of regulations. We do not know the source of regulations—only that we must obey them.

Oh, dear.  

Quirky Euro Files: Germany's Pirate Party

In all honesty, I just wanted to post this little picture of one logo which is, undeniably, quirky-humorous-cute.  Read more about the Pirate Party here and here or go right to its website.  What started as a kind of joke, computer geek/nerd political satire, and protest vote tweaking the stodgy political establishment has morphed into something else - something that actually seems to be generating a bit of real political steam.

Professor Niall Ferguson Speculates

What might Europe look like in 2021?  As usual, I should give you the caveat that historians are not futurists or oracles -- that what we're good at is looking at the past.  Still, a little speculation is amusing if you don't take it as an actual prediction.

Euro Notes: Technical Difficulties ...

The trouble with rule by technocrats.  Money quote here:

... one irony here is that many of Greece and Italy’s current woes can be traced back to the original design flaws of the euro itself — which, of course, was dreamed up by unelected experts and policy wonks. Technocrats, even.

Well, DUH.  Meanwhile, the entire idea of unelected technocrats in power -- i.e., rule by unelected expert (or "expert") -- should give us all pause.  The key word is "unelected," boys and girls. More here.


UPDATE:  Commentary by Daniel Hannan:

Euro Notes: German-o-Phobia?

People are upset and all about the eurozone mess, but is lashing out at Germany really the answer?

Quote of the Day: the Euro Currency

Oh, my:

The Euro is a spectacularly misguided attempt at a currency union in a sea of nation-states with different national interests, languages and stages of economic advancement.

Euro Notes: Greece and the Eurocrats

Oh, dear.   The slow-motion train wreck that is the Greek catastrophe in recent days has reached the point at which I am compelled to have "train wrecks" as an actual blog post category tag.

Self-evident metaphor.

Daniel Hannan: A European's Warning to America

In short?  Don't repeat our mistakes.  Sounds like good advice to me.

Euro Notes: Barroso: "Hey, We Need the EU Precisely Because It's Undemocratic!"

Well, at least he was honest.  *Sigh.*

Euro Notes: Europe's Missing Foundations, or, the Castle in the Air Crashes to Earth

Read it all.

Euro-Skepticism: You're Doing It Wrong, Nigel Farage!

It's some kind of breathtaking verbal venom, though even I'm thinking, this doesn't do anything really positive. It's not that I don't think some of his points are valid (the EU superstructure is undemocratic and populated with bureaucratic mandarins), but there's no reason to be offensively nasty about expressing yourself. There's no need to gratuitously insult the other guy's country either if you're arguing that the EU is bad because it steamrollers over the idea of individual nation-state sovereignty. Anyhoo, take a look and listen as UK MEP Nigel Faragely rips EU President Herman van Rompuy to the guy's face. I half expected Faragely to make a Yo Mama joke while he was at it!

Euro Notes: The New EU President and Return of Courtiers and Mandarins?

The Belgian politician Herman Van Rompuy is the new (and unanimously selected) President of the EU, but some Euroskeptics aren't too happy with the process that put him into that office. Blurb from one critic:

A modern parody of absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings is being staged in Europe right now. The 27 heads of the executive — some of them presidents, others prime ministers — in the countries of the EU are in the process of choosing the president or fixed term head of state in the EU, as mandated by the new constitution that has just been ratified.

We have lately witnessed the primaries, television debates and nation-wide electioneering to which candidates for the American presidency have to submit. This reveals the character of those standing for high office. In Europe, by contrast, the 27 heads of state form an exclusive electoral roll of their own. At this very moment, each one of them is wholly employed telephoning the other 26, trying to find out who is going to vote for whom, to canvass for their candidate, and to discover some means of influencing or discreetly buying votes. The people of Europe will never know the true ins and outs of this horse-dealing, but tomorrow or within a few days if more time is needed, they will be presented with the winner. The Bourbon-Parmas and the Hohenzollerns would thoroughly appreciate the closed-doors intimacy of the selection, especially the total elimination of any participation by their hapless subjects.

Well, that doesn't sound too appetizing, does it? Still, I don't envy Herman Van Rompuy his job. It'll be like herding cats. In over 20 different languages.

Today in History: the 1989 Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia

Your history lesson of the day, kids! The Velvet Revolution began on November 17, 1989, in Prague and led to the overthrow of the Communist regime a month later. Out of it would come Slovakia and the Czech Republic. 1989 was a good year for liberty in Europe as Communism collapsed and the Cold War followed.

Becoming a Free Marketeer in a Communist State: Vaclav Klaus Remembers

Here is an interesting interview with Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic (and holder of a doctorate in economics). Do see.

Bonus: it's an example of grad school and higher education actually having a great result!

Also see Klaus' comment on the current state of things in the relationship between Brussels and the Czech Republic: "We are importing socialism from the EU." Uh-oh. He doesn't sound at all happy with this, as well he shouldn't.

History: A Retrospective on the Fall of the Berlin Wall 20 Years Ago

Go here! 20 years ago, freedom won.

Here is the quote of the day about that historical moment:

There will be speeches and celebrations to mark this anniversary, but not as many as the day deserves. (Barack Obama couldn’t even fit a visit to Berlin into his schedule.) By rights, the Ninth of November should be a holiday across the Western world, celebrated with the kind of pomp and spectacle reserved for our own Independence Day.

Never has liberation come to so many people all at once — to Eastern Europe’s millions, released from decades of bondage; to the world, freed from the shadow of nuclear Armageddon; and to the democratic West, victorious after a century of ideological struggle.

Never has so great a revolution been accomplished so swiftly and so peacefully, by ordinary men and women rather than utopians with guns.

Hear, hear. See this too.

From Pursuit of Serenity comes this cool link to the Berlin Twitter Wall. Check it out!

History Lesson: How to Remember the Berlin Wall and East Germany

Listen up, class! As the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall approaches, Claudia Rosett has your history lesson of the day:

When the Berlin Wall came down 20 years ago, it did not fall from sheer wear and tear of tyranny. People actively chose to destroy it. They tore down that iconic wall not only with pickaxes, hammers and bare hands, but as a culminating act of decades of sacrifice, courage, determination and a complex, globally contested war of ideas.

Many of the vital battles were fought by people living far from Berlin. They were fought by people who persisted in the face of everything from ridicule to misguided Utopianism to violence, imprisonment and the hot wars that flared along the front lines of the Cold War.

The wall itself, built in 1961, stood for 28 years, and was just a small part of the massive iron curtain with which the Soviet empire penned in the people of Eastern Europe. But the wall became a symbol of the far larger divide that split the world for much of the 20th century, partitioning great swathes of the globe into spheres of influence in which the basic trajectories were free vs. unfree, capitalist democracy vs. command-and-control Communism.

Yes. This seems obvious, but it's unfortunately not. Read the whole thing.

The Wall did NOT fall because of the current (stupid) tropes floating around some circles, such as (a) it just kind of happened, (b) Saint Gorbachev ended the Cold War because he was just such a nice guy, or (c) everyone oppressed by totalitarian Communism one day woke up, wished really hard, and *poof!* suddenly freedom happened.

The revisionists who are mangling history (out of a combination of willful cussedness and cloudy-eyed ignorance) are out in full force about the Cold War, and I am sorry and angry to say that Obama's just as bad about it as the worst of the closeted academic so-not-crypto-Marxist egghead Communist sympathizers yearning to engage in social engineering, the would-be puppetmasters (with us as the puppets, of course) constrained only by lack of means and opportunity.

Previous rants here and here.

Related news story on the East German aftermath here:

Now, the battle over how the GDR is to be remembered — or not — is raging hot. The former cadres would like the GDR to be remembered as some kind of benign leftist social-welfare experiment, idealistic and well-intentioned in looking after people from cradle to grave, if perhaps a tad over-zealous.

Former human rights activists, political prisoners and historians — of left and right — would have it remembered as it was. Then it might serve as a warning to future generations about the dual seductions of belief and obedience.

A growing degree of Ostalgie — toxic, rose-coloured fantasy — infects misrepresentations of the late state.

Memory IS a battleground . . . which means you better go armed with hard facts and evidence, along with a big dose of skepticism for pretty words and shiny rhetoric.

Remembering That Hey! We Won the Cold War... and That Was a Good Thing

Read this, comrade citizen!

Also, read this related post in case you're in any way confused about how the Cold War ended. Then you can think about people like Lech Walesa, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and everyone else famous and not-famous who helped.

Heck, it's as if some people are embarrassed that FREEDOM WON. Would you really rather live under Soviet rule and behind the Iron Curtain, where Marxism led to totalitarianism? Give me a break. Read Solzhenitsyn or The Black Book of Communism. Then read this.

Quirky Euro Files: Handicapping Candidates for EU President

Amusing. Time to play the odds -- or it would be, if I were a betting woman.

Mark Steyn on Big Government and Individual Liberty

Read the whole thing, as Steyn delivers piquant points with his customary light touch.

"Live free or die!" Indeed.

Euro Notes and Your Voltaire Moment: the Geert Wilders Debacle in the UK

First of all,  Dutch politician Geert Wilders seems (to me, anyway) to be an inflammatory, crude, extremist far-right wingnut.  He's made a name for himself by being, among other things, the creator of the controversial short film Fitna (you can see it online -- MM thinks one should at least see the thing before commenting on its content.  *cough* David Miliband! *cough*)  

Wilders also wants to ban the Koran in the Netherlands -- a position that gives the rank whiff of hypocrisy to the entire "free speech" argument when he exercises it.  I do NOT endorse him, and I think his approach to Dutch problems with multiculturalism makes that tough situation even tougher because of his alienating belligerence.  The man is, frankly, a gadfly, and he's not the spotlessly shining hero and martyr of liberty that he seems to think he is.  In fact, he's kind of a CREEP.

BUT.

He was invited to the UK by several British politicians to screen his film in Parliament, but then the Home Office decided to ban Wilders from entering the country.  He flew to the UK anyway and was turned back at the airport.  The resulting firestorm has been intense.  Supporters and opponents of the Wilders ban have all been shrieking about free speech, so the result is complete cacophony.

As I'm looking at this debacle, I'm thinking that the actual problem is not Wilders per se, regardless of how personally obnoxious or controversial he is.  He is a catalyst and a lightning rod for a bigger problem.  He has metaphorically kicked over the tree that is the UK -- and let everyone see the inner rot at the core.  The same nation that provided sanctuary for Salman Rushdie twenty years ago and stood up to Iran now cannot bear to let in Geert Wilders (and is apparently cowed by its own restive, unassmiliated, and radicalized minority populations).  The entire situation is really about the current state and mindset of the UK government.  Philip Johnston wrote about this a few days ago, for instance, as another editorialist called the moment "a disastrously missed opportunity." See too this very interesting bit from a British left-leaner.  Another editorial opines, not inaccurately, that the Wilders ban only helps extremists on both sides.

A note about the "lightning rod" sorts of people like Wilders.  There is a clear distinction between "defending the right of people to speak" and "defending the content of what they say."  If anything, freedom of speech is the freedom to say things that people don't want to hear, hence the famous quote attributed to Voltaire.  But this brings us to an unhappy situation.  What about people who don't see the distinction between right and content?  Look, plenty of committed defenders of a free society and I can, do, and will defend the right of people to speak even if their words are offensive .  That doesn't mean that we have to defend the substance of what they say (or how they say, either).  Here's a pithy Aussie editorial on just this idea.

What happens when other people don't make that distinction?  What happens when unhappy offended people look at free speech defenders and consider them the same as the speakers?  "Hey, look, So-and-So says that Wilders has the right to speak.  Therefore s/he must support the things that he says.  S/he also wants to (insert stupid Wilders policy idea here), etc. etc."  OH, BOTHER.  This complicates an already complicated situation in a world where overheated emotional people oversimplify at the drop of a hat.  Anyway, I thought I'd just throw this idea out there since everyone's shouting about free speech . . . so we can try to clarify and get back to the critically important debate about the right of free expression.

I'll also express the (almost certainly futile) wish that folks will engage in speech exchange with some good old-fashioned courtesy and civility even when the argument is heated.

We need more debate, not less.

PS: If the Home Office doesn't like Wilders, then why make a martyr out of him and therefore give him a much bigger platform and far more international media attention than if he had simply screened his film to a few MPs and then gone home?  Now you also have the spectacle of the Dutch government (that is prosecuting Wilders at home) more or less speaking up in his defense by criticizing the UK's decision?  Meanwhile, commentators are busy pointing out the massive cognitive dissonance that had the UK opening its doors to all sorts of unsavoury radicalizing characters, thus creating "Londonistan," while slamming those doors in the face of a European parliamentarian.  All this makes the UK government look even more feckless and lame than it already does.  Oh, and it got a letter from the International Free Press Society condemning it for abandoning Britain's own traditions of free speech.  Well done, Jacqui Smith, et al.

PSS: I made it this far through a serious post, but no farther.  My inner sarcasm has woken up, and it demands to know if Geert Wilders has the same hairdresser as Amy Winehouse.