27 Comments

1. Urban B:

Perhaps it is the gentleman’s accent that makes him sound so clear headed (as English children always sound so intelligent). I would love to hear as impassioned a defense of federalism here in the U.S., but I believe I wait in vain. Similarly, his very specific criticism of outlandish comments-naming names and pointing fingers, no less-is music to my ears.

One of the questions lurking in conservatives’ minds under the surface these days is, “When WILL Atlas shrug? Where is that line?” I now wonder if federalism will not see a resurgence if a President Obama does all the things he wants to do, yet never speaks of out loud (anymore). Where I live (Alabama) is quite conservative on the role of government, and the people here are fiercely individualistic. We are quite proud of our economy’s performance over the past couple decades. (The ‘00-’01 downturn largely missed us.) If the Yankee Federal Gov’ment messes everything up… and given some lingering, shall we say… tendencies?… I wonder if some nut-jobs in the South will waste an opportunity to talk about federalism, and go straight to secession. Oh, boy.

(P.S.-”Tendencies” have nothing to with race, by the way. After all we’ve been through, don’t doubt we’ve also moved much farther than most.)

Dec 17, 2008 - 8:59 am 2. RWE:

Hmmmm…

A business opportunity here?

Sell Confederate flags to P.Oed Europeans?

Dec 17, 2008 - 9:40 am 3. Alexis:

Actually, Confederate flags are popular among far right-wing Germans.

Dec 17, 2008 - 11:52 am 4. Brock:

“who am I to stand in the way of progress?”

I hate that word, ‘progress’. Lots of assumptions built into it, and those assumptions change radically depending on who uses the word. This subjectivity of meaning cannot be avoided, so I avoid the word instead.

Dec 17, 2008 - 12:35 pm 5. Thomas:

Activism’s desire is not to get rid of the existing system but, more so that they are the ones who should be in charge. They are activists because the existing system does not recognize their abilities. If they must tear down the existing system and rebuild it with them in charge so be it. What Vaclav is trying to get across is that he wants to be an equal partner in the endeavor, not a slave to it. What the Euroweenies are trying to get across is that if he wants to play, bend over.

Dec 17, 2008 - 12:38 pm 6. Alexis:

I have often thought that the definition of a revolutionary is an unemployed bureaucrat.

Dec 17, 2008 - 12:42 pm 7. RWE:

Alexis:

Yes, you are right.

Far right wing Germans in South Carolina and Georgia.

I meant sell them to Europeans.

Dec 17, 2008 - 1:02 pm 8. Urban B:

RWE:

HA!!!

One has to wonder how much time and effort the EU MPs are spending on the flags flying over Prague Castle. I believe some symbols do matter and are worth promoting, but do those guys think this is this one of them? Maybe if the EU did something worthy of some flag waving, it would take care of itself.

Dec 17, 2008 - 1:09 pm 9. Peter Boston:

The loss of personal liberty in the EU is staggering.

Politicians in Brussels decreed that British citizens living and working at home in the UK cannot work overtime.

Daily Mail

Dec 17, 2008 - 1:59 pm 10. A Conservative Teacher:

Before you do anything else, read a little bit about Vaclav Klaus. The guy is a true hero- the Czech version of Ronald Reagan. He writes with clarity, morality, and intelligence, and understands good and evil. He is a great man. He has fought for liberty and freedom his whole life, and when he sees it threatened, whether by communists from the Soviet Union or progressives from the European Union, he fights.

Check out his books On the Road to Democracy: The Czech Republic from Communism to Free Society by Vaclav Klaus, or Blue Planet in Green Shackles by Vaclav Klaus.

Dec 17, 2008 - 3:08 pm 11. Frau Jedöns:

Václav is the man to name your children after, not America’s “Prize-elect” who only writes about himself.

Dec 17, 2008 - 3:50 pm 12. Alexis:

RWE:

No, I meant far right wing Germans in Bavaria. At the very least, the Confederate flag was popular among them twenty years ago.

Dec 17, 2008 - 3:56 pm 13. BDelsol:

I thought “progressives” thought flag waving was for ignorant fools — if not downright fascistic.

Maybe they just meant American flags.

Dec 17, 2008 - 4:00 pm 14. BDelsol:

Look at the bright side. At least now there’s a flag lapel pin that Obama will be proud to wear.

Dec 17, 2008 - 4:04 pm 15. bobal:

Why is Obama’s home phone number in Chicago linked to the Party of Socialism and Liberation in California?

hmmm?

Dec 17, 2008 - 4:35 pm 16. Tony:

Above all else, Liberals are offended by actual liberals, seekers of liberty. There’s no room for liberty, that’s a waste of thinking. It’s time for Liberal law to be enforced, enough of this liberty and freedom business.

Who knew there were people in Euro who DIDN’T yearn for one world goverment? Some kind of uber-denialists still survive on the Continent, who knew?

As for the the appeal of aristocracy we see that now, as Princess Caroline, of King JFK, steps up to take her rightful Senate seat for the rest of her natural life. Just as the Democrats granted this NY Senatorship to the former first lady who had never lived in the state, so should the seat be rightfully conferred upon m’lady Kennedy, kind mistress of all the lowly folk of New York state.

Dec 17, 2008 - 4:50 pm 17. Storm-Rider:

“It (Socialism) is based on big and patronizing government, on extensive regulating of human behavior, and on large-scale income redistribution….There is always a limiting (or constraining) of human freedom, there is always ambitious social engineering, there is always an immodest ‘enforcement of a good’ by those who are anointed on others against their will, there is always the crowding out of standard democratic methods by alternative political procedures, and there is always the feeling of superiority of intellectuals and of their ambitions…These alternative ideologies are successful especially where there is no sufficient resistance to them, where they find a fertile soil for their flourishing, where they find a country (or the whole continent) where freedom (and free markets) have been heavily undermined by long lasting collectivistic dreams and experiences and where intellectuals have succeeded in getting and maintaining a very strong voice and social status. I have in mind, of course, rather Europe, than America. It is Europe where we witness the crowding out of democracy by post democracy, where the EU dominance replaces democratic arrangements in the EU member countries, where [some people] do not see the dangers of empty Europeanism and of a deep (and ever deeper) but only bureaucratic unification of the whole European continent. They applaud the growing formal opening of the continent, but do not see that the elimination of some of the borders without actual liberalization of human activities ‘only’ shifts governments upwards, which means to the level where there is no democratic accountability and where the decisions are made by politicians appointed by politicians, not elected by citizens in free elections.” President of the Czeck Republic, Václav Klaus

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/206

Dec 17, 2008 - 6:37 pm 18. X3NA:

Politicians in Brussels decreed that British citizens living and working at home in the UK cannot work overtime.

And how do they enforce that, with little vans going up and down the street in the middle of the night with antennas which can detect desktop keystrokes? If they see the text “Quarterly Profit Estimates” rather than “oh baby when you put your big boobs against my back it always turns my stomach” do they stop and issue a ticket?

Dec 17, 2008 - 7:30 pm 19. Lifeofthemind:

That was absolutely brilliant. Americans largely do not understand how undemocratic the EU is and how special our gift of Federalism is. The Swiss could help in teaching the difference between a top down structure like the EU and a bottom up structure like the US. “Subsidiarity” is not the same as popular sovereignty. We must understand that Europe was cobbled together this way for a very good reason. After two world wars it was decided that the greatest threat to peace was Nationalism and the democratic energies that flowed from the French Revolution through the Romantic Age and then gave rise to Imperialism and Fascism. Given that the result was 25 million dead and a civilization destroyed the idea of not sacrificing again on the altar of German, English or Irish identity has some appeal. The EU is a profoundly Conservative, in the sense of being Reactionary concept. Christianity has been replaced by Socialist dogma and post-Modernism but the goals are not much different than those of the Congress of Vienna. The elites of both times would understand. The difference now is that Europe is smaller and demographically shrinking while the moslems who were peripheral and harmless then are now actively taking over.

Dec 17, 2008 - 11:38 pm 20. Dave:

According to the late Fr Malachi Martin, Pope John Paul II was convinced that Europe would be where the big blowup would originate. (Keys Of This Blood).

Do not know if that will prove accurate or not. However, a pissing contest over something as trivial as a flag display is something of an ominous warning. Indicates that ideological ego gratification can blot out real needs of statecraft. Remember
a minor Archduke getting assinated in 1914?

Dec 17, 2008 - 11:42 pm 21. Lifeofthemind:

@Dave,
My point is that they want the EU flag precisely because no one gives a damn about it. No one can seriously be expected to grab the EU flag and lead the peasantry into battle. They want to blot out the Czech flag or the Union Jack because those are symbols the proletariate get excited about. Perhaps they will start teaching children to sing an Ode to the OECD.

Dec 17, 2008 - 11:55 pm 22. Beverly:

Nah, they’ll teach them this instead.

“The Internationale” [variant words in square brackets]

Arise ye workers [starvelings] from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We’ll change henceforth [forthwith] the old tradition [conditions]
And spurn the dust to win the prize.

So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.

No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we’ll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They’ll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We’ll shoot the generals on our own side.

No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E’er the thieves will out with their booty [give up their booty]
And give to all a happier lot.
Each [those] at the forge must do their duty
And we’ll strike while the iron is hot.# # #

Note the praise of fragging.

Dec 18, 2008 - 2:33 am 23. 3Case:

The last two posts have addressed the question paradox of why activism, which detests money, should need it. The other question is why activism, which professes egalitarianism, should resort to the appeal of aristocracy.

“Activists” are thugs…as thugs, they are stupid and brutish. On the first point, remember that old saying that begins “When they say it’s not about the money….” On the second, they submit themselves to their aristocracy so that they may be rewarded for their thuggery, which gets us back to the first point.

Dec 18, 2008 - 7:40 am 24. Dave:

@Lifeofthemind: Precisely. Eliminate the
symbols of the entities crucial to survival/well-being. Then replace them
with a symbol that means nothing EXCEPT
submission to the whims of the moment.

Klaus, the man with both brains and balls,
comitted blasphemy against their secular religion.

Let us resolve to burn them at the stake before we are the one immolated.

Dec 18, 2008 - 10:22 am 25. Starling:

I had not heard much about Klaus until about a month ago when The New York Times ran a hatchet job of an article about him.

I knew I smelled a rat or two in the article but couldn’t explain exactly how many. The next day Newsbusters reported that “New York Times European correspondent Dan Bilefsky bizarrely relayed the contents of a secret police file from the former Communist state of Czechoslovakia to boost his argument that Vaclav Klaus,the new president of the European Union, is a dangerously arrogant proponent of the free market.”

When I read that I became a lot more fond of Klaus. But when I read this in Investors Business Daily, I actually started to feel something akin to the audacity of hopeychanginess:

“But this is nothing new. In 2003, Arie Oostlander, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, lamented that “the worst thing that the Czechs could have done was to elect to the presidency a follower of Margaret Thatcher.”

Yet Klaus, a student of the great F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman, is exactly the sort of leader that Europe has to have. The liberty-minded defender of free markets has the opportunity to rock the continent out of its self-inflicted economic malaise.”

Dec 18, 2008 - 11:38 am 26. Roderick Reilly:

“”"”"”"”The loss of personal liberty in the EU is staggering.

Politicians in Brussels decreed that British citizens living and working at home in the UK cannot work overtime.”"”"”"”"

To me, the irony is huge. The late Middle Ages saw the rise of what would one day become the Middle Class. These industrious ex-peasants created what became known as “Cottage Industries,” which involved “Moonlighting” when the full Moon permitted it, and keeping the hearth fire stoked so they could work into the late evening. The authorities (representing the interests of the aristocracy and the Church) created something called a “Curfew” (”Couvre Feux”) to try to curb the practice of live fires after sunset under the guise of promoting “Public Safety.” Sound familiar?

Dec 18, 2008 - 1:07 pm 27. Barry 0351:

I would fly my country’s flag too and should the EU want to remove it I would invite them to try.
Backed by a military fist to stop that attempt.

Dec 19, 2008 - 9:57 am

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