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Europe In Trouble Traditions are part of human nature. So is the ritual of change, and there's where it gets sticky. These two forces, in growing conflict, have made a mess of the concept called Europe. The European Union, that is. As forecast in Germany Alert, the Euro is now loathed by millions of Europeans who want their Guilders and Francs and Marks and Lire back. That is but the beginning. Culture, language, education and even low crime rates have been wrecked by the fools who write EU laws dictating an end to all kinds of traditions in the various nations of the European continent. With each law and its corresponding loss of tradition, citizens are getting more disenchanted. Indeed, they are getting enraged with the process. How did it all happen? For centuries, European countries were governed by an assortment of good and bad prime ministers, presidents, monarchs and tyrants. With some horrendous exceptions, they governed by seeking consensus among the people of their nation. At the end of World War II, leaders and their parliaments determined to prevent a repetition of the murderous suffering wrought by Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. Yes, a few technocrats did write essays and books calling for a federal Europe, but such ideas were promptly written off as nonsense. What leader in his right mind would, after all, consider given away the peoples' sovereign rights, rituals and way of life? Instead, the new leaders vowed to learn from the lessons of history. They backed rebuilding both West and East Germany but declined to impose the kind of political or economic strangulation that prepared the way for rampant German nationalism after the first World War. Each European country concentrated on building economic opportunity and social justice for its citizens, and gave encouragement to national traditions ranging from literature to art to cuisine. Things changed in 1974 when West Germany elected Helmut Schmidt as chancellor and France voted for Valéry Giscard d'Estaing as president. Neither was a leader; they were managers, technocrats who abandoned the time proven relationship between leader and citizen in favor of one that considered only managers and goals. The governed began to be ignored because their problems did not happen to fit in with their managers' plans. An acceleration of the burgeoning European crisis occurred as Reagan came to power in the US and Thatcher in the UK. They were ideologues, super capitalists who were not content to simply see their own managerial class get rich: they demanded that other nations follow suit by abandoning consensus and co-existence in favor of confrontation and win-or-lose ultimatums. The American-Anglo alliance, which continues to this day, was only partially rebuffed by European nations. So when the Soviet Union and its East Europe partners fell from grace thirteen years ago, western Europe was suddenly confronted with a single, giant Germany that few had thought possible. With eighty million citizens, versus sixty million or so each in France, Italy and Britain, the new German powerhouse seemed like a potential threat to peace and stability throughout the continent. Under Kohl and his foreign minister, Genscher, it was in fact a threat. The new Germany manipulated diplomatic recognition of its old Nazi ally, Croatia, triggering the bloody war in Yugoslavia that is still simmering. European leaders, nearly all of them simply managers by then, moved quickly to gather Germany within the cloak of a united Europe, seeing the hastily enacted new policy as the only way to prevent another descent into war and suffering throughout the continent. Thus the European Union was born in a polygamous shotgun marriage of unequal, enthusiastic managers who thought themselves to be pragmatists. They gave birth to a new bureaucracy in Brussels, and that new order promptly began flexing its muscles. The EU chipped away at national sovereignty with one treaty after the other, almost always adopted without the consent of those who were to be governed. Even when it came to introduction of the Euro, member states battered down the fundamental resentment of ordinary citizens with glitzy propaganda that was filled with lies. Today, with the Euro hated by an ever-growing majority in many EU countries, a reassessment of policy is certainly overdue. It is time for managers to be turned out by leaders, by men and women with vision and determination to turn back policies that the governed find increasingly repulsive. If these moves do not occur voluntarily, the people may very well rise up and try to overthrow their leadership just as eastern Europeans did just over a dozen years back. At best, without radical surgery in Europe, the continent will become increasingly a place where citizens are governed without their consent. - 28 October 2002 Dutch Government Falls When Dutch populist Pim Fortuyn was murdered just days before the May general election, tens of thousands reacted emotionally by voting for his rightwing, anti-foreigner party known as the LPF. By now most of the party's backers have discovered that his ragtag successors were incompetents. The CDA (conservative) - VVD (conservative) - LPF (rightwing) cabinet fell today, making it the shortest lasting government in The Netherlands' post World War II history. It fell apart after fewer than ninety days. Since becoming part of the government, LPF ministers argued with one another about just about everything except the country's interest. Only in the past week we saw two of those ministers at each others' throats, plus a move to topple the LPF parliamentary leader and, as a bonus, the party's decision to boot out two of its own representatives in the Dutch lower house. All this may be worthy of a soap opera satire but was unworthy of The Netherlands. A nation that had for centuries been known for its tolerance was suddenly being co-governed by an LPF that was willing to violate the Dutch constitution in order to move against foreigners, especially Moroccans. A country best known for the likes of Rembrandt, Erasmus, Van Gogh and, more recently, Prince Claus, was unexpectedly being governed by a gang of political morons. Now the government has fallen and there will be new elections, rather than subjecting the Dutch to more of the LPF's crap. It's about time. But responsibility for the government crisis belongs to prime minister Balkende (CDA), who tolerated chicanery and incompetence for far too long. By waiting until today to let the government fall, Balkende forced Queen Beatrix, who only yesterday buried her late husband Prince Claus, to interrupt her mourning to busy herself with an interim government. - 16 October 2002 |
