Tag: EU

A continent, not a government

Rather a lot of this “conservative manifesto for Europe” not only sounds encouraging and inspirational, it sounds familiar:

1. Europe is our home.
Europe belongs to us, and we belong to Europe. These lands are our home; we have no other. The reasons we hold Europe dear exceed our ability to explain or justify our loyalty. It is a matter of shared histories, hopes and loves. It is a matter of accustomed ways, of moments of pathos and pain. It is a matter of inspiring experiences of reconciliation and the promise of a shared future. Ordinary landscapes and events are charged with special meaning—for us, but not for others. Home is a place where things are familiar, and where we are recognized, however far we have wandered. This is the real Europe, our precious and irreplaceable civilization.

2. A false Europe threatens us.
Europe, in all its richness and greatness, is threatened by a false understanding of itself. This false Europe imagines itself as a fulfilment of our civilization, but in truth it will confiscate our home. It appeals to exaggerations and distortions of Europe’s authentic virtues while remaining blind to its own vices. Complacently trading in one-sided caricatures of our history, this false Europe is invincibly prejudiced against the past. Its proponents are orphans by choice, and they presume that to be an orphan—to be homeless—is a noble achievement. In this way, the false Europe praises itself as the forerunner of a universal community that is neither universal nor a community.

3. The false Europe is utopian and tyrannical.
The patrons of the false Europe are bewitched by superstitions of inevitable progress. They believe that History is on their side, and this faith makes them haughty and disdainful, unable to acknowledge the defects in the post-national, post-cultural world they are constructing. Moreover, they are ignorant of the true sources of the humane decencies they themselves hold dear—as do we. They ignore, even repudiate the Christian roots of Europe. At the same time they take great care not to offend Muslims, who they imagine will cheerfully adopt their secular, multicultural outlook. Sunk in prejudice, superstition and ignorance, and blinded by vain, self-congratulating visions of a utopian future, the false Europe reflexively stifles dissent. This is done, of course, in the name of freedom and tolerance.

4. We must defend the real Europe.
We are reaching a dead-end. The greatest threat to the future of Europe is neither Russian adventurism nor Muslim immigration. The true Europe is at risk because of the suffocating grip that the false Europe has over our imaginations. Our nations and shared culture are being hollowed out by illusions and self-deceptions about what Europe is and should be. We pledge to resist this threat to our future. We will defend, sustain and champion the real Europe, the Europe to which we all in truth belong.

5. Solidarity and civic loyalty encourage active participation.
The true Europe expects and encourages active participation in the common project of political and cultural life. The European ideal is one of solidarity based on assent to a body of law that applies to all, but is limited in its demands. This assent has not always taken the form of representative democracy. But our traditions of civic loyalty reflect a fundamental assent to our political and cultural traditions, whatever their forms. In the past, Europeans fought to make our political systems more open to popular participation, and we are justly proud of this history. Even as they did so, sometimes in open rebellion, they warmly affirmed that, despite their injustices and failures, the traditions of the peoples of this continent are ours. Such dedication to reform makes Europe a place that seeks ever-greater justice. This spirit of progress is born out of our love for and loyalty to our homelands.

6. We are not passive subjects.
A European spirit of unity allows us to trust others in the public square, even when we are strangers. The public parks, central squares and broad boulevards of European towns and cities express the European political spirit: We share our common life and the res publica. We assume that it is our duty to take responsibility for the futures of our societies. We are not passive subjects under the domination of despotic powers, whether sacred or secular. And we are not prostrate before implacable historical forces. To be European is to possess political and historical agency. We are the authors of our shared destiny.

7. The nation-state is a hallmark of Europe.
The true Europe is a community of nations. We have our own languages, traditions and borders. Yet we have always recognized a kinship with one another, even when we have been at odds—or at war. This unity-in-diversity seems natural to us. Yet this is remarkable and precious, for it is neither natural nor inevitable. The most common political form of unity-in-diversity is empire, which European warrior kings tried to recreate in the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire. The allure of the imperial form endured, but the nation-state prevailed, the political form that joins peoplehood with sovereignty. The nation-state thereby became the hallmark of European civilization.

8. We do not back an imposed, enforced unity.
A national community takes pride in governing itself in its own way, often boasts of its great national achievements in the arts and sciences, and competes with other nations, sometimes on the battlefield. This has wounded Europe, sometimes gravely, but it has never compromised our cultural unity. In fact, the contrary has been the case. As the nation states of Europe became more established and distinct, a shared European identity became stronger. In the aftermath of the terrible bloodshed of the world wars in the first half of the twentieth century, we emerged with an even greater resolve to honor our shared heritage. This testifies to the depth and power of Europe as a civilization that is cosmopolitan in a proper sense. We do not seek the imposed, enforced unity of empire. Instead, European cosmopolitanism recognizes that patriotic love and civic loyalty open out to a wider world.

9. Christianity encouraged cultural unity.
The true Europe has been marked by Christianity. The universal spiritual empire of the Church brought cultural unity to Europe, but did so without political empire. This has allowed for particular civic loyalties to flourish within a shared European culture. The autonomy of what we call civil society became a characteristic feature of European life. Moreover, the Christian Gospel does not deliver a comprehensive divine law, and thus the diversity of the secular laws of the nations may be affirmed and honoured without threat to our European unity. It is no accident that the decline of Christian faith in Europe has been accompanied by renewed efforts to establish political unity—an empire of money and regulations, covered with sentiments of pseudo-religious universalism, that is being constructed by the European Union.

10. Christian roots nourish Europe.
The true Europe affirms the equal dignity of every individual, regardless of sex, rank or race. This also arises from our Christian roots. Our gentle virtues are of an unmistakably Christian heritage: fairness, compassion, mercy, forgiveness, peace-making, charity. Christianity revolutionized the relationship between men and women, valuing love and mutual fidelity in an unprecedented way. The bond of marriage allows both men and women to flourish in communion. Most of the sacrifices we make are for the sake of our spouses and children. This spirit of self-giving is yet another Christian contribution to the Europe we love.

The Alt-Right is inevitable. It doesn’t need leaders, dramas, or monkey-dancing for the media. It simply needs to stay focused relentlessly, and fearlessly, on expressing the truth. Globalism, multiculutralism, civic nationalism, and progressivism are rely upon the enforcement of lies. The truth will set us free.

A reader sends a not-unrelated quote from Toynbee:

“The moth’s self-inflicted doom is an apt simile for the nemesis that overtakes the barbarian invaders of more prosperous societies that lack the military strength to hold their aggressive barbarian neighbors at bay. The barbarian invaders’ greed is self-defeating. If the the intruders are not eventually exterminated by a counter-stroke, as the Gutaean conquerors of Sumer and Akkad were, they survive only to share in the impoverishment that they have inflicted on their victims.”

The problem, of course, is that even impoverishment by European standards is still better than living in non-European filth. And the European women are considerably more accessible, both with and without consent.

Catalonia declares independence

Things may have just gotten a little more interesting in Spain.

Catalan parliament declares independence from Spain

The Catalan regional parliament has voted to declare independence from Spain, just as the Spanish government appears set to impose direct rule. The move was backed 70-10 in a ballot boycotted by opposition MPs.

Spain’s Senate is still to vote on whether for the first time to enact Article 155 of the Spanish constitution, which empowers the government to take “all measures necessary to compel” a region in case of a crisis.

I have absolutely no sense that anyone in Catalonia is interested in actually fighting for independence, or even seeking true independence free of the European Union. Then again, Napoleon didn’t think the Spanish were going to fight the king he imposed on them either. Either way, we will probably find out fairly soon.

It might be even more interesting if the Spanish Senate voted against enacting Article 155.

UPDATE: They didn’t exactly hesitate. Madrid imposes direct rule on Catalonia just 40 minutes after the region FINALLY declared independence.

Garibaldi’s nightmare

Lombardia and the Veneto overwhelmingly vote for autonomous rule:

Two of Italy’s wealthiest northern regions on Sunday voted overwhelmingly in favour of greater autonomy in referenda that took place against the backdrop of Catalonia’s push for independence from Spain.

Voters in the Veneto region that includes Venice and Lombardy, home to Milan, turned out at the high end of expectations to support the principle of more powers being devolved from Rome, officials said. Veneto President Luca Zaia hailed the results, which were delayed slightly by a hacker attack, as an institutional ‘big bang’ while reiterating that the region’s aspirations were not comparable to the secessionist agenda that has provoked a constitutional crisis in Spain.

Turnout was projected at between 57-61 percent in Veneto, where support for autonomy is stronger, and at around 40 percent in Lombardy. The presidents of both regions said more than 90 percent of voters who had gone to the ballots had, as expected, done so to support greater autonomy.

The votes are not binding but they will give the leaders of the two regions a strong political mandate when they embark on negotiations with the central government on the transfer of powers from Rome to the regions.

Hey, the Lombardi have already got a perfectly good, if rather ugly, castle sitting at the end of the Galleria waiting for a new Duke of Milan to rule over them, although I’d prefer to rule from the Bergamo high city myself. Let’s face it, liberal democracy in Europe was pretty much a complete failure across the board even before it turned suicidally pro-immigrant. Italy certainly managed to accomplish a good deal more of lasting value in the age of city-states; post-Garibaldi Italy did little more than produce Fascism and Fiats before getting itself raped twice by Germany.

#VotaSI

Twin proto-independence referendums in Italy today:

ITALY is facing its own referendum crisis as two regions, Lombardy and Veneto, engage in a bid for more power from Rome, buoyed by the Catalonia independence campaign in Spain. The wealthy Italian regions account for at least 30 per cent of the country’s GDP and they will ask voters to take to the polls today to gain greater autonomy from Rome.

Analysts have likened the Italian referendum vote as being similar to that of Scotland’s independence vote from Britain, the UK’s decision to leave the European Union, and Catalonia’s quest for independence from Spain.

The votes were called by the two regional leaders, Roberto Maroni of Lombardy and Luca Zaia of Veneto. In Italy, the twin referendums are non-binding, but a resounding “yes” vote would give the presidents of the neighbouring regions more powers.

Forza la Lega Nord! And let’s bring back La Serenissima while we’re at it.

Article 155

The Spanish government has announced that it will meet on Saturday to take the first step in suspending the autonomy of Catalonia, and the suspension will then be ratified by the Senate on Monday.

After discussing the matter in some depth with several Catalans, my impression is that they don’t really want independence, which explains why they would be quite happy to remain under EU rule even if they were able to become “independent”. A lot of this appears to be belated fallout from the scars of the Franco regime’s suppression of Catalan language and culture, and an expression of a feeling of a general lack of respect from the rest of Spain.

One American married to a Catalan woman talked about how, despite being warned to rent a car instead of taking their car with plates indicating its Barcelona registration, he drove it to Madrid. And, as she warned him would happen, the car got keyed. He cited this as a microcosm of the general disdain that the rest of Spain holds for the Catalans.

Whether that is true or not, it does seem to reflect the general sense of the population. The problem is that while Spain has attempted to legally grant the Catalans the sense of respect they crave, and then some, by giving them a great deal of political autonomy, it’s not simply possible to do so through the mechanism of government and politics.

It may be that what the Catalans really want is just impossible. You can’t be simultaneously equal and special. You just can’t.

The promised rise of nationalism

It is here. It is now. You may recall that I was one of the very few observers of European politics who predicted this years ago. I said it would take two election cycles for the nationalists to come fully to power. We’re still in the first one.

  • In a recent poll by the Czech Academy of Sciences, the ANO scored 30.9 percent, more than the two traditional heavyweights in Czech politics — the Social Democrat CSSD and the right-wing ODS — combined, who scored just 13.1 percent and 9.1 percent respectively.
  • The takeover of the OeVP in May by “Emperor Kurz” was as swift as it was radical. First he ended the decade-long unhappy coalition with the Social Democrats (SPOe). Then he rebranded the OeVP and its black party colour as a turquoise “movement” tough on migrants and easy on taxes. The strategy of “putting Austrians first” propelled the sluggish OeVP to pole position in opinion polls and Kurz to near-rock star status.
  • The People’s Party (OVP) got 31.6 per cent of the vote, according to exit polls from pollster SORA. Mr Kurz’s party is tough on migration, easy on taxes and widely Eurosceptic after rebranding itself over the last few months to propel its popularity in the wealthy Alpine nation. The 31-year-old is expected to form a coalition with the right-wing populist Freedom Party (FPO), who got 26.9 per cent of the vote, according to the latest projections. 
Of course, as with Brexit, the nationalists still have to deliver and free their nations from both the migrant invasions and the chains of the European Union. But be that as it may, it is clear that they have the democratic mandate of their nations, as well as the duty, to do so.

Retreat in Catalonia

Spain and the EU managed to call the Catalan bluff:

Don’t let the cheers in the Catalan Parliament fool you. There’s been a full-blooded retreat from the separatists. After rowdy demonstrations, a covert referendum (which drew a violent response from Spanish police) and vows to set up a new republic, Catalan President Carles Puigdemont blinked.

Many lawmakers gathered for a special session of the regional legislature were hoping to hear a declaration of independence. Instead, he put the process on hold to make another appeal for talks with the Spanish government. No deadline. No leverage. And Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s response was powerful: he started the process that could see Puigdemont’s administration stripped of its powers.

Already last night cracks were opening up in the separatist coalition, suggesting a regional election may be necessary next year.

Perhaps Puigdemont had no real choice. The EU made it clear an independent Catalonia would be isolated. The region’s biggest companies were pulling out. And elite Spanish police officers were waiting to arrest him.

The reason the Catalan bid for independence is going to fail is that they don’t want actually want to be independent. They simply want to move up one rung on the EU totem pole. And that isn’t something that anyone in their right mind is going to fight or die for.

The Spanish misplayed this situation badly, but were ultimately saved by the fact that the Catalans were always ultimately hoping for the EU to swoop in and tell its member state that it had to let Catalonia go. Once the EU belatedly clear that it had no intention of doing so and called the Catalan bluff, the secessionists had no choice but to blink. Because they never, ever, intended to fight.

Skeptical nationalism

John Derbyshire contemplates Catalonia and California:

The great classic Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms opens with a sentence that any literate Chinese person can quote to you: 話說天下大勢, 分久必合, 合久必分 — “It has been said of all under Heaven that what was long divided must unite, what was long united must divide.”

As well as being a fair summary of four thousand years of Chinese history, that’s not a bad guide to history at large. Nations come together and merge; empires form then disintegrate.

Yes, there are those big historical tides ebbing and flowing. But we can form preferences related to our own time and place. Mine are nationalist, with a seasoning of skepticism.

Nationalism isn’t hard to understand. People want to live among and be governed by other people mostly like themselves, with the same language and shared history, not by foreigners in some distant city who don’t understand them.

It is of course the case that our co-ethnics may be crazy beasts — North Korea‘s a nation; Khmer Rouge Cambodia was a nation — while the foreigners in that distant city might be benign and wise, or at any rate not life-threatening. The Middle East under the Ottoman Empire was not an exemplar of peace and justice, but it doesn’t compare badly with today’s Middle East.

The great British national conservative Enoch Powell, who fifty years ago gave those eloquent warnings about the evils of mass immigration, once said that if Britain were at war he would fight for Britain, even if it was a communist dictatorship.

The Greek poet in Byron’s Don Juan, living under the Ottoman Turks, likewise looked back to the Greek tyrants of antiquity and sighed:

Our masters then

Were still, at least, our countrymen.

I’m basically on the same page with these nationalists, but with reservations. When the Vietnamese army put an end to the Khmer Rouge government by invading Cambodia, most Cambodians hailed them as liberators. Perhaps I would have, too; perhaps even Enoch Powell would have.

So there are qualifications to be made about nationalism, especially small-country nationalism or sub-nationalism. You’re not drawing from a big pool of political talent there. I have mixed occasionally with Scottish and Welsh nationalists; let’s just say I wasn’t impressed.

Sub-nationalism like Catalonia’s is also in contradiction to nationalism proper. Who’s the truer nationalist: the Spanish citizen who would fight and die for Spain, or the Catalan separatist who feels the same way about his province?

Here you’re in the zone of differences that can only finally be decided by force of arms.

Derbyshire comes out for Spain, in the end, in favor of nationalism over sub-nationalism. I would be vastly more inclined to do so if Spain would also abjure the European Union; as usual, binary thinkers can’t seem to grasp the observation that neither side is good and both sides are idiots fighting over the right to be directly subservient to the European Commission on behalf of the Catalans.

The sour joke in Britain thirty years ago was that having fought eight hundred years for their independence, the Irish had then sold it for a package of EU agricultural subsidies. That’s not altogether fair. But looking at Ireland today gives you a jaded perspective on Irish nationalism. The seminaries are full of Nigerians [ How Catholicism fell from grace in Ireland, Chicago Tribune, July 92006] the cab drivers are all Polish; and the current Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, is an open homosexual whose father was an Indian born in Bombay. For this the heroes of 1916 faced the firing squads?

MPAI is one of the sad realities of history. Regardless, Derbyshire’s most important idea is here: We can call this alliance the Natintern, the Nationalist International. I’m still waiting for someone to come up with a suitable anthem, to be called of course The Nationale.

EU incoherence

Both the EU and the Spanish government are proving to be tone-deaf over the threat to their claim to democratic legitimacy.

The obvious answer to the objection of Weber and others on the running of the referendum, is to have another one agreed by all and run in strict accordance with international standards. Yet strangely, despite their complaints about the process, they do not want to have a better process. They rather do not wish people to be allowed to vote at all.

There are however no arguments that the Catalan Parliament was elected in anything but the proper manner. Its suspension by the Spanish Constitutional Court – a body on which 10 out of 12 members are political appointees – is therefore not due to any doubts about the Catalan Parliament’s legitimacy.

No, the Catalan Parliament has been suspended because the Constitutional Court fears it may be about to vote in a way that the Spanish government does not like.

Note that it has not even done this yet. Nobody knows how its members will actually vote, until they vote. The Constitutional Court is suspending a democratically elected body in case it takes a democratic vote of its members.

This makes the EU look pretty silly. It was looking pretty silly anyway. I telephoned the Cabinet today of Frans Timmermans, the EU Commissioner who told the European Parliament that Spain was entitled to use force against the Catalans and it had been proportionate. I spoke to a pleasant young man responsible for the “rule of law and fundamental rights” portfolio in the Cabinet. I got through by using my “Ambassador” title.

Here is the thing. He was genuinely shocked to hear that people thought the Commission’s support for use of force was wrong. He stated that it had not been the intention of Timmermans to say the use of force was proportionate, rather it must be proportionate. He became very agitated and refused to answer when I repeatedly questioned him as to whether he thought the use of force had in fact been proportionate. I suggested to him rather strongly that in refusing to acknowledge the disproportionate use of force, he was in effect lying. I pointed out that Timmermans had supported use of force and said “rule of law” over and over again, but scarcely mentioned human rights.

Here is the thing. It was plain that his shock was genuine, and he had no idea whatsoever of the social media reaction to Timmermans speech. I told him to search Timmermans on twitter and facebook and see for himself, and he agreed to do so. The problem is, these people live in a Brussels bubble where they interact with other Eurocrats and national diplomats, and members of the Establishment media, but have no connection at all to the citizenry of the EU.

Crying “law, law, law” is never going to prove convincing to anyone. The Nuremberg trials killed the concept of the legal justification for morality once and for all. According to the neo-liberal world order, the law rests upon the collective consent of the governed, which consent can be withdrawn at any time as per the Chinese concept of the Mandate of Heaven. Both the EU and Spain are flirting with forces that have the ability to undermine them entirely, and unfortunately, they do not seem to understand this.

For those Spaniards who are apparently very, very slow, I do not support the communists of Catalan. Unlike the Lombardian and Venetian secessionists, I don’t regard their position on independence and the EU to be even remotely coherent. But that does not make what Spain and the EU are trying to do either right or wise.

The Saker is thinking on similar lines when he concludes the Russians are more amused than anything by the situation in Catalonia, and quite reasonably so:

Catalonia is far away from Russia and the outcome of the crisis there will have no real impact on Russian national interests. But on a political level, Catalonia is highly relevant to the Russian political debates. See for yourself:

The case of Catalonia can be compared to Crimea: a local referendum, organized against the will of the central government. In contrast, when Kosovo was cut-off from Serbia in total illegality and without any kind of referendum the entire West gave this abomination a standing ovation. The Russians then issues stark warnings about the precedent this set and thereafter South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Crimea happened. Is the secession of Catalonia not the next logical step? Is there not a karmic beauty in the fact that Spain and the rest of the EU are now being hit by the very same demon they unleashed in Kosovo? There is a definite Schadenfreude for many Russians in seeing the pompous asses of EU politicians sitting on the red ants nest of separatism – let’s see how smart and “democratic” you guys truly are?! It is rather funny, in a bitter-sweet way, to see how ‘democratic’ policemen beat up peaceful demonstrators whose only “crime” was to want to cast a ballot in a box.

A lot of Russians are now saying that Russia is now the only truly democratic and free country left out there. Needless to say, the way the Madrid government handled this situation further damage the credibility of the West, the EU and the entire notion of “civilized Europe” being “democratic”.

The return of La Serenissima

Now that Catalonia is on the verge of independence, Lombardia and Venezia are next:

Italy facing its OWN Catalonia: Referendums in Lombardy and Venice could TOPPLE EU

This month the Lombardy region and the city of Venice will both vote on new powers of autonomy at referendums which are now taking on increasing levels of controversy. Previously seen as a low-scale vote on local powers, the referendums are now experiencing symbolic overtones following last Sunday’s Catalonian chaos.

Last weekend more than 800 people were injured by police as a referendum on independence for Catalonia was held – against the express wishes of leaders in Madrid and Brussels. And now Italy is facing similar chaos with two referendums set to be held on October 22, although in these instances the votes are state-approved and will not face violent opposition.

I’m pretty sure the Venetian referendum will pass. I’m less confident about the Lombardian vote, since there are some heavily socialist regions of the province, but it stands a reasonable chance of passing, especially given what we’re seeing out of Spain. And unlike Catalonia, neither Venetians nor Lombardians are at all keen on the EU. It’s time to let Garibaldi’s Folly pass into history and bring back the great Italian city-states of the Renaissance.

Basta bugie, no UE! 

Media: Wait, don’t you live in Lombardia?
VD: (whistles innocently)