Posted on 03/04/2010 2:32:47 PM PST by ScaniaBoy
According to Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian Prime Minister who now leads the Liberals in the European Parliament, “The ultimate consequences of identity thinking are the gas chambers of Auschwitz“.
Politicians should be careful about dragging Holocaust references into everyday arguments. Even Churchill – who arguably had more right to make such references than the rest of us – suffered when he tried to draw a parallel between socialism and the Gestapo during the 1945 election campaign. Yet Euro-integrationists make the link so habitually and so matter-of-factly that they no longer realise what they’re doing.
During the last session of the European Parliament, both the Liberal and Socialist leaders said that Euro-sceptic MEPs made them think of the Nazis (see here). And who can forget the words of Margot Wallström, then Sweden’s European Commissioner, at the anniversary of the liberation of the Theresienstandt concentration camp: “There are those today who want to scrap the supra-national idea. They want the EU to go back to the old purely intergovernmental way of doing things. I say those people should come to Terezin and see where that old road leads.”
I am uncomfortable drawing contemporary political lessons from the Nazi genocide: I still can’t get this photograph out of my mind. But, if we must, let us consider the Wallström-Verhofstadt theory that nationalism causes genocide.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
Nigel Farage fined after Herman Van Rompuy slur (called unelected EU president "damp rag")
Of course none of the persons Hannan links to (German social dim Martin Schultz or lib dim Graham Watson) were fined or even reprimanded for calling pro-referendum MEPs nazis and/or communists.
Orwell was right again: Four legs good, two legs better....
When they dislike Jewish people, lie about it and attempt to silence public mentions of it with fallacious arguments.
Liberals get away with calling normal people nazis. Normal people are harassed and sued for calling angry hate-speech that demonizes Jews “nazi.”
Nanazi is surly a NAZI. The NAZIs were the first with trying to implement Eugenics ... so that’s one test. She said recently she wanted to join the NAZI tea baggers.
NAZIs also were among the first to try and con people with the greenies.
When all that didn’t work, I guess they figured genocide was better and more efficient.
When you’re Hillary Clinton on the floor of the senate calling Republicans Nazi’s and Bush Hitler ... then it’s Ok.
A weird philosophical concept of united Europe they don’t talk about much is one of their basic axioms.
They believe that national, cultural, linguistic, and ethnic differences are to blame for 1500 years of war in Europe. And thus the way to prevent war is to make Europe as homogeneous as possible.
However, this is intellectual cowardice, and untrue. It was not *these* differences between people, but because all the noble aristocrats thought of themselves as better than the “common man”, natural leaders because of their inherent superiority.
And as such, they were the only people who *mattered* in Europe. The “commoners” were just pawns in their games, schemes, and intrigues against each other. When noblemen directed their nations to fight, it was with the same lack of compassion dog fighters have for their animals. They only care if they win or lose.
And, I might add, that this attitude of superiority over others is what is seen today in the Eurocrats and the MEPs. Of course they despise democracy. They believe their seats are theirs by divine right, and heaven has ordained them to rule over the people as masters.
So they invent this illusion, that the distinctions between nations, cultures, languages and ethnic groups are to be despised. So any lord can rule over any peasant, anywhere.
Like all lies, a little truth makes them stronger. National, cultural, linguistic, and ethnic differences certainly played a part in the almost constant warfare in the European continent. I would add religious and economic differences too. However, they are not going to prevent war by trying to make Europe one homogenous whole. Apart from the practical difficulties of doing that, the various European nations are so distinctive that trying to force them to be one is going to emphasise those differences, which will probably make conflict more likely.
Such “discoloration” is quite tragic in a way. I remember perusing Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, and was quite entertained with all the unique, colorful and beautiful eccentricities of Europe in the 19th Century. But between two devastating world wars, followed by continual efforts to standardize and normalize western Europe since the 1950s, and the horrific tyrannies of the East, have taken their bitter toll.
Some of this was inevitable with modernity, I assume. I was introduced to an American language expert who, as late as the early 1960s, could talk to someone for just a few minutes, and divine from the subtleties in their speech where they came from in the US, to within 50 miles. But even then he could tell that radio and television were wiping out these differences, replacing them with a more standard American English tongue.
But should there be nostalgia for a time when an American from Boston could not speak and be understood, or understand, East Texan?
Likewise, does Europe even need hundreds of different kinds of wines and beers?
Twenty years ago I first went to Sweden, and it was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Some of it was better than my homeland, and some was worse, and some was just different. But it was all good.
Ten years later I was in Stockholm looking directions, and I was handed a map of the city courtesy of MacDonalds, who had 140 restaurants in the city.
Now I’m ok with MacDonalds, and I know they have the right to expand their business, and the Swedes no doubt are pleased with that “USA Hamburger experience”, but all the same...I dont go to Sweden to eat American. Personally, I reckon differences add colour to life. I’d rather have a Europe that was a palette of blues, reds, greens and yellows, rather than one where everything had been mushed together into a shapeless, formless, dull grey.
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