The Christian Democrats are Germany's last hope of avoiding falling into the full abyss of terminal socialism...presuming that they aren't there already.
Posted on 06/10/2005 9:52:26 PM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
FRANKFURT--Germany is on the brink of revolution. If the signs (and polls) aren't wrong, a woman will soon lead the country for the first time. She is Angela Merkel, a trained physicist raised in East Germany, a pastor's daughter who grew up under communism. With no power base of her own, she has managed over the past six years, with energy, clarity and tactical skill, to prevail over various long-established, conspiratorial old-boy networks in her Christian Democratic Party, the CDU/CSU. She lacks any of the trappings of the loyal party cadre; but she is capable of formulating political concepts that are unusually clear for Germany. That is why so much hope has been placed in her.
Ms. Merkel rejects the endless and always costly compromises of the old Bonn republic, which was at first simply transferred wholesale to Berlin. In the climate of reunification, this republic managed one final, rotten achievement. The question of how the unexpectedly united nation could be reorganized was buried by the governing conservative coalition with a "currency and social union" promising rapid "equalization of living standards." The necessary economic conditions for this were never discussed.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
The Christian Democrats are Germany's last hope of avoiding falling into the full abyss of terminal socialism...presuming that they aren't there already.
A very good read!
"A very good read!"
Yes, really an exeptionally good analysis!
First, the author captures in a paragraph the economic condition which expresses the cause and result of the malaise in economic terms:
A state that spends 48% of its budget on social-welfare entitlements and 14% on interest payments on a growing mountain of debt, and can only invest 11% in modernizing infrastructure, has long since lost its ability to act. It is bankrupt.... An economy that requires at least half the hourly wage to be paid over to the government in the form of taxes and entitlements, and on top of that significant consumer and corporate taxes, is no longer competitive.
The German economy is no longer competitive relative to its peers. This has here and now real world significance for Germans. For generations Germany was the locomotive of Europe and now they are not. In many ways they cannot compete with the Brits. For a generation the Germans have been eating their seed corn but that recipe for calamity was not enough to scare them out of their lethargy so long as the rice bowl was intact and their neighbors were more or less as hedonistic as they were. But now the rice bowl is being broken before their eyes, and their peers are stealing the march.
Meanwhile, the red-green coalition has put Schröder in a place where he can do infinite harm. He has wrenched his country away from its relationship with America and in doing so has ruptured his country's close and happy relationship with the world's only super power and aligned it with the French, a nation capable of defending Germany with one dysfunctional aircraft carrier, and possessed of a track record of duplicity toward its "allies" that would shame a Clinton.
So long as the conception of the European Union embraced the idea of a world class super state, the Germans could ignore the long term strategic danger to which Schröder's rupture with America exposed their children. But now, the typically perverse French have killed their own bastard child when they repudiated the EU constitution and left Germany an unprotected state with a moribund economy and a suspect currency.
The Germans have none of the advantages of a mutual alliance such as physical security, and all of the disadvantages of foreign imperial occupation. The Germans have already ceded control over their own borders to a score of other nations and have no control, therefore, over immigration. They have surrendered many other elements of sovereignty to an unelected and unaccountably imperial power in Brussels. They have already lost control over their precious Deutschmark.
To express the conundrum which now confronts the Germans in almost Biblical terms, one could say that they were seduced and abandoned by the French harlot. It is not by accident that the author sees the choice confronting the German electorate in the next election to be a choice between the American and the French revolutions. Make no mistake, the French themselves understand the question starkly because they voted against an "anglo" economy in that constitutional referendum. The French have decided to defend the rice bowl at all costs even when to do so defies rationality. Now, the Germans are facing a threat which will force them to a choice which they have been willfully avoiding for a least a generation: Equality of opportunity or equality of condition.
The author has described it thus:
the German democrats, who had always existed, took up the ideas of the American declaration of independence and the French revolution, but gave them a peculiar cast. The eternally conflicting principles of freedom and equality were reinterpreted and ranked in a specific, German way. Civil equality before the law became social equality, and freedom was, in case of doubt, always sacrificed to the idea of social equality.
The collectivist "public good," so defined, always ranked higher in the public mind than the protection of basic civil rights and universal human rights. To this day, Germans speak of a "Father State" that will always put things right. They see it as an insurance policy against absolutely everything. The vast majority believes, to this day, that the concepts of state and society are interchangeable--that they are synonymous.
My own anecdotal experience here in Germany confirms the author's analysis. For example, the German government has effectively banned Scientology as a "Kult", out only to bilk the unwary. When one queries a typical Bavarian Catholic about this departure from a cardinal tenet of the American Revolutionary experience and an aping of the anti-clericalism of the French revolution, he looks at you blankly, uncomprehending, and recites that the government has determined that this cult is a sham and the naive need protection from it. Even when one points out the obvious parallels to the Nazi times, the Bavarian will distinguish that experience. He fears not the state but elements in his own society and expects to be protected from them by the state. A cult which ensnares and brainwashes a few unwary souls is more to be feared than a government which defines the route to heaven.
If you want to have some fun, engage a German in the subject of the Right to Bear Arms as enshrined in the American Revolutionary experience. Suggest to him that the primary reason to preserve gun ownership in the citizenry is not to protect us from wild savages, shoot meat for the table, or defend ourselves against criminals, but to empower us to make revolution against our oppressive government. Now note his reaction.
The selection of the French revolutionary model leads to other baleful consequences which my anecdotal experience has also confirmed. When a society chooses equality of result over equality of opportunity, the inevitable byproducts are the politics of envy, cronyism, lethargy, and the engrossment of the state - all of which we see abundantly in Europe. Cronyism flourishes in all socialist models, the Germans have nicknamed it "vitamin B" the favoritism gained through connections.
So this is the economic and spiritual condition of the German commonweal. Most Germans expect the situation to continue in a muddle regardless of which party is in power because they do not see any tipping event which requires their neighbors (always only the neighbors) to risk the rice bowl. But that tipping event is about to engulf all of Europe.
The Chinese are coming!
If you believe as I do that Tom Friedman has got it essentially right, that is, The World is Flat, then you believe that not just Germany, and not only Europe, but the whole world is at an inflection point brought about by the Chinese (and soon Asian) economic miracle. The question is which model best equips a society to compete in a flat world, the French model, or, the American model(called the "anglo" model or the "anglo-American" model by the French and the "atlanticist" model by CNN International). The French have just voted to compete by withdrawing, to defend their failing model with more of the same in the forlorn hope that they can repeal the laws of supply and demand with legislation. The recipe for failed socialism has always been more socialism. The French might as well attempt to repeal the law of gravity with legislation. But before the reckoning finally comes we are likely to see some very ugly examples of the politics of envy run riot. God protect the French from themselves.
Meanwhile, the Germans will be confronted with the same inexorable realities coming over the horizon from the far east. The French will try to convince them that the threat is as they currently misconceive it, from Stash the plumber coming over the border from Poland to take away their trade jobs. But, of course, the real threat is from an engineer sitting at a keyboard in India, highly motivated and super educated, taking away white collar jobs and stealing the march into the 21st century. They might be able to defend themselves against Stash the plumber but they cannot stop the engineer at the keyboard any more than they can stop the internet, short of a Stalinist state.
The dance with France has already begun. Schröder and Chirac have just met to divide the continent away from Britain by insisting the Brits give up their right to reduced EU contributions which Thatcher had negotiated. Blair, cleverly, did not outright reject Chirac's demands but said that should be discussed in the context of Eu subsidies to French farmers. Chirac said no way, it could not even be discussed because Chirac knows he would be lynched if he did otherwise. Schröder stood there in physical and tacit support of Chirac.
Here is a micro view of the ultimate choice Germany must make. Here is a typical example of French solipsism. Schröder stands shoulder to shoulder with Chirac. They have even implied that they have not given up on the constitution. He has lost the confidence of even his own party and clearly cannot lead. The question is, can Merkel?
One last observation for those Freepers who do not think it important whither goes Germany or even the ultiimate alignment of Europe. Germany historically supplies the tipping momentum for europe. As Germany goes, so goes Europe and likely the whole of western civilization. Do you think America can hold out not only against the blue states but against the whole of the world indefinitely?
German children in their fairy tales learn of a "Scharaffenland," a land of milk and honey in which if you open your mouth a fried chicken flies in. In fact, like all welfare states, it is a Cloud-Coo-Coo-Land. A welfare state is ultimately a Ponzi scheme, depending on generous contributions by the young to sustain the old. And when there are fewer and fewer young and more and more old - as in Germany and all Western Europe - it must-inevitably collapse.
What does she look like?
Very good and interesting read. Nathanbedford, thanks for your additional analysis.
Those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it. Were truer words ever spoken?
Lessee, that's about 57% social-welfare entitlements (only 42% if you count state-local transfers as some sort of service instead of direct entitlements) and 15.1% on interest.
But the U.S. is soooooo much better off than Germany because we're so darn 'free.' /sarc
"Together they provide a realistic analysis of what confronts Germany - and Europe."
And the U.S.--see post 10.
Hals und Beinbruch Angela!
I do not say the French model is without its advantages, that is why they dig in to save it. But the French model has turned into a zero sum game, hence the politics of envy. In any event, I see the French model, regardless of the seductiveness of its social net, as incapable of competing against the Asians.
I am consistent about this, having frequently complained on these boards about entitlements like prescription drugs, farm subsidies and federal support of education. I believe social security should either be privatized or means tested
As to the sense of being "darn free" in the social sense and in the cultural sense, well, the belief in that is a large part of what makes us conservative.
I have the unfortunate feeling that they ARE already there. Junkies know they should quit, but it's too difficult a prospect for most of them to contemplate. Those addicted to government will keep going back for more "free stuff", even thought they understand that their addiction is immoral and counterproductive. It's what happened to France, and it is what the Democrats here at home see as their ticket to political power. Hence, their relentless effort to bring European-style secular socialism to America.
No argument that we have more freedom of economic action than most of Europe when it comes to hiring and firing. But we are only escaping their tax burdens by borrowing. And America's tax burden will be a reason that globalization can't work for us--until that problem is resolved, we are simply pretending our economic situation is better than Europe's by postponing paying for it.
Please do not think I am seeking to exonerate the current administration or the boys in Congress for their profligacy. So much of it is unecessary. I would grant the tax cuts and the military spending and then put on the green eye shade. I find the addition of new entitlements like prescription drugs, gifted without even means testing, to be unconscionable.
It was not so long ago that Ross Perot had us all worried about the crazy aunt in the attic - the times they have a-changed and the body politic has the memory span of a gnat.
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