Posted on 06/22/2006 4:29:24 PM PDT by Pokey78
THE SOUND of lusty Germans filling World Cup stadiums with the refrain of what much of the world still thinks of as Deutschland über Alles has provoked mixed reactions. Despite the best efforts of the enforcers of political correctness, it will never be possible for any of the current generations of Englishmen or women (or many other Europeans, for that matter) to dissociate the sound from the nation’s still unpleasantly recent past.
Certainly, it’s not the Horst Wessel Lied, and the anthem’s words (“Bloom, in the glow of happiness, Bloom, German fatherland!”) are almost bathetically bucolic by comparison with the old, troublingly blunter: “Germany, Germany, above everything in the world!” But there’s something about the sight of muscular Aryans and blonde-plaited Fräulein belting out the familiar tune that prompts some to reach instinctively for the tin helmet and the map of Poland.
But to others, me included, the development is a welcome one. It marks another small, symbolic victory in the unending struggle of people everywhere to preserve their national sovereignty. It says much, too, about the enduring nature of national identity. Despite centuries of efforts to extinguish it, the nation remains the unit in which most peoples, especially those in Europe, invest their loyalties. You can read too much into the behaviour of football fans, as we English know only too well. But the guiltless embrace of patriotism by football-loving Germans fits with a general perception in recent years that Germany is close to being a normal nation again.
Nationalism, of course, has long been a dirty word. It is generally deemed to have consigned Europe to almost continuous war between the early 19th century and the mid-20th century. And so it did.
But as with so many attempts to extirpate evil, the desire to crush its baleful consequences overreached. It was not just nationalism, but patriotism that was suppressed. The idea that your country can stand for something benign became unsayable, even with nations whose past fully entitled them to make such a claim.
The conviction took hold, in the governing and opinion-forming classes in the West, that the nation state itself was somehow an abomination, an intrinsic threat to peace and stability. So for half a century, emboldened political leaders in Europe made larger and larger efforts to snuff it out.
But while you can submerge nationhood in a tight web of supranational institutions, you can’t destroy the basic allegiances that animate the hearts of men. You can take the soul out of a country but you can’t take a country out of the soul. And the risk has always been that the more you attempt to suppress the idea of a nation, the more you will foster resentment and the very sort of indignant nationalism that has proved so tragically costly.
The European Union, of course, is not alone. The post-Second World War multilateral settlements designed to promote international co-operation between sovereign nations have become, in the dreams of many, an even larger opportunity to suppress the nation itself. There are political and cultural elites everywhere who regard the nation state as an unhealthy anachronism, who want to bury national pride and identity beneath an avalanche of deracinated, brotherhood-of-man, why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along-together mush. It is a conviction founded on a moral relativism, of course — no one nation is any better than any other — and promulgated by diplomats, business leaders and entertainers who have long since shaken off the irritating shackles of their own nationhood to play on a much larger global stage. To these people the United Nations is the highest achievement of humanity, and they would happily subjugate the will of peoples everywhere to its rule.
What is so striking about this effort to extinguish national identity and the popular will is that it is persistent, and through history repeatedly reveals itself in different ways. Marx regarded the nation as a capitalist construct, another manifestation of false consciousness to distract alienated labour from its true plight. The Soviets certainly did their bit to eliminate national boundaries, but the vigorous and renewed national pride in Eastern Europe is testament to the enduring failure of global communism.
Radical Islam wants the umma to replace national communities — and is willing to eliminate nations by violence. And I suppose, for reasons of absolute fairness, and as a Catholic, that I should also acknowledge that the Church has had a long history of adopting a bluntly political interpretation of its universalist claim, though today it has, fortunately come to happier terms with the nation state.
In some parts of the world, of course, popular allegiance is paid to even smaller units of society — tribes and ethnic groups. Indeed in places like Iraq, we should wish there were a stronger nationalism.
But the principle remains that voluntary loyalty to one’s own group is the most powerful popular coagulant. Belief in the supremacy of national sovereignty is not at all, as its critics claim, an inevitable driver of racism or nationalism. Even if, like the Dixie Chicks, you claim not to be able to understand the very idea of patriotism, you should at least acknowledge that, for most people, the nation is the primary political unit, the one that legitimises the governing of their nation.
Nor is support for the principle of a world of free sovereign nations consonant with economic isolationism. Globalisation has worked (and it has been the greatest antidote to poverty the world has ever seen) because it has been driven by consumer choices, individuals acting freely to promote their own welfare, not by elites.
Indeed, economic integration remains the best way to promote global co-operation and genuine prospects for peace. It gives people a tangible stake in each other’s futures in a way no supranational ideal or multilateral institution ever could.
Aside from Russia and Turkey: Crimean War, War between Prussia and Austria, Franco-Prussian War, war for independence [Greece], Balkan Wars vs. Ottoman Empire, Swedish occupation of Norway, Wars of Italian Unification [Savoy & France v. Austria-Hungary].
There's been more than a few.
The place was certainly European!
It was a battle between "European" nationalities and "European" nationalities.
Come to think of it, it's even less warlike than our own National Anthem, which includes the following lines:
Oh where is the band that so vauntingly swore,
Through the tumult of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country would leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
Heck, the American national anthem is pretty much purely about war and sticking to it. That's a GOOD thing.
It's also based on a drinking song. An even better thing.
If we can just get East Timor to base their national anthem on Ziggy-Zaggy-Ziggy-Zaggy-Hoi-Hoi-Hoi...
This guy is smoking something good; what about the Belgian family on the verge of stand off with the "elites" for not observing/signing the required UN approved BS while home schooling?
The Germans (Germanic heritage for which I am part of it) are always proud of their roots and "fussball"(soccer) is a venue were most Germans are showing their heritage and pride more so then other events.
18th century wars were more frequent but can't compare to the casualties seen in Europe during the first 15 years of the 19th century. Even Frederick, with his massed musket fire, couldn't even come close.
If you want to use those criteria, there were a great many European Wars during the 19th century, including four in which the US participated.
Unless I am quite mistaken, the Napoleonic Wars had very few technological advances in weaponry over the American War of Independence or the Seven Years War.
The biggest difference was the French Revolution and its "popularization" of warfare, resulting in much larger armies "living off the land," with the inevitable atrocities against the people living on that land.
If you run numbers, I believe you will find that the Seven Years War had equivalent percentages of deaths in battle among those engaged to the wars of Naponeon.
These numbers didn't rise significantly till the American Civil War and the development of the rifled musket and minie ball. Then casualties as a percentage of troops engaged did shoot up, as generals continued to use tactics developed by Napoleon and Wellington long after they were no longer appropriate.
Here, here! What tends to get forgotten is that the lessons of the War of Northern Agression were there for all to see, including European military observers. They were cast aside as irrelevant, because those American bumpkins didn't know how to fight a war. It took the War to End All Wars to make Europe understand the lessons that we had already painfully learned.
So I guess the North American Union (Here comes that super highway straight north from Mexico through America, ready or not, like it or not, you can't stop it!) Mexico's depopulation and the rest of the hemispere's mass migration northward, ethnic cleansing, rampant TB, Hepatitis C, leprosy, measles, etc. has the author's approval. I feel better already.
Nationalism is a dirty word because it is a synonym for chauvinism.
Nationalism is not about singing your national anthem with pride and to fever with your O legged football stars - it's economical warfare - intrigue, slave trade, steeling resources and giving a wet §$%§ about people in other nations.
Patriotism is the good one. Nationalism is for Skin Heads.
First, the anti white stuff in the US has been relatively minor and the anti white is much less than the anti gay, anti black, anti asian things in the recent past (1960).
Second, the Nazis really were bad people and not all that long ago. If I were a german, I'd be in self flagelation mode for my entire life for allowing this to happen.
Third, yes there is a very minor amount of anti white guy stuff going on in the US, but that brick on you shoulder is way out of proportion to the offenses you perceive.
Next time I meet you, I will have to remember to say Seig Heil.
Bud, not only am I Jewish but a quarter of my family disappeared in the Holocaust. But guess what - the vast majority of Germans alive now were not alive then and are blameless for it.
If you think the anti white stuff in the USA is minor, you haven't been paying attention. There is an entirely different set of rules for white people than there is for nonwhites, written all over the law and even more in practice. Hate crimes under which only white people are punished; school admissions programs that put white people on the back of the bus; job hiring and promotions quotas and target goals for anybody but whites (you may have heard of "diversity" programs if you are employed).
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, nonwhites can be true Hitler-revering genocidal fascists and few appear to be concerned. The lesson of the Holocaust is not "Germans are evil".
Number of white people prosecuted for hate crimes is probably less than 100 in a given year or about 1 per 3 million population. School admissions are mostly about kicking out the asians to admitt blacks. After CA banned race based admissions, the number of blacks went down, asians went up and whites remained the same. The diversity hiring is minimal compared to the jobs whites get via the old boy network and I use the near idiot Bernie Ebbers of worldcom as an example.
You would not trade places with a black man , but the reverse shure would be true.
Finally, I find the moaning by any race in the US to be stupid because every one can achieve success. I will say that the game in the USA favors whites, asians, hispanics, and blacks, in that order, but the game is fair enough that complaints are unjustified and that includes white men.
I'd call it the war for idiot white men to keep black slaves. War for Souther IGNORANCE, also works for me.
You sound like a f'in liberal or a Ohio Republican Senator. - Neither worthy of attention.
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