Posted on 08/13/2009 6:55:01 AM PDT by Tolik
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The more Europe professes to be egalitarian, the more cynical and conniving the people have become. |
After concluding another 16 days in Europe. I am again reminded how different their form of socialism is, and yet how closely it resembles the model that Obama seeks for America. The vast majority of citizens lives in apartments, even in smaller towns and villages. Cars are tiny. Prices are higher than in the states; income is lower (The government taxes you to pay for things like “free” college, so you won’t have much to spend on antisocial things like your Wal-Mart plastic Christmas Tree or your second K-Mart plasma TV.)
Mass transit is frequent and cheap, but often crowded and occasionally unpleasant. The stifled desire to acquire something—large house, car, deposit account—is of course not quite destroyed by socialism, but rather is channeled into a sort of cynicism and anger, often leading to a hedonism of few children, late and long meals, and disco hours until the early morning. The number of Gucci like stores selling overpriced label junk like 200 Euro eye-glass frames and 1000 Euro leather bags to socialists is quite amazing.
A Party for Everything
Multiple political parties flourish, all with passionate single agenda constituents. Graffiti is not gang related, but mostly political and nonsensical. Media is divided by politics, a leftwing paper, a rightwing magazine. Unions control almost all government services. And yet class is firmly entrenched and aristocratic snobbery more pronounced. (We already see that strange symbiosis between socialism for everyone else, capitalism for a few, whether in Michelle’s clothes, the Obama’s mansion, the Kerry fortune, the Edwards compound, the Gore appurtenances, the Clinton speaking cash cow, and to many others to list).
Among upper-class Greeks, one is constantly reminded that their grandfather, their cousin, or mother-in-law was this minister once, or that writer years ago, or today a famous diplomat—anything to focus one’s attention beyond the possession of the normal flat in the normal apartment building and the normal tiny Fiat and the normal public education.
Ministries to be Milked
When I talk to well-off Italians and Greeks who have substantial homes by the sea not available to most others, one of three realities leak out: one, they have family money made decades ago by their ancestors that includes ancestral estates permissible before the period of supposed mandated equality of result. In other words, theirs got theirs and then helped make laws so no one else could.
Or, two, people simply cheat on taxes all the time. If you buy something, the offer comes to pay in cash. A Greek explained to me his government job is his official tax-paying day job; the expertise necessary for it is what he farms out at night and on weekends for cash that goes for a second home, a larger car, a vacation abroad.
Egalitarian Vampires
Or, three, the technocrats who run these vast welfare states are not only well paid, but more importantly are able to garner cars, travel, and plush apartments as tax-free job related perks (cf. the current scandal in London). If being a “venture capitalist” is what wannabe Harvard kids in their 20s sought in the 1990s, being a bigwig Minister, with neo-classical office, state Mercedes, and official residence is the perennial European equivalent. This is a continent of Tom Daschles, who win by being exempt from the burden of government that they subject on others, and win again by having the contacts to sort out government contracts to crony-businesses.
My point? The more Europe professes to be egalitarian, the more cynical and conniving the people have become—almost as if the human craving for one’s own property and to make one one’s destiny cannot be denied by the state, but by needs will be channeled into what the state mandates as anti-social for most, but quietly a perk for a few.
Unhappy Socialist Campers
I’ve been reading a lot of commentary in Italian and Greek newspapers these last three weeks and talking to Italians, Greeks, and Turks during two long European lecture tours. Socialism surely does not make one happier, or content knowing that the resulting society is somehow more humane or caring. Instead each faction is constantly on the verge of striking against the public good. There are always the bad “them”, easy-target public enemies among the rich and aristocratic who need to give away more to the “deserving.” The bank workers are in perpetual war against the garbage cleaners who hate the social service workers who whine about the fire and police—each convinced the public must grant more largess on themselves than on like others.
Just as the government is necessary to nanny one and all—and thereby earns both the demands and resentment of the recipient for its caring—so too the United States serves the same role to Europe at large: hated and needed at the same time.
Parents Are Hated by Their Dependents
In Greece, they are being hit by a pandemic of Turkish over-lights in the Aegean, and rather cynical efforts of Turkish money-making smugglers to buy wrecked freighters and beach them with hundreds of aliens from the Middle East on the shores of Aegean—Greece being the gateway to the EU money trough for supposed “political refugees”. Illegal aliens are everywhere in Athens. The country is sort of the front lines of European utopian pretension: what sounds good in Brussels is reified in the here and now in Greece with its porous maritime borders on the Middle East.
I would assume that if there weren’t a US-led NATO, some sort of shooting war would quickly break out over immigrants, Aegean air space, or Cyprus. To suggest that privately to Greeks is to earn a grudging nod; to do so publicly is to get a fiery denunciation and yet another tutorial about the 1967 coup, and the Henry Kissinger intrigue in Cyprus, as prequel to Iraq and Bush.
Thoughts on DMV Health Care in extremis
Because I have traveled a great deal in my life, often recklessly so, alone, and to weird places in search of answers to topographical questions of the ancient Mediterranean world, and first-hand observations about battles and campaigns in out of the way places for several books— I have ended up over the last 36 years in a number of socialist hospitals: E-coli poisoning in Athens from tainted strawberries; a cut tendon on my index finger from a barbed wire fence in Sparta (with reaction to live tetanus vaccination); a severed ureter due to an impacted staghorn calculus kidney stone from dehydration of excavating at Corinth; a light case of malaria at Karnak, Egypt; an out of control, strep throat that turned into something more in Izmir, Turkey; a ruptured appendix, surgery, and peritonitis in Tripolis, Libya, and so on.
In each case, the care was terrible. A sole lonely doctor or maverick nurse in two cases saved my life, but on the average the facilities were filthy, and the employees akin to those in the government-run post office or bank. And a strange thing occurred as well: often the staff became mad at the patient: “Why did you come here with an appendix problem?”; You should have not let your strep get out of control!”; “If you don’t drink water, what do you expect!”; “See what happens when you don’t take all your quinine pills!”.
Socialism will always blame the patient (just watch when it comes here), I suppose for drawing on collective resources, and to focus on public enemies whose weight, smoking, or lifestyle (I do not smoke or drink, but exercise and am of reasonable weight) have betrayed the public ideal. (Fat people, and smokers (except our President) will soon become as hated in the socialist mind as jet skis, those in their 80s who want a bypass, Yukons, Tahoes and investment bankers.)
Europe is Europe, Because America is Not?
No, Europe should not only not be our model, but Euros know it should not be our model. A few brilliant Europeans whisper, “Of course, it is lost here, since no addict insidiously hooked on government entitlement ever gives such largess up. But you over there still have a chance.” For a few Europeans, America’s military (drawing on fewer people and less territory and GDP than the expanded EU) is the only hope for Western defense. It’s where most life-saving drugs will emerge, new technologies are birthed, and huge sophisticated markets grow for European goods. So they have a stake in not allowing us to become like them.
The Not-so-Kind Face of Socialism
One final thought: I’ve never met a beatific equality-of-result person. They are usually grim and angry warriors determined to right cosmic wrongs, eager to demonize those who ‘have too much’, convinced that the divine ends justify the demonic means.
In that regard, despite the hope and change rhetoric, when Obama went down that ‘spread the wealth’ path, I feared that we would get the Rev. Wright race talk. It is no surprise that Obama invokes the constant bogeymen who do all sorts of terrible things, among them most prominently the Orwellian Goldstein figure of George W. Bush. There are no legitimate critics, only those Obama & Co. claim are shills for the insurance industries, who unfairly attack the Canadian health system, the greedy who go to Vegas and the Super bowl, the Neanderthal who cling to their guns, the dissidents known as Nazis, stooges, mobs, and the well-dressed who dare to become rude to the Congresspeople.
The road to socialism is not natural. It must be paved with the hard work of class envy, demonization of the successful, and obfuscation that each new massive spending program that will raise both taxes and deficits (that’s the point, after all, to create so much red ink that we must raise taxes and redefine what constitutes income) must be passed immediately, without delay, now-or-never to stave off Biblical hunger, plague, and flood.
Or else!
Inevitably, Fascism will return with a vengeance to Europe.
I’m thinking I should start knitting, just in case.
Victor Davis Hansen is outdoing himself at pajamasmedia.com. Every post there is a winner plus he gets erudite comments from readers. There is an archive
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/
(smile) Not sure if knitting will be an approved activity, it might be viewed as nonproductive or harmful to the body with all that repetitive motion.
Businessmen who like to break wages are the major culprits driving this mass migration, and that has split the American Republican Party. The "Business Wing" (Mr. Bush, McCain, all the RNC leadership) want immigration to continue unabated, for the economic benefit of their clients, wealthy businessmen.
The result will be civil war at some point, as Mexico becomes a narcoterrorist state and its citizens in the U.S. become increasingly lawless and align with the cartels and destructive political operators in the U.S. (Alinskyites/neoCommunists).
Since our defensive umbrella funds Europe’s Socialism, a point VDH has often made, what will happen?
Ironic, Obama supposedly hates colonialist Europe. I guess he admires their post-colonial prostration.
A superb article. Between ennui, uncontrolled immigration, and state-funded bread and circuses, social democracy is beginning to look more and more like Rome before the fall. The EU cannot stop it because the sort of sloppy egalitarianism that results in a two-tiered society is one of its founding notions. Individual European countries can recover from it once the EU breaks up, which is beginning to look like an even bet. Individual states within those countries can recover from it. Towns, villages - what we see here in the name of human freedom is the devolution of monolithic government. It isn't a new idea. Marx insisted one had to go through a stage of massive central government to get there but it would appear that the latter is actually the end state and the former a mirage. The state never does wither away, it only grows and festers.
America's secret has always been "build it and they will come" - "Land Of Opportunity" is more than an advertising slogan, it's the assurance that you will get to keep what you earn, a blunt principle that has been steadily chipped away at by people who don't. The more socialistic a country turns, the more that tendency is that you get to keep what you steal. It should be no surprise that it results in a government of thieves drawn from a ruling class of thieves.
Hence Mr. 0bama, whose resume of honest work could be written on a postage stamp. Hence the Clintons, whose principal labor was jobbing the legal system, Mr. Gore, a Tennessee thoroughbred whose antecedents are purely ruling class and whose mansion appears exempt from the laws he proposes for others, Mr. Edwards, whose own mansion was constructed on the proceeds of a lawsuit that ostensibly was to protect The People from The Corporations; the list is long and very familiar. It is an aristocracy of thieves, and the government it intends to run is a kleptocracy. Nice work if you can talk your way into it.
>>”Land Of Opportunity” is more than an advertising slogan, it’s the assurance that you will get to keep what you earn, a blunt principle that has been steadily chipped away at by people who don’t.
On that note, see my tagline. It’s the fix, but how we get to there is quite the quandary.
>>Nice work if you can talk your way into it.
And look at yourself in the mirror every morning. I really don’t see how they do it.
VDH a great read as usual.
Thoughts on DMV Health Care in extremis
Because I have traveled a great deal in my life, often recklessly so, alone, and to weird places in search of answers to topographical questions of the ancient Mediterranean world, and first-hand observations about battles and campaigns in out of the way places for several books— I have ended up over the last 36 years in a number of socialist hospitals: E-coli poisoning in Athens from tainted strawberries; a cut tendon on my index finger from a barbed wire fence in Sparta (with reaction to live tetanus vaccination); a severed ureter due to an impacted staghorn calculus kidney stone from dehydration of excavating at Corinth; a light case of malaria at Karnak, Egypt; an out of control, strep throat that turned into something more in Izmir, Turkey; a ruptured appendix, surgery, and peritonitis in Tripolis, Libya, and so on.
In each case, the care was terrible. A sole lonely doctor or maverick nurse in two cases saved my life, but on the average the facilities were filthy, and the employees akin to those in the government-run post office or bank. And a strange thing occurred as well: often the staff became mad at the patient: “Why did you come here with an appendix problem?”; You should have not let your strep get out of control!”; “If you don’t drink water, what do you expect!”; “See what happens when you don’t take all your quinine pills!”.
Socialism will always blame the patient (just watch when it comes here), I suppose for drawing on collective resources, and to focus on public enemies whose weight, smoking, or lifestyle (I do not smoke or drink, but exercise and am of reasonable weight) have betrayed the public ideal. (Fat people, and smokers (except our President) will soon become as hated in the socialist mind as jet skis, those in their 80s who want a bypass, Yukons, Tahoes and investment bankers.)
In each case, the care was terrible. A sole lonely doctor or maverick nurse in two cases saved my life, but on the average the facilities were filthy, and the employees akin to those in the government-run post office or bank.
And a strange thing occurred as well: often the staff became mad at the patient: “Why did you come here with an appendix problem?”; You should have not let your strep get out of control!”; “If you don’t drink water, what do you expect!”; “See what happens when you don’t take all your quinine pills!”.
Socialism will always blame the patient (just watch when it comes here), I suppose for drawing on collective resources, and to focus on public enemies whose weight, smoking, or lifestyle (I do not smoke or drink, but exercise and am of reasonable weight) have betrayed the public ideal.
ObamaCare: Obama's intended punishment for the perceived historical "sins" of America.
And frankly - not taking his medicine - not drinking enough water - and not seeking care quickly enough are things for which he should accept responsibility .. or blame as it were...
“Multiple political parties flourish, all with passionate single agenda constituents.”
Why is this a bad thing? More viewpoints get representation.
If the US does have a second civil war, it will be a great deal messier than the first.
In the WBTS the opponents were reasonably well split up geographically.
Today the groups are totally intermixed, in states, in neighborhoods and often within families.
Such a “true” civil war usually gets very nasty quickly.
>>>If the US does have a second civil war, it will be a great deal messier than the first.
In the WBTS the opponents were reasonably well split up geographically.
Today the groups are totally intermixed, in states, in neighborhoods and often within families.
Such a “true” civil war usually gets very nasty quickly.<<<
Very true observation. However, I’m seeing something different from a civil war on the level of China during the 1930s.
The American culture emerged from the cultures of Great Britain and northern Europe. Those places generally have rebellions. (Even the American Revolutionary War was a rebellion of British subjects against the Crown, and there’s a reason Confederates call themselves “rebels.”)
The metaphor for our present struggle is the Glorious Revolution of 1688, in my opinion. The question there was the divine rights of kings and political rights of Parliament. The rebellion was fought between the elites, with most of the people trying stay out of the way.
Our question is similar - should there be an all-powerful central government, or do individuals really have pre-existing rights? I’ve heard this over and over at the town hall meetings, where people have begun their statements with, “I don’t want the government to...”
On one side, there are academics, the media, the unions, and federal government officials. On the other side, there’s the military, the churches, state and local governments, talk radio, and businesses. These sides have been at war already for a while, although it hasn’t gotten to the point of outright violence. The health care proposal, however, might be the turning point.
The Glorious Revolution wasn’t a revolution like the Bolsheviks or Pol Pot. There were battles here and there. Some people (Catholics, Irish) were on the wrong side and got stepped on badly. In the long run, though, the Glorious Revolution established traditions like religious tolerance and a Bill of Rights, which were good things.
This is just a metaphor. (I don’t see anything like the Dutch navy coming into the capital... but perhaps there’s something about Sarah Palin having to come overseas to get to the Lower 48... or, much worse, a Chinese fleet coming to “save” the American government from the rebels... well, all that is science fiction.) My point is that we may get to the edge of calamnity, and back off, if free men and women are willing to stand up for their liberty. It wasn’t a good world in England for the Catholics after the Glorious Revolution, and certainly it wouldn’t be a good world for leftists if free people re-established limited government and individual rights. I’m not going to weep for the defeat of communists, though.
There is another scenario. We could have some kind of external disaster - an EMP weapon from Iran, for instance - and, for a while, there would be the collapse of the central government. The elites would battle it out locally - and since they really have no base of support without federal help in most locations, freedom and liberty would win out overall.
I guess we’ll see what happens soon enough.
We’re skipping right by Europe and heading for Zimbabwe.
Actually he was discussing getting gratuitous condescending comments from caregivers when he was being treated in a variety of hospitals, over the span of the past 36 years. He has a lot of experience of being subjected to a system where the patient/customer is not ‘right’, but instead, an inconvenient ‘workload’ for the caregiver. IOW, the patient is much lower in the pecking order in a socialist system, than in our capitalist system of medical care delivery.
You have it exactly backward.
Washington
Oregon
California
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Illinois
Indiana
Michigan
New York
New Jersey
Georgia
Massachusetts
Connecticut
New Hampshire
Delaware
Colorado
Nevada
Texas
These are all tax producing states. They contribute more to the Federal Government than they receive. They are clustered along the coast and the Great Lakes. The rest, the "countryside" as you call it, are all tax consumers. There is your welfare state.
This is not by accident. It was set up that way as a matter of national policy. The productive people are supporting the goobers.
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