Category Archives: Nationhood

UPDATED: Merkel’s Ironic Comment About European ‘Territorial Integrity’ (Ukraine)

EU, Europe, Federalism, Foreign Policy, Nationhood, The State

On the matter of the Ukraine crisis, and in particular, on whether to arm Ukraine, keeping in mind the dangers of “sparking a proxy war with Russia”—German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who met with Barack Obama today, said something rather curious:

Merkel said that abandoning the principle of territorial integrity at the heart of the Ukraine crisis posed a threat to the “peaceful order of Europe”.
“For somebody who comes from Europe, I can only say, if we give up this principle of territorial integrity, we will not be able to maintain the peaceful order of Europe,” she said. “It’s essential.”

Territorial integrity is just about all that remains of European national sovereignty under the Bismarckian suprastate that is the EU.

In the quest to engineer a single European identity, Eurocrats have substituted the nation-state with deracinated, supranational institutions. “The EU already has rights to legislate over external trade and customs policy, the internal market, the monetary policy of countries in the eurozone, agriculture and fisheries and many areas of domestic law including the environment and health and safety at work.” And the EU intends to “extend its rights into … justice policy, especially asylum and immigration,” and harmonize judicial practices.

The rhetoric about the free flow of goods, labor, and capital across borders is as credible as the verbiage about union for peace. The EU has mandated strictly regulated markets, privileging labor interests over those of capital, and instituted oppressive socialist labor laws and “unfair-competition” regulations that have hiked labor costs and resulted in structural unemployment.

Take The Czech Republic. Joseph Sima, associate professor at the Prague School of Economics, described the fate of his country since joining the EU as having gone “From the Bosom of Communism to the Central Control of EU Planners”: There’s the added dead weight of thousands of meddling mandarins, there’s the imperative to change local laws to fit EU decrees; to hike taxes, even liquidate duty free shops. There’s the burden on nascent businesses of prohibitive health and safety standards. (The right to work is not an EU-approved birthright.) There are subsidies and grants of monopoly to farmers. A regime of licenses now restricts entrepreneurial activity and blocks entry into assorted occupations. On hand to subdue any Czechoslovakian Martha Stewart is an army of SEC gendarmes, also by EU edict. As he photocopies his paper, Sima is reminded of the Association of Authors’ special copyright shakedown fee he must shell out at the copier—EU orders! (Corporeal property rights are barely protected under EU reign.)

A process of centralization has seen the people of Europe come under the control of the institutions of the European Union. The European Commission now proposes more than half of any given country’s laws, explained a Euroskeptic on RT’s Crosstalk. Eighty seven percent of Germany’s laws are handed down by the EU and 50 percent of the UK’s laws.

Liberty, of course, is associated with a dispersion of political power, never its concentration and centralization.

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UPDATE: According to Justin Raimondo, @Antiwar.com, Kiev refuses to tolerate the,

describing the conflict as a civil war rather than a Russian “invasion.” This is a point the authorities cannot tolerate: the same meme being relentlessly broadcast by the Western media – that an indigenous rebellion with substantial support is really a Russian plot to “subvert” Ukraine and reestablish the Warsaw Pact – now has the force of law in Ukraine. Anyone who contradicts it is subject to arrest.

And even

a dissident within [the Brookings Institution], former State Department official Jeremy Shapiro, … argues that the Ukrainian conflict is a civil war that cannot have a military solution, and is more than likely to provoke a dangerous military confrontation with Russia …

… The US has no business interfering in Ukraine’s civil war, and no legitimate security interest in the question of who gets to administer Crimea – which has been Russian since the days of Catherine the Great. The idea that we are going to confront Russia over this issue is dangerous nonsense – and, unfortunately, it is just the sort of nonsense politicians of both parties find hard to resist.

There are even some ostensible “libertarians” who can’t resist the temptation to refight the cold war, notably the voluble and well-placed NATO-tarian faction of “Students for Liberty” (SFL), who denounced Ron Paul for his supposedly “pro-Putin” (i.e. anti-interventionist) statements on Ukraine. Ron is appearing at their upcoming “International Conference,” with several of the loudest NATO-tarians in attendance: one hopes he’ll give them a good talking to, although perhaps a spanking is more appropriate for these noisy brats. These juvenile blatherskites claim “Compelling arguments can be made for both advocates of globalist and noninterventionist foreign policy positions,” but aver that “Ron Paul has crossed the line.” It is they who have crossed the line: no libertarian is or can be an advocate of a “globalist” foreign policy – because conquering the globe is, you know, a statist thing.

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First The Packers’ Fan, Then The Pickup Line

Crime, Nationhood, Politics, Sport

So I’m out power walking up the hill, in the gentle precipitation characteristic of the sublime Pacific Northwest. (I have yet to resume running since knee pain struck in October.) Ahead of me a man walks his dog. Both look forlorn.

I’m powering ahead, trying to decompress because of a laundry list of stressors, of which the least pressing are Pete Carroll, Russell Wilson and “Beast Mode”:

Well, at least we have a better Chris Matthews to help supress the bile that rises whenever the wide receiver’s namesake on MSNBC makes an appearance. (The other, lesser Chris Matthews is host of “Hardball,” an apropos name, given Chris’s well-known carnal affections for Barack Obama. The man spent the first two years of the Obama presidency in a state of sexual delirium. The crappy, MSNBC Chris is famous for fessing up to experiencing something akin to a (daytime) nocturnal emission during Obama’s coronation—”thrill up the leg,” Matthews called the accident.)

I pass the gloomy dog and his owner. The latter asks me how I’m doing. I reply: “Seahawks sad.” The guy says, “Oh, I’m a Packer’s fan, so I’m doing OK.” By Wikipedia’s telling, “The Green Bay Packers are the last vestige of small town teams common in the NFL during the 1920s and 1930s.” The team members look good. I might switch allegiances.

So far I’ve rooted for my home team, the Hawks. Why? It occurred to me that the football fetish in the US has arisen in the context of a country whose inhabitants share very little other than The Game. The host country’s history and founding documents have been turned into a liability by its educrats. The language has been dumbed down and demoted as the number of non-English-speakers clamoring for official recognition for their respective tongues rises. And the faith that once united those who fought to establish the republic has been banished from the public square and confined to the shopping mall, where adherents shop for God until they drop.

As I neared the end of my walking route, a car that had driven past a few time stopped. I imagined the occupant needed directions and sidled up to his vehicle. I’m wearing a thin anorak and a Jews-for-the-Preservation-of-Firearms-Ownership cap.

A young man looks me over and asks, “Want a ride, honey?” Really? In a family friendly neighborhood, in perfectly pleasant weather? I’ve seem “them” grisly cases on Investigation Discovery—a big favorite, bar “The Americans” and “The Fall” (first season, especially)—where women get shoved into cars by crazies.

First the Packers’ fan; then the pickup line. Perhaps I should pack a pistol next time I go for a walk in the neighborhood?

The Obama Ebola Doctrine: Worship The Saints In ‘Spacesuits’

Barack Obama, Ethics, Foreign Aid, Healthcare, Nationhood, Propaganda, Pseudoscience, Terrorism, The State

“The Obama Ebola Doctrine: Worship The Saints In ‘Spacesuits'” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

… The Obama Ebola Doctrine (OED) was dictated during the second of two presidential addresses, this week, on Ebola. The message, delivered against a backdrop of demigods in freshly unpacked, white laboratory coats, was hardly subliminal. So serious was Obama, he even threw in references to a God not himself, something he rarely does.

The president used the word “troops” to describe the individuals stationed behind him. These public health workers were “serving” America (much like soldiers would). Theirs was a “sacrificial service” (much like that of saints). They were “citizens of the world, global citizens,” who were “leading globally” (as all you locals should strive to do).

Volunteering in Africa Obama has equated with American “patriotism.” Well of course. If being “citizens of the world” is the in existential state-of-being—then patriotism must be redefined. No longer does it mean the love of one’s country and countrymen, but love of The World. Go to West Africa, and you are demonstrating “citizenship … and public service at its best.” In Africa, you will be serving America, “the country that we love.”

The medics who rush headlong into the Ebola maelstrom embody “American exceptionalism” (unlike all those Americans who run businesses they didn’t build).

To the extent that America’s Ebola workers are motivated by “faith,” it is their “sense of faith and grace” that Obama has commanded all Americans to emulate.

The president is now defining for his subjects the very meaning of worship.

Aversion to Ebola, Obama mocked as “hiding under the covers,” indirectly associating precautions with cowardice, even venality.

His Holiness “saluted” Dr. Craig Spencer for “his service”— Spencer is the saint in scrubs who lied to investigators about his whereabouts. He had been gallivanting around Manhattan when already symptomatic.

Is Nurse Kaci Hickox next to be canonized? …

… The Bush Terrorism Doctrine was as follows: We’re fighting them over there, so we don’t have to fight them over here.

The Obama Bioterrorism Doctrine runs parallel. BHO’s express objective is to convince Americans that if we fight Ebola in West Africa, it won’t threaten America: “If we [don’t] deal with this problem there, it will come here” …

… The complete column is “The Obama Ebola Doctrine: Worship The Saints In ‘Spacesuits,'” now on WND.

UPDATE IV: Jealous Of The Scots (What Would Lincoln Do? Drop Daisy Cutters)

Britain, Nationhood, Socialism, States' Rights, The State

Envy ought to animate America, as it watches the push for the decentralization of power—radical federalism—across Europe and in Canada. For here in the US, the legacy of Lincoln has prevailed. He carried out a violent constitutional revolution (instead of pursuing peaceful emancipation like every other nation did), a revolution, which, in turn, sired the modern imperialist, interventionist and highly centralized American State, and outlawed peaceful political divorce.

The sweet sounds of of Scottish secession (to shamelessly mix metaphors) have fallen silent. For now. Scotland voted against leaving the United Kingdom and becoming an independent nation. But only just. The “No” campaign won 55.3 percent of the vote. The Scots hardly “rejected independence,” as Fox News put it. The tyranny of democracy has meant that a simple majority won the day.

Afrikaner secessionist Dan Roodt summed up my sentiments, in an email:

The Scottish referendum is a big disappointment to me, as I had hoped that a “Yes” victory could have unleashed a whole series of independence movements, in Europe, but also here in SA. More and more the Zulus control South Africa, with the media waging a futile campaign against Zuma. So ultimately ethnicity has triumphed over all these other clever theories.

Contra broadcaster Mark Levin—who clings for dear life to an anti-secession sentiment, so as to better love the unlovable: war criminal Abe Lincoln—the healthiest and most intuitive response to deep-seated unhappiness—political or personal—is not a constitutional convention, but a divorce; to exit the abusive relationship.

If Americans try what the Scots have have just done, our states and neighborhoods would be invaded by the federal government. People could die.

UPDATE I: To continue the theme of majority makes right, via Butler Shaffer at LRC.COM:

The mainstream media informed us that David Cameron was greatly pleased by the outcome. It is the nature of politics that this statement is true. Political thinking has trained people to believe in the 51% principle: no idea is worthwhile unless 51% of the public believes in it. But imagine a man with nine children, and four of them dislike the father so much that they want to vote to have all siblings leave home. The vote is held and, by a 5 to 4 margin, the pro-big daddy side wins. Would any loving psychologically-healthy man consider this to be a great personal victory?
Opponents of this measure were quick to announce that the question of Scottish independence has been settled, “once and for all,” words that mean “when we get the outcome we want, the issue can never be brought up again.”
All-in-all, the outcome of this vote was a referendum on the ageless choice people must make between individual liberty and collective security.

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UPDATE II: If “1 in 4 Americans are open to secession, what does it say about this freedom which Lincoln waged war to abolish? It tells you that secession is intuitive to a very many ordinary folks.

Secession, political divorce, peaceful separation: these are the most natural and best ways to solve disputes. Walk away. This tells you just how aberrant was Lincoln’s war against the South.

UPDATE III:

Nikola Dzhilvidzhiev on Facebook:

In the past week, I heard a lot of arguments from neoconservatives that Scottish secession was ‘because they wanted to be even more socialist than the UK’. Maybe I was a bit optimistic but I believed that the sudden leftward surge in Scottish policy and resultant loss of living standard would have shocked the people and policymakers into understanding that capitalism and free markets are the way to prosperity, á la China.
Until the next referendum, at least, you’re all welcome to join me in shouting Alba gu bráth from the rooftops of the world.

To Nikola Dzhilvidzhiev:

Yes, the secessionist would have had to learn whence come their subsidies and, for freedom’s sake, they would have had to cease and desist the country’s march toward complete socialism. Nevertheless, the CORRECT libertarian view is to support the impetus of decentralization. (Reason magazine is left, Beltway libertarianism).

UPDATE IV (9/19): WHAT WOULD LINCOLN DO? Drop Daisy Cutters. That’s what he’d do.

Rafi Farber emails EPJ editor Robert Wenzel:

Before we decide what to think about Scottish independence, let’s consider what our beloved forefather, Abraham Lincoln, Honest Abe, would do if he were head of the UK in the event that the Scots secede from the United Kingdom tomorrow.
Answer: He would make some stupid but eloquent speech about how a House Divided Cannot Stand…and then proceed to bomb the living crap out of Scotland, murdering as many people as possible man woman and child, burning their property and salting the earth. And after he broke their will to fight, he would force them back in the UK and tax the living daylights out of them. Then we would all celebrate him hundreds of years later for saving the country.

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