Europe

Re-institute the military draft to fight for Lebensraum!

The piece of news is doing the rounds in the media that the United Kingdom and the United States are considering re-instituting conscription. Why? You guessed it right: because of the threat from Russia (and maybe China) and because the armed forces are short of manpower. There has been no draft in the United States and the United Kingdom for years: both countries have based their military forces on voluntary conscription. Then, year by year, the supply of volunteers has been dropping, which was of ever more concern of the respective governments. Why did voluntary conscription drop, in the first place?

There are a number of important causes that the authorities will by no means address. Where do you recruit soldiers? Well, you recruit them among young, able-bodied men, who – if they are not mercenaries – are of the patriotic cast of mind or who – at worst – want to make a living by serving in the armed forces. You need to recruit men who are tough physically and mentally, who eagerly engage in rivalry and love risk-taking. You need to select from the many candidates because not every man is suitable for any type of military service and some may not be fit to do the military service at all, given their health and mental capabilities, much though they wanted to be soldiers.

Now, all the factors having to do with the recruitment of appropriate human supply have been played havoc with for decades and the outcome is that there are fewer and fewer volunteers. What has been destroyed and continues to be destroyed?

[1] The family and its fertility. In the West, there are fewer and fewer typical families made up of a man and a woman with a bunch of kids – among them boys that can be recruited – with a male father figure that is capable of developing manly features in his sons. All this is gone. Single-mothers are raising at best only sons and they care more about passing onto their offspring the ideas of climate change or equity rather than anything having to do with warfare. Manly features of character such a daring, courage, self-sacrifice, rivalry, dominance have all been suppressed. Boys with feminine casts of mind are not going to serve in the army and if some of them are, they are not going to be anywhere close to becoming warriors in the full sense of the word. Low fertility does not make up for the shortage of soldiers on the ranks. Hence ideas of drafting foreigners, aliens, individuals without citizenship of the country they are supposed to fight for; hence the idea of recruiting foreigners in exchange for… citizenship. Does it not remind us of the late phase of the Roman Empire?

[2] Demise of faith, patriotism and generally higher values. Unless you are a mercenary – i.e. a paid murderer – who fights for wages, you need to believe in the grandeur of your country, your nation and generally in afterlife. On the contrary, if your mind is preoccupied with material things and pleasurable experiences – having sex, travel, having fun, being on the dope – you are incapable of sacrificing not only your life but even a small fraction of it. If all that matters is pleasure and if there is no afterlife, why die for such an abstraction as your nation or country? Haven’t you heard for decades that patriotism is a dirty word? Haven’t you heard for decades that anybody can be a British or American (or French, or German) citizen once he sets his foot on British, American (French, German) soil? Haven’t you heard for decades how terrible, awful, repellent, reprehensible your nation has been for centuries because of its imperialism, racism, because it practised slavery and so on, and so forth? Haven’t you heard for decades that your nation needs to genuflect to the rest of the world for the sins committed by your ancestors, that your nation needs to keep apologizing on and on and dismantling all traces of its past glory? Why should you now want to fight for such a monster? Add to this the culture of shaming and blaming, the resultant emergence of the snowflake generation and your picture is complete. A young man has been showered with entitlements and flooded with the victimhood narrative. If you belong to one of the national-ethnic-sexual minorities that – as you have learned again and again – have been oppressed by your country, why should you fight for this country?

[3] How about ethnic diversity? Diversity was supposed to make the Western nations strong. Why then can’t the Western nations recruit wonderful warriors from all those Pakistanis, Afghanis, Somalis, Kenyans, Mexicans, Colombians and, and, and who have flocked to and keep flocking to the West? They all should be grateful for the opportunity of having a wonderful life in one of the western democracies, they all should readily and willingly join the armed forces. They somehow don’t. Why? The answer is bafflingly obvious. First, you do not relocate to another country, thousands of miles away from your home country, avoiding (as is often claimed) war in your own country, only to take part in another war! Second, it is not people with a patriotic cast of mind who abandon their nationality and adopt a new one. They all do it for economic purposes! If they were not loyal to their own countries or nations why in heaven’s name should they be loyal to the adopyted country or nation? Why should a Muslim Afghan or a Jamaican professing voodoo fight for a (post-)Christian Britain? Why would anyone expect anything like that from them? They did not want to suffer the hardships of life in their country of birth, why should they want to suffer those hardships in an adopted country? Did they immigrate to experience unpleasant things? Why can’t the Western elites understand it?

[4] Wokeism. Even though all the factors enumerated above discourage young, able-bodied men from joining the armed forces, still some of them would do so, but then they are repelled by wokeism. It is drummed into their heads and thrust down their throats that women, lesbians, gays, people of colour they are all better and more desirable in the military ranks than white toxic, racist, sexist and bigoted males. Who in his right sense would like to join any organization in which he is not welcome? If women and homosexuals and Third World people are going to do the job better than white males, why hinder them in that task? Is it not so that the armed forces rather than recruiting able-bodied, higher IQ men, strive to fulfil the diversity quota?

[5] Last but not least, it is all about the policy-making that leaves people astounded. The escalating conflict between the West and Russia is one that has been devised by the Western powers that be. Why all of a sudden is Russia the West’s enemy? What has happened? Do not let yourselves be drawn into the petty news about Mariumpol, Avdievka or Bakhmut. Look at the big picture. What is it?

In 1988 we had two opposing military and economic blocks: in the West it was the EEC and NATO, in the east it was the Comecon and the Warsaw Pact. Two – so to say – empires ready to be at each other’s throats at the drop of a hat.

In the years 1989-1991 the Eastern Empire surrendered, laid down its arms, dissolved itself, abandoned its ideology, opened itself to Western ideological, economic and military penetration. The Cold War came to an end, and it seemed that a new, peaceful era was dawning.

In the year 2022, a war between the Western Empire and the rump of the Eastern Empire broke out. Its battlefield – Ukraine. What happened in between 1991 and 2022, what happened within these thirty years?

Well, the Western Empire kept expanding, enlarging both the EEC (now rebranded as the European Union) and NATO, encircling the rump Eastern Empire in an attempt to suffocate it, to dismember it (like they did with Yugoslavia) and removing it from the world’s political chessboard once and for all. The victory in the Cold War was regarded as insufficient: the enemy – the rump of the Eastern Empire – needed to be crushed and carved up. Naturally, the rump Eastern Empire began to put up a fight, hence the ongoing war.

Now, why should young men in the United Kingdom, in the United States, in France, Germany, Sweden or the Netherlands take part in this fight? To win the Lebensraum for the likes of Sunak, Biden, or von der Leyen? Why should young males have their limbs amputated, why should they come back home maimed? Because the Western Empire wants to wipe out the Eastern Empire?

To top it all, watch the US Army recruitment video presenting a prospective soldier – a girl raised by “two moms” – and you will understand why a mentally healthy man will avoid joining an “army” like this.

No more lies about migrants

The traffic light coalition (Ampelkoalition) is like a deer caught in headlights: it has been letting migrants in for years and telling its fairy tales, its lies that it benefits the German economy and demography in the long run. Now there is a defiant professor of economics in Freiburg, Bernd Raffelhüschen, who has calculated exactly what the cost of this madness is. In his study for the Market Economy Foundation, he estimates the cost of “immigration” at 5.8 trillion euros. This is due to the fact that immigrants hardly integrate, and even if they are able to operate on the labor market after years of qualification, the taxes that they pay are too low compared to the transfers offered to them by the state and municipalities to be able to call them “profitable” citizens who contribute to prosperity. Without immigration, the financial gap for the tax and social systems would be 13.4 trillion euros instead of 19.2 trillion euros – i.e. 5.8 trillion euros lower, according to Raffelhüschen.

The traffic light coalition expects a rejuvenation dividend from immigration: immigrants are their godless religion, the politicians living in their unrealistic Berlin bubble worship colorful idols, but even if they hold the office of finance minister, they are not financial experts who care about the positive fiscal balance of their undertakings and decisions. The idiotic welfare state, which functions in a socialist way (everyone is equal and on an equal footing), is in danger of collapsing because the traffic light coalition gives the green light to non-taxpayers and imported recipients of benefits. Wouldn’t it make more sense to transfer these funds to the indigenous farmers in Cottbus and other German cities, to make life easier for those who manufacture foodstuffs?

Irish courage

On November 27 this year, The Irish National Party (An Páirtí Náisiúnta) made a statement in defence of the Irish nationality, against the uncontrollable, mass influx of foreigners. The statement denounces the “contemptible, bought-up political establishment” that is pursuing a policy of open borders and stepwise makes the Irish to become a minority in their own country. The statement expresses the concern of the National Party over the future of Irish identity and the survival of the Irish people. It calls the listener’s attention to the disastrous consequences caused by large numbers of foreigners in housing, employment, education and medical care. It condemns this ongoing deluge that is obviously encouraged and promoted by the treacherous elites. Much of the statement is devoted to rising crime as a result of the influx of aliens.

So far, so good. The Irish, just as any other nationality, have the right to protect themselves against the influx of foreigners. If the human rights that are quoted on every occasion are to be regarded with the seriousness that they deserve, then any national community ought to be prevented from being diluted by a huge admixture of foreigners.

Also, the foreigners, the aliens, the immigrants – you name them – ought to behave with proper restraint. Surely, they wouldn’t like to have their countries changed by mass immigration; undoubtedly, they wouldn’t like to have to accommodate foreigners and provide for them; undeniably, they wouldn’t be happy about becoming a minority in their own countries. Why, then, do they inflict that calamity on others? 

Because there is no such thing as human rights: we only have the right of the strong over the weak, and the right of the sly over the meek. Since the Western governments keep promoting immigration to their own countries, since they tolerate the everyday influx of foreigners and continue to take full care of them, the other ethnicities simply take advantage of it. They must think of the Western nations in terms of – forgive the word – being suckers.

For all that, if the foreigners were honourable people, they would not impose themselves on other ethnicities. They know it full well that they are not welcome by the common people, they know it full well that they only live off the fat of the land because the treacherous elites of Western nations think it right to exploit their own people and redistribute the wealth produced by them to immigrants. Sadly, as said above, there are no human rights: given an opportunity to make a killing, man will make a killing.

With all compassion and due understanding, the statement delivered by the National Party reveals more than it says. While discussing the consequences of the influx of foreigners, there is only one ethnicity that is named – three times – and these are Ukrainians. It is hard to believe that the National Party is so much upset about the arrival of Ukrainians. Ukrainians are white, European, (post-)Christian and – just as all Slavs – have a deep inferiority complex towards the West and everything Western, so this complex will drive them to go out of their way to assimilate and integrate themselves with the Irish nation. It is obvious that it is not the Ukrainians whose presence in Ireland is resented by the National Party: it is the Third Worlders that are not welcome, and rightly so. Why then does the statement of the National Party not mention them?

The Irish patriots have only so much courage as to point a finger at other Europeans.

“It is funny watching all of this unravel right before our very eyes”

A few days ago, seven – some report – eight thousand invaders from Africa landed on the island of Lampedusa. Nothing new under the sun happened. Similarly, nothing new could be heard in the mainstream media. The same mumbo-jumbo could be read or heard about the “migration crisis” and what to do with it, that is, how the better process influx after another influx, because – God forbid! – the invaders cannot be pushed back under any circumstances.

There was something a bit new this time. All interested in the event could see on their screens two women descend the flight of stairs that enabled them to get out of the plane down. Lampedusa was graced with a visit by one Ursula von der Leyen and Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. What a sight it was! Two small girls surrounded by big men bending over backwards to please them, two little girls were doing the tour of the island, inspecting the place, preaching to and moralizing the world. What a sight it was, really! Ursula von der Leyen, a model in an advanced age, always in her spic-and-span, neat and tidy, immaculately custom-designed, made-to-measure suits and the same hairdo, as usual excited about being able to speak English, got new thrills of virtue signalling: she showed how kind, compassionate, empathetic, sensitive, philanthropic and caring a human she was: as usual, all she wanted to do was to save all the people (with some exceptions, which is always said for domestic political consumption) and bring them to the European fold, with Meloni – the latest incarnation of Pinocchio – keeping company. One could almost see Pinocchio’s growing nose: well, she swore to solve the problems of invaders and now she was compelled to accompany Ursula von den Leyen (how aristocratic her name sounds!) in “welcoming the refugees”. The reader will have remembered von der Leyen’s words in the European Parliament, where she championed the cause of “Europeans of African origin” or “Afroeuropeans” or whatever to this tune, so now she simply landed on Lampedusa to extend her welcoming hands to the new arrivals with Meloni as her younger “sister” who came along to get a lesson in European values. 

Georgia Meloni and Ursula von der Leyen visit Lampedusa as migrant numbers soar, The Times and The Sunday Times, YouTube

Now, Ursula von der Leyen must have got yet another thrill apart from speaking her favourite language and walking around like a model that attempts to maintain her youth and vigor. She came to Lampedusa to embrace the many thousands wild males aged 20-30! What a sight for a woman of success! European white men are simply beyond compare. The first, second, third and fourth waves of feminism have turned them into eunuchs! Now women being women are designed to burn with passion for manly, brutal, wild, ferocious men and – lo and behold – a new batch has arrived! That’s what Ursula von der Leyen has arranged for her many sisters scattered across the Old Continent! Clap your hands in acknowledgement!

To think of it. Year after year after another year the same events – now Lampedusa, now Gibraltar, now the Balkans, you name it – and the same hopelessly helpless (seemingly or genuinely?) politicians who solemnly promise to solve the problem only to fail miserably as if by design! Why won’t Ursula von der Leyen invite a number of those African Europeans or Europeans of African origin to her own villas, palaces, rooms, tables… Why? Or maybe she already accommodates some of them? Who knows.

A comment under a YouTube short clip about von der Leyen’s and Meloni’s visit to Lampedusa says it all [emphasis added]: Literally not one world leader has a clue what is going on in the world or how to stop the bad stuff. It is funny to watch them spout off about how great they are and what action they are going to take. We all know nothing is going to happen, the power they profess to have is an illusion and we are all beginning to see that. It is funny watching all of this unravel right before our very eyes, while they think none of us can see it. [@neildraycott5272]

Why is this war being prolonged?

You recognize this fragment, don’t you? Suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. At the outbreak of the hostilities, Ukrainians were very much aware of the proportion of the opposing forces, and so they were willing to negotiate. Such talks even began in Turkey but – lo and behold – Kiev received a command to back out. Now the hostilities are slowly nearing its second year and the number of casualties is rising. More than four hundred thousand (FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND) Ukrainians are said to have lost their life, but despite these horrible losses and despite the ten thousand being played off against the twenty thousand – to adduce the introductory parable – the war continues and there is no sign of it coming to an end. Why? Do Ukrainians really think they can beat the Russian bear? Do Ukrainians really think they can regain lost territories? Do Ukraine’s Western supporters and guardians really think Ukraine can win and regain its lost territories? Anyone in his right senses cannot believe that, especially high-ranking officials, whether in Ukraine or in the West, because they have all the data and, consequently, they know that ten thousand is fighting a losing battle against twenty thousand. If they know it – assuming we are dealing with people in their rights senses – then why is this war being prolonged? 

The Independent

The war is being prolonged for three reasons, two of which are rather familiar to the reader. One purpose in having this war go on is to weaken Russia as much as possible, to keep it engaged in a conflict, to make Russian president less and less popular among Russians and – maybe? – have the Russian people topple him down. A highly unlikely event, considering the highest approval rates that Vladimir Putin gets as compared to all the other leaders around the globe (Western leaders are credited with less than 50% of approval). The other reason is to deplete American stockpiles of arms so as to have a pretext to replenish them i.e. so that the industrial military complex can have new government lucrative commissions for the production of replacement equipment. There is yet a third important reason why the war – a proxy-war between the United States and Russia – is being prolonged. 

The Dive with Jackson Hinkle

Up to February 14, 2022, American troops had carried out military operations or – simply put – outright wars and interventions in very many places of the world, and nowhere did they encounter an enemy to be reckoned with. Whether it was Iraq or Yugoslavia, America’s opponent was significantly weaker, smaller, and usually politically isolated. It is in Ukraine that the American military are encountering an opponent that is a match. It is not only the type and quality of the advanced weaponry that the Russians use, but also the strategy and the tactics that they employ. Americans want to learn about their rival (enemy) as much as possible from the warfare. Ukraine is their laboratory, a military area where a war game is conducted, a war game for real with this precious exception that no American soldier gets killed (save for mercenaries, but that’s a different story). Americans have their advisors there on the ground, they have American mercenaries i.e. American active duty soldiers in disguise, while obliging Ukrainians provide the Pentagon with any and all intel. The war in Ukraine is a huge opportunity to study the Russian army in action. It is a huge opportunity to make Russians reveal the most secret, the most advanced of their weapons. Wars being wars, a hope arises that some of the most advanced types weapons might be intercepted. The reader might recall how the British received the whole V-2 ballistic missile that landed in marshes in occupied Poland and was retrieved, disassembled and documented by the Polish Home Army and then sent in pieces to the United Kingdom by means of a Dakota that flew from southern Italy to Poland and back.

Ukraine cannot win this war, just as ten thousand cannot prevail over twenty thousand. Nor can the collective West win it. Still, the United States can keep one of its global rivals militarily engaged (for more information, see the geopolitical ideas developed by RAND in 61 Gefira Feb 2022), study the Russian strategy and tactics and hope for intercepting as many items of Russian military technology as it is possible. That is why Ukrainians must die.

Joseph II and the EU

The Hapsburg monarchy and the European Union bear very striking resemblances. Of interest is especially the period of the reign of Emperor Joseph II (ruled 1765-1780 with his mother Marie Theresa, and 1780-1790 on his own), who went down in history as the great reformer, a revolutionary on the throne. During his tenure the Hapsburg monarchy was – just like the present-day European Union – an ethnically and culturally diversified political entity. Within its borders the following languages were spoken: German, French, Dutch, Italian, Czech, Hungarian, Slovene, Croatian, Slovak, Polish, and Ukrainian, to name the major ones. The whole structure was ruled from Vienna, just as today the European Union is ruled from Brussels. Though the European Union respects national languages, one may rest assured that its managers will slowly but surely impose one language across the Union and it is going to be English, despite the fact that the United Kingdom has ceded from the EU. Consider Ursula von der Leyen or Klaus Schwab for that matter: you only hear them speak English, not their native tongue, and you can feel the thrill that they get from it even though the latter of the two personages has a hard time pronouncing the English sound represented by the ‘th’ cluster of letters. Who cares? When French was regarded as the language of the managers of the world, not all of those managers mastered the language.

Coming back to our comparison. Joseph II was – just as the managers of the EU are – obsessed with reforming everything he or they can lay their hands on. And just like Joseph II, the managers of the EU adopt the patronizing attitude towards their subjects because they – just as Joseph II – know better what will benefit the people. How do they know that? They know it from the ideologues that they admire, under whose influence they are. Joseph II imbibed the ideas fabricated by John Locke, d’Holbach, Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu, Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), and others. He was intoxicated with those ideas. The managers of the European Union are intoxicated with the ideas of Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Henri Bergson, Antonio Gramsci, Karl Popper, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Yuval Harari, and many, many others. To put it otherwise: both Joseph II and the present-day managers of the present-day Hapsburg monarchy (i.e. EU) draw inspiration not from reality, real life, but from the schizophrenia of the philosophers that they follow. What they – the 18th century revolutionary on the throne in Vienna and the modern revolutionaries in the offices in Brussels – have in common is also the fact that they all want to regulate everything to down to the minutest detail. Consider some of the reforms.

• The abolishment of the capital punishment. Yes, it was Emperor Joseph II who came up with this idea; the managers of the European Union followed suit. No country may become a member-state of the EU unless it abolishes the death penalty if it happens to have it.

• Emperor Joseph II cared very much about nature, about the environment to the point that he prescribed doing away with wooden coffins and either using the same for new burials or burying people in sacks. Does that not remind one of the EU ideas to refrain from eating meat and using fossil fuels?

• Emperor Joseph II believed in the efficiency of central authority. The managers of the EU reflect the same conviction: member-state governments are being constantly deprived of more and more of their prerogatives or competences.

• Emperor Joseph II expanded his administration, and so does the European Union.

• Joseph II would produce edicts, decrees, regulations lavishly and abundantly: 6 000 during his ten-year reign, i.e. two documents per day; the European Union is not lagging behind by any means.

• Emperor Joseph II would prescribe such details as for example how many candles were allowed to be burning during a church service… One need only to think about the EU’s definition of what a banana is or what to classify as fruit or vegetable.

• The emperor was anti-Church: he abolished a number of church festivals (why waste time in idleness?) and gained notoriety due to his abolishment of many monasteries and cloisters which he regarded as useless. Just as today, prayer and divine service are considered superstition to say the least. You remember the adamant refusal of the EU to include Christianity in the preamble to the constitution of the European Union, don’t you?

• The emperor was busy destroying the social cohesion and the ideological foundations of his monarchy (for all practical terms a union of former states): his edict of religious toleration and the emancipation of Jews followed by the permission of imposing interest on loans along with the recognition of marriage as a civil union (yes, already at that time!) slowly undermined the traditional society with its set of moral values, of which usury (interest on loans) mattered a lot. The European Union follows in the same footsteps: the importation of Muslims and Hindus and the suppression of European traditional values are in full swing. This alone slowly brings about the change of European culture. Similarly to today’s changes that enable a Hindu or a Muslim to run an otherwise (at least nominally) Christian nation or to hold an important position in it, Joseph II paved the way for non-Europeans and non-Christians – at that time Jews – to work as civil servants, occupy high posts and be admitted to the ranks of the nobility not because of their pedigree, but because of their wealth.

• Also, it was not the original idea of the architects of the European Union to abolish border customs: Joseph II did it as first within his monarchy, which was, as already mentioned, a cluster of formerly independent kingdoms (Czechia, Croatia, Hungary, Poland). 

Just as during the reign of Joseph II, so, too, now, all these reforms, changes and regulations were/are too many, too detailed, too quickly, and too soon. The reformers behave like they were moulding a figure out of clay: they think that everything goes, they think that the subjects or citizens see eye to eye with them on all these changes, they think that the people at the other end of the reforms are grateful. Why do the reformers think so? Because they live in a fairy land of their won imagination fertilized with the pseudo-intellectual sperm of the respective philosophers. True, Joseph II did his best to learn how common people live: he tarvelled under a disguise across his many lands and abroad, and is even known to have ploughed a stretch of a field with his own hands. Also today we get such clowns: high ranking politicians or activists who love to display how down to earth they are. A day’s labour does not compare to a year’s labour, while a monarch or a politician at a plough is no more than a show for the people. That kind of experience is no experience at all, and consequently does not entitle the monarch or the politician to claim that he knows how to run all businesses.

Managing society or economy or whatever of the kind is like managing your own body. The reality is that you cannot manage or control society anymore than you can manage or control your body. That is you can, but only up to a point and strictly obeying the signals that society or the body provide. Just as you cannot eat to store food in your stomach for later digestion but you need to eat small portions at certain intervals, just as you cannot demand of your body much physical strain or skill without previously training it patiently, step by step for months or years, so you cannot transform society at the snap of your fingers even if your ideas seem to be oh so beneficial. Those ideas only seem to be oh so beneficial, but are they? Reformers of all times and ages seem to be impervious to common sense. Worse, they think they are omnipotent, they think they are capable of taking into account all factors, so that no results produced by their reforms will surprise them. That’s a huge delusion. Joseph II fell for it, and today’s managers of the European Union fall for it. The latter all the more so because they are armed with computers!

Consider: the abolishment of church holidays meant the abolishment of days free of work. Why should labourers be pleased with this change? The abolishment of the capital punishment means that it is not the state but other (secret? criminal?) organizations that henceforth have the monopoly of meting out the severest of all punishments i.e. ultimate power goes to them. Who are you going to obey, who are you going to fear: the government that cannot kill you, or the mafia that can? Joseph II prescribed that 70% of a peasant’s income be retained by the peasant, i.e. all manner of taxes ought not to surpass 30%. It looks very nice on paper and is oh so very humane, but can it be maintained in real life? The emperor never ran a business, never dealt with contractors or employees: how did he know what was feasible and what was not? Ah, surely, he had advisors, but then advisors are usually the people who are good at guessing the wishes of their superior and complying with them. It is very easy to decree something from a desk; it is an entirely different story to put decrees into practice. The managers of the EU are, like the emperor, oblivious to this truth.

Joseph II’s reforms produced chaos rather than a blessing. People began to revolt: Hungarians did and the burghers of Brussels did (the lands of present-day Belgium belonged then to the Habsburgs). What an irony of history! Is Brussels going to rebel in the foreseeable future against the EU commissioners along with their decrees and decisions produced by the thousands? Notice in passing that Otto Hapsburg (Hapsburg!) was one of those ardent activists working towards the creation of the European Union. Obviously, the obsessive idea of bringing different nations into one fold and blessing them with tons of directives and decrees runs in this family.

When Joseph II died, his subjects were relieved. Many of his reforms were repealed. He himself prior to his death had grown to be aware of his political failures and revoked some of his decrees. He had himself buried in a simple coffin (not a sack!) with the following legend on the gravestone: Here lies a ruler who, despite his best intentions, was unsuccessful in all of his endeavors. In all likelihood, the same will be applied to the managers of the European Union. 

Divided we fall, united we stand?

Europe used to be divided into many feuding kingdoms, duchies and republics. Europe used to be like that almost all of the time. The kingdoms and duchies and republics would wage wars and play havoc with each other’s property and population. Yet, at the same time, in the modern era that began with the first geographical discoveries, it was these warring European countries separately that started to explore the world outside the Old Continent, establish colonies and subdue almost the whole rest of the globe. It was not only France, England (later the United Kingdom) or Spain that took possession of vast territories in the Americas, Africa and Asia; it was also such small countries as Portugal, the Netherlands, and Belgium. They each acquired overseas territories that were many times larger than the home country of the conquerors. The people of the colonial countries spilled over to the colonies, populating them and developing there economy along with advancing some degree of education. The European colonial countries did not stop warring with one another during the time of subduing the other continents: conversely, they clashed militarily not only on the Old Continent, but also in the new territories, which sometimes led to the change in ownership but never ever weakened the colonial European states. True, the American dependent territories became independent of the United Kingdom, Portugal and Spain, but they continued to expand and exist just as their former European overlords.

Today all those European countries are united because their managers claim that unity translates into strength. Now, where is this strength? Europeans have long withdrawn from Africa and Asia as colonial powers and have stopped populating those continents. Conversely, Europeans are being colonized by people from Africa and Asia. Today, former colonial powers have heads of states from the Third World while their indigenous populations live in constant fear of the arrivals whose constant influx is unstoppable. Non-Europeans transform parts of the European countries where they have settled and no one in his right senses can say that this transformation is for the better. When Europeans settled in the Third World countries, the transformations were for the better without a shadow of a doubt. Think of all the technology, infrastructure, agriculture, medicine, literacy and, and, and. Of course, the transformation did not benefit all the indigenous inhabitants at once, but then it was a time that also most Europeans did not enjoy all those benefits to the full on the Old Continent.

Let us come back to the titular question: where is this strength of a united Europe especially as compared to the previous centuries? Before the Second World War the United Kingdom alone controlled the whole of India (at that time that term referred to the combined territories of present-day Pakistan, India and Bangladesh), not to mention a quarter or so of Africa. Today the United Kingdom has a Hindu prime minister while the UK’s capital has a Pakistani mayor. Belgium used to control a huge chunk of Africa known as the Kongo: today, though Belgium’s capital is concurrently the capital of the European Union, Belgium is an insignificant country on the international arena while one third of its capital is populated by Muslims who turn their boroughs into extraterritorial areas. France used to control a third or so of Africa and the whole of Indochina; today, the indigenous French people live in fear of the aliens from France’s former colonies and are exposed to repeated tsunamis of street violence complete with shop window smashing and car torching. Yet, Europe is united. It has become united to be strong and influential. At least that’s what is said. It has turned out, that it has become united only to fall easier prey to whoever pleases to grab for it. The agreeableness of Europeans, their welcoming culture and readiness to apologize for all real and made-up crimes of their predecessors of whom an average European has no idea exposes them to predators and parasites.

The phrase, United we stand, divided we fall (attributed to Aesop), has been misinterpreted. It only works for natural unions like those uniting people of the same ethnicity. Beyond that its application is maladaptive because it is in struggle and fierce rivalry that we grow stronger (or perish, as the case may be). A union or alliance of forces is as debilitating as shared ownership in that in either case no one cares about the whole and everyone expects the other participant (ally, co-owner) to do the brunt of the job. We know this famous saying: what belongs to everybody, belongs to no one. The same may be said about unions: they are a kind of shared possession of strength and resources and decision-making and what not: manifestly and demonstrably ineffective. Rivalling nations reflect the economic forces on the free market: they cause products to be better and better and at the same time cheaper and cheaper. A monopoly brings about stagnation, lack of incentives and ultimately death. Which is what we are seeing in the Western world. Unless you want to tell me that France or Great Britain or Spain or Belgium are now – acting in unison – more powerful than they used to be a hundred years back when they each acted on its their own, which goes counter to historical fact invoked above.