Comments:
* The EU is a recreation of Christendom without the Christianity. Soon enough to be Europe without the Europeans.
* It’s a very obvious but rarely spoken fact, that the main role of the EU is the integration of Germany into Europe, or in other words, the prevention of a German nationalism. This is the real meaning of the often mentioned goal of “preventing war in Europe”. France has been sidelined by events much like after Versailles. When German re-unified, peacefully, rather than through wars of restoration like last time, there was little that France could do to oppose it, even morally. German leadership knew how sensitive this issue was, so it pushed for the Maastricht treaty, firmly binding Germany to a new liberal institutional order, which became the basis of the new EU. So France became stuck in an impossible quagmire: it could not oppose German hegemony through war, but also not through peace. A more robust EU would eventually be dominated by Germany and France could do nothing to help it.
* Visualizing Values Mismatch in the European Union
http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/visualizing-values-mismatch-in-the-european-union/
In my July 1 post, Brexit as Destructive Creation, I argued that one significant cause for the European dysfunction was the choice made by the European elites to expand the union too fast too far. Why do I think this was a mistake? […]
The pattern is so striking it almost doesn’t require commentary, but let’s spell it out anyway. The original six (“Core Europe”) group together very closely. There are only two other countries that are part of the same cluster, Austria and Switzerland. Remarkably, the modern territories of both of these countries were encompassed by the boundaries of the Carolingian empire (see Is this the Beginning of the End for the European Union?). It looks like the “ghost” of the Charlemagne’s empire has more influence on today’s cultural values than such later distinctions as Catholicism versus Protestantism.
The current 28 members of the European Union, on the other hand, don’t cluster at all. On the contrary, they span three-quarters of world variation in values. Only African-Islamic countries and central America end up outside the ellipse that encompasses all 28 EU members.
EUROPE’S NORTH-SOUTH DIVIDE—A STUBBORN CHASM
http://www.europeaninstitute.org/index.php/ei-blog/155-european-affairs/ea-august-2012/1614-europes-north-south-dividea-stubborn-chasm
Proponents of the cultural explanation for the North-South divide, like Tino Sanandaji from the Institute of Industrial Economics, are returning to a certain extent to the ideas of 19th century German sociologist Max Weber. The latter had suggested that Protestant countries in Northern Europe outperformed the rest of the continent because of their superior work ethic, because they were thriftier and because they possessed more effective social capital, that is to say the efficacy of social networks. Following in Weber’s footsteps, Sanandaji argues that the current gap in economic outcomes between North and South cannot be explained by differing policies, since both display roughly comparable levels of social expenditures, taxation rates and government sizes. Instead, similar policies are resulting in different outcomes because the latter are ‘mediated through the deeper structures of society’, such as culture, norms, or social capital.
Cognitive emotion regulation and psychopathology across cultures: A comparison between six European countries
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886916302756
Most notably, there were differences on strategies that have been linked to symptoms of psychopathology; overall northern European countries (Germany and Netherlands) made less use of strategies such as rumination, catastrophizing, and other-blame, when compared to southern and eastern European countries (Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Hungary).
* The EU was Europhobic in its origins. The first President of the Paneuropean Union, elected in 1923, was Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi. He envisioned the destruction of the existing European races through admixture with Africans. The new mixed race was to be ruled over by a new, primarily Jewish, aristocracy. From his book Practical Idealism written in 1925 (i.e. prior to the rise of National Socialism in Germany):
The man of the future will be of mixed race. Today’s races and classes will gradually disappear owing to the vanishing of space, time, and prejudice. The Eurasian-Negroid race of the future, similar in its appearance to the Ancient Egyptians, will replace the diversity of peoples with a diversity of individuals …
Instead of destroying European Jewry, Europe, against its own will, refined and educated this people into a future leader-nation through this artificial selection process. No wonder that this people, that escaped Ghetto-Prison, developed into a spiritual nobility of Europe. Therefore a gracious Providence provided Europe with a new race of nobility by the Grace of Spirit. This happened at the moment when Europe’s feudal aristocracy became dilapidated, and thanks to Jewish emancipation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_von_Coudenhove-Kalergi
The Paneuropean Union is the oldest European unification movement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paneuropean_Union
The Coudenhove-Kalergi Foundation awarded its European Prize t0 Angela Merkel in 2010.
https://www.bundeskanzlerin.de/ContentArchiv/EN/Archiv17/Artikel/_2011/01/2011-01-13-merkel-europapreis_en.html
* Juncker seems to be very similar to Yeltsin. The more his project falls apart, the more he drinks. He drinks to avoid the reality of what he has created.
Trump is of course a teetotaller. I wonder if he will impose some of that philosophy on, for instance, the white women and Native Americans who are drowning in drink?
* It is interesting to note the impact of Muslim immigration on Germans. Having lived there for four years in the 1970s and visiting often, it was without question one of the safest places on earth. I’ve found myself in the Red Light districts of many German cities at night before immigration (no aspersions please :-), noting in surprise the number of women walking alone (including little old ladies with canes) and young mothers pushing baby carriages … something you would not dare to do in the United States.
From the news, many German girls and women today find it too dangerous to venture out of their homes to visit the town square during the day or leave their homes at night without male escorts. What a contrast as German cities areas start to reflect the seedier aspects of decaying urban ghettos in the United States and the generally degenerate conditions in underdeveloped countries.
It is difficult to comprehend the argument that the solution to the social decay in Germany caused by Third World immigration is more Third World immigration. “Quick, my house is on fire … quick, more fuel for the fire!”
* How did the US go from being a country founded by slave owners, to a country willing to send 600,000 to their deaths to end slavery? How did the UK Liberal party go from wanting to abolish the income tax in 1882 to introducing the welfare state in 1906? How did the Israeli Labour party go from “There’s no such thing as the Palestinians” in 1969 to Oslo in 1993? The list goes on and on. The basic point seems to be that liberalism should not be understood as a set of beliefs, but as a process, the telos of which is always receding into the future. The best work on unwrapping this remains Moldbug, but, of course, he never systemized his observations. Part of the problem is that much of basic mental equipment we use to understand politics itself comes out of the liberal tradition and is thus delusory. More recently, the blogger doing the most to carve out something like an explanation is the recently defunct Reactionary Future, but I’m not sure if he’s insane or not. It’s hard to tell when you lose your bearings.
In the specific case of the EU, though, it’s worth noting that it was constructed by liars – Leftist radicals working with the State Dept – who at every stage dissembled about their true intentions. It’s basic purpose has always been to destroy pre-WW2 conservative Europe.
