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The Pursuit of Knowledge
The Rebirth of Nations
Europeans are standing up for their national identities at the risk of being labeled “extremists” by the Eurocrats.
The True Finn Party in Finland has broken through the left-liberal consensus to take second place in the polls, reminding voters that Finland is not just a geographical area but a country defined by language, culture, and history, a country that has been defended at great cost against the Soviet desire to absorb it and which is now, thanks to the European Union, being robbed of its savings in order to replenish the pockets of Mediterranean kleptocrats. Finns have revealed that they don’t like being manipulated by political elites outside the country. They want to show the world that Finland is not just a quaint survival, defined by a weird language and a romantic folklore, but a real and self-governing nation-state, whose resources belong to its citizens, and whose citizens wish to claim their ancestral territory as their own.
A comparable feeling has made itself manifest in France, with growing support for the Front National of Jean-Marie Le Pen, and for Le Pen’s dynamic daughter, who is now likely to lead the party to positions of power and influence across the country (see Joseph A. Harriss, p. 54). The Dutch have rallied to the cause of Geert Wilders, whose outspoken attacks on Islam and calls to restrict immigration have brought a new spirit of national defiance to the politics of the Netherlands. Belgium is unable to form a government, on account of the nationalist aspirations of its Flemish majority, while in Italy the Lega Nord is pressing for a redefinition of the Italian settlement, one that will acknowledge the distinction between the law-abiding north and the Mafia-ridden south of the country.
All across Europe the nations are beginning to boil with frustration, at a political straitjacket that prevents them from asserting their ancient rights. The causes of this are many, but two in particular stand out: immigration and the European Union. The two are connected, since it is the EU’s non-negotiable insistence on the free movement of labor that has prevented the nation-states from exerting meaningful control over their borders. At a time when unemployment in Britain stands at more than 2 million, more than a million immigrants from Eastern Europe have come to take what jobs there are. It is impossible that such a situation should endure without strong sentiments of national entitlement among the indigenous people, and our governing elites are struggling hard to prevent those sentiments from emerging into the light of day.
Equally provocative, however, has been the debt crisis within the European Union. At a time when the people of Britain are being told that they must face cuts to public services that will cause widespread hardship, they are also being told that taxpayers must contribute 4 billion pounds — roughly 200 pounds each — to pay for the extravagance of Portuguese politicians, who have been lining their pockets and robbing their people in the traditional way, and relying on the euro to protect them. The subtle economic arguments with which this move is justified fail to persuade people that they are not being robbed. And it is one appeal of the nationalist parties elsewhere in Europe that they honestly declare that the people are being robbed, in order to subsidize the lifestyle of elites who have no historical connection with them, and that when people are being robbed they have a right to defend themselves.
JUST WHERE ALL this is going it is hard to know. One thing is certain, however: nationalist sentiments are once more prominent in the cultural landscape of Europe. And they are the more prominent for the attempt by the Eurocrats to forbid them. I doubt that this situation was foreseen by those who first set the European process in motion. It seemed reasonable, even imperative, in 1950 to bring the nations of Europe together, in a way that would prevent the wars that had twice almost destroyed the continent. And because conflicts breed radicalism, the new Europe was conceived as a comprehensive plan — one that would eliminate the sources of European conflict, and place cooperation rather than rivalry at the heart of the continental order.
The architects of the plan, who were for the most part Christian Democrats, had little else in common apart from a belief in European civilization and a distrust of the nation-state. The éminence grise, Jean Monnet, was a transnational bureaucrat, inspired by the vision of a united Europe in which war would be a thing of the past. His close collaborator Walter Hallstein was an academic German technocrat, who believed in international jurisdiction as the natural successor to the laws of the nation-states. Monnet and Hallstein were joined by Altiero Spinelli, a romantic communist who advocated a United States of Europe legitimized by a democratically elected European Parliament. Such people were not isolated enthusiasts, but part of a broad movement among the postwar political class. They chose popular leaders like Konrad Adenauer, Robert Schuman, and Alcide De Gasperi as the spokesmen for their ideas, and proposed the European Coal and Steel Community (the Schuman Plan) as their initial goal — believing that the larger project would acquire legitimacy if it could first be understood and accepted in this circumscribed form. At the same time the long-term goal was kept secret, on the justified understanding that, if the people got wind of it, they would make sure it never happened.
When the first instruments of European cooperation were being devised, the continent was divided by the Iron Curtain, with half of Germany and all of the Slavonic countries under Soviet occupation and fascist regimes installed in Portugal and Spain. France was in constant turmoil, with a Communist Party commanding the support of more than a third of its electorate; the free remnant of Europe was critically dependent upon the Atlantic alliance, and the marks of occupation and defeat were (except in Great Britain and the Iberian peninsula) everywhere apparent. Only radical measures, it seemed, could restore the continent to political and economic health, and those measures must replace the old antagonisms with a new spirit of friendship.
As a result, European integration was conceived in one-dimensional terms, as a process of ever-increasing unity under a centralized structure of command. Each increase in central power was to be matched by a diminution of national power. Every summit, every directive, and every click of the ratchet has since carried within itself this specific equation. The political process in Europe has therefore acquired a direction. It is not a direction that the people of Europe have chosen, and every time they are given the right to vote on it they reject it — hence everything is done to ensure that they never have the chance to vote on it. The process is moving always toward centralization, top-down control, dictatorship by unelected bureaucrats and judges, cancellation of laws passed by elected parliaments, constitutional treaties framed without any input whatsoever from the people — in short, the process is moving always toward imperial government. And only one thing stands opposed to this result, and that is the national sentiments of the European people.
For this very reason national sentiments have been demonized. Speak up for Jeanne d’Arc and le pays réel, for the “sceptred isle” and St. George, for Lemmenkäinen’s gloomy forests and the “true Finns” who roam in them, and you will be called a fascist, a racist, and an extremist. There is a liturgy of denunciation here that is repeated all across Europe by a ruling elite that trembles in the face of ordinary loyalties. But the fact is that national sentiment is, for most ordinary Europeans, the only motive that will justify sacrifice in the public cause. Insofar as people do not vote to line their own pockets, it is because they also vote to protect a shared identity from the predations of those who do not belong to it, and who are attempting to pillage an inheritance to which they are not entitled.
WHAT WE ARE NOW seeing in Europe is that yesterday’s radical visions cannot translate into today’s political needs. The imperial project has entered into conflict with the only source of sentiment upon which it could conceivably draw for its legitimacy. The nation-states are not equally stable, equally democratic, equally free, or equally obedient to the rule of law. But they are all that we have. They alone inspire the loyalty and obedience of the European people, and without them there is no way that the machinery of the Union can act. By replacing national accountability with distant bureaucracy, that machinery has left people disarmed and bewildered in the face of the current crisis. The euro, invented and imposed without any proof that the people of the “eurozone” had any desire for it, was immediately understood, by the kleptocrats of the Mediterranean, as a way of enlarging the national debt, and transferring it to the hard-working Germans. And the people of Greece, Spain, and Portugal agreed, since nobody alerted them to the cost — the national cost — that will be paid, once the eurozone breaks up, as surely it must.
Now that the day of reckoning is approaching, people all across the continent sense the need to prepare themselves for hard times. In a crisis people “take stock,” which means that they retreat to the primary source of their social identity, and prepare to defend it. They do not do this consciously. But they do it nevertheless, and the futile attempt by the comfortable elites to denounce the “extremism” of the people whose inheritance they have stolen merely exacerbates the reaction. But the situation is not a happy one. Not only are there nations like the Flemish and the English that have no nation-state of their own. The half-century of peace and prosperity has fed upon the European cultural inheritance without renewing it. The constitutional treaties and transnational courts of the Eurocrats have made a point of granting no favors to the Christian faith, and the spirit of multiculturalism has ensured that national cultures receive no subsidies either from national governments or from the European Union. A “cult of the minority” has been imposed from above.
This cult is painfully apparent in England, where I am writing. English schools that refuse to celebrate Christmas will nevertheless insist on a day devoted to Diwali and another to Eid; “diversity” is the theme of our official festivals, and the Arts Council of England even refuses to support the English Music Festival, on account of the offensive word English in its title. At the same time, here as elsewhere in Europe, people no longer accept the cult. All across Europe “multiculturalism” is being rejected, both by ordinary people and by many of their elected representatives. For, while multiculturalism has done nothing to reconcile immigrant communities to their new surroundings, it has destroyed the frail remnants of national cultures that survived the Second World War.
This is one reason why people who stand up for their national identity can so easily be made to look like “extremists.” You don’t look like an extremist if you express your national sentiment in the idiom of a Péguy, an Orwell, a Lampedusa, or a Sibelius. But when you have no national icons besides the flag and the football team you find it difficult to display the most important aspect of national sentiment, which is that it is an invocation of peace, and not a cry of war. That is why culture matters, and why its loss, in times of crisis, is a loss to the whole community, and not just to the educated minority who are aware of the fact.
About the Author
Roger Scruton is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His latest book, How to Think Seriously About the Planet: The Case for an Environmental Conservatism, has just been published by Oxford University Press.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (41) | Leave a comment
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Melvin| 6.23.11 @ 6:45AM
I am happy that some of the Europeans are waking the hell up. For many years now the Europeans and we here in the United States have had this multicultural horse squeeze crammed down our throats, whether or not we accepted it or not.
Day, after day,after day, we have Eurosnobs, and our wanabe Eurosnobs here in the United States tell our kids in the state run education system that being an American or European is bad, because of European,and American Imperialism. The poor are poor because of us, the starving are starving because of us, and we are stole the world's resources.
Children cannot display pride, and display the American flag in state run education centers because it might make someone feel bad who is from another Country.
Same thing with the Pledge of Allegiance, we have to me more inclusive and tolerant of other cultures who might be in the classroom.
As an American I am shot at, being threatened to be blown to bits in our Nation's public places, I have had Saudi Arabians fly jets laden with fuel and fellow Americans fly directly in our buildings killing thousands without the declaration of war, and I am supposed to shut up and be more tolerant of these bastards who are trying to kill me, my family, and my fellow Americans.
Now a Somali born individual who became a United States Marine Reservist is allegedly responsible for shooting at Marine and other government building.
Myself being a retired Marine, in what I think should happen as punishment to this Somali born individual is unfit for public forum and another topic altogether.
A message to the Eurocrats and the Eurosnob wannabes in the United States. No matter what legislation you pass to silence me, you will not. No matter how much pressure you put upon be to conform, I will resist, and no matter how many threats you cast at me, with threats of violence, I will fight you and your perverted ideology.
My forefathers were Americans, My father and Mother are American and by the grace of God I am an American, as is my children, their children's children, and I'll be damned if I let some pencil neck SOB tell me any different.
Dave| 6.23.11 @ 9:32AM
Well said, Melvin! And thank you for your service.
lydia | 6.23.11 @ 10:21AM
The first person of course is the radiant woman which was none other than the nation of Israel. And fighting against the woman was the great dragon and this dragon is none other the person of Satan in his great diabolical work in trying to destroy the nation of Israel because by that he could make God a liar.
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Anita| 6.23.11 @ 12:33PM
What the heck is your problem
Go to a porno site, will ya.
Melivn| 6.23.11 @ 3:01PM
Your very welcome. Thank you for taking the time to post.
Anita| 6.23.11 @ 12:47PM
well said, however, how many people can say what they want at work? At church? At a party? Do you really believe that you can't lose your job, your rights, because you said something not politically correct. That's how it starts. Our freedoms eroding and a new sense of fear in what we can't say. They are doing it very well here. Try speaking the truth, see what happens.
USSAlabama| 6.23.11 @ 3:58PM
Hell yes, Melvin. Every ancestor I have was in Jamestown or the Cherokee Nation - no immigrant in my bloodline.
TOO much is recognizable from this article in our own country right now, and just like the unsuspecting Europeans who 'would have made sure it didn't happen .. if they got wind of it..' it has been being foist upon us for decades now.
Our school must call Christmas break 'winter break' -- the list of grievances in this article are far too obvious in our own country to bear at this point.
It has already gone way too far.
Occam's Tool| 6.24.11 @ 1:59AM
Dear Melvin: thank you for your service, and you rock! Incidentally, Geert Wilders won his court case. But he still has to have armed guards from those who killed Van Gogh.
You know that non-interventionalism with this problem is futile. And you also know that up to this point, there has been only ONE ex-Marine---Lee Harvey Oswald. I suppose the Somali will join him.
Hal G. P. Colebatch| 6.23.11 @ 7:04AM
It would be an interesting exercise to dissect out the official roots of "diversity" and "multiculturalism". Does "celebrating diversity" have the force of law, for example?
Citizen Jerry| 6.23.11 @ 10:39AM
That's an easy one. Political correctness or diversity is called cultural Marxism. It attaches itself to the culture, rather than the economic system, as it did in Russia.
If you really want to be shocked, type "Frankfurt School" into your favorite search engine. Lots of information on how this cancer got started.
scythe| 6.23.11 @ 7:17AM
The European Union is a Soviet collective. It boggles the mind that the direction in which they pulled the nations of Europe was not discernible to all generations ago. No nations? No self government? Edicts passed without popular will? Socialism everywhere. The heavy handedness? The mixing of races and nationalities to blur and destroy national identities? ALL CLASSIC MARXISM. Just like what we are experiencing in America. The turmoil in the world today stems from one direction: THE LEFT. Everywhere the eye is cast it see the tremors and death throes of cultures and civilizations which embraced or were forced to live under the UNNATURAL predatory political scheme of communism/socialism/fascism/Marxism/progressivism - they are all the same monster with a different nickname. Marxism should be outlawed. That's right. It already is. In the United States. Because we have a Constitution. But that never stopped the thieves and liars. We used to be on guard for those who wished to spread this cancer. We should revive the practice. Imagine what our schools, institutions, neighborhoods, and once great cities would be like today if the Marxists amongst us had been outed and destroyed decades ago.
A. C. Santore| 6.23.11 @ 12:27PM
You wrote, "It boggles the mind that the direction in which they pulled the nations of Europe was not discernible to all generations ago."
Respectfully, it certainly was discernible generations ago. It's just that no-one listened and the discerners were silenced in one way or another.
When I was in college in the late 1950s, I had an Economics professor - a D.P. from Europe - who pointed out in perfectly precise terms exactly what would happen, starting with the euphemistically-named "coal and steel" treaty.
Regarding monetary union, he said that it can never work because the countries with the weaker economies cannot do anything but pull those with strong economies down with them. We are watching that happening before our eyes.
I have spent over half a century watching his predictions coming true in every detail.
"All multi-ethnic landscapes are fragile. Any serious tremor may disrupt them, setting off landslips, earthquakes and eruptions of blood." Neal Ascherson
Although my professor's predictions are still coming true, we have not yet seen the "landslips, earthquakes, and eruptions of blood."
Heaven help us.
POST American| 6.23.11 @ 7:37AM
---Passing bows to destroyed cultures.
MEANWHILE, the Globalists walk about free
and unchallenged, and the word TREASON
disappears from discourse.
NOT GOOD
Bob K.| 6.23.11 @ 8:24AM
Nationalism is inevitably appearing again. It always does when an elite of Internationalists attempt to control all things. Just like it happened in Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, Argentina at the end of WWI and yes, in the good old USA and Great Britain and Russia at the start of WWII. Let us hope that it's leaders are more like Churchill than Hitler and Stalin and Tojo!
irish19| 6.23.11 @ 1:51PM
Amen to that.
Pecos Pete| 6.23.11 @ 8:44AM
"By replacing national accountability with distant bureaucracy, that machinery has left people disarmed and bewildered in the face of the current crisis."
Does this define the current USA. Yeah, I think so. Think of the EPA and most federal departments/agencies.
wholesale underwears | 6.23.11 @ 8:46AM
A message to the Eurocrats and the Eurosnob wannabes in the United States.
D. Singh| 6.23.11 @ 9:12AM
Sir
This is a fair and reasonable summary of what has happened across the European Union (Mr Scruton is correct to describe it as an imperial power (constructed on the continental scale against the wishes of the various peoples)).
On of the principal reasons why this imperial power will implode is that there is no people who see themselves as European. There are Poles, Germans, Spaniards, British etc. But there is no European people.
The European Union does not have a demos.
There are tow routes that the current crises suggest to the Eurocrats:
1. Break up of the EU – with Greece leaving first; or
2. Imposing repressive authoritarian measures.
D. Singh| 6.23.11 @ 9:23AM
Sir
Mr Colebatch asks an interesting question:
Does "celebrating diversity" have the force of law, for example?
Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 states:
That a public authority must have have due regard to the need to –
(a) eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited by or under this Act;
(b) advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not share it;
(c) foster good relations between persons who share a relevant characteristic and persons who do not share it.
The protected characteristics are:
(a) Age;
(b) Disability;
(c) Gender Reassignment;
(d) Marriage and Civil Partnership;
(e) Pregnancy and Maternity;
(f) Race;
(g) Religion or Belief;
(h) Sex (formerly gender); and
(i) Sexual Orientation.
This legislation intercepts the British bureaucrats’ culture of ‘always doing things by the book’. It is this piece of civil law which they use to justify ‘celebrating diversity’. Of course ‘rights’ issued to different minority groups (for example to the religious and to the homosexualist) clash in courts of law. When this happens one group must triumph over another creating a hierarchy of rights.
At the present time of writing; the Christians are at the bottom of the pile of ‘rights’.
C Smith| 6.23.11 @ 10:08AM
"You don't look like an extremist if you express your national sentiment in the idiom of a Péguy, an Orwell, a Lampedusa, or a Sibelius." But you DO look like an extremist if you express your national sentiment in the idioms of Zion:
The Rebirth of a Nation
Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children (Isaiah 66:8).
On Sabbath Eve, the 5th Day of Iyar 5708 (14 May 1948) David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the State of Israel and appealed “to the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora to rally round the Jews of Eretz-Israel … in the great struggle for the realization of the age-old dream — the redemption of Israel.” President Truman, an outsider unexpectedly elevated to the Oval Office a few years earlier, was immediately notified. Quickly hand correcting a two sentence response without notifying officials of contrary opinion in the State Department or a Special Session of the UN General Assembly, the United States, in the person of Harry S. Truman, was the first to recognize “the provisional government as de facto authority of the new state of Israel.” In the eleven minutes it took Truman to respond, the two thousand year justification for SPIRITUALIZING Israel's covenants, promises, and blessings vaporized! The children of Israel were in the land.
"The first person of course is the radiant woman which was none other than the nation of Israel. And fighting against the woman was the great dragon and this dragon is none other the person of Satan in his great diabolical work in trying to destroy the nation of Israel because by that he could make God a liar... Of course he ultimately fails because God will yet proclaim His purpose for Israel. He will yet reveal that purpose. It will yet be unfolded in time to come and the very fact that Israel is a nation today is indicative of the fact that God is going to keep His Word as if there was any doubt" (The Valley Church, emphasis added).
There was dancing in the streets, and then the realization that Israel’s rebirth would be through the fire. Arab forces of Lebanon, Syria, Iraqi, Egypt, Tran Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Yemen converged within hours to annihilate the fledgling nation, which in the estimation of British Field Marshall Montgomery would occur within two weeks due to the imbalance in training and ordnance: “1 tank w/o gun (Arabs 40 tanks), 0 war planes (Arabs 74), 5 artillery pieces (Arabs 140), 3 armed ships (Arabs 12)” (Yosef Ofek, Not on a Silver Platter: From National Home to Sovereign State, 1939-1949, 1984). Israel did have access to a few Piper Cubs, from which Jews tossed empty seltzer bottles modified to mimic the sound of falling bombs. They also had a few other small planes where the bombardier, legs strapped to the door, would chuck improvised bombs (some with sewer pipe casings) between his legs football style. Like David in the valley of Elah they had little more than sticks and stones, but they were fulfilling His purpose “that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel” (cf. 1 Samuel 17).
http://theisraelofgod.blogspot.....e-day.html
Petronius| 6.23.11 @ 10:28AM
To: Professor Roger Scruton
Ramsbury, Wiltshire
Federal Republic of Wessex
Sir
Me best mate tells me that HM subjects cannot even display the Union Jack outdoors on your own property. But with all, I must state that this article is far too late. The Speccie beat you to it on 15 July, 2000 with it's lead piece titled Rank Ignorance which had no byline. The style of it is very much yours. And every time I read a column like this one, I go back to it. It has become an anchor for me. So Roger: do fess up and tell me that Rank Ignorance is also your work. I'll by you a pint next time I'm over.
Tina B| 6.23.11 @ 11:12AM
Bottom line: it all comes back to the fight between good and evil, free will and bondage, between the children of the Lord and Satan's children.
I am not saying all nationalists are good and internationalists evil. But the battle remains between those who believe in the inherent value of every man, woman and child and those who believe in the state, the government, the King, the President, the ruling class. The hard working, God worshipping, family protecting, tax paying or volunteer working, neighbor loving members of our world versus the community organizing, government welfare state protecting, I know what's good for you crying, God mocking, abortion providing, diversity pushing, thieving, lying and power loving members of this planet.
I am of European birth and descent, a citizen of the US by naturalization in Los Angeles, CA, when I turned 16, in 1966. I couldn't have been prouder. My Brittish Mom and Polish (ex Captain in the Polish Army in WWII) Dad were naturalized 5 years from the date they arrived back in '54. I thank God we three came to the blessed USA.
But accross the globe the battle lines are being drawn. And at its root it is still the people of God versus the evil one and his minions.
Now I know that not all decent people follow Our Lord, and not all people who claim to follow Him are decent. (Good thing He knows the heart.) And the converse is also true. Not all people who preach diversity are commiting evil in their own eyes but are, however, often willfully and pridefully ignorant, and many I know who call themselves Christians are deluded in this way.
Melivn| 6.23.11 @ 3:00PM
Hey baby sister, I applaud your post. Myself I just might be a little bit older, somewhat slower, and cannot jump over buildings in a single bound, but what I lack in physical strength, I make up with treachery.
One of the proudest days of my entire life, is when my wife became an American citizen. When she and other newly minted citizens, swore the Pledge of Allegiance, then everyone including us in the gallery sang our National Anthem, made me so damn proud to be an American.
And I'll tell you what Tina, your a part of this Country that will fight tooth and nail, and rip anyone or anything to shreds that will take away the character of the United States of America away from it's citizens.
Every single American should be required to go and observe a swearing in ceremony in become United States Citizen.
A tear or two still comes to my eye, when I think of that day.
Pelligrino| 6.23.11 @ 7:14PM
Melvin,
Your suggestion for attending a U.S. new citizen ceremony is very timely. Many are done on July 4th. So just ten more days.
Make plans to attend one near you. Take your children and grandkids. And note all the volunteers who step up to make the occasion special for all.
Naturalborn Texican| 6.23.11 @ 11:47AM
History repeats itself.
Good post, C. Smith.
Any one who has ever studied the history of how Israel came to be should clearly and easily be able to see the hand of God in it's creation.
Sheila| 6.23.11 @ 12:43PM
Mr. Scruton, you are careful to characterize a nation as "defined by language, culture, and history," but you carefully omit the people and only obliquely refer to them as "citizens." A Pakistani-born Muslim may be a "citizen" of Great Britain, but he is not and never can be part of the English "people." I could go live in China but I would never be Chinese. An historic nation is a people, descended from the same genetic and racial group - a family writ large - from which proceeds the aforementioned common language, culture, and history. The True Finns made this the centerpiece of their message, which is why they won and why the leftist Euronazis, as well as the Frankfurt school alums in the US, are up in arms. Let's use precise and correct terminology, and stop tip-toeing around the main issue. Demography is destiny.
Robert Pinkerton| 6.23.11 @ 7:50PM
Ma'am, "Mr. Scruton, you are careful to characterize a nation as "defined by language, culture, and history," but you carefully omit the people and only obliquely refer to them as "citizens."
By way of concurrence with your statement, I submit that an upper-case-"P" People?b> is what classical Greek calls Ethnos, Russian calls Narod, German calls Volk, and Hebrew calls Leum. While these words can be construed to mean "nation, their -- so to speak -- 'ideational center of gravity' lies with the Whole People, Elite vastly outnumbered in a panorama of elite and Commons alike.
We see derivations of ethnos everywhere in current discourse. And, of course, nation derives from the Latin deponent third-conj. verb meaning '[to be] born,' with its context of family and kinship. While our English cognate of Volk, "folk, carries less emotional weight and freight than does its German cousin, it still refers to possession of the People in common, e.g.: (Including but not limited to) Folk wisdom (often feet-on-the-ground factuality as counterposed to elitist head-in-the-clouds captivation by one intellectual fad or another) or folklore or folk songs.
Joe D.| 6.23.11 @ 12:58PM
The article was very interesting and not totally surprising. I expected this 10 years ago. However, America extented this by helping militarially and economicly.
Well said, Melvin! And thank you for your service goes for me as well.
Melivn| 6.23.11 @ 3:02PM
Your very welcome Joe.
JP| 6.23.11 @ 2:35PM
Whether Left or Right, the Euros all worship the centralized state. There is not one major party that wishes to not only tear down the EU bureaucracy, but also limit thier own national governments. Almost every European wishes to keep their bloated entitlement state.
Besides, there are not enough young Europeans to lead a major reform movement.
Ore Gone| 6.23.11 @ 3:58PM
Half way through the article I couldn't help but compare Europe to what California and other progressive states are doing to our Union. It shows that a strong central government is not a desirable thing and that if you have bad ideas and intentions you should be allowed to fail. Just as in Europe we should not prop up States that fail. The intent of the Constitution was to let people correct their mistakes with their feet and not have a central government that bails everyone out including favored businesses. This government along with Europe needs a reboot.
Pelligrino| 6.23.11 @ 8:04PM
Central government is always bad.
Brussels cannot ever know what is going on in Ovidedo, Ostrava, Orléans, Osnabruck, or Oulu.*
Don't know that last one, Oulu? No worries. The Eurocats in Brussels, Strasbourg, Den Haag, and Luxembourg City don't either. They've never been there, will never go, and cannot locate it on a map.
Odd that we allow the ignorant to govern us.
Washington D.C. couldn't and shouldn't always know what is going on in Fargo, Fresno, Freeport, or Fulton County. They shouldn't be able to dictate goingson either.
The irony is that as Finnland rightly seeks to more distance itself from the Eurozone (perhaps longing to have done what Norway has done?), Croatia joins next year.
Yet Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Slovenia, Montenegro, and Serbia were a "unified" Yugoslavia not so long ago. Strange that Euro elites have had no problem at all allowing former Yugoslavia to break into 7 different parts, no?
*Oulu is Finnland's largest northernmost city. 6th largest overall in population.
weddingdresses | 6.24.11 @ 2:04AM
Half way through the article I couldn't help but compare Europe to what California and other progressive states are doing to our Union. It shows that a strong central government is not a desirable thing and that if you have bad ideas and intentions you should be allowed to fail. Just as in Europe we should not prop up States that fail. The intent of the Constitution was to let people correct their mistakes with their feet and not have a central government that bails everyone out including favored businesses. This government along with Europe needs a reboot.
Charles Martel| 6.24.11 @ 2:15AM
Free the Europeans! Death to the Euro!
+++
Johnny| 6.24.11 @ 6:36AM
I can't help but think that the Eurocrats have accomplished much of what Hitler was trying to do, just in a much more covert manner. I just wish that people in the U.S. would wake up and see that the same is true for us. There are a group of people attempting the same thing in this country at the present time and are being successful. The big problem with the plan here is they haven't figured out how to disarm the people of the U.S., and I pray they will never figure that one out or we're done as well.
Juan Jose Morales | 6.24.11 @ 10:50AM
My Puerto Rico has also been forced to pretend to take American style multiculturalism seriously, when in fact Puerto Ricans are not gringos under another name. but instead a PEOPLE with its own personality and its own cultural identity.
Long live a Free and Independent Puerto Rico!
Juan Jose Morales | 6.24.11 @ 10:50AM
My Puerto Rico has also been forced to pretend to take American style multiculturalism seriously, when in fact Puerto Ricans are not gringos under another name. but instead a PEOPLE with its own personality and its own cultural identity.
Long live a Free and Independent Puerto Rico!
Hal G. P. Colebatch| 6.25.11 @ 7:35AM
I know for a fact that a few years ago all British people, on land, were allowed to fly the Union Jack, as we in Australia are not only allowed but encouraged to fly the Australian Flag (our Members of Parliament have an allowance of them to give free to people who ask for them), What LAW prevents British people flying the Union Jack?
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tma_sierrahills| 7.3.11 @ 5:31PM
"A 'cult of the minority' has been imposed from above."
This and the rest of it all so very well said, thank you.
"weddingdresses ... Half way through the article I couldn't help but compare Europe to what California and other progressive states are doing to our Union"
As a lifelong resident of California I could go on forever agreeing, on the other hand, just imagine what a more conservative state, say, Alabama, would look like today if for over four decades it had been up against a Third World border with a federal government in favor of its invasion. California's Pete Wilson decades ago tried to deny taxpayer benefits to illegals, which was the most popular thing he ever did--swatted down by the courts. For years Californians parked their cars and shined their headlights on the border, as a futile protest against 'their' federal government's inaction and collaboration. But American elites were already busy 'electing' a new people, just as their counterparts have been doing in Europe.
I came across this excellent Scruton piece on a visit to the American Third Position website. I had enjoyed the Spectator before, but I guess I had just assumed that by now you would have been taken over by the PC Pod people. What a wonderful surprise. I shall return.
Hater| 7.3.11 @ 7:06PM
White people don't have a right to their ancestral homelands because of the legacy of colonialism. Their displacement is of the highest moral virtue in the quest to fight racism and white supremacy. In the past whites had a right tightly ancestral homelands but after colonialism, the holocaust, slavery, Hiroshima, and any number of atrocities. Well whites lost that right through their heinous actions.