A Greek economy run by Brussels will ignore the lessons of history, leading to more misery, writes Boris Johnson.
It is one of the tragic delusions of the human race that we believe in the inevitability of progress. We look around us, and we seem to see a glorious affirmation that our ruthless species of homo is getting ever more sapiens. We see ice cream Snickers bars and in vitro babies and beautiful electronic pads on which you can paint with your fingertip and by heaven suitcases with wheels! Think of it: we managed to put a man on the moon about 35 years before we came up with wheelie-suitcases; and yet here they are. They have completely displaced the old type of suitcase, the ones with a handle that you used to lug puffing down platforms.
Arent they grand? Life seems impossible without them, and soon they will no doubt be joined by so many other improvements acne cures, electric cars, electric suitcases that we will be strengthened in our superstition that history is a one-way ratchet, an endless click click click forwards to a nirvana of liberal democratic free-market brotherhood of man. Isnt that what history teaches us, that humanity is engaged in a remorseless ascent?
On the contrary: history teaches us that the tide can suddenly and inexplicably go out, and that things can lurch backwards into darkness and squalor and appalling violence. The Romans gave us roads and aqueducts and glass and sanitation and all the other benefits famously listed by Monty Python; indeed, they were probably on the verge of discovering the wheely-suitcase when they went into decline and fall in the fifth century AD.
Whichever way you look at it, this was a catastrophe for the human race. People in Britain could no longer read or write. Life-expectancy plummeted to about 32, and the population fell. The very cattle shrunk at the withers. The secret of the hypocaust was forgotten, and chilblain-ridden swineherds built sluttish huts in the ruins of the villas, driving their post-holes through the mosaics. In the once bustling Roman city of London (for instance) we find no trace of human habitation save for a mysterious black earth that may be a relic of a fire or some primitive system of agriculture.
It took hundreds of years before the population was restored to Roman levels. If we think that no such disaster could happen again, we are not just arrogant but forgetful of the lessons of the very recent past. Never mind the empty temples of the Aztecs or the Incas or the reproachful beehive structures of the lost civilisation of Great Zimbabwe. Look at our own era: the fate of European Jewry, massacred in the lifetimes of our parents and grandparents, on the deranged orders of an elected government in what had been one of the most civilised countries on earth; or look at the skyline of modern German cities, and mourn those medieval buildings blown to smithereens in an uncontrollable cycle of revenge. Yes, when things go backwards, they can go backwards fast. Technology, liberty, democracy, comfort they can all go out of the window. However complacent we may be, in the words of the poet Geoffrey Hill, Tragedy has us under regard. Nowhere is that clearer than in Greece today.
Every day we read of fresh horrors: of once proud bourgeois families queuing for bread, of people in agony because the government has run out of money to pay for cancer drugs. Pensions are being cut, living standards are falling, unemployment is rising, and the suicide rate is now the highest in the EU having been one of the lowest.
By any standards we are seeing a whole nation undergo a protracted economic and political humiliation; and whatever the result of yesterdays election, we seem determined to make matters worse. There is no plan for Greece to leave the euro, or none that I can discover. No European leader dares suggest that this might be possible, since that would be to profane the religion of Ever Closer Union. Instead we are all meant to be conniving in a plan to create a fiscal union which (if it were to mean anything) would mean undermining the fundamentals of Western democracy.
This forward-marching concept of history the idea of inexorable political and economic progress is really a modern one. In ancient times, it was common to speak of lost golden ages or forgotten republican virtues or prelapsarian idylls. It is only in the past few hundred years that people have switched to the Whig interpretation, and on the face of it one can forgive them for their optimism. We have seen the emancipation of women, the extension of the franchise to all adult human beings, the acceptance that there should be no taxation without representation and the general understanding that people should be democratically entitled to determine their own fates.
And now look at what is being proposed in Greece. For the sake of bubble-gumming the euro together, we are willing to slaughter democracy in the very place where it was born. What is the point of a Greek elector voting for an economic programme, if that programme is decided in Brussels or in reality in Germany? What is the meaning of Greek freedom, the freedom Byron fought for, if Greece is returned to a kind of Ottoman dependency, but with the Sublime Porte now based in Berlin?
It wont work. If things go on as they are, we will see more misery, more resentment, and an ever greater chance that the whole damn kebab van will go up in flames. Greece will one day be free again in the sense that I still think it marginally more likely than not that whoever takes charge in Athens will eventually find a way to restore competitiveness through devaluation and leaving the euro for this simple reason: that market confidence in Greek membership is like a burst paper bag of rice hard to restore.
Without a resolution, without clarity, I am afraid the suffering will go on. The best way forward would be an orderly bisection into an old eurozone and a New Eurozone for the periphery. With every month of dither, we delay the prospect of a global recovery; while the approved solution fiscal and political union will consign the continent to a democratic dark ages.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/19/2012 07:54 ||
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#1
Nationalism is now growing. One world government thought is the cause of this disaster. Socialism doesn't pay the bills. National pride will turn the tide. A drowning swimmer will pull anyone close down with them. A poor athlete or student will begrudge those who advance. Some will fail but others will push ahead. Things will change. Some for the good and some for the bad but change it must. "Which shall it be"(H. G. Wells) , the future is not for the weak.
#2
Hopefully, after two obviously failed attempts to revive after previous suicide attempts, we won't waste our resources or citizenry again. Let history take its course.
#3
How long will it be before we are asked to vote for a "plan" that was hatched in Beijing?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
06/19/2012 10:37 Comments ||
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#4
The powers that be thought setting up OWG-NWO = PROTOSPACE GOVT-ORDER was going to be quick + painless, or at least like the EEC = Common Market.
Didn't have to explain or even ask the Voters iff they wanted it.
IMO OWG is the future, but the OWG = Space
"Baby" is so big + contentious, etc. in the womb that Baby Momma is gonna be in serious painful labor for many hours or days yet [decades?], + is gonna need lots of drugs to beget the Birth.
AFTERWARD, BABY DADDY IS GONNA GET HIS LIGHTS PUNCHED OUT BY BABY MOMMA IN RIGHTEOUS FEMME INDIGNATION.
With all the reports lately about this or that state working to clean up the voter rolls of Deceased Americans, Imaginary Americans, non-citizen Americans and possibly, in an excess of enthusiasm, legitimate Americans, I thought I ought to do my share by checking to see if I was still registered at any of my previous American addresses.
It turns out this is amazingly easy, so long as one has an internet device, web access, and a few minutes of free time.
As a first step I googled "__county voter registration" with the name of each of the various counties I've lived in since reaching majority. Each site had a page for checking registration, which I did most dutifully, and demonstrated to my satisfaction that I have left no ghosts behind for fraudsters to use. I am happy to report ditto for Mr. Wife, and that my father -- who died two years ago -- is no longer registered. Well done, voter registrars of Erie County, NY and Hamilton and Butler Counties, Ohio!
I'm not sure what one has to do to clean up multiple registrations, but no doubt the nice people at the telephone number listed on each web page will know.
#1
This would be a great idea for someone to run with. Get 1000 people together and do this, and find out how prevalent fraudulent registrations are. It would be all over the blogosphere if someone got up the gumption to do this sort of campaign.
#2
It's pretty easy to find bad registrations. Not so easy to remove them.
There are several good projects out there. True the Vote is perhaps the best known. Another project has been comparing the names of those excused from jury duty because they are not citizens with voter registration lists.
Another give away is large numbers of voters at a single address. I'll bet if you could run a database query of all addresses with more than 3 registrants, you could turn up thousands if not tens of thousand of suspect registrations.
The left is conducting fraud on a wholesale basis. The scale is staggering. In some areas they can bring in a quarter million fraudulent votes or more. They do not believe in democracy. They believe in power.
[Dawn] AS we get tired of the intense drama being played out on the national stage and look away in the hope of some relief, what do we see? Hafiz Gul Bahadur issuing a decree banning polio ...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set... vaccination in the North Wazoo Agency. The Death Eater is considered one of the 'good' Pak Taliban, a pro-army commander with whom the authorities have cut many deals. By banning polio vaccination and linking its resumption to the cessation of US drone strikes, he now imperils some 140,000 children in the area he controls. What is left to be said when children are used as pawns in a game they are unlikely to understand? This is not only evident in the case of the ban but also in the CIA-sponsored fake vaccination campaign that was carried out by Dr Shakil Afridi in Abbottabad ... A pleasant city located only 30 convenient miles from Islamabad. The city is noted for its nice weather and good schools. It is the site of Pakistain's military academy, which was within comfortable walking distance of the residence of the late Osama bin Laden.... to verify the late Osama bin Laden ... who has made the transition back to dust... 's presence there. While a direct link has yet to be established between that operation and the reluctance of people in the tribal areas to have their children vaccinated in its wake, the number of cases in which parents have refused polio drops for their offspring has been on the rise. Such unwillingness on the part of the parents will only serve to enhance the effectiveness of the propaganda tool in the hands of the Death Eaters, especially with Hafiz Gul Bahadur's declaration that the CIA is known to use polio vaccinators as spies.
In an area where polio is endemic, vaccination has now stopped and there are reports that kits have been snatched and destroyed, and many villages have decided against vaccinating their children. Where is the state in all this? Has it abdicated all responsibility? Will its obsession to remain onside with forces it feels are vital to its national security objectives weigh heavier in its decisions than its duty towards its children? We wish we knew.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/19/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
Polio, once a dreaded disease, has essentially been eradicated in the civilized world. Sadly and pointlessly, it is still endemic in parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Northern Nigeria. It is left as an exercise for the Reader to determine why.
#2
Yes! Similar to the organised fake vaccination drive to get Osama bin Laden's family DNA, and Bush-hitler's anti-HIV campaign in Africa, polio vaccines are CIA sponsored and should be avoided by the devout.
#3
Besoeker, is it just the polio vaccines that are haram or should all vaccines be considered in-Islamic? And if vaccines are forbidden, shouldn't antibiotics also be banned?
#4
I can remember the pre-polio vaccine world and what it was like. Just about everyone knew someone who lived close by or was in your family who had polio. It seemed like it hit the young more than adults for some reason. Parents were afraid for their children because they did not know how to protect them. There was a generation of kids running around with leg braces because of paralysis. One of our presidents, FDR had polio. I remember a very promising, bright kid down the street who got polio. He was confined to an "Iron Lung" because he could not breathe on his own. It is difficult to imagine parents who would reject vaccinations when it is so readily available and preventive of a terrible scourge.
#5
It is difficult to imagine parents who would reject vaccinations when it is so readily available and preventive of a terrible scourge. It's not one bit difficult for me to imagine people like that, not after reading about modern Islam & Pakistain.
#6
JQC, I'm also of an age to remember leg braces and the March of Dimes.
In middle school one of the kids had a brace and he was the baddest ass kid in the school. My leg brace wearing 8th grade science teacher? He was the baddest ass in the whole damn school!
I was brought up to believe that this was compensation for the disability. Didn't matter why but they both had "DO NOT MESS WITH" signs in blinking neon.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
By trailing wife
AS we get tired of the intense drama being played out on the national stage and look away in the hope of some relief, what do we see? Hafiz Gul Bahadur issuing a decree banning 
