Monday, April 16, 2007

Comment by Carl Simpson

A first positive reply to what I wrote, I got from Carl Simpson, one of the regulars at VFR, who gets it completely. It's kind of ironic, but just as well warmly welcomed, that it's from Americans that I get the first positive feedback to this description, considering how critical I am of what constitutes a core part of contemporary American pride. But if we think for a moment there is no surprise here, Europeans have much more a blind spot for the most basic assumption behind this description: that the good, free and peaceful society that we live in is ultimately protected by military power.

Carl Simpson wrote at VFR: (more comments by me below)

I think our Conservative Swede has really hit upon something here. The European elites are at least partially kept there by the power of the US military--which still has numerous bases throughout Europe 15 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Note also that (despite the Mahdi from West Texas' comments about not indulging in nation-building like his predecessor) the United States still has troops on the ground in both Bosnia and the Serbian province of Kosovo. I agree with Conservative Swede that the electoral process is an empty gesture of symbolism that changes nothing in Western countries. Filling the voting rolls with enough welfare recipients, aliens, and feminist-indoctrinated women guarantees a de-facto one-party system even if there are multiple parties who squabble over inconsequential details of how to implement more liberalism and sovereignty-destroying treaties. Any political movement which presented a serious challenge to the established order in Europe would be rapidly marginalized. It's scarcely different here in the USA. There's a reason all the funding and media attention is going to Romney, McCain and Giuliani, while Tancredo, Ron Paul or anyone who might upset the apple cart is summarily painted as "unelectable" by the conservatariat.

The drive for globalism and one-world-government received a great boost from Woodrow Wilson's administration. It was complemented at home by a drive for the consolidation of federal power over both the states and individuals. Three disastrous amendments to the US Constitution: popular election of senators, effectively destroying the representation of the different states as states in the congress; the Federal Income Tax; and women's suffrage were all ratified during the Wilson administration. There are serious questions about the legitimacy of the ratification of all three. The same period saw the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, whereby Congress turned over its fiscal policy-making authority to a cartel of bankers. Likewise, Federal police powers were vastly expanded thanks to another (subsequently repealed) amendment--Prohibition. The federal police force created during the prohibition--whose powers were not removed with Prohibition's repeal--morphed into today's BATFE and FBI.

Lots of food for thought. Thanks, CS, for giving a view with a different angle. I quite agree with CS's assessment that Bush would attack any European country that refused to acquiesce to the universalist, utopian ideology of those who yank his chain just as Clinton attacked Serbia. It's fairly obvious that Bush and his neo-Jacobin pals have no problem with the establishment of an Independent Islamic Jihadistan of Kosovo, despite all the empty nonsense about "global wars on terr-r-r-r-r." Hey, it's "democracy," isn't it?

Greetings to Carl Simpson who gets completely what I wrote. As he said it's "giving a view with a different angle." And this is my first motivation—that virtually no one else provides this angle—which call for me to stress it.

In any other historical situation we would start our analysis with identifying who's the empire and who are the vassal states. But when talking about our own age, this rarely enters the picture. The left is not interested in admitting that America is the "good empire" protecting Europe by its military might. While the right, who supports the American hegemony, denies that America is really an empire. The nature of America is that it is an empire-in-denial. You have to be, if what you are promoting is democratic imperialism.

What I provide is the fundamental structure of the power relations in our Wilsonian age. But there is much more to it, to complicate the picture. But I have made it into my quest to stress this side of the situation.


Fellow Peacekeeper said...


I sincerely hope that is wrong. That is a recurring personal nightmare, the US becoming a monster enforcing de facto one worldism. What if (say) France elects Le Pen and suddenly deports Muslims en mass would America intervene to stop it?

Conservative Swede said...

The point is that we, the European resistance, have to fear it. We cannot ignore the possibility of this threat. This is also why we need friends like VFR and Gates of Vienna in America.

This is what I wrote about the issue in the VFR thread:
My first point is not whether this will actually happen or not--if the country is Great Britain or the president is Tom Tancredo, I'd say we can be sure it won't happen in this way. The point is that America is the empire, that the rules of the game are clearly communicated, that power demonstrations of the ability to do the above has been made (last time in Serbia), so this has been internalized among the Europeans, which inhibits them from taking action.

Let's say the country is the Netherlands and the president Giuliani. They would likely meet isolation and international bullying. Then UN resolutions and threats of international criminal courts. And if they persist... But probably they won't persist. It would be easier just to escape to Poland and leave Holland to the Muslims.

xlbrl said...

I will disagree with Carl Simpson on one issue. The United States, now or in the future, is much less likely to intervene in Europe for any reason whatsoever. And yes, in the coming civil wars, there will be more than smoke and mirrors. Yet the American public is keeping a loose accounting. Cowardice as nuance, hypocrisy writ huge, dissembling as an art form. When Will Rogers said the French coundn't hate us more if we bailed them out of another war, that was two wars ago. I'm quite certain there will be no pity this time around. Eastern Europe may be looked after, if that is possible to do. That is all. This is an easier call than Swede's on the coming conflagurations. In fact, for bettter or worse, you many assume some satisfaction as retribution for leaving us these burdens alone.