Europe’s problem, boiled down

Numerous articles about the eurozone crisis (such as this one) have made the same points: that the cause of the crisis is the joining together of countries with very different economic levels into a common currency, and that the solution to the crisis is for Greece and other southern European countries to abandon the euro, return to their respective national currencies and devalue them, thus reducing their debt. But the rulers of Europe will absolutely not allow this, because the end of a common currency would mean the end of the EU project, and, as Angela Merkel said the other day, if the EU project ends, Europe will instantly return to nationalism, war, Nazism, etc.

Such thinking has of course driven the EU project from the start. The belief is that since Nazi Germany was the seat of ultimate evil, the independent nation-state is itself the seat of ultimate evil, and therefore the only way to save Europe from this evil once and for all is through the construction of a transnational government subsuming the nations of Europe.

But of course the premise is wrong. Modern liberalism/leftism is largely a function of an irrational overreaction to Nazism, in which the evil of Nazism was associated with the nation-state itself, making the abolition of the nation-state necessary. In the same way, the Nazi genocide was defined as “discrimination” and “intolerance,” making the abolition of all discrimination and intolerance necessary. But, since a certain amount of discrimination and intolerance is inseparable from the ordinary life of any society (e.g., a society favors its own culture and its own people over foreign cultures and peoples), the project of eliminating all discrimination and intolerance requires the suppression of ordinary human life and institutions, including the nation-state. Hence the totalitarian PC regime of today’s Europe.

What all this means is that the ultimate cause of the European financial crisis is not economic, but moral and spiritual. To sum up the argument:

• After World War II, the leaders of Europe made a disastrous moral error, associating the ordinary life of the European peoples, including the very existence of their nations, with Nazi-like evil.
  
• Therefore the nations of Europe had to be eliminated at all costs, by merging them into one sovereign power.
  
• Merging them into one sovereign power required, inter alia, that they all have the same currency.
  
• But the adoption of a common currency for all of Europe has created the financial crisis, and the insistence on keeping the common currency makes it impossible to cure the financial crisis.

Sixty-six years after Adolf Hitler put a gun to his head, the fear of him still rules Europe, driving it to commit not only national and cultural suicide but economic suicide as well.

- end of initial entry -

James P. writes:

Your assessment of the basic problem of the EU is right on target. Now, carry the assessment over into the discussion of the Pope’s proposed world state. Experience has shown that Europeans, with their numerous common characteristics, are nevertheless unsuited to economic and political union. Therefore, the nations of Europe and North America are quite obviously even more unsuited to economic and political union with the vastly different “poorer nations” of Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. And yet the Pope wants to shackle them all together!

Dean Ericson writes:

TYPO: .”..making the abolution of all discrimination… ”

“Abolution.” That’s an interesting word you’ve invented.

I like it.

LA replies:

I agree it’s a neat sounding word. It means, when you abolish something by dunking it in water.

(Ablution means “the act of washing yourself or another person.”)

Dean Ericson replies:

Heh.

Or a new evolutionary process whereby a species abolishes itself. As in, “the abolution of the white race.”

LA replies:

That’s right. The white race abolishes itself in the act of washing off its racist sin.

Dean Ericson replies:

Abolition by ablution: Abolution.

Kristor writes:

It’s rather like the exaggerated recoil Europe suffered after the Great War, and that resulted in the League of Nations, and eventually the UN, with its fool’s errand of ending or preventing all war. WWI was so horrific that Britain in particular decided war must be avoided at all costs. So, in the 1930s the last thing they wanted to do was admit to themselves that Hitler was dangerous, and would force them to war.

This is, so far as I can tell, a peculiarly modern phenomenon. When really bad things happen to modern civilization, it panics. It does everything it can think of to prevent the merest glimmer of such a thing, ever again. It seeks to drive out the evil, totally, and anything like that evil. Our ancestors had cooler heads. They recognized that bad things happen, that this is to be expected, and that the task of every generation is to preserve the integrity of civilization against their onslaughts. They recognized that this often means war, often means conquest. They did not shrink from this reality.

I attribute this change of attitude ultimately to the loss of confidence in a transcendent reality.

LA replies:

You wrote:

“When really bad things happen to modern civilization, it panics. It does everything it can think of to prevent the merest glimmer of such a thing, ever again. It seeks to drive out the evil, totally, and anything like that evil.”

This strikes me as a new insight. And, of course, the effort to prevent the merest glimmer of that evil thing leads to much worse things, e.g., the appeasement of Hitler resulting in World War II; the totalitarian re-shaping and elimination of ordinary society; etc.

Don Hank writes:

Absolutely correct, Mr. Auster! (See below)

Merkel said recently, as justification for the creation of the euro zone: “No two countries with the same currency ever waged war against each other.”

This hopelessly naïve oversimplification ignores two very obvious facts known to anyone with a secondary school knowledge of world history:

1—Until the European Empire (EU) was foisted on Europe (by stealth and deceit. See “Fabian Society”), almost no two countries had the same currency, so there has been no way to test this hypothesis under controlled conditions.

2—ALL nations in the world use a common currency, the dollar, for most international transactions, but dollar-transacting nations are far from being at peace with each other (Iran, Venezuela, N. Korea, Syria, vs the rest, need I go on?).

3—Almost all civil conflicts were fought among people using the same currency (e.g., the recent conflicts in Egypt and Libya, most notably).

This kind of thinking borders on hopeless ignorance and reflects the total lack of logic and reason we have been brainwashed into accepting by the MSM, the “education” system, etc, and falls into the realm of propaganda.

Not much has changed since Hitler’s fall. Has he in fact fallen at all? Or merely shape-shifted?

Kristor replies to LA:

Exactly. We could even view Marxism—the first explicitly materialist political philosophy—as another such phenomenon. Marxism apprehends the suffering of poverty and the relative economic and political powerlessness of the working class, and reacts by trying to eradicate the basic causes of poverty and differentials of power. To do this it must totally remake society, and man. And this, naturally, cannot be done except by totalitarianism.

Can we treat the French Revolution this way? I think we can. It was the first Western political movement that sought to dispense with Christianity, and with all things traditional; indeed, to extirpate these things, so as to prevent the evils that they allowed.

Both the Marxist and French Revolutions followed a loss of faith. Both rely on the power and capacity and goodness of men to bring about the salvation of utopia. Both therefore fail, as men must fail.

Men fail in every age, but traditional societies expect such failure, and expect to have to deal with it, always. “The poor are always with us,” etc. The modern political philosophies think they can get around this reality, can somehow fix it. It is the error of Judas; and the rage of the Leftists is the rage of Judas.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 31, 2011 09:44 AM | Send