Bringing Down Brussels
As everyone knows, Greece became a member of the eurozone on the back of a lie. The colonels’ regime had collapsed, Greek politicians were nervous, and that pseudo-French aristocrat Giscard promised entry to a country that is more Middle Eastern than European, but with olive oil. Entry meant no more tanks surrounding Parliament at midnight—rather a pity, actually, because they kept some semblance of law and order. So from 1980 onward, the Greeks began to spend other people’s money, the chief spender being the present premier’s father, known to us Greeks as Ali Babandreou.
Thirty years later the Greeks have managed to bring the European Union to the brink of collapse—again, not necessarily a bad thing, but looked upon by bureaucrooks in Brussels as the greatest disaster to befall Europe since the Black Plague. Recently, a rather dumb and pompous Euro MP remonstrated with me for expressing delight at the prospect. Pigs that feed in the trough would, wouldn’t they?
The Greeks, however inadvertently, might bring down the whole shebang. That is the good news. The bad is that the rich-as-hell Germans and the garlic-smelling French are fighting as never before to keep the pseudodemocratic union going. The reason is simple: The Greeks are in hock to German and French banks to the tune of one trillion euros. The global elites who believe in Brussels and seek to reduce nations to “ethno-cultural enclaves in a new world order run by these same bloodless bureaucrats,” as Pat Buchanan rightly put it, are as undemocratic as they come. In fact, they make the Greek colonels look like Thomas Jefferson by comparison. Countries that rejected certain E.U. treaties, such as Ireland, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Sweden, and even France, were told in no uncertain terms that they would have to vote again, and again if necessary, until the will of Brussels was met. If that’s democracy, I’m Monica Lewinsky.
In my recent peregrinations around Europe it was obvious that the euro was never purely an economic construct. It was a political one. It was to ensure total control for the bureaucrats uniting 500 million people speaking 30 different languages under little ole Brussels. Well, they got close to pulling it off, the tiny tinpot dictators, but then the Hellenes screwed up.
If the Greeks had any brains, of course, which they don’t (they are like people on welfare in Britain—too well off to get off), they would quit the European Union, default, restore the drachma, and watch every manufacturer in Europe and America rush to establish factories in Athens and its environs. Billions in tourism alone would enrich Greek coffers. But as I said, they are too weak and too dumb to do it. Like a mistress who has gotten used to her monthly stipend and is too lazy to go out and find new blood, the Greeks will now tighten their belts, blame Germany and America, and go to the beach until mid-September, when things will really get hot.
The great oracle of Delphi was typically ambivalent when I asked her whether the European Union would survive. She gave me three choices: The first was that the rich countries will prop up the poor ones by continuing to bail them out until . . . That’s when her voice trailed away. The second was that the euro might be abandoned, and the rich northern countries who avoid the beach will set up their own currency. The third was that the PIGS—Portugal, Italy, Spain, and Greece—will get their act together through reforms and pay back their debt. The oracle laughed out loud as she pronounced this third choice, but by now she was quite stoned.
So there you have it, dear readers. A few farsighted men got together in Rome more than 50 years ago and decided to turn Europe into a free-trade zone in order to avoid war in the future. It was a good idea, but like many good ideas the principle of peaceful trade and cooperation was hijacked by fat, faceless men who believed they could achieve power not at the barrel of a gun but through stealth, lies, and doublespeak. They flooded Europe with African and Muslim immigrants who refused to integrate, sold out Christianity to Allah, and rejected any loyalty to the land and people whence they came. Now the chickens are coming home to roost, and I, for one, am delighted.
But I am not getting my hopes up yet. The faceless ones are vicious and sly. They have the bankers, the press, and most of the politicians on their side. The pro-E.U. propaganda has drowned out the few responsible traditionalists who believe in individual freedom and their nations. My only hope is my fellow Greeks. Perhaps I will lead a midnight coup myself—but when was the last time a yacht sailed into Piraeus and Athens surrendered?
This article first appeared in the August 2010 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
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This is hilarious nonsense! The EU on the brink of collapse? Middle Eastern Greeks? Garlic-smelling French? I suppose we should be glad he didn't mention the cow dung-smelling Irish or, indeed, the oily-smelling Greeks! The fact that Mr Theodoracopulos is reduced to this kind of irrational ranting shows just how successful the ongoing process of European integration actually is. It also shows just how monumentally Wall St's attack on the EU and the euro via Greece has failed. Nay, has been positively counter-productive! Like the WWII Blitz, the American attack has driven Europeans closer together, not sundered them apart. That that miscalculation might annoy expatriates is hardly surprising.
More ignorance and effrontery from the predictable source. Mr. Kenny is a lot like the securities salesmen who call my office and lie their way from secretary to secretary, pretending to be one of my long lost high school pals or one of my financial advisors. I put them on speaker phone and make fun of them just to hear the time-wasting ranting that comes out of the phone as I do my email. I do think, though, it is probably bad for our moral health to experience such contempt for a fellow human being so often, though physicians assure us that laughter is good for high blood pressure. Thanks for making my day.
On an unrelated but related note, Christopher Caldwell writes how the EU has facilitated the Third World invasion of Europe. The free movement of people within Shengen-Agreement countries allows invaders to set up residency in an country with easy entry (most notably, Spain) whereby they can then move to a richer country with greater economic benefits. The EU undermines individual countries' ability to regulate immigration. But this phenomenon might be a cause of celebration for Michael Kenny.
"The global elites who believe in Brussels and seek to reduce nations to “ethno-cultural enclaves in a new world order run by these same bloodless bureaucrats,”
Mr. Theodoracopulos and Mr. Buchanan are too kind. THEY won't even let us have enclaves.
Some minor point of dispute - there are other claims by major papers about how Germany and its politicians are the biggest Euro-skeptics. So I wonder how it reconciles with Taki's claim that the Germans want to keep EU running.
Whatever it is, apart from the useless laws that European Parliament keeps imposing on Europeans, bringing back the drachma in Greece might only bring another set of problems. I think it is offensive to suggest that a nation's sovereignty lies in its money. The sovereignty only lies in its people. Money is just a medium of exchange. The system of legal tender laws broke the division of labour internationally, and allowed governments to rob money from citizens through inflation much more easily. It also brought in a whole bunch of difficult currency controls that makes necessary international transfers of wealth much more difficult.
The difference was that regional currencies ensured that any country that inflated too much would find its wealth lost to other countries. So it also put some controls, by pitting robbing governments against each other. Common currency ensured that governments won't have to burn each other out, and can work together on monetarily burning out their populace's wealth. It had the merit of removing the hindrances of multiple currencies, which hurt trade badly. It's between sound money and being able to trade.
We could have both, if we followed the 1950s hard money policy followed then by West Germany, Japan, Italy, and Switzerland - which quickly enriched those nations, while causing US to slowly lose most of its gold reserves to them (especially Japan). Make both money and trade sound, and international bureaucrats won't sap away your nation's sovereignty.
Mr. Taki had better watch it. His "garlic-smelling French" comes dangerously close to triggering an EU hate-speech prosecution. Or does that only apply when the "hate-speech" is directed against Muslims as Brigit Bardot and Oriana Fallaci found out?
Only I don't think it was Giscard. It was the Germans over everone's opposition. They were adamant that the Greeks were the sources of European civilization and tradition and therefore indespensible for the future superstate. All hubris all of the time, naturally.
Don't ever believe the newspapers about anything. Naturally many Germans are quite skeptical about the drain on their resources the PIGs are likely to cause, but the Germans are senior partners in the European Empire