I’m not sure, but I don’t think Nigel Farage, a member of the UK’s European Parliament, likes the EU President, a former Prime Minister of Belgium. Interestingly, in their coverage of the incident, the Times of London conveniently left out the quotes regarding Farage’s accusation that Van Rompuy was determined to turn the EU even more socialist than it is. That was the crux of his tirade, and a good and appropriate one. Yes, it was a rather scathing attack, but let’s not forget the British tradition of PM “Question Time,” where MPs regularly go after each other with contained abandon. So to speak 😉
Here is the background as to why Mr. Farage would be so passionate about his opinion. The ToL’s position that this was an effort to get PR by Farage is ridiculously misleading. Here’s what Van Rompuy, who looks more like The Grinch than he does a ‘damp rag,’ has been up to:
War in the EU as Herman Van Rompuy makes ‘power grab’
National leaders are concerned Mr Van Rompuy, who had been expected to take a back seat role, is attempting to expand his position.
Germany and France backed his candidature on the understanding he would act as an EU “chairman” rather than a high-profile leader.
But the introduction of the Lisbon Treaty has triggered bitter in-fighting between Mr Van Rompuy, Baroness Ashton, the foreign minister, and the Commission over who is in charge of representing Europe on the global stage.
Diplomats are increasingly worried that amid the turf wars there is a danger of Brussels “mission creep” as squabbling EU chiefs try to enlarge their empires at the expense of each other and national sovereignty.
National governments, led by Germany, are incensed by an attempt by Mr Van Rompuy to take on new powers he claims were agreed at an informal summit two weeks ago.
With the new UK Tea Party movement and Farage’s sort of clear, blunt commentary, it looks like we do have allies across the pond 😉 Here’s the now viral video.
A blow to world government. Good news.
I have been saying this for years – we in the U.S. should have the same thing in our Legislature, both Houses. I get tired of listening to “The Honorable Senator from the State of X”. I want some verbal attacks like this.
Hell, I’m even for those brawls they have in some Asian countries! When “Liar!” was yelled I was for it . I’m tired of this fake politness, this semblance of propriety. Are we not the rabble from Europe and other countries. Weren’t we considered the savages by the Europeans? Why in the world do we try to act all nice?
I’m done with it. I’m with Andrew Breitbart – the gloves are off and I’m READY TO RUMBLE!
😀
Sweeeeet stuff!!! LOL!
I was shocked that Eastern European countries were voting themselves back into a kind of quasi-fascist/communist government. It’s now the EUSSR. I got that from a policy scholar who actually lived in the Soviet Union. I corresponded with him a few months ago. He says that Putin is salivating at getting the chance to resurrect a new Soviet Union for Europe. Since Russia has so many natural resources, he can blackmail most of Europe.
I have to tell you all this story. A friend of mine has a friend from England. He’s lived in Germany for some time. He asked her why the U.S. is so opposed to socialism. He sees it as a great system. (I am serious about this.) She also said that this guy and most of Europe get their information about the U.S.A. from MICHAEL MOORE!!!! Yes sir, Michael Moore is the premire spokesperson for the U.S. of A!!!! This is the mental paralysis that permeates European society. This man has been so conditioned and so intellectually inert, he takes Moore at face value. Even though Americans don’t take him seriously. My friend had to educate this man about that fact. It is refreshing to see someone call out these philosopher-kings. Unfortunately, Europe is ground zero for Plato’s ideal society.
Slimfemme, I can totally believe this. My mom was raised in England after WW2 by Polish parents. And while my grandparents were not known for their politics, they certainly saw what happened in Poland after the war as they visited their a few times during my mother’s youth and my mother obviously saw it as well. Nonethless, my mom still doesn’t understand the Constitution, the idea of a Republic – even after becoming a U.S. citizen when I was in high school. Not being raised here, she simply doesn’t understand the ideas underlying the Constitution.
And I’ve heard this from Americans as well – many do believe in a centralized gov’t because anything else to them seems like chaos. They just don’t understand what that can lead to – at best, a European style country which will ultimately fall apart financially anyway and probably be vulnerable to Islamofascism; at worst, North Korea, China, USSR, Cuba.
Europe has had some kind of centralized gov’t, some kind of welfare state for so long, they know nothing else. We were always the aberration. Always. People don’t understand it unless they live it. But then the Progressives came in and they began poisoning the minds of our own American youth, but also the minds of those who are new here.
We must take this country back from these Progressives. The life of our Republic is at stake.
Your and Slimfemme’s comments kind of answer the question that was behind the horror that people felt over Nazi Germany. How could a mature society that was so cultured and educated become so barbaric? I don’t mean this as a slam against Germans specifically, but rather against “the European mindset” (there was Mussolini in Italy as well). I’ve pondered the same question.
I watched Kenneth Clark’s BBC series “Civilisation” recently. I highly recommend it. What became apparent is that our system of government was based on ideas from the Enlightenment period (I heard this when I was in school as well), when rational thought re-emerged to prominence in European society for the first time in about 1,500 years, in the 17th/18th century. We had an easier time establishing a system of government based on these ideas than the Europeans did, because we were “starting anew”. It was a brief window in time. In the 18th century, according to Clark, rational thought began to fade in Europe and a Nature religion, and after that the romantic period began to take hold. People were guided more by their passions than from thinking things through. It led to upheaval in Europe in the 19th and 20th century.
I’ve referred to Thomas Sowell before. I’ll quote from his interview on his book “A Conflict of Visions”. Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution starts by quoting from Sowell’s book:
Robinson: “‘The two great revolutions in the 18th century in France and in America can be seen as applications of these differing visions.’ Explain that one.”
Sowell: “Well in France the idea was that if you simply put the right people in charge and created the right institutions then all these problems would go away. In the United States it was assumed from the outset that there were very limited things you could do, and what you needed to do above all was to minimize the damage done by the flaws of human nature. This is why the United States, for example, has its constitution, so much lamented by those who believed in the French Revolution, in which this group is offset by that group, and nobody can sort of run wild.
If you believe that what you need is to have the right leaders who love the people, and so on–a “messiah”, as it were–then your problems are solved. But if you believe there isn’t any political messiah, and you believe that you have to make sure that all people are restrained in what they are able to do, then you have the separation of powers, you have elections, you have constitutions. You have all kinds of things hemming you in.
Condorcet, who was a great supporter of the French Revolution, could not understand why there was a separation of powers. And not even when, at the end of his life, he was arbitrarily thrown into prison, where he continued to write about why the Americans have this separation of powers; and of course if there had been a separation of powers, he wouldn’t be rotting in prison.”
I really liked the irony in Sowell’s illustration. It seems, according to Clark, the only thing the Enlightenment accomplished in Europe was to topple the Church from its throne of authority. Since then, “there has been no center.” He indicated that the rationalism of the Enlightenment could not reconcile the contradictions and “messiness” of European culture at the time. And so it sounds like it was rejected, or at least isolated to some niches, like science and parts of academia.
One of the most salient points Glenn Beck has made about the Progressive movement is that they’ve changed our history. Not only that, they have thrown out the great ideas that a relative few great people came up with, and which have benefitted society greatly. Hence the reason that there are a lot of people who do not understand the rationale for the Constitution. It would make a lot more sense if people understood the history and the thought that went into creating it. The true basis for understanding what the Founders created is understanding the philosophy that says all human beings have a flawed nature. Without that, people can’t really understand the rest of it. Progressives believe in the unconstrained vision, which says that everyone except an elite few have a flawed nature.
Another thing that Robinson and Sowell talked about is an apparent contradiction in the idea that people should be educated in our society. Robinson confronted Sowell, asking, “Why is that? Why is that? Why is that? We keep coming back to higher education as a kind of POLLUTANT in the American political system! That’s been a theme of our conversation. WHY?! What’s going on?” Sowell just recently published a book called, “Intellectuals and Society” that I believe attempts to answer that question (the interview was done about 1-1/2 years ago).