Elite Ideals Meet Democratic Realities

The Eurozone is in trouble.  Deep, deep trouble.  It has been for more than a year now.  Tons of money and words beyond count have been expended in the effort to keep the Euro afloat despite the great gashes torn by the sovereign debt loads of Spain, Italy, and, the mother of them all, Greece.

Bankers have wept and wailed.  Politicians have viewed with alarm while making promises that all will be well in the sweet bye and bye.  Emergency meetings have been held, recently on an almost daily basis.  Special funds have been established.  Experts from the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund have developed plans, made demands, issued words both threatening and reassuring.

Still the "crisis" rolls along, a tsunami.  And, like all tsunamis, the wave was not self-created but rather is the result of tectonic forces.

In the case of the Euro-debt tidal wave, the underlying tectonic forces are found in the nature of national politics.  National political dynamics whether in Germany,  Greece, France, or Finland are the cause of the seemingly economic disaster.

The economics of the current Eurozone are easy to understand.  Greece and the other so-called PIGS borrowed money, a lot of money.  More money than could be repaid without causing pain and misery within each state's population.  For some years, the payments could and were made--sometimes with more borrowed money.  With the onset of the Great Recession four years ago, the assorted PIGS led by Greece had more and more difficulty meeting extant obligations.  As a result, the cost of borrowing more money on the international market ramped up.  Ramped up a lot.

The economic slowdown around the world assured that the PIGS, again led by Greece, would have to make tough choices between meeting sovereign debt obligations or meeting domestic obligations ranging from salaries to pensions, from housing subsidies to underwriting the costs of medical treatment.  The money to do both simply did not exist.

Absent the Eurozone, Greece would have done something many states have done in the past.  Athens would have defaulted on its sovereign debt.  Walked away from it.  Given the bankers and other holders in due course a haircut.  For a period of time, Greece would have had difficulty borrowing on the international market, but that would have passed.

Argentina took the default route a few years back.  Today it is in better economic shape than it has been in more than three quarters of a century.  Default like currency devaluation imposes only short term costs while usually providing the basis for long term benefits.  Greece would have been able to do the same had the Euro not existed.

The common currency, the Euro, like the countries which use it, the Eurozone, exists as a tribute to a concept which owes much to idealism.  The Euro, the Eurozone, the European Union are all tributes to High Minded and Lofty Thinking.  The notion which propelled all was that of creating a federated Europe, thus preventing future conflict both violent and economic.  The visionaries who created the European Union, the Euro, and its zone were convinced that a new, supra-national Europe would put the final nail in the coffin of nationalism and all it spawned for once and all.

Insofar as the EU is concerned, the visions have not yet been so challenged by real world forces as to discredit the dream, at least not entirely.  The same cannot be said for the Euro.

The Eurozone was created as a monetary union but not a fiscal one.  This has meant that the countries of the zone cannot have a common tax, or a common limit on public expenditures, or a common policy on wages and pensions.  More importantly, the zone cannot provide for the orderly and automatic transfer of wealth from richer countries to poorer ones as is the case in another federal union, the one called the USA.

As a result, the Eurozone as an entity could not head off profligates like Greece before the crisis occurred.  Nor could the Eurozone as an entity assure the automatic coverage of Greece's "overdrafts" from a common treasury.

Back in the Nineties, when the Euro and its zone were under construction, the assorted Deep Thinkers did debate whether or not the zone would be restricted to a monetary union.  The downsides of this limited approach were understood.  The overarching concern of the politicians involved in creating the zone had to be sure their respective national legislatures as well as the public which elected each would accept and support the new currency and the mechanism behind it.

In short, an accurate understanding of the limits of democratic acceptance put a necessary constraint on the ambitions of those creating the Euro.  It was believed by these people as well as the national elites who welcomed the new expression of European integration that the Euro and its zone were but an intermediate step on the road to full federalism.

Even in its limited form, the monetary union was not greeted with universal hosannas and paeans.  There were hard fights in the countries which opted to join the zone.  Some states, most notably the UK, decided to stay out in the cold.

The force at work in the UK and within the opponents of the zone was democratically expressed nationalism. "Not to worry," murmured the Eurocrats, "federalism will come.  Good times along with the European Union and its parliament will work wonders on the reactionary nationalists."

Wrong!

The Eurofanatics might have deprecated those who opposed the Euro along with those who were against the expansion of the European Union's sway in terms similar to those employed by President Obama and others of his ilk regarding people living in "fly over country," but in doing so they forgot that the hoi polloi had the franchise--and were willing to use it.  The Great Recession exacerbated the already growing sense of frustration infecting many in Europe.

The frustration was the product of being, as one Irish woman put it during the vote on the Lisbon Treaty expanding the authority of the EU, "over governed."  The climate of frustration over the attitudes and behavior of the political, media, and academic "elite" of Europe was enhanced by the ever growing and ever more evident presence of non-Europeans on the local soil.

The tone deafness if not blatant ideologically predicated stubbornness of the elites with a constant message of multiculturalism and end-of-nationalism stimulated the rapid growth of nationalist political parties across Europe.  From Norway to Italy, from France to Austria, people in growing numbers saw and felt themselves to be strangers in a strange land, powerless pawns subject to dictates from Brussels and under siege by hordes of newcomers.

The push back was and will continue to be strong.  Election after election with few hesitations have shown the increasing strength of nationalism and the parties which traffic in this commodity.  The message has not been lost on the current occupants of elected office.

The American Treasury Secretary and his British colleague have warned the politicians of Europe to take immediate and decisive steps to end the market turmoil caused by the Greek sovereign debt.  Both men made this abundantly clear when they sat in with the European finance ministers this past week.  Both have good reason to be worried, very worried.  A melt down in the European financial sector will have adverse consequences for both the UK and US.  Great adverse consequences for two national economies not yet recovered from the Great Recession.

The European politicians did not need the Anglo-American warning.  They are perfectly well aware of what is going on.  It is just that they and their bosses in Berlin, in Athens, in Paris cannot do anything given the mood of the respective electorates.

The average German and counterparts in the Netherlands, Finland, and even France are not thrilled by the prospect of never ending bailouts of the "improvident" PIGS.  The average Greek or Italian or Spaniard is equally disenchanted with having the quality of life beat down by remote bureaucrats from Brussels or the IMF.  Undoubtedly, all hands would be quite willing and able to express their disapprobation come the next election.

The elites both in and out of government overlooked the basic truth here.  The elites in their ideological fervor have far outrun the limits of general public approval.  At the same time, they had forgotten the "unenlightened" members of the hoi polloi have a leash and collar on each and every elected proponent of European togtherness and multiculturalism called elections.

The Greek default crisis served to remind national politicians that the public was willing and able to administer a mid-course correction to policies of which it disapproved.  The reminder has taken the form of apparent indecisiveness in the highest circles of European leadership--starting with Chancellor Merkel.  Ms Merkel and the others are not indecisive; they are afraid of the costs of making a decision.

Ideals are wonderful.  No one should neglect to have them.  However, in the world of politics, particularly the politics of the world, it is critical that ideals not be decoupled from the realistic appraisal of what will be both accepted and supported by the majority of the politically articulate within society.

The creators of the Euro and its zone ignored this precept.  As long as the world generally and Europe in particular enjoyed prosperity without precedent, all went well regardless.  But, as was inevitable, the good times stopped, the dues collector came around.  Unfortunately, in the case of the Euro, it looks as if the dues will be collected not only in Greece or in Germany but everywhere, even in the US.

The takeaway?

Simple.  National publics are like armies as General George Patton once observed.  "They are like pieces of cooked spaghetti.  You can't push them.  You can only pull them along, slowly."

What! Me Worry? Not About "Eurabia"

Once upon a time, long ago, Newsweek was a staid, stolid magazine. Way back then, back when Ike was in the White House and the collective knees of We the People knocked like castanets with gran mal epilepsy, it was the boring, fact-oriented rival of the froth spewing icon of the Luce Empire, Time. High school students groaned when they were forced to read the dull words of Newsweek rather than the more stimulating pap of Time. Boring or not, Newsweek had the advantage of being free of opinion, particularly the ill-informed and unsourced sort.

Times have changed. Now Newsweek is not only thin in size and coverage, it is very, very lacking in weight, particularly intellectual weight. It is, however, long, indeed, very, very long on politically correct opinions of dubious intellectual honesty or robust factual undergirding. As an example of this, one might consider the magazine's treatment of what it is pleased to call the "Myth of Eurabia." Written by William Underhill, a staff hack who has penned articles on such diverse subjects as mosquitoes, Prince Charles, the Labor Party's difficulties, and the race for the so called "god particle," the piece portrays any and all who have voiced alarm at developments in Europe, pointing to the Muslim minority gaining an undue influence on the region's political, social and cultural structures, as a crew of paranoic scaremongers.

Nothing in Mr Underhill's string book indicates that he has any special qualifications to write on the complex subject of the Muslim impact on European politics, society, and culture to say nothing of the longer term implications of their growing and increasingly strident numbers in the European states. This in no way deters him from pushing a multi-cultural agenda with the intent of both reassuring the reader and demonising all who have found cause for concern in the Muslim penetration of Europe from the UK to the depths of the former Warsaw Pact.

Mr Underhill starts off by branding those who warn of the emerging Islamist threat to ancient European cultural values, social norms, political institutions, and world view as being "far right." The use of the term "far right" as the broad tar brush is as common, intellectually bankrupt, and ethically objectionable as was the use of the phrase "red-baiter" against anyone who spoke against Soviet espionage and subversion efforts a half-century ago.

(Let the record show that during the long, dark days of the most frigid Cold War, Newsweek did not stoop to the loathsome practice of name calling. The editors in those days let such reprehensible practices reside with the minions of Luce-world.)

Let us grant that Mr Underhill is correct when he avers Muslims will not be a majority of the Western European population in the next half-century even though that is a debatable proposition. Let us further grant Mr Underhill's undocumented and undocumentable contention that most Muslims are quite happy with the extant European social norms, cultural values, and political processes and institutions.

Even with these concessions, Mr Underhill's main point--Muslims are dear, sweet, harmless and ever-so-likable, and somewhat exotic friends and neighbors--is subject to the Scots verdict, at the very best. His second major conclusion, that any who do not share his view of Muslims are members of a pointy-headed, bigoted, knuckle-dragging assemblages of racists, Islamophobes, and fascists is totally unproven.

Those who warned of the threat to Europe posed by Adolph Hitler and similar national socialists long before German re-armament and renunciation of the Verseilles Treaty made it patent were right. Those who saw a threat to Europe and the Western World in Stalin's ambitions were right no matter how often they were dismissed as "red baiting right wingers." Twice within living memory the accurate Cassandra's have been dismissed as the loonie fringe only to be proven right.

Mr Underhill has made a choice. On the basis of little evidence and much wishful thinking and politically correct celebration of multi-culturalism, he has concluded that the Islamic population of Europe is a pure blessing to that old, tired continent. He has determined on the same basis that there is nothing happening in Europe today or in the near future which should concern, let alone worry Americans. With a sweeping certainty he dismisses all who have seen a potential threat contained in the Muslims of Europe, not only to those states but the US as well, as being a bunch of myth-making scaremongers of the worst, most racist sort.

Mr Underhill has taken a dangerous position. He has taken one which is difficult, if not impossible to maintain in the face of the realities of Islam and Islamism.

While there are peaceful Muslims in numbers which defy counting, Islam qua Islam is not peaceful. It is a warrior's religion. It is a religion without limits either as to its territorial sway or the means employed to gain the fullest possible expansion of its domination.

Islam is a religion in which there is no firebreak between the sacred and the profane, between mosque and state, between public and the private. One of the major appeals of Islam to converts as well as those born to the faith is the emphasis on community, a global community which has only in the past thirty years become aware of its strength, numbers, and global reach. As a result, the ever more extensive demands of the Islamist has grown in stridency--and influence.

Mr Underhill fails to note that there have been no organised, large scale protests by Muslims in Europe (or anywhere) against the bloody excesses of the Islamist jihadists. This lack of public opposition to the most revolting tactics of the "martyrdom seekers" speaks volumes to the willingness of Muslims generally to accept and tacitly approve of any and all efforts by their more militant coreligionists to seize and hold power. As an alternative explanation of Muslim silence, it might be posited that the observant Muslim has been terrorised into submission by the threats and acts of his Islamist jihadist brethren.

In either case, Mr Underhill's argument that Muslims are so fractured and fragmented that they can not serve as an effective political force is vitiated. If Muslims resident in France, Germany, or the UK cannot and do not publicly express total, absolute disapprobation of Islamist actions, then there exists a de facto community coherence which protects and potentiates the activities of the most extreme within the Muslim community.

Even in the immediate aftermath of 7/7 and the Madrid bombings, the denunciations coming from what might best be termed "public Muslims" were strangely redolent of the pro forma, the formulaic. They were mere genuflections before the alter of outraged majority opinion of a purely and obviously self-protective nature. This is not to gainsay the contention that there were individual Muslims who were shocked by the attacks and reprobated their having occurred as well as those who carried them out, but rather to indicate the community as a community never disavowed the acts and the actors, the sin and the sinners, if you like.

Mr Underhill, as is the case with so many of the American and European intelligensia, the "useful idiots" as Lenin termed them, fails to parse properly between the attitudes of the European (and American) elite and the hoi polloi of both continents. Mr Underhill partakes fully of the typical elite disdain for the great unwashed of the general population, the people who do not write for major media outlets or pontificate at conferences of learned academics or rub elbows comfortably with the elect in the halls of power.

As elections including the recent one for members of the European Parliament indicate, there is a great and growing gulf between the world views of the elite and the hoi polloi. Increasingly, the hoi polloi are not content to keep their mouths shut in the presence of their "betters," to keep their place, keep their mouths shut, and follow the leaders.

In the minds of the elite (and Mr Underhill), nationalism is dead and should be buried. The age of multi-culturalism is upon the world and should be welcomed by all proper minded people. The hoi polloi obviously do not agree.

The voices from the bottom are being heard to the discomfort of Mr Underhill and the elite generally. There is an irony here. Back in the years right after World War II the French broke their arms patting themselves on the back for having suddenly discovered the voices of the heaving masses of the people previously unheard by historians.

The French and later the historians and intellectuals of all Europe and the US engaged in orgies of self-congratulations for giving long overdue credit to the perspicacity and sagacity of the working classes; the women of field, factory and kitchen; the privates huddling in the trenches. The true voice of the people these intellectuals assured each other and the rest of us were the valid source of history, of the collective wisdom of the folk.

Now, the voices are in the present, in the political and not the safe reaches of the past. Because the wisdom, the perspacacity, the sagacity of the hoi polloi does not meet the desires, expectations, or exhortations of the elite, the people are no longer fountainheads of understanding. Now they are the tools of the "far right." Now they are the misguided fools of nationalism and cultural stolditity.

The elite, Mr Underhill in specific, may sputter and pour soothing syrup but they may be the fools. Perhaps it would be best if the elite listened instead of tut-tutting. Heed instead of assuming it has both the capacity and right to lead.

Time to Get a Grip on Religion and History

Quite a few apologists for Islam, not all of them Muslims by a long, long way, enjoy pointing out that it was the followers of Islam who "invented" zero as an arithmetical place holder, preserved what little classical literature survived the long ordeal of the Dark Ages, and had a vibrant, productive period of scientific and medical research and discovery. Two of these three points are true--but not in a way that reflects any particular credit on Muslims.

First, the untruth: Muslims did not "discover" nor "invent" the use of zero as a place holder in math. That honor belongs to folks in India who were, then as now, Hindu. The convenience of zero in making basic business math type calculations was appreciated by the Arab merchants trading across the Indian Ocean, and they quickly adopted the Indian innovation. It then spread via trading routes into Europe where, along with the admittedly far less cumbersome Arabic numerals, rapidly sent the clumsy Roman system of notation to the scrapheap--and cornerstone dates for pretentious buildings.

The only credit due Islam per se is that it didn't inhibit all international trade with its giant appetite for war and conquest. The real kudos belong to Indian merchants and their Arab colleagues.

What about the other two? They are true assertions, no doubt about that. However, the truth rests less with the peaceful and scholarly nature of Muslims than with the deficiencies of Europeans.

It wasn't that the Europeans had suffered a terminal attack of stupidity when the Roman Empire in the West collapsed some 250 years before Islam erupted from the sands of Arabia. Nor did the Germanic tribes in the course of their folk migrations and displacement of Romans, Gauls and the other residents of the decaying empire have a single digit IQ level.

No. The ultimate responsibility for both the role played by Muslim scholars in preserving the remnants of classical learning from Greece and Rome and the splendid but short lived period of Muslim scientific and medical research rests with two facts on the blasted wastes of European society a thousand years and more ago.

Take a hold on the two facts.

Fear was one. Fear was pervasive in the aftermath of the collapse of Roman order, Roman protected trade and commerce, Roman peace. Decades, centuries of war, famine, death produced a very long lasting legacy of fear in all levels of the European population. Completely encapsulating fear produces a driving need for anything which will seem to take charge, direct perceptions, beliefs and behaviors. In short it produces a high number of authoritarian personalities eager to follow a leader, an institution, an ideology which offers to reduce fear.

The second fact was the existence in Europe at and after the implosion of the Western Roman Empire of an institution with an ideology and socially dominant authoritarians which was ready, willing, able and eager to take charge of the wreckage and move out.

That institution was the Catholic Church. The ideology was Pauline and post-Pauline Christianity. The socially dominant authoritarian personalities went by various job titles ranging from priest to pope. Ideology, institution and members combined as a total package which offered to reduce fear, reduce risk.

Intentionally or not, the Church considered as a religio-political system reduced something else, something even more important for a society, a culture, as a whole. The actions of the Church as it sought to provide a complete, integrated political and spiritual existence for its European adherents suppressed curiosity, repressed inventiveness, reduced almost to the point of elimination any individual questioning, thinking, acting.

For an authoritarian institution, as for the authoritarian personality, stasis is the desired state. The lack of exploration, the absence of change, innovation, creativity outside of narrowly defined boundaries are all considered good. Learning became a rote exercise in memorizing certain selected texts. Science and medicine--where and when either existed at all--consisted of repeating the work done a millennium or more earlier.

For centuries Europe froze under the heavy hand of an authoritarian institution and ideology. Nothing really changed intellectually, culturally, socially, politically, economically as one dreary year succeeded another. None of this occurred without good reason.

In the short hand of military intelligence manuals dealing with interrogation of prisoners of war, the reason is known as, "fear up; fear down." Authority over the perceptions, beliefs and behaviors of an individual (or an entire society with its many levels, ranks and functions) is established and maintained by manipulating fear up and down, of playing the most primal emotion of people like a musical instrument, running the scale up and down, higher and lower.

The Church painted horrifying visions of eternal damnation for those who did not follow all the many "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots" purportedly found in the one and only Official Bible as interpreted by those institutional functionaries licensed by the Church to do so. At the same time the Church offered the comforting images of a perfect place beyond space and time where the virtuous would dwell forever. Of course, "virtue" was defined by the Church.

While Europe droned on in a semi-coma, Islam was in its most rambunctious phase. It was a young, energetic, highly motivated and successful ideology. It might have had an ideology susceptible to authoritarian abuse, but the time was not yet right for the contradictory components of the Quran to be put to that purpose.

Islam was quick with the sword, not only against external enemies but against its own membership. There was internal violence, inner fractionation, palace intrigue, all the things that make life exciting, vibrant. Along with conquest, in tandem with killing and looting, in companionship with backstabbing and seizing one gold ring of power or another while standing on the bodies of yesterday's friends, came a thirst for learning that quickly drained the sparse oases of Arabia and seized eagerly upon the new lakes of knowledge in Alexandria and elsewhere.

Learning, scholarship had been celebrated by Mohammad so the Muslims who cherished the knowledge of antiquity and pushed forward the boundaries of understanding in chemistry, physics and medicine properly saw themselves as doing the will of Allah. Every now and then, according to the Geek's reading of history, authoritarianism and untrammeled creativity and invention can coexist. The first two hundred, three hundred years of Islam was such a time.

From the contrast briefly outlined here, it is easy to see why Islam cruised by Europe in so many fields of learning. But, let's get an honest grip on the truth behind this. If the Europeans had not fallen under the sway of a fossilizing authoritarian institution with the goal of totally controlling all aspects of human life, is it not likely--likely to the point of certainty--that Europeans, not Muslims, would have made the advances whether in science, medicine, government, trade and business or even war?

The answer to this question is found a couple of centuries later as the High Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance and Reformation. The hallmark of the Ren and Ref is a new celebration of the individual. In close second place is an increased willingness and ability to cast off the shackles of fear and authoritarianism.

As the Enlightenment replaced the earlier Renaissance and Reformation and as the failures of the Church's repressive efforts known as the Counter-reformation became increasingly evident, the day of the Individual fully dawned in Europe. To be sure this new emphasis upon the individual and his or her efforts came with increased risk and even new fears as well as the usual accomplices: war, famine, death--and creativity, innovation, invention, discovery, all the little things we have thought of for so long as "progress."

It is ironic to say the least that Islamists and Islamic fundamentalists want to stop the clock in its tracks or even turn it back to some supposed earlier and better time. It is ironic that Islamists and Islamic fundamentalists want to play the "fear up-fear down" racket to gain and maintain authority over fearful people. It is ironic that so many Muslims have given way to fears without basis.

It is ironic to see Islamists and their ilk try to kill their way to a social-political order frozen in a past which never existed in the way they believe it did. It is bitterly amusing to see Islamists and their accomplices try to bring a religiopolitical system into existence identical in all essential respects to that which so paralysed Europe that Islam could have had its great and brief moment in the sun.

There is something pathetic in the misuse of Western history by Western apologists for Islam. However, the Geek supposes it's inevitable that they do so. What else can be expected when they have so desperately misread the realities of today.