Keep Right — Column by Ralph K. Ginorio
Vice President J. D. Vance’s recent speech to the Munich Security Conference exposed the starkly anti-democratic tendencies of today’s European elites. These tendencies amount to a variant of the old Viet-Nam era libel, “We had to destroy the village (or the democracy…) in order to save it!”
Many Americans on the Left share this view of a “managed democracy”. By this, they mean a return to feudalism-by-any-other-name. European elites have deep experience with feudalism. Under feudalism, elite aristocrats made all major choices while the peasants, serfs, and slaves were treated more like livestock than as fellow human beings.
European elites justify much of this as an ongoing effort to prevent a resurgence of a latter-day National Socialist German Workers’ Party-led Fourth Reich. For eighty years, politicians from center-right to the far left have collaborated against what they deem to be both populism and the far right.
Both US political parties since 1945 have agreed that it is in America’s interest to assist Europeans in suppressing and opposing the Fascist, Nazi, and Communist variants of totalitarianism. The Cold War was waged in service to shared JudeoChristian Western Civilization defending itself against secular ideologies of control. It was seen as being far better for us to spend dollars now than lives in the future to protect freedom from tyranny.
However, the poison of the Woke Mind-Virus has distorted this noble and necessary mission into a sad and sick parody. This tragic intellectual devolution was best expressed by CBS TV Personality Margaret Brennan, who literally blamed the Final Solution on free speech!
Somewhere, this prominent product of contemporary Woke higher education and corporate culture had come to the bizarre conclusion that Hitler’s path to power and governance was rooted in an excess of freedom of expression.
Our Vice President’s speech was made in the wake of yet one more murderous rampage perpetrated by an “asylum-seeking” Islamist immigrant. The driver rammed his vehicle into a crowd of Germans who were peacefully protesting unfettered immigration into Europe. As with so many atrocities perpetrated here in the US, had immigration law been followed, the perpetrator would never have even been there in a Western nation to commit mass murder.
Vance rightly pointed out just how unwilling to even question their open borders policies these elites have become. Because of their bureaucratic groupthink, an increasing proportion of European voters have been disenfranchised.
British opposition to the European Union’s open borders policy was so strong that they departed the EU, at great cost to Britain’s ongoing prosperity. This was one of the very few opportunities that any Europeans had to cast votes about this highly provocative matter.
Anti-establishment Europeans have been castigated as being too “populist” or “ultra-right wing”. The elite’s implicit claim, that anti-establishment Europeans are really just neo-Nazis, is and has been used to justify their refusal to treat their critics’ concerns seriously.
Those who provoke public anger, and then deny it a voice, court violence. The very military and civil bureaucrats to whom Vance spoke have been engaged in the systematic suppression of any public expression at variance with both the elites’ policies and their ongoing rule.
Vance referenced a man in Britain who silently prayed over 150 feet from an abortion center. He carried no signs. He shouted no slogans. He spoke to no one. Police accosted him, asking him about what he was praying. This is literally policing thought.
Instead of remaining silent or lying in answer to this outrageous question, he said that he was praying for the soul of a child that he and his partner had previously aborted. For this, he was charged, tried, convicted, and fined. In the modern home of free speech, a man was punished for silently praying.
Across Europe, a two-tiered policing and court system indulges or blatantly ignores crimes committed by Moslem immigrants. Meanwhile, European natives can no longer engage in political deliberation without fear of being arrested for thought crime.
Recently in Romania, a national election was cancelled after the fact because of a claim of Russian interference. Upcoming German elections may also be cancelled if the Alternative for Germany (AFD) party wins too decisively.
All of this reveals a fundamental difference between the English-speaking variant of Western Civilization from its continental cousin. While societies like ours, which flow from England, are traditionally rooted in Enlightenment values of liberty and limited government, continental Europe hearkens back to the Roman Empire. While our institutions serve citizens, continental institutions rule them. This distinction is key.
Vance rightly pointed out that all of this could split the trans-Atlantic alliance. While this alliance has kept the peace for eighty years, Americans are much less willing to spend blood and treasure to protect the powers of unelected bureaucrats than we are to save fellow free people from totalitarianism.
Vance has given Europe’s elites an indispensable warning. Europe may willingly return to our shared Western values of respecting freedom and human rights. Or the United States might spend our resources in defense of liberty elsewhere.
