Category — Germany

From Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce:
(Link to Book)

December 19th, 1914 -
Lt Geoffrey Heinekey, new to the 2nd Queen’s Westiminster Rifles wrote to his mother, “A most extradordinary thing happened…some Germans came out and held up their hands and began to take in some of their wounded and so we ourselves immediately got out of our trenches and began bringing in our wounded also. The Germans then beckoned to us and a lot of us went over and talked to them and they helped us to bury our dead. This lasted the whole morning, and I talked to several of them and I must say they seemed like extraordinarily fine men…It seemed too ironical for words. There, the night before, we had been having a terrific battle, and the morning after there we were, smoking their cigarettes and they smoking ours (p 5).”

“…As night fell on Christmas Eve the British soldiers noticed the Germans putting up small Christmas trees along with candles at the top of their trenches and many began to shout in English “We no shoot if you no shoot (p. 25). The firing stopped along the many miles of the trenches, and the British began to notice that the Germans were coming out of the trenches toward the British who responded by coming out to meet them. They mixed and mingled in No Man’s Land and soon began to exchange chocolates for cigars and various newspaper accounts of the war which contained the propaganda from their respective homelands. Many of the officers on each side tried to prevent the event from occurring but the soldiers ignored the risk of a court-martial or of being shot.”

Such is, or used to be, the power of this important Christian occasion. It still is for us. A wish for peace, and a Joyous Christmas, from me to everyone, Christian or otherwise, everywhere…and especially to the faithful folks here at New England Republican.

Shock: chimpanzees smarter than Liberals and Progressives combined

Unnecessary testing of what is all ready known.

In one more case of researchers wasting grant money, European scientists have found that chimpanzees are smarter than Liberals and Progressives.

A unique study comparing the abilities of chimpanzees and orangutans to Liberals found that apes have social learning skills superior to the Liberals; the Progressives lagged far behind, according to the results.

In one social learning test, a researcher showed the apes and Progressives how to pop open a plastic tube to get food or a toy contained inside. The chimpanzees observed and imitated the solution. The orangutans were about 2.5 seconds slower than the chimpanzees.

Progressives, however, tried to smash open the tube or yank out the contents with their teeth. All apes beat the Lefties with the shortest time differential 19 seconds.

European scientists gave a battery of cognitive tests lasting three to five hours separately to 60 Liberals and 45 Progressives, 106 chimpanzees and 32 orangutans over two weeks.

“Using these multiple tests allows us to pinpoint where are the similarities and where are the differences,” said researcher Ed G. Mann of the Pine Planck Institute for Political Apology in Saurbraten, Germany.

These findings provide enormous insight into the devolution of Political Left. Chimpanzees ’s brains are three times larger than those of the closest Progressives and twice the size of the Liberals.

“This is the first time that anything like this has been done,” said Pine Planck Institute researcher Wynotte Nayler.

This will probably be the last time for these tests, since the apes legitimately objected to the Liberal and Progressive comparison. The chimpanzees signed that they felt demeaned by the whole experience.

US could be heading for recession

· Subprime crisis in full

· Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Prepare for the crunch

Former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers warned that the United States may be heading into recession as the biggest victim to date of the sub-prime mortgage debacle was humiliatingly sold for a token sum in Germany.

Traders are braced for another week of turmoil after the near breakdown of America’s $2,200bn (£1,100bn) market for commercial paper. [snip]

In Germany, it emerged that the state-bank SachsenLB may have accumulated $80bn of exposure to risky assets through a set of Irish funds kept off balance sheet. [snip]

It allegedly used no fewer than five Irish ‘conduits’ (off-balance sheet vehicles) to invest in collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) and other high-risk instruments, according to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. [snip]

Federal Reserve data shows that the outstanding stock of US commercial paper has fallen by $255bn over the last three weeks, a sign that borrowers have been unable to roll over huge amounts of debt. The fall is comparable to the sudden shrinkage that occurred at the onset of the dotcom bust, and may have the effect of draining liquidity. [snip]

Even so, the cost of this credit is still up roughly 80 basis points since late July - for those borrowers who can obtain it at all. Bill Gross, head of the US bond-giant PIMCO, said parts of the commercial paper industry were now so discredited that it may be impossible to revive them. [snip]

If one avoided courses in economics during the educational process or if they were Marxist approved, the above is incomprehensible.

So the answer to the postulate is no, if the FED keeps money available to lend. (Liquidity) If the FED allows credit to tighten, bet on a recession. Interest on T-Bills and bonds are set at auction, rates probably will go up to attract capital, making it harder to borrow; printing more money is inflationary. Neat little box, isn’t it.

Glance through the given sites; this time around mortgage brokers, not banks made loans to those who could not repay them and to those who bought houses beyond needs. Banks ad brokers then bundle these loans and sell them to Freddie Mac. This lowers interest rates but allows lenders to purge high-risk loans; loans they would not make if forced to keep them in portfolio. Lenders and buyers promoted this condition. Risky loans made to individuals, who believed what goes up stays up. Impossible, this violates the law of gravity and economics.

Harkening back to the 1980’s, one may see how the lending system bankrupted itself before. Well not quite by itself, this batch of polluted individuals greased the slide for the S & L debacle, the Keating Five: Senators John McCain (GOP) and Dennis DeConcini, Alan Cranston, John Glenn, and Donald Riegle (Dems)

Whenever politicians insert themselves in to business/economics, the wheels come off the train. Congress wants to do it again.

The clamor for mortgage bailouts has swept congress; only because they are on vacation (again) is this not in the news. Subsidizing irresponsible borrowers and lenders allows for more of the same in the future. The S & L mess, the dot com bust and now more poor banking judgment.

A critical point needs addressing here! No money disappeared or vaporized. It is in someone else’s account. Let the investors take the hit; they profited, now let them lose.

I’ll address one more point; we need some regulation when investing OPM. If the cash is yours, anything legal is fine, win, lose or draw.

German critics mock wrinkled rockers on tour trail

BERLIN (Reuters) - Rock stars from the 1960s and 1970s have been hitting Germany’s lucrative concert circuit but many of the grandpa-generation acts have disappointed fans and provoked withering reviews in Europe’s biggest music market.

The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Genesis, the Who, the Police and Black Sabbath are among the acts appearing this summer in arenas between the Black Forest and the Baltic, in Europe’s richest nation with a wealth of top-class concert venues. [snip]

“The question is ‘why are they bothering?’,” said Harald Peters, culture editor and music critic of the newspaper Welt am Sonntag. [snip]

Advancing age is noticed not only in their music.

Police drummer Stewart Copeland, 55, observed in his blog of a stop in the band’s first tour in 23 years this summer that vocalist and bass-player Sting was not as agile as he used to be.

“Last night Sting did a big leap for the cut-off hit, and he makes the same move tonight but he gets the footwork just a little bit wrong and doesn’t quite achieve lift-off. The mighty Sting looks like a petulant pansy instead of the god of rock.”

Others performing in Germany this year included Meat Loaf, who turns 60 next month, Lou Reed, 65, and Peter Gabriel, 57. The latter needed a teleprompter to help him remember the words.

Sueddeutsche Zeitung critic Sebastian Gierke said it was “almost tragic” to see Ozzy Osbourne, 58, at a “farcical” concert.

“He kept screaming ‘I can’t f—ing hear you!’ over and over again. You felt like shouting back ‘buy a goddamn hearing aid and maybe you’ll realize you’re singing everything off key’.”

What else is there to say?

….was Benito Mussolini in his gold-braid and be-medaled glory.  He’s the reason for this post and a few to follow,  the opera-bouffee dictator who opened the curtain on fascism almost a century ago.  In 1919, he poured the foundation for the Italian fascist edifice which arose around his party.  Fascist-oriented theorizing bubbled in the 19th century, but Mussolini and his “intellectuals” got it boiling into a malevolent stew in the nihilistic atmosphere after World War I.  The rest is history.

Italian Fascism either spread to, or met with its cousin in Germany, and thrived there in a somewhat different form as Naziism.  By the 1930’s, fascist movements had migrated to nearly every nation on earth.  But in the end, it was only a temporary, lethal inter-war phenomenon.  It survives today only in the minds of some radical Islamists, and Western leftists who attribute it to anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders. 

By the way, the word “fascism” shares letters, but no common root, with “fascinate”.  Still, something resonates in the coincidence.  “Fascinate” has Middle French origins,  and means “to bewitch or enchant”,  which describes the left’s preoccupation with fascism.

I say “the left”, and not “liberals”, because liberalism is nearly extinct.  You find very few liberals now.  They’re in scattered outposts, schools and churches and charitable agencies,  stranded like septuagenarian Japanese soldiers on tiny islands, awaiting a crackling voice message from The Emperor.  But they’ll die alone and forgotten.  Sad, too, because being smart and learned (rather than “educated”), and thoughtful, the old liberals knew something about fascism that their replacements don’t.  They lived through the pertinent years, and had the capacity to make honest distinctions  between fascism and American conservatism.

Fascism wasn’t always an epithet.  It became one when the two principle European fascist states, Italy and Germany, refined the art of street violence, and then invaded everyone within reach.  Also, the Spanish Civil War raised the concept of “anti-fascism” to a romantic art form for men and women of the old left.  Even though the “Republican” volunteer armies against Franco’s presumably fascist regime included genuine, idealistic American Republicans, they also included friends of the Soviet Union and other collectivist types in search of a barricade.

The anti-fascists lost their campaign in Spain.  Franco won.  But the old and new left acquired battle streamers and campaign ribbons which they flash to this day, along with a magnitude of heroic importance that dwarfs their actual numbers and purposes.  Their stock rose even more in leftist circles after Mussolini’s last swing through Milan, and Hitler’s bunker cook-out.  Their demonic anti-Marxist-socialist states, the ones where fascism was “against” almost everything of real importance in the 20th century Western world, and which thwarted all socialist revolutions except their own, were in ruins.

The following is my opinion only.  After the destruction of the European Axis, terms like “fascist” and “anti-fascist” were too useful to retire from the leftist lexicon.  When the expression “anti-fascist” can encompass anyone from Stalin to Gary Cooper and Ernest Hemingway, it punches way above its weight.  It causes a fluctuation of values that can confuse a political dialogue.  Leftist revolutionaries, who need to confuse political dialogues, don’t give up Newspeak like “anti-fascist” easily.  Fascism might be dead as a political system, but alive and healthy as a means to obfuscate political differences.

In such a rhetorical environment, the accusation of “fascist” isn’t even necessary, when the positive attribution of “anti-fascist” to oneself  will ipso facto clarify the nature of your opposition as “fascist”.  This worked pretty well with the bargain-basement revolutionaries of the 1960’s and it seems to be working today.  The tactic of “anti” prefixing (anti-gun, anti-poverty, anti-racism, anti-fascism, anti-interventionist, anti-militarism, etc.) is the means by which leftists solidify their virtues against your vices.  They’re anti-war; if you disagree with their policies, you’re pro-war…this kind of demented logic works on the stupid or inattentive.

As for fascism, since 1945 a huge body of literature about it has piled up alongside the fuming pile of crap produced by fascist thinkers around the world.  A lot of it is dedicated to proving that modern American conservatism is a fascist variation, which is additional fuming crap emitted by the left.  Leftism is a system for dragging expired, but unmodified, fantasies and mystical ideas from age to age, and era to era, thinking of them as transcendant and eternal.    In this they have a lot in common with fascists.  More on that later.

Sex for the motherland: Russian youths encouraged to procreate at camp

Remember the mammoths, say the clean-cut organisers at the youth camp’s mass wedding. “They became extinct because they did not have enough sex. That must not happen to Russia”.

Obediently, couples move to a special section of dormitory tents arranged in a heart-shape and called the Love Oasis, where they can start procreating for the motherland.

With its relentlessly upbeat tone, bizarre ideas and tight control, it sounds like a weird indoctrination session for a phoney religious cult.

But this organisation - known as “Nashi”, meaning “Ours” - is youth movement run by Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin that has become a central part of Russian political life. [snip]

No vodka, no drugs and no condoms, it is about the opposite of our public schools.

Nashi fits perfectly into the Kremlin’s newly-minted ideology of “Sovereign democracy”. This is not the mind-numbing jargon of Marxism-Leninism, but a lightweight collection of cliches and slogans promoting Russia’s supposed unique political and spiritual culture. [snip]

Its racism and prejudice is implied, but not trumpeted. Other pro-Kremlin youth groups are hounding gays and foreigners off the streets of Moscow. Mestnye [The Locals] recently distributed leaflets urging Muscovites to boycott non-Russian cab drivers. [snip]

Those who hoped that Russia’s first post-totalitarian generation would be liberal, have been dissapointed. Although explicit support for extremist and racist groups is in the low single figures, support for racist sentiments is mushrooming.

Slogans such as “Russia for the Russians” now attract the support of half of the population. Echoing Kremlin propaganda, Nashi denounced Estonians as “fascist”, for daring to say that they find Nazi and Soviet memorials equally repugnant. But, in truth, it is in Russia that fascism is all too evident.

The Kremlin sees no role for a democratic opposition, denouncing its leaders as stooges and traitors. Sadly, most Russians agree: a recent poll showed that a majority believed that opposition parties should not be allowed to take power.

Just as the Nazis in 1930s rewrote Germany’s history, the Putin Kremlin is rewriting Russia’s. It has rehabilitated Stalin, the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century. And it is demonising Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first democratically-elected president. That he destroyed totalitarianism is ignored. Instead, he is denounced for his “weak” pro-Western policies.

While distorting its own history, the Kremlin denounces other countries. Mr Putin was quick to blame Britain’s “colonial mentality” for our government’s request that Russia try to find a legal means of extraditing Andrei Lugovoi, the prime suspect in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.

Yet the truth is that Britain, like most Western countries, flagellates itself for the crimes of the past. Indeed, British schoolchildren rarely learn anything positive about their country’s empire. And, if Mr Putin has his way, Russian pupils will learn nothing bad about the Soviet empire, which was far bloodier, more brutal - and more recent.

A new guide for history teachers - explicitly endorsed by Mr Putin - brushes off Stalin’s crimes. It describes him as “the most successful leader of the USSR”. But it skates over the colossal human cost - 25m people were shot and starved in the cause of communism. [snip]

Nashi is both a symptom of the way Russia is going - and a means of entrenching the drift to fascism.

Terrifyingly, the revived Soviet view of history is now widely held in Russia. A poll this week of Russian teenagers showed that a majority believe that Stalin did more good things than bad.

If tens of thousands of uniformed German youngsters were marching across Germany in support of an authoritarian Fuhrer, baiting foreigners and praising Hitler, alarm bells would be jangling all across Europe. So why aren’t they ringing about Nashi?

From pestering the Estonians to arming Iran, fascism is resurging in Russia. The Progressive elements are alive and well in a new Stalinist autocracy, a Tsarist style is more in favor with Putin. Children for the Motherland will replace those not willing to adopt the party line. School them early and often in the “Fascialist” belief system.

Listen to Putin first, then Obama, Clinton and Edwards; not much of a difference separating the crowd. Everything for the state, public schools, healthcare and of that big bugbear democracy, well totalitarianism is so much neater and propitious to a smooth interaction of government and the people.

What’s the difference between Hitlerjugend and Nashi? Looks to me to be only the spelling.

A tape shows Taliban suicide bombers graduating from a training camp:

The tape shows Taliban military commander Mansoor Dadullah, whose brother was killed by the U.S. last month, introducing and congratulating each team as they stood. 

“These Americans, Canadians, British and Germans come here to Afghanistan from faraway places,” Dadullah says on the tape. “Why shouldn’t we go after them?”

Could someone explain to me again why we haven’t sealed the borders yet?  Or why we can’t seal them without “comprehensive” immigration reform?  But not to worry says the administration: 

U.S. intelligence officials described the event as another example of “an aggressive and sophisticated propaganda campaign.”

Suppose the denial has anything to do with our president’s ardent pursuit of “comprehensive” immigration reform?  Others aren’t so sure: 

“It doesn’t take too many who are willing to actually do it and be able to slip through the net and get into the United States or England and cause a lot of damage,” said ABC News consultant Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism official.

What “net” would that be?  There are ½ a million illegal immigrants streaming into the country now.  It’s not a real stretch to assume motivated terrorists can make it too. 

Call your elected officials and let them know its time for real border security without amnesty.

The Other D-Day

By Victor Davis Hanson

The Washington Times | June 11, 2007 Sixty-three years ago this week, we landed on the Normandy beaches. As on each anniversary of June 6, 1944, much has been written to commemorate the bravery and competence of the victorious Anglo-American forces.

All true. But as we ponder this achievement of the Greatest Generation that helped lead to the surrender of Nazi Germany less than a year later, we should remember that the entire campaign was, as Wellington said of Waterloo, a near-run thing. [snip]

The most brilliant armored commander in U.S. history, George S. Patton, had been sacked from theater command for slapping an ill soldier the prior year in Sicily. Gens. Omar N. Bradley and Bernard L. Montgomery lacked his genius and audacity — and tens of thousands of Allied soldiers were to pay for Patton’s absence at Normandy.

We finally broke out of the mess, after using heavy bombers to blast holes in the German lines. But again, these operations were fraught with foul-ups.

On two successive occasions we bombed our own troops, altogether killing or wounding more than 1,000 Americans, including the highest-ranking officer to die in the European Theater, Lt. Gen. Lesley J. McNair. The nature of his death was hidden from the press — as were many mistakes and casualties both leading up to and after Normandy.

When the disaster in the bocage near the Normandy beaches ended more than two months after D-Day, the victorious Americans, British and Canadians had been bled white. Altogether, the winners of the Normandy campaign suffered a quarter-million dead, wounded or missing, including almost 30,000 American fatalities — losing nearly 10 times the number of combat dead in four years of fighting in Iraq. [snip]

What can we learn, then, on this anniversary of the Normandy campaign? [snip]

Of course, World War II was an all-out fight for our very existence in a way many believe the war against terror that began on September 11, 2001, is not. [snip]

The American lesson of D-Day and its aftermath was how to overcome occasional abject stupidity while never giving up in the face of an utterly savage enemy. We need to remember that now more than ever.

No matter what you think of our involvement in the Middle East, one must remember, only the eternally vigilant survive to see a so-called peace.

From the fool Chamberlain’s “Peace in our time” to the mindless chant “Give peace a chance,” others who disagree with your ideas and existence disrupted all periods of peace. Peace did not solve Nazism, communism, slavery and/or religious intolerance. Winning is the only road to peace; cutting and running, withdrawing, groveling or making nice leads to enslavement and loss of freedom.

To all who wears or wore the uniform, no matter where or when; Thank you.

It seems like eons ago that the current Bush White House said it wasn’t going to repeat the mistakes his father made.  But there doesn’t seem to be a conservative principal the current White House isn’t willing to wave the white flag on these days.  After 6 ½ years of ignoring the issue, the president is “warming” to the idea of man made climate change and is offering his European counterparts another bite at the Kyoto apple:

“My proposal is this: By the end of next year America and other nations will set a long-term global goal for reducing greenhouse gases,’’ Bush said in an address that set out the U.S. agenda during next week’s meeting of the Group of Eight industrial nations in Heiligendamm, Germany. The talks would “establish a new framework’’ for when the Kyoto Protocol on emissions expires in 2012. 

It looks like its legacy building time at the White House.  Liberals write the history books, so it’s time to play nice and pay homage to their causes.

 A dose of Steyn

Are you a fine upstanding member of the Undocumented-American community? That’s to say, are you (if you’ll forgive the expression) an illegal immigrant?

Great news! Being illegal is now perfectly legal! Just for being one of the circa 12 million people who shouldn’t be here, you can now be here indefinitely! If you were living and working in America illegally before Jan. 1, 2007, you’re now entitled to one of the new Z-1 “probationary” visas. And your parents and spouses are entitled to one of the new Z-2 visas, and your children to the new Z-3 visas.

Don’t worry: It’s not an “amnesty.” Every politician in America is opposed to amnesty — if not the concept, then at least the word. That’s why the visa starts with the letter that’s furthest away from the one “amnesty” begins with. “Z” stands for zellout . . . no, hang on, zurrender or Zapatista, or some other word way up the other end of the alphabet from “amnesty.” [snip]

12 million illegals by the government count sounds like a bid on a government contract. You know how solid those numbers are.

What is to keep these newly minted legals taking the jobs that Americans won’t do? What’s to keeping them working for low wages? What’s to prevent them from joining the trash on welfare.

Perhaps the answer is affirmative action. By definition that isn’t racist. That will allow us to admit the oppressed from Norway, England, Germany, Italy, and Poland ahead of the freely migrating individuals. The only stipulations would be that you are at least 3^rd generation native of the home country. The other grounds for non-admission would be health based; infectious diseases like TB, Smallpox or plague and mental deficiencies such as liberalism or socialism.

Amazing stuff out of Germany where a judge used the Koran instead of German law to justify wife beating:

A German judge has stirred a storm of protest here by citing the Koran in turning down a German Muslim wife’s request for a fast-track divorce on the ground that her husband beat her.

In a remarkable ruling that underlines the tension between Muslim customs and European laws, the judge, Christa Datz-Winter, said the couple came from a Moroccan cultural milieu in which it is common for husbands to beat their wives. The Koran, she wrote, sanctions such physical abuse.

This is a clear signal about the dangers of multiculturalism. When German judges can’t even defend a woman’s right not to be beaten, what hope do they have of maintaining their freedoms? Being accepting and tolerant of others doesn’t mean you have to give up your own culture and rights. Europe is certainly rotting from the inside out.

It’s also a great example of why Supreme Court Justices who interpret the “living” Constitution and import foreign law willy nilly are so dangerous.

MONTPELIER — Two leading voices on climate change…full story here

“The mid-case scenario — not the worst case — for what we can expect is a further 5 degree temperature increase in this century. That’s warmer than it has been since the beginning of primate evolution,” author Bill McKibben of Ripton testified.
[snip]

“Since the beginning of primate evolution” says he. Really?

Does McKibben have verifiable records from the Olduvai Gorge? If you look here you will find facts contrary to given opinion without asking Melvin and Lucy Australopithecine.

McKibben was the lead-off witness in a series of hearings called by Senate President Pro Tempore Peter Shumlin and House Speaker Gaye Symington to advance their plans for significant anti-warming legislation. The hearings are unusual because so many lawmakers — members of eight committees — are devoting so much time to a single subject.

“Climate change is the single greatest challenge — the single greatest catastrophe — our children and grandchildren will face,” Shumlin said as the session began. He and Symington also emphasized that they see the climate-change challenge as an economic oppurtunity for Vermont to build a thriving sector of alternative-energy, energy-efficiency businesses.

There is a reason alternative energy is so named: Wind, solar, geothermal, and water power were replaced with a power source more reliable. If this were not so, oil and coal would be the “alternative” energy source.

The greatest threat to our children and grandchildren is junk science. When you hear and see “the computer model” shows… then you know you are dealing with guesses. An informed guess is still a guess.

Far too many individuals with no expertise, create local warming by blathering about how their opinions should be graven in stone. We peons should listen to the consensus of the sui-generis poobahs, after all they have our best interests at heart.

Scientists say human use of fossil fuels is increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, an insulating blanket that raises global temperatures and sets off feedback loops as glaciers and sea ice melt at ever-faster rates.
[snip]

McKibben, author of essays and books on global warming, and Pittsford climate scientist Alan Betts outlined the scale of changes needed in human behavior to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“Sprawl, the Circ Highway — they are global warming machines,” McKibben said, because they encourage or require more driving in autos that emit carbon dioxide as they burn gasoline.
[snip]

McKibben and Betts were clear on one point: There is decisive scientific consensus that global climate change is occurring.
[snip]

Earth’s average temperature has warmed 1 degree in the past century.

The average temperature rise actually ai .3 deg. Celsius. (NOAA records) If you use the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Columbia U., be aware that they changed their data in 2004. They dropped all temperature data prior to 1880, making the global temperature rise seem much sharper.

The solutions, he assured lawmakers, don’t mean “we have to lead miserable lives huddled in caves.” Western Europeans lead lives very similar to Americans, yet do so using 50 percent less energy, he noted.

Nuclear energy is in widespread use in Western Europe; France produces 90% of its electrical power via the atom, Germany between 65 and 70% and recently decided to continue using the atom. Finland is building a new nuke facility.

The greatest user of alternative energy is Denmark producing just 8% of its total power that way. From a country that small, 8% amounts to nothing, the rest of Western Europe, counting all alternative sources, range from 3% in Great Britain to 5% in the Netherlands. The EU uses quite a bit of power. They are not doing without!

This attempt to control economies and countries will rise above the fiascoes of Alar, silicone breast implants, gun control, the evils of coffee and movie popcorn. It isn’t science; it is religion.

So its evident, citizenship is merely the result of a stroke of a pen, or a fiat of the government in charge.

You continue to misuse and mischaracterize the Nazi Germany example when it so clearly does not apply. In fact, pointing out that the Nazis used citizenship as a pretense to exterminate millions of Jews proves exactly why your parallels are so poorly drawn and inadequately supported. Let me assure you that the millions of people who served, died, and supported our war effort during WW II understood that US citizenship and Nazi citizenship were distinctly unique and represented more than a piece of paper.

This view of citizenship as something so trivial that it is not earned and confers no obligations on the holder is all-too-common. Fortunately, our nation has always been able to find citizens who valued their citizenship just a bit more. Their names are written in stark marble on the The Wall. They fill the graves in Arlington National Cemetery. Many will never return home. They pledge their lives in the all volunteer military that defends us today. I am thankful we could find people who saw their citizenship as more than a pen stroke and certainly paid a price far higher than the current $2,000 asking price.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a noise? You could ask the same question about media reaction to the release and repatriation of Abdul Rahman. Frankly, Mr. Rahman’s release and the victory of a constitutional government over radical Islamic clerics is a major step forward for Afghanistan. Our “unbiased” media lost interest in the story though once it no longer seemed to highlight the “failings” of President Bush’s policies designed to spread democracy in the Middle East.

On a side note, something is definitely amiss with the White House press function. They should be highlighting this as a success story, but instead we get this tepid, say nothing response from the press secretary:

“Obviously it’s good news that he has been released,” said the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan.

In all fairness to Mr. McClellan, we only have that snippet of what he said, but the White House really needs to jazz things up. Yes, it is obviously good news, but what it is not so obvious is how this points to the progress being made in Afghanistan and how President Bush’s policies directly contributed. Contrast the bland White House statement with German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s statement:

“I think this is a sensible signal to the international community but also for the situation in Afghanistan,” Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said.

The President has the stage which means the media can only filter so much. I get the feeling the White House is under utilizing the “bully pulpit” though.

What American Conservatives Need to Know about Europe is an interesting read. I highly recommend it.

That’s the difference between the US and Germany: Americans are used to minimal government, but for Germans, after two world wars and the collapse of almost every religious certainty, the welfare state has become a spiritual necessity, which can be reformed but not revolutionized without damage to the collective soul.

I am thoroughly convinced I would never make a good liberal. In my experience, a liberal’s glass is always half empty, and they myopically focus on the negative. But, even I was surprised by the profound hopelessness of the paragraph above. What exactly brings you to the point where you completely throw in the towel and surrender to the nanny state? Yes, Europe and America are historically very different, but the Berlin wall fell less than 2 decades ago. Can Germany have collectively wiped its own memory so quickly?

When the French Republic managed to forge an alliance with the Russian empire, it was only because France and Russia could diplomatically ignore each other’s values. The goal, after all, was defense against a common threat and not to make the French feel at home in Russia.

But what do you do when the other side refuses to ignore your values? Was Hitler going to ignore American values during WW II? Is radical Islamic terrorism going to ignore our values today? It is comforting to think when you close your eyes that nobody else can see or harm you, but the reality is much different.