Just a passing thought.
But first a few words from Ronald Reagan, a man whose whose salient words are still relevant today as the day when he said them, echoing the voices of the notable philosophers and thinkers from the Enlightenment.
“You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream — the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, “The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.”
– Ronald Reagan, October 27, 1964
What we are witnessing in Europe today, (as well as what’s trying to be implemented in the US) are the spoiled fruits from the decades old socialist (social democratic statism) experiment, that demands subservience to the status quo with a modicum of liberty, in exchange for illusionary peace and societal progress.
Socialism (statism in general) could never work, so you see people within various national movements (some of good design, others nefarious), seeking to overthrow what I deem as, a Neo-Aristocracy, a collection of self anointed ruling elites who are more than happy to embrace a post-Enlightenment mentality within an ever increasing coercive soft tyranny of democratic despotism, and happily call it ”democracy”.
It’s falling apart, piece by piece, because it was all built upon an illusion, a lie, that a handful of ”geniuses and masterminds” embody more wisdom and knowledge than the entire society that they claim to lead. The EU is the chief debilitating factor in Europe’s slide into oblivion, it’s a fool’s trade for supposed security and prosperity in exchange for the indigenous people’s self determination (down at the local level) that’s crushing these communities.
The people can’t blamed (entirely) for being dumbed down by decades of relentless indoctrination of socialist values that are translated into government policies, it’s the dish that they’ve been served by the academy which comprises one side of the iron triangle of power, shared by the faux media and the ruling (self anointed) elite.
This is what I see as the driving force that is tearing Europe apart, the total rehabilitation of socialism within elitist European circles of power, regardless of which side of the (now defunct model) political aisle you hail from. There is no such thing as conservatism in Europe, and it’s fading fast in within the US. Crony capitalism (welfare capitalism) is the most noticeable hallmark of their convergence.
Without the debilitating burden of Marxist socialism, in all of its many post-Enlightenment flavors, we wouldn’t have the problem of totalitarian Islam taking root within our borders. Multiculturalism would be seen for what it is by the overwhelming majority in society, as a by-product of group/identity politics which only benefits those who seek to both expand and protect big statist government agendas.
I could go on and on, but you get the idea.
