Who would have thought just a few years ago that we have to look to “Old Europe” for countries pursuing sounds economic policies?
Meanwhile President Obama and the Democrats continue to pursue the European socialist policies of the past wanting more Keynesian government spending, the government picking winners and losers in the private economy and refusing to prevent the biggest tax increase in US history in 2011.
Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, on the other hand, has cut billions of dollars in spending and cut some taxes and the German economy is booming. It is ironic that at least some Europeans are learning the lessons of the free market that we pursued in the past, while America has an arrogant, stubborn president and ruling party that insists on taking us down the road to European socialism.
On November 2, we get to reject the ideology and incompetence of the Democrats in Congress by voting them out of office.
Vice President Joe Biden, addressing the European Parliament got a little carried away in being polite to his host by saying that maybe Brussels, not Washington should be considered the capital of the free world.
An innocent gaffe from the gaffemeister? Maybe. But this deference to socialist Europe is also in line with the Obama administrations’ continuous denial of American exceptionalism and with the direction Obama’s expansion of government is taking the United States.
With Greece on the verge of insolvency despite a $1 trillion bailout and European countries like Italy, Spain and Portugal facing similar dangers, it is time to wake up to where socialism will lead. The economic situation is Europe poses the threat of pushing the world into another recession or even a major depression.
Freedom and socialism are not compatible and to call a city in which thousands of European bureaucrats work on “perfecting” their socialist system can hardly be called the capital of the free world. Obama and Biden haven’t gotten America to the same point, but if they are not stopped in the 2010 elections and retired in 2012, we may get to the point where Washington as the capital of the free world is as ridiculous a notion as Brussels.
Over the past few days, a volcanic ash cloud from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano has stopped air travel in most of Europe. This is biggest disruption to travel in Europe since World War 2.
The effects of this volcanic eruption and the lingering ash over Europe where completely unexpected. Airlines face serious losses not covered by insurance. Millions of passengers worldwide are stranded. There are reports of travelers running out of life-saving medications.
Volcanoes historically have had major effects on climate and human civilization. Volcanoes release sulfur dioxide which causes increased reflection of sunlight. Large volcanic eruptions have cooled global climate. Watts Up With That? reports on a study linking an eruption of Indonesia’s Krakatoa volcano in 535 AD with agricultural collapse leading to the world’s decline into the Dark Ages.
The Icelandic volcano eruption illustrates the hubris of global warming zealots who focus on one variable – increased carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions due to our civilization’s advances and ignores all the other complex factors that affect climate and the stability of human civilization. They manipulate historical temperature records, record temperatures in locations affected by urban heat islands, ignore the Earth’s mechanisms to absorb CO2, dismiss solar activity and never mention the Earth geothermal processes that cause volcanoes to erupt periodically.
The Iceland volcano demonstrates the folly of global warming zealots trying to predict how climate will affect us 100 years in the future. A single event, unanticipated just a few days ago, can cause serious harm, but they believe that they can predict effects decades and centuries in the future and that, if we agree to their drastic limitations on human freedom, we can change the future in predictable ways and “save the planet.”
The London Times explains why air planes cannot fly: “The ash from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano is dangerous to planes because the molten rock erupts through the glacier, solidifies and then shatters into tiny fragments. The smallest are carried high into the atmosphere and cannot be detected by radar or other aircraft instruments.”
It is unclear how long this disruption will last. The Time reports that some travelers have been told that they won’t be able to get home until next month.
Many countries in Europe have been affected by the recession more severely than the United States. This is no surprise since they have had socialist governments of the type Obama wants to impose on America for the past fifty years. If the Iceland volcano continues to stop air travel, it could seriously damage Europe’s fragile recovery.
November 9, 2009 is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the most joyful historical events in my lifetime. It happened during an amazing series of events in the fall and winter of 1989 when the people of Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Checkoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania overthrew over 40 years of Soviet Communism with hardly any bloodshed. I grew up less than 50 miles from the “Iron Curtain”, a phrase Winston Churchill first coined in 1946:
Where it not for some small adjustment of the Iron Curtain that occurred 9 years later, I too would have been born on the totalitarian side of this curtain. Instead I came as a teenager from socialist, but democratic Western Europe to America where President Ronald Reagan was in the midst of destroying the Soviet Union by unleashing the power of American ingenuity in economic growth and military power. In 1987, he gave a speech in Berlin calling on Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall”:
Referencing Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev’s refusal to remove the Berlin Wall, the speech, delivered by Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin on 12 June 1987, contained the sentence
“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
On arrival in the city before authoring the speech, Robinson was warned by US diplomats to avoid Cold War rhetoric and that Berliners had adjusted to the presence of the Berlin Wall. However, after consultation with local Berliners, he found them deeply wounded and concerned about the wall; in many instances it had separated families and represented an intrusion of a police state into daily life. Returning to Washington D.C., Robinson’s phrase became controversial with the State Department and other staff members, including Chief of Staff Howard Baker and National Security Advisor Colin Powell. Repeated attempts were made to remove it from the speech, but Reagan overruled them, wishing to communicate not only with West Berliners but with East Germans on the other side of the wall.
Less than two and a half years later the events of November 9, 1989 unfolded. Mikhail Gorbachev did not tear down the wall, but, to his credit, he did not stand in the way and two years later was forced to accept the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union. Anyone who would have predicted this 10 years earlier would have been declared insane or hopelessly naive.
On the evening of November 9, Günter Schabowski, member of the East German politburo, mistakenly stated at a press conference that an order to lift border restrictions that was supposed to take effect the next day was effective immediately (German, NO subtitles):
Then West German television, which was secretly watched in East Germany and had credibility among East Germans that their government’s TV broadcasts lacked, reported that East Germany had announced that all its borders are open immediately:
The same evening pressure against the urban border grew and East German military fortunately stepped aside although there were plenty of tense moments and temporary setbacks. Watching this is a lot better than anything you will watch on TV. Enjoy!
The opening of the Berlin Wall 1989 / Reichstag:
The opening of the Wall at Berlin Bornholmer Strasse 1989:
