Matt Taibbi: Raised to think Europeans were our gentler, more civilized partners, they now look like shameless freeloaders
“Europe enjoyed its years of low military spending thanks to a prolonged period of protection from the US, allowing it to build one of the most generous social security systems in the world… Across the EU, social protection has grown as a share of total government spending, rising from 36.6 per cent in 1995 to 41.4 per cent on the eve of the pandemic… While higher borrowing can cover some initial outlays… the cost of rearmament will ultimately be shouldered by taxpayers and beneficiaries of the continent’s social security nets.”
There you have it. While in America it took an electoral upheaval and a near-military assault on the federal budget before citizens learned they were spending oversight-free billions on “climate change things” or funding trans hair salons in India, Europeans are still in the stage of needing The Financial Times to explain that in an unsubsidized country, taxpayers pay for taxpayer benefits.
Since EU President Ursula von der Leyen announced weeks ago that Europe is commencing a new “era of rearmament,” the atlanticist press has been churning copy in a frantic effort to explain what living without subsidized defense means. As an American who’s sent decades of taxes overseas, these dispatches are hard reading. It looks like a bunch of pundits Googled, “How do major industrialized countries pay for their own defense?” The tone is what an editor breaking the news about Santa Claus to forty-year-olds would shoot for. It’s incredible stuff.
Sounds oddly familiar.
And the Irish are painting themselves blue, and firing up horse-driven lathes, to turn out wooden pikes by the railcar load.
Back in the late 60’s and early 70’s, I was programmed to believe that Europeans were “so wonderful”. I took a 2 month vacation there in 1977 when I was 25 and was disabused of this idea violently. Even in 1977, most people in Great Britain or in Europe did not have telephones. You used the one at work or went to the Post Office (or the red call box in Britain). Everything was so small, hotel rooms, private homes (my parents had given me introductions to family friends in the UK and in Paris). The streets were dirty (Paris was especially bad). There were wonderful old buildings and artwork in museums, so there is that.
I was so glad to come back to Canada, where things worked and there was space. Sadly, our “betters in Ottawa” have now ruined even that!
I’m always amazed at how the homes have NO proper Entries … just an exterior door opening onto a tiny, narrow hallway … and all the hallways appear less than 3ft wide. And the bathrooms?! As we call them: shit, shower, and shave bathrooms. Where you can do all 3 without moving an inch … where you can’t move an inch.
No wonder Supertramp sang:
”They got to have ’em in Texas
‘Cos everyone’s a millionaire
Because everything’s BIG in Texas … unlike the narrow little hallways of the UK
I remember when I finished high school in the late sixties of so many acquaintances taking a year off before university and travelling to Europe on $100 charter flights to “discover European culture” or to volunteer for some cultural voyeurism in some third world shithole.
My parents couldn’t help out with tuition so I spent that year working and saving up for school. When they returned, the cultural knowledge they had acquired was mostly wine, women and song or a bad case tropical parasites.
Later on well into my career I had the opportunity to travel in Europe and came away happy that I hadn’t wasted my time earlier. Really the best that Europe had to offer was War, Pestilence, Hunger and Death. It starts it’s rivalries then wars and finally asks or connives to get the US, Canada, Australia or New Zealand to save its ass.
The further we avoid Europe the better.
Canad is in the same boat, but even worse. We have Italy’s finances, and the Vatican’s defense force, that is to say ceremonial. Canada has been crumbling, to borrow a shop worn phrase, how will it end? Slowly at first, then all at once.
Funny. And sad.
But that’s how you get labeled, internationally as … “nice”. Those Canadians are so NICE … because they’ve unilaterally disarmed. They’re so … so … “neutral” a nation.
There is nothing civilized, let alone gentle, about legalizing prostitution or drug use (and thus green lighting trafficking, addiction, and all the attendant ills). There is nothing civilized about implementing/encouraging euthanasia. There is nothing civilized about aborting children who MIGHT be ‘sub-standard’. There is nothing civilized about encouraging children to mutilate their bodies and take hormones that may seriously affect their health. There is nothing civilized about stealing your people’s wealth and enslaving them to a dole. There is nothing civilized about threatening your people with incarceration or other oppression for speaking out. There is nothing civilized about encouraging a war that did not need to happen, especially to promulgate the above (and to cover up for the fact that there is no money anymore).
There is nothing civilized nor gentle about not looking out for your people and their prosperity.
It gives the worst of the backward troglodytes a run for their money; human sacrifice on a scale that would make the Aztecs blush.
And Americans who bought into this “civilization” are fools and need to be disabused of their foolishness. We should pray to whatever mighty Creator we ascribe to that we do not end up so ‘civilized’.
Well said and I’m done paying for the freeloaders in Europe and elsewhere.
You also forgot, that there is nothing civilized about opening the floodgates to hordes of migrants who hate our culture and view themselves as conquerors, and there’s nothing civilized at having immigration at such absurd levels that all aspects of your society and infrastructure break down under the pressure.
Robert! Featured comment of the day (if not year) right HERE! Jane deserves to be KNOWN.
for the longest time, l dreamed of some day affording a prolonged guide tour of europe, talk to a travel agent find one that would hit the places that interest me.
what does not and never did interest me is being cautioned about ‘areas’ that are ‘off limits to non-muslims’ etc.
l am in fact on the verge of finally affording the trip of a lifetime and no longer much interested in seeing what the place has *become*.
You could still do much of Eastern Europe which hasn’t succumbed to the madness afflicting Western Euro countries.
Poland, Hungary and Sovakia are three sane countries that come to mind.
when will it happen? when will an uber wokist claim that WW II was ‘racist’ and thus our soldiers, sailors and flyboys were all ‘part of the biggest exercise in racism in history’?
because THAT is the exceedingly warped reinterpretation of things we are headed into. and all the clucking officials will agree to protect their zhobs and pensions.
all these stories and anecdotes and observations point to one thing: an irresistible downward slide into chaos ‘of biblical proportions’. as predicted in Revelation.
just saying . . . . . . .
Yup, the biblical judgements have just begun ….
That bridge has already been crossed:
https://www.bostonreview.net/reading-list/white-supremacy-and-hiroshima/
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4408093-sanders-says-gaza-is-worse-than-what-happened-in-dresden-during-wwii/
They have a trickier time with Dresden because Germans are white (little comment on how the Japanese considered themselves white as well, or highly ‘white adjacent’), but the narrative is still there.
The victims of Coventry and Warsaw, Manila and Nanking, could not be reached for comment.
Dresden happened partly due to a weather anomaly. the rest because Dresden joined the cheerleading squad when adolph became most popular.
had his guys won the conflict, the uber privileged of that enviable centre would have french cooks, gardeners from britain, and maids and servants from elsewhere europe. the enormous wealth being produced in factories run by slave labour gleaned from the rest of the conquered continent.
and real cheap oil and steel from russia.
didnt werk out dat vay herr dresden did it now? cry me a river. the Danube to be precise.
Dresden was an important transportation and industrial hub, as such it was a military target. Does that mean I rejoice in the deaths of civilians? No; it was a tragedy, but then war is tragedy. And I mean that in the very strict Greek sense of the word.
Nor were the victims of the Bataan Death March … Merry Christmas, Mr. LawRence …
Available for comment
Taibbi says, “taxpayers pay for taxpayer benefits.”
No Matt, private sector taxpayers pay for taxpayer benefits,
and also for all non-taxpaying citizens benefits,
ie The Growing Public Sector, who contribute little to tax revenues,
and vote to keep it that way.
Removing their “right”
to vote against the interests of those who finance their every breath,
or modifying universal suffrage to reflect the extra costs and responsibilities
shouldered by the private sector,
would go a long way in correcting the suicidal course of this world.
The Europeans spent a lot on defence until the Berlin wall came down and the threat evaporated. The US spends a fortune on “defence” so they can conduct wars in the middles east, and their troops and bases in Europe are not to defend Europe, but to support US military operations in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.
Yes, “oddly familiar”.
Canada is THE freeloader in the world and stupid, smug Canadians – minimum %70 of the total – think we can continue this way.
Its as if we’re the pipsqueak in a gang always slagging the biggest toughest member yet expecting them to bail us out when trouble comes.
Let’s go back to this topic in about five years so the EU, the UK, and Canada can all tell me again how wonderful their universal healthcare systems are. I don’t mean that in a mocking way (and certainly not aimed at most contributors to this site). But, the ability to set up those systems at all is partly because minimal appropriations were being applied to national security and personal defense. This article focuses on the benefits of “social security”, but it’s bigger than that. The entire infrastructure of the EU and the UK ended up being shaped by dependency.
Plus! It provided a warm blanket of public perception that Europeans … and Canadians … are “peaceful” peoples unlike those horrible American “policemen” and “militarists”.
And not a single one thanked us for that cozy blanket.
We don’t wanna do your dirty work … no more
https://youtu.be/l1NjmTAPiZ4?si=dx33fgQHjuyP0jae