"Europe" Needs a Wakeup Call from American Parents
NATO Article V only means what we will tolerate
TL; DR: If Europe sends troops into the Ukraine and Russia attacks them, they need to understand that NATO’s Article V only means what parents like me are willing to tolerate. And I’ll stand right here, right now, and put it as clearly and bluntly as I can. I will tell my boys that when they come to take you off to war, you put your two hands out, wrists up, and tell them to hook you up and take you away. For I would rather visit you in jail than visit you in Arlington.
I walked into Arlington National Cemetery with my wife not too long ago. We were in Washington, D.C. for a work-related event and the bonus of visiting our younger son, who works as a finance editor for a major news outlet.
As my wife explained to me why this visit meant so much to her, I was taken back to 2009-2010. She was studying for the U.S. citizenship exam. The boys were in grade school. When I quizzed her on some of the topics and she paused to think, they would spin around and blurt out: “Mom! We learned that in third grade!”
My wife is of Chinese ethnicity from Malaysia. My boys and I watched as she took the oath of U.S. citizenship on January 20, 2010. Some 13 years later she explained how important it was to her that she take the time to remember the people who sacrificed everything for the freedoms we cherish. I kept my peace for a bit to gather my thoughts.
I then explained to her how I was conflicted. The imagery reminds me of the graves in France and “Saving Private Ryan.” As for them, yes, I shared that sense of reverence. But I could not help but feel the ghosts of souls who should still be with us. I felt then, and still feel today, that they actually got the better of the deal. The ones who survived Iraq and Afghanistan returned to fetid homelessness, substance abuse, and have no choice each night but to redeploy to their nightmares.
Because I respected my wife’s feelings in that moment, I kept this question to myself. I wondered as taps was played: What does it mean to remember them?
From Vietnam through Afghanistan we printed money to paper over the lies told to draw us into war and to perpetuate the stupidities of the interventionist foreign policy establishment. In the 1940’s we printed ration coupons to ensure that World War II was adequately supplied. Now we print money rather than demand these sacrifices of ourselves. If we had to make these kind of sacrifices here at home today, we would never have tolerated the incompetence of these blood-thirsty war-mongers.
These feelings started out as esoteric academic interests. Now, with boys in their 20’s, they are visceral, passionate, and conflicted. If I put pictures of liberated concentration camps alongside these ration coupons, I can imagine proudly supporting my boys if they were called up to fight such a war.
But this? Russia, Europe, and the Ukraine? Hell no! Enough of the lies. Here is the truth.
The world view of the people of Eastern Europe is inescapably colored by the old things of family memories and the ancient things which have always been. The tens of millions of people who died - Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian - in the Great War (to use the Russian description) are the old things of family memories. The bitter inter-ethnic blood feuds between them are the ancient things which have always been - and always will be.
We have our own family memories. I recall my late father telling me on September 11, 2001 that it would be our generation’s Pearl Harbor. That attack took 2,403 Americans. 9/11 took 2,977. And we say “Never Forget.”
The last time Russia had a Western military power at her borders, 25 million Russians were killed. Next time you listen to this cross-Atlantic cadre of political and think-tank dimwits, just ask yourself whether Russia might have that same sentiment. And then go here and read Thomas Friedman recount his 1998 interview with the late George Kennan - right at the point NATO began creeping eastward. You’ll then appreciate how shockingly stupid these people really are. It’s not as if they were not warned about what would happen in the Ukraine.
You’ll also learn who really started this war.
What we don’t have are the ancient inter-ethnic blood feuds. This is a testament to the singular thing that makes America exceptional. No nation had ever forged a national identity around anything other than language, ethnicity, and religion. None until we did. Our national identity is built around a set of ideals about individual liberty. These are the values we have historically shared with Europe. (More on these values in a moment.)
We will never view the world as the Russians view it. And for this we ought to celebrate. This is why we honor those buried at Arlington. But we must not allow these fools to propagandize us with their ahistorical, moralizing claptrap. If Europe wants to ignore history and moralize with their smug sense of superiority over Russia’s view of the world, then Europe can put their money where their mouth is and leave the rest of us the hell alone.
But it is more than just not being willing to fund - with either blood or treasure - this continued circle jerk of interventionist stupidities. A Europe who truly shares what were once our common Enlightenment values is worth fighting for and with. Immanuel Kant was asked to sum up the Enlightenment, and is reported to have boiled it down to two words: Sapere Aude! - Dare to Think!
Today’s Europe bears little, if any, resemblance to these values. Today’s Europe looks a lot like Europe right as the Black Death began to take hold. You did not think for yourself - what was true was what was taught to you by the clergy. And then comes a “global” pandemic, and the clergy were dying like everyone else.
It became clear that the priests were not who they said they were, nor did they know what they claimed to know. The ecclesiastical epistemology of the ruling class was the last casualty of the Black Death. And as we see over and over again, these same rulers were the last to realize it. It was out from this post-pandemic Europe that came Copernicus, Galileo, Leonard DaVinci, the great polymaths, the sciences, the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, and the Reformation.
And here we are, on the back end of Covid and now the priests wear white lab coats.
And as seems to always be the case, they are the last to realize that the rest of us - especially those who bear the burden of fighting their wars - see them as the fools they really are: They are not who they claim to be nor do they know what they claim to know. God forbid we dare to think. They tell us not to “do our own research” and “trust the science.” So we quietly tune them out. We turn our back on those to timid to be free and replace them with the few mainstream voices too free to be intimidated.
“Europe” - its people as proud heirs of true Enlightenment values - is worth fighting with and for. “Europe” as embodied by the bureaucrats in Brussels, and the banking fraud writ large known as the European Central Bank that funds them, is the last rotting corpse of the most recent pandemic. It is best buried in an unmarked grave.
This European ruling class and their lab coat draped clergy desperately need a wake up call. If they send troops into the Ukraine and Russia attacks them, they need to understand that NATO’s Article V only means what parents like me are willing to tolerate. And I’ll stand right here, right now, and put it as clearly and bluntly as I can. I will tell my boys that when they come to take you off to war, you put your two hands out, wrists up, and tell them to hook you up and take you away. For I would rather visit you in jail than visit you in Arlington because you died fighting for a European ruling class who abandoned our shared Enlightenment values and were too stupid to learn from their past.