[58] News from Absurdistan - The European Harmony between Fuckor and Fuckee

The people of Europe are so conditioned to feel strongly about hollow concepts, they are incapable of realising what is really going on.

Even in Germany, the media have at least occasionally reported about politicians, including Chancellor Merkel, tricking their subjects into acquiescence vis-à-vis the legal underpinnings of the European super-bureaucracy that is to rule them with even more unchecked power and still less democratic say.

You would think issues concerning the fundamentals of power in society would trigger alert responses.

Not in countries completely dominated by show-biz-democracy.

The people just do not care.

The odd politician yells at the people:

"Hey, you - we are screwing you."

No reply.

The politician yells louder:

"Hey, people - we are screwing you! Like in a big way!"

No reply.

The politician to his buddies:

"All right, they're fast asleep. We're ready for the next step."

And when the people wake up to some unpleasant surprises, they will be told:

"But it is the law."

"Oh? Is it?"

"Sure, it is the law."

"Well, if it's the law, it's the law."

But should this surprise us?

Not the historian of ideas, who is aware that the original concept of liberty that emerged in Britain entered the rest of Europe in the form of an originally French bastardisation of the concept of freedom - which was to become the standard throughout Europe - to this day:

"Gallican Liberty," wrote Francis Lieber in 1848, "is sought in the government, and according to an Anglican point of view, it is looked for in a wrong place, where it cannot be found. Necessary consequences of the Gallican view are, that the French look for the highest degree of political civilization in organization, that is, in the highest degree of interference by public power."

This has become second nature to most Europeans - and, hence, the European harmony between fuckor and fuckee.

One of the "necessary consequences of the Gallican views", the fatal wish for "the highest degree of interference by public power" is faithfully embodied in the institutions of the European Union.

Do not expect much resistance to the European super-state. The people of Europe simply do not understand why they love to be governed and what is wrong with that passion. No catastrophe (including communism, WW I and WW II) brought about by the "Gallican" state is horrific enough to spoil the Europeans' taste for more of it.

Incidentally, the "Gallican" conversion of the original (and only consistent) meaning of liberty is preserved in the terminology of American politics, where the term "liberal" is reserved for the enemies of liberty (in its original and genuinely liberal denotation). And the Hegelian idolatry of the state so popular in Germany is reflected in the German word for the rule of law: Rechtsstaat, law-state, whereby "state" implies the government and its state organs. And here we come full circle with Lieber's observation: that according to the distorting "Gallican" redefinition "...Liberty is sought in the government...in the highest degree of interference by public power" - which is precisely the opposite of what the rule of law is all about.

Today (as for hundreds of years), the countries of Europe embrace the Gesetzesstaat, the rule of legislation, where law is whatever the holders of power declare it to be.

In a free society protected by a meaningful constitution (securing individual liberty and restraining the power of government) a manipulative attempt such as the one described in the below dispatch would cause general outrage and require the immediate deposition of the government(s) perpetrating the sleight of hand. Not so in a society where people feel that law emanates from government.

Government knows best how we should be governed - that is what the apathy of the European subjects boils down to.

For more, see my posts:

[53] News from Absurdistan - Legality Instead of Justice - Technically Refined Barbarism
[52] News from Absurdistan - Why Germany Does Not Care

EUobserver titles: Lisbon Treaty Made to Avoid Referendum, Says Giscard:

The EU's new treaty is the same as the rejected constitution - only the format has been changed to avoid referendums, says Valery Giscard d'Estaing, architect of the constitution.

In an open letter published in Le Monde and a few other European newspapers over the weekend, the former French president seeks to clarify the difference between former draft constitution - which was shelved after French and Dutch voters rejected the text in 2005 - and the new Lisbon Treaty which EU leaders agreed earlier this month.

"Looking at the content, the result is that the institutional proposals of the constitutional treaty … are found complete in the Lisbon Treaty, only in a different order and inserted in former treaties," Mr Giscard d'Estaing said.

The former chairman of the European Convention - the body of over a hundred politicians that drafted the 2004 EU constitution – suggests the new more complicated layout was only to avoid putting the treaty to a referendum.

"Above all, it is to avoid having referendum thanks to the fact that the articles are spread out and constitutional vocabulary has been removed," he says

Mr Giscard argues that the Lisbon treaty represents a way for the EU institutions to take the lead after the "interference" of the members of parliament and politicians who were in the European Convention.

"They are therefore imposing a return to the language that they master and to the procedures they favour, and in doing so alienate the citizens further," he said.

Mr Giscard's word are likely to fuel the calls for referendums in the UK and Denmark where the governments are arguing that there is no need for a public poll on the Lisbon Treaty because it is sufficiently different from the EU constitution.