by
Patrick
J. Buchanan

Recently
by Patrick J. Buchanan: Tomorrow’s
Man – or Yesterday’s

U.S. growth
in the first quarter fell to 2.2 percent, a disappointment. But
in Europe, that news would have caused general rejoicing.

For consider
the gathering crisis on the old continent.

With negative
growth now for six months, Britain has fallen back into recession.
“I don’t think we’re anywhere near halfway through the eurozone
crisis,” said Prime Minister David Cameron this weekend.

Romania’s government
fell last week. The Czech government barely survived a vote of no
confidence. In the capital cities of both countries, tens of thousands
have angrily protested the new austerity.

The Dutch government
also fell last week, when the Freedom Party of right-wing populist
Geert Wilders abandoned the governing coalition.

Wilders refuses
to support spending cuts and new taxes needed to meet the hard deficit
target of 3 percent of gross domestic product set by the European
Union for 2013.

The Rome government
of Silvio Berlusconi is history. New Prime Minister Mario Monti
says Italy cannot sustain the austerity being imposed upon her.

In Spain, unemployment
has hit 24.4 percent. Half her young are jobless. “Spain is undergoing
a crisis of enormous proportions,” says Foreign Minister Jose Manuel
Garcia-Margallo. He compares the EU to the Titanic.

French elections
are Sunday. Most observers believe they will end the career of President
Nicolas Sarkozy and install in the Elysee Palace a socialist, Francois
Hollande, who has pledged to impose a 75 percent tax on incomes
above 1 million euros.

With a week
to go, the French campaign calls to mind the 1930s.

Sarkozy, says
The New York Times, is focusing on “patriotism, protectionism, French
values,” attacking immigrants who do not assimilate.

“I do not want
to let France be diluted by globalization,” Sarkozy declared Sunday.
“Europe has given in too much to free trade and deregulation. …
I do not want France to be isolated in the world, but I want frontiers
respected. … France expects a Europe that protects the European
people.”

The far-left
candidate, Jean-Luc Melanchon, defeated in the first round, is charging
Sarkozy with using the language of Pierre Laval and Marshal Philippe
Petain, both convicted of collaborating with the Nazis.

“To be treated
as a fascist by a communist is a compliment,” says Sarkozy.

“In 2012, the
issue is borders, and I will put them at the center of the debate,”
Sarkozy said Sunday in Toulouse, where an Islamist fanatic recently
murdered four Jews, including three children, and three French soldiers.

“Without borders,
there is no nation, there is no Republic, there is no civilization,”
he told 10,000 cheering supporters. “We are not superior to others,
but we are different.”

Sarkozy is
on “a mad path,” says Hollande. “The issue in France and in Europe
is the fight against extremism.”

Greek elections
are also scheduled for Sunday, with the center-left Pasok Party
and center-right New Democracy having lost half of their support
since 2009.

Ireland votes
May 31 on the eurozone fiscal pact that calls for austerity among
Europe’s most indebted nations. Polls are predicting a yes vote.
But Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams has ridden a rising tide against the
pact to make his party the second-most-popular in Ireland.

“The rise in
political extremism in Europe,” writes Financial Times columnist
Wolfgang Munchau, “is in part the consequence of stubbornness and
stupidity among centrist elites.”

Where is Europe
going?

Larry Summers
is probably right, “Again Europe and the global economy approach
the brink.”

With the demonstrations,
riots, and governments falling like dominoes, Europe’s ruling elites
are losing the confidence of the people and its ruling parties are
bleeding support to the more militant left and right.

What does this
portend for Europe?

Probably an
easing up of austerity – of the tax hikes and budget cuts for payrolls,
pensions and health care – demanded by Germany’s Angela Merkel and
her fiscally hawkish allies. And it probably means an effort to
stimulate the dormant economies of Europe without sending buyers
of Europe’s bonds fleeing for the exits out of fear of inflation
or default.

But the vision
of One Europe that dates back to the 1950s and Jean Monnet seems
to belong to yesterday.

Transnationalism,
the idea of sacrificing the national interest for the greater good
of Europe, is dying. Not one of the four leading French parties
in the first round of voting was making the case for Europe.

Second, the
idea of a multicultural Europe open to immigration from beyond its
borders seems to be dead.

Third, the
ideology of Occupy Wall Street has crossed the pond.

The
senior Catholic cardinal in Britain is demanding that Cameron accept
a “Robin Hood tax” on large financial transactions to make “banks
and large financial institutions pay their fair share,” with the
tax money going to the poor.

The One Percenters
are in the gun sights everywhere. Rarely was Yeats’ couplet more
apposite.

Things fall
apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy
is loosed upon the world.

May
1, 2012

Patrick
J. Buchanan [send
him mail] is co-founder and editor of The
American Conservative. He is also the author of seven books,
including Where
the Right Went Wrong, and Churchill,
Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. His latest book is Suicide
of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? See his
website.

Copyright
© 2012 Creators Syndicate

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