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By Encore4570
Often we see the question being raised, why Americans are so self-centered and why they don't see that Europe needs their help. Europe is in trouble - again, and they seem to be unable to drag themselves out of the mess they governed themselves into. Again.
What strikes Europeans most when they visit the USA for the first time is, that especially in the western part, the average cattle ranch covers more area than many a European state. To drive from San Diego, CA, to Maine takes several days and the frontiers you'll have to cross do not really mean what they do in Europe. In San Diego, most people speak English, as they are doing in Maine or anywhere in between. The USA, what Europeans mean when they say "America" is large. Large in any way you may consider, and it is a great country as well. The USA has almost 300 million inhabitants, a third less than the EU. This is quite a mouthful, considering that Germany, the largest populace in the EU has "only" 82 million inhabitants.
So, if the world view of the average American does not include all thirty-odd states which exist in Europe, he does not lack far-sightedness, he just minds his own business. That the US Army twice helped the Europeans out of a mess these very Europeans had governed themselves into, does not mean that they did it to "help" good old Europe. It only means that the federal government of the US and a couple of major corporations had interests of their own. All the average American got out of it was a few thousand graves on foreign soil and higher taxes. The downfall of the Nazi reign in Germany was mere "collateral damage", though welcome.
When Americans are self-centered they are just minding their own business. They've got a lot of that to make do with and it's all theirs. Freedom is under fire in the US of A and the freedom movement is going through a hard time, though they might be much better off than the freedom movement in Europe.
The peoples of Europe should not hope for salvation being delivered from a deus ex machina aka Uncle Sam. Freedom is no thing that can be given, awarded, exported or purchased. Freedom is never a given thing. Freedom can only be taken and lived. If you want freedom to live, live it yourself, take it. Take your freedom, live your own life.
That may sound trivial, maybe, but sometimes the most heroic thing you can do is state the obvious. Freedom is proprietary to every individual. You can share your freedom, but you cannot borrow freedom from others. You can watch other people having sex, maybe, but you will never feel what they feel unless you participate. Watching other people eat does not feed you. In fact, it makes you even more feel your hunger. What is true for sex and food is twice as true for freedom. If you wait for other people to make you free, you will never be free. Nobody will set you free unless you do it. Nobody will ease your hunger unless you eat something.
The European freedom movement, scattered, timid and understaffed as it may be, must fight its own fight. We here must face the beast, grasp it at its horns with our own hands and throw it down. Recipes to do it you''ll find galore. Just do it. Don't wait for deliverance, it will never come. Do it now. RFN. Don't wait for another Hitler to come to power and to convert all of Europe into a concentration camp. People did not wake up in 1933, they won't wake up in 2008. There will be no mass resistance when it's too late, this is one conclusion we can draw from WWII. To blame the Americans for not having done a full job by leaving half Europe to tyranny means that you have not understood that it was not our job they came to do but theirs. Despite all crapaganda, they never came to rescue Europe. They came to serve US Fedgov interests.
If we Europeans want to be free, we must mind our business. There is no such thing as a free lunch, a saying that is nowhere as true as in freedom-related issues.
Few people ever understood that tyranny comes on velvet paws, not on iron-clad hoofs. Tyranny approaches silently, legally and step by step. When another Hitler grasps power or gets it shoved down his throat by another "enabling act" like in 1933, it is too late for prevention, then the issue is definitely war and destruction. Then, our feeble freedom movement has failed. All we can hope for in that case is, that some folks remember the Warsaw Ghetto uprising before they have to face thousands of troops with but a handful of weapons and no chance to survive. A hero may be a hero, but heroes are of no use when they're dead.
At this very hour, Europe is going to cross a point of no return. The new European constitution is being jammed down our throats. When this law will be ratified, Europe will be a Soviet-like police state. Then we may kiss our little remainders of freedom good-bye for a long time. In that case, the only hope will be that the United States of America will refrain from "helping" us.
The downfall of the east block did by no means come overnight. Famines, shortages of all kinds, mismanagement in its worst form and socialism, took care of that. Eastern Germany, sixteen years after, is still a bloody shambles, its economy devastated, unemployment rates sky-high and even more people on social welfare. Forty years of red socialism, twelve of national socialism and the destruction of WWII will take decades to recover from. What extended the lifetime of socialism in eastern Europe were loans from the western world, never meant to be repaid. Else, the socialist block would have collapsed in the early sixties.
When the new socialist European Union will crush down on its subjects, there will be no "West" to bail them out except for the USA. Sincerely, I hope, America will not "help" us. I want to live long enough to see the beast fall down.