Samizdata

There are some people in the world who will go to great lengths not to be taken seriously. One of these people is a certain Mr.Paul Clark who has contributed this stupendous bit of reality-subversion on Lew Rockwell’s website.

According to Mr.Clark, Libertarians and True Conservatives everywhere could do a lot worse than look to European Union for inspiration. Well, yes, they could always look to North Korea, I suppose. He goes on to state that the USA should seek to emulate it.

“In fact, the EU offers, in many ways, an example for the United States to emulate. The EU still is what the US is supposed to be: a federation of more or less sovereign states, united for economic and military cooperation.

For those of us who advocate a small, truly constitutional government basically the same as the US had in 1800, the common response is that the world has changed, and that it is now impossible to have the kind of weak central government that existed two centuries ago, when the population and area were a fraction of what they are today. In response to that, one simply needs to look at the European Union”

Yes, he actually says that! And, to add injury to insanity:

“If I were leader of an island nation in the middle of the Atlantic, and were forced to choose between joining the EU or the US, there would be only one choice. If one were concerned with preventing a deluge of tax collectors, bureaucrats, and regulators; and if one wanted to maintain traditional culture and laws, then one would not join the US”

Do you think he means us?

The whole article is a tissue of egregious distortions and outright misrepresentations. For example, Mr.Clark claims that the EU does not tax its citizens when it is common knowledge to every European that plans to do are already well-advanced. He also claims that the EU has no army when the European Rapid Reaction Force (a rose by any other name…) is being built around our ears and with a brief to do just about anything its political masters order it to do both internally and externally.

As someone who has many friends in the USA so I am only too well aware of the exasperation they feel when dealing with their bloated and blundering Federal Government but to compare it unfavourably with the EU requires not just gall but a breath-taking turn of relativism.

It seems that Mr.Clark is yet another of that curious breed of American Libertarian that is so convinced of the irredeemable iniquity of their own government that any ANY alternative is better, be it the EU, Latin American Caudillos, the Moonies or Pol Pot for that matter. Perhaps Mr.Clark should be directed to this Blog for some clarity about the ‘laissez-faire’ credentials of the EU. He could start by trying to explain away the post below.

But maybe I am leaping to judgment. Maybe Mr.Clark has merely written a ripping satire. Maybe he is deliberatly trying to be provocative in order to make some other subtle point. But, if not, then I regret to say that it isn’t just the prisoners at Camp X-Ray who are hooded and goggled.