About the limitations of legislating historical truth.

Have you known that not everything that looks, moves and smells like genocide is genocide? A 1948 convention criminalized such actions. According to its definition, the extermination of ethnic groups, religious communities and nationalities constitute genocide. At first glance, this appears to be in order. However, the approval lasts only until the second glimpse. As a concession to the Soviets, the persecution of social classes and economically defined groupings are excluded by the phrasing. For instance, liquidating Kulaks –as done in the Ukrainian Holodomor- does not qualify. Admiral Farragut said, “Damn the torpedoes” and this escape clause applied to the Ukraine says, “Damn the seven million that starved”. Perhaps the helpful critique in the “why do they not eat cake”-style would be “why did they diet and not eat?” 

Most thinking conservatives believe that the modern West has gone off the deep end, and most of them also identify a particular historical event as the start, or at least the first major symptom, of this development. For many modern cultural conservatives, that event was the moral revolution of the 1960s; for some on the American right, it was the Civil Rights movement, the New Deal, or the end of the Civil War; and for certain counterrevolutionaries, it was the French Revolution.

Europe’s self chosen fate is, due to her weight, not a local but a global issue.

It does not take much skill to plead that, due to her size and economic power “Europe” is a decisive world neighborhood. The continent might not have the will or the organization to determine on the US, Russian and Chinese level global events. Nevertheless, its failures can, as in the past, shape worldwide developments. For this reason, the process that aims to give the term “Europe” a new content is of interest to those whose vision extends beyond the tip of their nose. 

Cecil B.DeMille died on January 21^st, in 1959. At the time of his death he was at the very top of the “A list” of Hollywood directors. DeMille is probably not well remembered by many outside of the film industry today. But among DeMille’s Academy Award winning films were “Cleopatra”, “Samson and Delilah”, “The Greatest Show on Earth”, and, of course, “The Ten Commandments”. This last film was among the top five most profitable films in history and is still considered a classic (it won multiple Academy Awards).

Those that practice the politics of prejudice are serving their own phantom but not the common good.

Some nations can only be defeated if its people lend a hand. Recent US cases come to mind. Russia and China, regardless of their system, are also members of the same club. In the coming election, the GOP can only be rescued from victory if it decides to commit hara-kiri. The debates suggest that such a self-disembowelment is an ongoing process.

A disturbing impression arises during the apparently pleasing auto-amputation of limbs. Minor issues regarding the candidates are raised. They are to grade the would-be occupants of the White House before it is repossessed to cover the national debt. It is a good thing that dietary habits and BMI have not yet become issues.

About a misuse of the media in the service of the challenged “Political Class”.

The international press and the TV stations that serve the world are full of news that pillory an otherwise neglected Hungary. These reports bemoan that country’s new 2012 constitution. The charge is that this legislation creates a dictatorship. It is alleged to empower permanently a two-third majority that is the product of a free election. 

The accusations emphasize only a few themes. One is the lowering of the retirement age of Supreme Court judges. The second issue is the fusion of the directorate of the National Bank and of the organ, which controls financial institutions. Third, the document holds that life begins at conception. Fourth is that, marriage involves a male and a female partner. Fifth, the size of the national debt and the budget’s deficit are capped and a flat tax is imposed. In sixth place is the preamble of the fundamental law that causes most of the indignation. 

Incompatible ambitions hide behind the professed desire to create a “Europe”.

Europe wobbles since about 1900. The attempts to structure the Continent have repeatedly turned the world upside down. Reacting to two world wars, the reluctant USA had to become a great power, Communism captured a major state and China was restored to her old global position. In a revolutionary restructuring of world affairs, the European era ended by the end of the colonial empires and by the modernization of the non-western world. Although typically, most Europeans do not worry about it and non-Europeans act as uninterested witnesses, our future is tied to the perennial crisis. As in 1914 and 1939, the calamity is homemade and it reflects a political collapse that expresses itself by misgovernment.

On New Year's Day, Hungary's new Constitution, which was ratified in April of this year, comes into force. Reactions from Leftist elites in Western Europe have, to say the least, been unfavorable. A recent blog post on the subject hosted on the website of the Stavanger Aftenblad, one of the largest regional newspapers in Norway, is entitled “Ungarn tar farvel med demokratiet,” which translates to “Hungary Says Farewell to Democracy.” An older article, courtesy of Human Rights Watch and written when the Constitution was first ratified, has the title “Hungary: New Constitution Enshrines Discrimination.”

In the not-so-distant past, Christmas was a season of “comfort and joy” throughout the West. Encompassed by spiritual ties that bound people together, even people of different languages and varied religious outlooks, the celebration of the babe in the manger brought university in the midst of diversity and reminded us of our heritage and our common humanity. But as the last Christmas came and went, we were reminded again that those spiritual ties, and that Western heritage, have been ruptured. As a result, historical (actual) events in our past which demonstrated our culture’s university are not even remotely possible today.

Case in the point: The Christmas Truce that took place in the trenches of World War One during the Christmas of 1914.

The less you know about a matter, the more likely that you will be misled by distortions that mirror the news making clan’s prejudices.

Your correspondent dislikes themes that involve his origins. There was a time when, coming from the “other” Europe, you were rated as biased by birth. Familiarity with the system proved a prejudice. You knew too much, you were too close to the case and that kept you from appreciating communism’s achievements. Firsthand knowledge counted a disqualifier and knowing the subject became a blemish. An objective witness had to be someone that read books about it or, if local, then he was a member of the Central Committee.

Recent events demand that the silence be broken. Abandoning self-censorship is warranted, as the specific case of Hungary is indicative of the might of those that can skew the global media-rendition of occurrences.