(Illustration from the Gates of Vienna website)

Some observers have compared the ongoing trial against the prominent Dutch Islam-critic Geert Wilders in the Netherlands to the case against Galileo Galilei in seventeenth century Italy. There is no question that the trial against Galileo represents a dark chapter in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, but there are some popular misconceptions regarding it.

George Handlery about the week that was.

1. While writing this, the news spread that US federal spending outside the security and entitlement area is to be frozen for three years. Regardless of the laudable intention, some skepticism is warranted. The weaker the President gets – the vote in Massachusetts suggests that Obama is losing ground – the more he needs to spend. Spending buys support. The more is spent, the greater the influence of the administration will be. Stopping spending for the duration of a speech is possible. Beyond that time limit, however, we discover a major problem. It is that spending is not caused by discovering new holes into which money can be stuffed. The core reason for spending is that there is a philosophy according to which the allocation of dough heals problems – or at least it will shut the mouth of complainers. Therefore, the need of priority is not a case-by-case reduction of some marginal expenses. What the situation demands is the abandonment of the philosophy behind the process. The one is meant that regards the throwing of money at problems as statecraft.

Freedom on fire

Freedom is no more than a piece of combustible paper: a forbidden book, a speech draft in longhand, a film no longer printed on combustible stock but still setting minds aglow. All tyrannies in recorded history have sought to burn, confiscate and banish that paper or other media that carried the ideas of liberty, and to burn or banish the authors. Nowadays, such tyrannies exist primarily in Dar al Islam and in its lesser franchises of elective dhimmi socialism (abbrev. dhimmisocialism) in Western Europe and Canada and in nascent forms in the United States and Australia.

Paper, of course, has less wholesome uses, such as receptacle for sanctimonious twaddle, self-congratulatory schadenfreude, ignorant grandstanding, and solipsistic verbal onanism.  What used to be called the “great” newspapers (and magazines) of the world all too often misapply precious wood pulp to such ends.  

A decade ago, the introduction of the euro, the common currency of 16 of the 27 EU member states, was a political decision – not a monetary one. When the euro was introduced in 1999, Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman wrote to his friend, the Italian economist Antonio Martino: “As you know, I am very negative about the euro and I am very doubtful about how it will work out. However, I am less pessimistic about it now than I was earlier simply because I never expected that the various countries would display the kind of discipline that was required in order to qualify for the euro.”

Today, I am posting an extraordinary letter from a soldier currently stationed in Iraq, a sometime penpal of mine to whom I sent my three-part series on the aftermath of the surge to elicit his opinion. Knowing how thoughtful he is, I expected a substantive response. Given his time constraints alone, I did not expect an essay of this scope and I decided, with his permission, to present it here. It is unlike any commentary I have read from Iraq; it is both coolly reasoned and deeply passionate, and certain to challenge and disturb readers across the political spectrum: PC-believing liberals, Iraq-as-success-believing conservatives, Islam-as-a-religion-of-peaceniks of both Left and Right.

So be it.

He writes:

Some things never go away. The controversy over Pope Pius XII's actions during World War II was recently reignited when Pope Benedict XVI signed a decree affirming that his predecessor displayed "heroic virtues" during his lifetime. When the pope visited the Great Synagogue of Rome on Sunday, Riccardo Pacifici, president of Rome's Jewish community, told him: "The silence of Pius XII before the Shoah still hurts because something should have been done."

George Handlery about the week that was. Crushing crises and the culture of improvisation. Close your eyes and the troubles are gone. Intellectuals and tyrannies: Persecution is a form of coveted recognition. Present perils and the downgrading of the Soviet threat. The ostrich-test.

1.Haiti. The tragedy behind the crisis will be hijacked to prove pet peeves. This writer’s perspective and experience is with war between men, and not with nature against man. From this personal perspective, the ability of the locals to improvise and to bear deserves recognition. People that live in the kind of perfected systems in which everything works as it is supposed to, are subject to two errors. One: They underestimate the ability of some societies to cope with unanticipable cataclysms. Second: They overestimate their own skills to cope with the kind of devastation that leads to a total collapse. Closely related to this is that advanced societies are skilled in the art of circumnavigating and avoiding turbulence. Nevertheless, some crises are unavoidable and the breakdown caused is inevitable. The earthquake would have severed the sinews that bind together optimally structured societies. Overall, the Haitians, conditioned as they were by their badly functioning system, coped well with the collapse of the state, the economy, the infrastructure, social institutions and the disappearance laws.

The Chinese made promising beginnings in the secular observation of nature, but never completed a full ideological framework for the scientific project comparable to Greek natural philosophy or developed an organized program dedicated to promoting the scientific method.

We should be careful about projecting a too modern understanding of “science” onto the activities of ancient scholars. As the eminent historian Edward Grant reminds us, “Science in the ancient world was a tenuous and ephemeral matter. Most people were indifferent to it, and its impact was meager. It was a very small number of Greek thinkers who laid the foundations for what would eventually become modern science. Of that small number, a few were especially brilliant and contributed monumentally to the advancement of science.”

There's a lot invested in the European Union. Not only money (to the tune of €100 billion a year), also massive amounts of confidence from Europeans towards the Union, assuming that it will protect citizens / consumers from the evils of dangerous products, exploitative business and the dangers of the independent nation-state, all while protecting democracy and citizens' rights. Former Chief Accountant Marta Andreasen has a discouraging tale to tell.

First, a bit of history. Marta Andreasen was hired in January 2002 as Chief Accountant responsible for the EU budget at large, with the specific additional task of initiating reform of an obviously deficient system of accounting that each year permitted billions of euros to vanish, pure and simple.

A case of corruption had in 1999 brought down the European Commission led by Jacques Santer, and the clear message from the European Union was that now it was time for zero tolerance of irregularities and waste. After all, it is taxpayer money we entrust the European Union, not money earned by the Union directly. We should expect that money to be spent responsibly, or not spent at all.

Marta Andreasen was hired to put the required reforms into effect. However, she was dismissed after less than five months in office, a dismissal that led to a lengthy legal process, but no reform. This book is her account of what happened.

For the benefit of those who do not want to read the complete essay, my opinion is:

Well worth reading, 4 of 6 stars.

In the summer of 2008, as many readers know, I traveled to six European countries to interview politicians dedicated to breaking, halting and/or reversing the Islamization of their countries (here is a collection of some of the writings inspired by the trip).

One of those politicians was Geert Wilders, then the little-known (outside of the Netherlands) leader of a very small party, PVV, the Party for Freedom. Only a year and a half later, Wilders is the most famous Dutchman in the world, and his party rivals the current ruling party in popularity. Wilders is also now on trial for his political life and liberty – hardly a coincidence.