There’s an Evil Rising in the West

There is an evil rising in the West. Just as is the case in Tolkien’s saga the Lord of the Rings, an evil power is building an empire and planning to swallow the whole world in darkness. In Tolkien’s Middle Earth the evil lord Sauron is seeking the Ring of Power to finalize his evil doing. In reality all power is already in the hands of the evil-doers.
      The European Union is sometimes said to be our time’s greatest political project. It is true that it is great in one sense--it is huge. But as to purpose, basis, structure or whatever else there is really nothing great about it. Its greatest achievement so far is the build-up of continental-wide agricultural subsidies and an oversized bureaucracy in Brussels (Belgium) and Strasbourg (France).
      The European Union is in essence a joint venture between liberals, conservatives and other statists trying to bind a whole continent in one gigantic welfare state. This monster of political power mixes economic pragmatism with nation-state centered socialism, trying to forcefully achieve the benefits of the market and at the same time aims for “protection” of any wealth created. This approach is in the EU represented by political standardization of trade and anti-trust policies domestically, the so-called “Four Freedoms,” and massive trade barriers and sanctions levied upon any non-EU actor in the marketplace.
      The population of the “Union,” which is striving to become a pan-European federation, reached well over 300 million when Austria, Finland and Sweden were greeted as full-scale members in 1995. A few days ago the European Union celebrated yet another enlargement involving no less than ten new member states, most of them former Soviet or “Eastern” European republics. With this enlargement, the population of the EU reaches 450 million people, making the union one of the largest political players in the world. Only the People’s Republic of China and India are greater population-wise.
      This enlargement, making the European Union yet more powerful, is of course greeted by all European political leaders as an immense achievement and “great political success,” as German Hans-Gert Poettering, leader of European Parliament conservative faction, puts it. The fact that enlargement officially takes effect on a May 1^st, the international Labor Day, gives a hint of what kind of success it really is--and in what direction the European Union is striving.
      This rising superpower of Europe is in many aspects only yet another statist attempt to centralize power and inflict totalitarian political rule covering over the full continent of Europe. This time the empire is built upon the concept of democracy, hence supplying a foundation for a greater political ruling class than the former attempts to unite the continent in the Roman Empire, the “Third Reich” and the Soviet Republic.
      The popular notion of politics as a “liberator” of the people, just as the notion of the Holocaust as a liberating measure for the Aryan race or the Soviet attempts to abolish private property in order to liberate the working class, is augmented by the political ruling class. EU leaders, in a joint statement, claim the enlargement is “the end of the artificial divisions of the last century.” One has to wonder how the creation of such a great political power as the European Union, maintaining and even enforcing border control, is supposed to end “artificial divisions.”
      Poettering states the enlargement of the EU “means [...] peace can be ensured for the long term.” This can only be interpreted as a thorough belief in the political power over which Poettering himself has integral influence. I dare say he is not the first German relying on power politics in order to “ensure peace” through the creation of a European empire.
      It is all but surprising the politically influential, in the European Union and elsewhere, are hailing whatever measures taken to increase their power. Their ignorance and blindness for the nature of politics is however fascinating. As is the case with the Ring of Power, political power cannot be used to do good. Politicians continuously fail to realize there is less to rule and less to appropriate as the spontaneous and voluntary wealth-creation transactions in the marketplace are strangled through increased political power.
      The difference between fiction and reality seems to be that the characters of Tolkien’s world seek to destroy the power, while the power-hungry in the real world fail to realize the powers of the Ring are only deceiving and destructive.

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