The trouble with people who ‘come in from the cold’ is that they have unfortunate tendency to bring some of that coldness with them and, every so often, they just cannot help but drop a little of it into our lives.
Take, for example, Christopher Hitchens, a man who has been widely (and justifiably) praised for the excoration of his former leftist colleagues since the WTC attacks. But reports of defection from the dark side may well have been exaggerated if this infuriatingly superficial and condescending bit of Euro-fawning is anything to by:
The Turkish Cypriots did not mount mass demonstrations against partition because they had any romantic idea of the European dream.
They just didn’t want to be confined in a little sweat-shop state, forced to do business in the mainland Turkish lira, and kept away from a prosperity that they could see taking place on the other side of the wall.
See, the Turkish Cypriots want to embrace Europe so why are we Brits being so stubborn? Who is Mr.Hitchens trying to kid? The Northern (Turkish) sector of Cyprus has been the subject of official sanctions imposed by just about every European country since it was established in 1974. If the Cypriot Turks are, indeed,wallowing in a ‘little sweat-shop state’ then Europe is the cause of their misery not the cure.
For them, “protection” and “protectionism” became the
same thing – another name for stagnation and isolation.
‘Protectionism’ does indeed mean ‘stagnation’ but membership of the EU does not mean the abolition of protectionism. It simply means writing protectionism across a whole continent. It is exchanging the almost non-existant risk of ‘Fortress Britain’ for the racing, inescapable certainty of ‘Fortress Europe’. A bad idea does not get better by simply inflating it.
In order to join this club, you had to have a political
democracy and free movement of labour and capital
No, in order to join this club you have to submit to the will of the Commission and agree to trade according to their incomprehensible ziggurat of rules and regulations.
Does anyone doubt that the relative peace between Britain and Ireland, now reduced to irritating discussions about constitutional details, is the result of London and Dublin being members of the same prosperous customs union? There’s nothing left that’s worth fighting over, and the “border” has become an economic irrelevance.
The free trade between Britain and Ireland was established by a bilateral treaty that long pre-dates the EU.
Former enemies like Hungary and Romania, Croatia and
Bosnia, Greece and Turkey, are competing to meet the “criteria” which Little Englanders so despise.
Oh yes, we’re back to the ‘Little Englanders’ slur. In case of desperation, break glass and immediately deploy baseless insult. Why doesn’t he just call us ‘cavemen’ and have done with? And the ‘criteria’ which the Croatians and others are ‘competing’ to meet are a pantheon of hurdles and regulatory impositions constructed in order to ensure that the one thing they can never do is compete effectively with France or Germany.
The anti-Euro campaign in Britain, which so ostentatiously waves the banner of “our history” seems, in fact, to be appallingly ignorant of it. Do we imagine that a few miles of dirty water truly separate us from the fate of our “continental” neighbours?
The fate of our ‘continental neighbours’ that we have managed to avoid are the fascist or communist tyrranies that have convulsed that place every two generations or so and left a charnel house in their wake. Does Mr.Hitchens imagine that it was a ‘few miles of dirty water’ that kept us safe from those darkest nightmares? Or was it our Anglo-Saxon traditions, our civil society and our common law. You remember those, don’t you Mr.Hitchens? They are the things that have truly kept this island safe and yet even now are being jettisoned in favour of corpus juris, top-down elite rule and a sheaf of grand-sounding ‘rights’ that turn out, on closer examination, not to be worth the 100% recycled paper they are printed on.
If Mr.Hitchens doesn’t belive this he should take some time to examine the list of countries that have managed to make it through the 20th Century without violent revolution, despotism or foreign occupation. It is a depressingly short list but includes only two European countries (Sweden and Switzerland). Is history trying to tell us something here?
Or that we can remain indifferent to their attempt at a
coalition? Name one disaster in British history that did not result from getting this wrong.
No, because we have tried to do anything this stupid before. I can, however, name a disaster in the Balkans that resulted from getting this wrong.
This doesn’t just cut out the middleman and the
currency-trader if you are a tourist. It compels each country to take a wider interest than its own into account.
Note that Mr.Hitchens does not appear to have shed his anti-bourgeois sentiments just yet.
Now I am supposed to care whether the Queen’s head is on a piece of paper or a coin that I only need to pay my non-electronic bills?
WHY is there not a fleur-de-lys on my international bank statement? How can I live with this national shame? Don’t be silly, in other words.
Yes, it’s all so silly. So silly and petty and beneath him, don’t you know. Why are these silly, pettyfogging bores making such a fuss about whose face appears on our banknotes? It’s all silly and preposterous. Mr.Hitchens is clearly aiming his sentiments to the appeal of the patrician party set and, if he had made a point about all fiat currencies being artificial to some degree, he would have had something.
As it is he seems to want us to believe that the whole issue is one of symbols, as if things like legal systems and constitutions are just irritating details best left to our betters. No, best we cast aside such prosaic nonsense and float with Hitchens through the sun-dappled, cafe-strewn boulevards of ‘New Europe’ air-kissing theatrically to the lilting melodies of Mozart and soaking in La Dolce Vita mixed with the sensous aroma of fresh French coffee.
Ahh, what a dream. Only it is the utopian fantasy of the kind that have bedrugged English intellectuals for the last Nth generations. But you can’t cherry-pick from this package,Mr.Hitchens. You cannot just extract the bits you like and leave the rest. No, you sign up to the whole deal or you leave and had he had been keeping up with the current events, including the terrifyingly creepy totalitarian tendencies of the neo-communists in Brussels, the whole big fuss over banknotes wouldn’t seem quite so petty after all.
We have a chance to be one of the serious members of a
burgeoning community, and to help create a system that doesn’t answer to Washington or to Moscow, and the umpteenth government to be faced with this ancient but obvious question is cravenly seeking yet “more time”.
This man is positively dripping with outmoded canards. Why is answering to Brussels any better that answering to Washington or Moscow? If that was the only choice I know which I would opt for. But the real truth is that independence is not just an option but our very best option and, contrary to fashionable belief, that independence is tantalisingly within our grasp if only the political will existed to reach out and grab it. That depressingly short list I refer to above also includes Britain; an independent Britain and, by doing the right thing now, we can stretch our proud record of achievement into the 21st Century and beyond. If that isn’t a real dream worth fighting for then I don’t know what is.
Much has been made of the apparent conversion of Christopher Hitchens to the cause of common sense and reason. I, myself, have been unpersuaded and it looks as if my instincts were right.
It goes back a little farther than September 11. Hitchens loathed Bill Clinton and was loud about it, which won him a late-20th-Century slot as the American Right’s favorite pet Lefty. He had a sort of rumpled, boozy charm that (god knows why) played well in Peoria.
Hitchens also had a long-standing interest in the Cyprus problem, writing a book about the island’s history in the early 1980s, blaming both Turks and Greeks, but saving his real bile for the way Britain and the US played the two off against each other.
Principled as Hitchens is, I get the impression he finds economics a bit hard to understand.
Keep in mind, this is a man who thinks Mother Theresa is a fraud, Kissinger should be up on war charges, Clinton was too far to the right, and breathlessly gushed to Martin Amis that “Lenin… was a great man”.
Surely the dirty water helped a bit?
Salve Samizdatae.
Go to “Northern Cyprus” as our dear Turkish friends call it. Live there a while. Consider your options…
Yes, given this background, the EU is a good alternative for the average person in the street. Life in North Cyprus, if one is not a rich friend of the “administration”, is hard and economically uncertain and politically, err, constrained.
As much as the opinion may be an anathema to Samizdatae, it is probably true that joining the EU is a step up for some as much as it might be a step down for others.
As for an overbearing administration that thrives on corruption – that epitaph could be applied to the Turkish regime as much as the EU. A match made in heaven?
The Northern Cypriot Administration is an illegitimate state set up by a hostile invasion by fascist, racist, almost Nazist Turcoland. Thousands of Cypriot civilians died in this invasion I might add. And its not just Europe but America and everyone else who established sanctions on that hellhole. And besides, they can still trade through the port of Mercin.
Yet Turkey, after the (Armenian) Karabagh rebellion in Azerbaijan, placed crippling sanctions not just on Karabagh but on Armenia proper as well, which had nothing to do with the rebellion!Turkish hypocrisy at its best. They also wont lift the sanctions until Armenia caves to Turkey’s demands that it cease efforts to gain recogniition for the Armenian genocide. So until we give in to their Nazi-like demands denialist demands they will continue to attempt a second genocide by starvation, however some mainstream political parties in that worthless nation want a more “final solution” to the “Ermeni Sorunu.” All in all a sick, sick, evil society.
I’m always at a loss to understand the fuss that is made about Hitchens or other lefties who have “seen the light” and expressed some sensible opinions.
Does the fact that you were consistently and tremendously wrong for many years bestow on you some special aura when you finally glimpse the truth ?
Hitchens was and is a socialist. That he is not a dogmatic one, and rebels at some of their most absurd orthodoxies – is a good thing worthy of praise. Still, he is more often wrong than right.
The Northern Cypriot Administration is an illegitimate state set up by a hostile invasion by fascist, racist, almost Nazist Turcoland. Thousands of Cypriot civilians died in this invasion I might add.
Yup – and my father lost a great deal of land too – my legacy. I plan to take it back some day.
“Principled as Hitchens is, I get the impression he fids economics a bit hard to understand. ”
Yep – Because he’s a socialist.
Hitchens, though is a good writer, and can put forth a very good case for his position, even when it’s wrong. However, he does have a touch of arrogance that allows him to fall into Chomsky-like debating tactics like simply stating a position in a tone that says “obviously, I’m right so there’s no need to offer evidence to prove it.”
Still, he was, to my knowledge, the first person of any profession to accurately describe our terrorist enemies as the Islamic-Fascists that they are. I’ve yet to see a better description of Al Quaeda and all the Saudi-influenced terrorists.
While, he was (in my opinion) correct in his positions on Afghanistan and Iraq, it should be noted the case he put forth was really the “liberal” case for war. Jonah Goldberg of National Review noted some time ago, that while Hitchens seems to understand the lunacy of many of his fellow leftists, he is and likely always will be a man of the left. It’s always important to note that, and this article is proof.
I can’t agree with Hitchens about Clinton being too far to the right, but I have to say I have always distrusted Mother Theresa and her cunning little peasant eyes, and Henry Kissinger has always given me the creeps.
Hi David
The full list of countries does not include Britain.
Eamon
I used to think Christopher Hitchens was a total arse. His attack on Mother T. and the Royal Family was pretty much boilerplate lefty chip-on-shoulder rubbish. But he can write beautifully and has a Swift-like ability to spot bullshit a mile off. He was interviewed by Reason magazine some time ago and said that although he was still a sceptic on the case for free enterprise, that he admired many libertarian thinkers, including – (drums roll!) – Ayn Rand. He also wrote a pretty good profile of Alan Greenspan for Vanity Fair which was far more intelligent and respectful than I would have expected.
Hitchens is still, in a vague sense, a man of the “left”. But then the forgoing suggests what a useless word “left” is when it comes to such folk. I think of him as a freestanding iconoclast who, on the whole, is one of the good guys.
And I prefer him to his reactionary brother, Peter.
Three European countries have avoided violent revolution, despotism, or foreign occupation — you forgot the UK.
Well, techinically Scotland has been under the London’s thumb for centuries, so I suppose only England has avoided foreign occupation.