Wednesday, August 13, 2008

The EU’s 170,000-Strong Army of Bureaucrats

A brief note from Fjordman:

The EU now has all the tools it needs in order to become a true, totalitarian entity. And it has managed successfully to corrupt the national elites to sell out the freedom of their peoples by inviting them to take part in the world’s largest racket, paid for by European taxpayers. This one via Dutch blogger Klein Verzet, who also has the Fjordman Files.

According to Open Europe, the EU now employs a 170,000-strong army of bureaucrats.


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8 comments:

Baron Bodissey said...

Here's what Fjordman added to his original comment:

Fjordman said...

Speaking of which: I am writing the country essays for Holland and Germany now. If you have any ideas you wish to include in these, or in the Ten reasons to get rid of the EU, you can post them here at GoV and I will have a look at them.

laine said...

With Russia throwing its weight around again, the EU would be better off if that "army" of bureaucrats were a real army instead of measuring the angle of cucumbers and acting as tongue troopers.

Anonymous said...

170,000 people????? That's crazy!

Homophobic Horse said...

Post-modern totalitarianism through a tangle of bureaucracy.

Look at the face of this pompous weasel.

Where have I seen that face before?

Pointless Tory gossip monger Iain Dale

There can be seen the faces of the democratic tyrants, full of hubris, for their ideas are crowd friendly; they are utterly superficial and completely unable to deal with the complexity of life. They have a gross tendency towards intellectual abstraction, for to address problems in a direct and actual way is too violate the permissiveness of democracy and it's presupposition that man is homogenous. For that reason everything is cloaked in a grey net of abstraction used to simplify and explain in a way that is subtly dishonest, sublimely pleasing, and most importantly of all - universal i.e. disconnected from the non-homogenous actual human reality. The democratic mind, oweing this abstraction tendency, readily imbibes and promotes the ideas of Freud and Marx in one form or another. Even the democratic sense of aesthetics is mired in this tendency towards abstraction - the "Centre for the Study of Democracy" displays an abstract modern art style.

Henrik R Clausen said...

Anyone whining about Russia being 'Totalitarian' should ponder this. The EU is _more_ totalitarian than Russia (of today), as this army of controllers and regulators show.

Further, what they regulate is to a great extent various national institutions, who in this way also work under the guidance of Brussels, with their national governments, parliaments etc. being relegated to a position of administrators. The recent cases (more are coming, BTW) against Denmark demonstrate this.

EU is not as _authoritarian_ as Russia. I mean, we can get rid of our rulers in the European Commission any day we like, can't we?

Not? Oh, crap...

Unknown said...

Whenever the day is grey, the rain is pouring, and spirits are down, I know at least I can always open the Gates of Vienna for a good larf.

For example, the constant tut-tutting about how bad things are in Europe - as in today's given case, the proliferation of numbers in the EU bureaucracy. But what about the following?

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/05/AR2006100501782.html

When the ratio of inhabitants to desk-jockeys is taken into account, the U.S. seems to have little to brag about.

Similarly, the recent news - mentioned in the Gates of Vienna - that the US will have a non-white majority by 2042. Somehow I suspect that at least a few European countries will still be maintaining their white majorities at that time.

In short, the US is rapidly sinking, and has been going to perdition long before it exported its viruses of Political Correctness and Multiculturism to Europe.

So, as much as I abhor Freud and Freudianism, I think he had a point with his idea of projection (to quote Wikipedia, " ... a defense mechanism in which one attributes one’s own unacceptable or unwanted thoughts or/and emotions to others. Projection reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the unwanted subconscious impulses/desires without letting the conscious mind recognize them.") The amount of Schadenfreude flung about on GoV can hardly be otherwise explained, with its focus on what's wrong in Europe.

Rest assured, though - the Gates of Vienna performs a useful public service - by lulling its readers into thinking that all evil emanates from Europe, and that the situation there is far worse than it is in the States, it soothes otherwise sensitive American consciences, guilty over the re-export of politicized European leftist concepts, which - given life through legislative embodiment in the States, have been served back to the continent where those ideas first saw light, and in doing so, sealing the fate of Europe.

As said, Gates of Vienna - always good for a chuckle.

Henrik R Clausen said...

Being European myself, I'm glad that GoV focuses on Europe. We have a tendency for myopia, not really heeding what happens in our brother countries, and GoV is a nice cure for that. I never thought of that being a kind of Schadenfreude...

Argh, Freud! Probably one of the most dangerous anti-civilization activists to come out of Wien. His ideas wrecked havoc on a generation of 'intellectuals' who thought that what he did was profound. 'Profoundly stupid' is as far as I'll admit.

No worry, that's just my knee-jerk reaction to him :)

Anyway, what you say about US government underlines what I've been suspecting: The federal government of the US is severely out of control, internally as well as abroad. The situation is unstable, and the states may start to assert some kinds of independence against the federal system.

But most Americans seem to believe that their trouble is coming from abroad, while in reality the US economical and military policies have sowed the seeds for most of the cacti they're sitting in.

Here in Europe, the europhiles are arguing that EU needs to be Strong, United and able to project its power anywhere in the world. Those who say so are often leftists, and then I ask if they really want to make mistakes as large as the US government?

If they say "Yes, of course!", I proceed to compare the Unity-striving system to fascism. They usually don't like that...

X said...

GoV focuses on us Europeans because its owners have declared interest in the place (specifically Yorkshire in the Baron's case) and want to keep people informed about the reality on the ground here. The number of european readers and contributors has been touted a few times. I certainly don't see projection - the problems the US is having have been made very clear here. Look at the Jamaat ul fuqra posts. Two years ago I wouldn't have believed that there could exist such places in the US yet, there they are...

In fact the pessimism about the state of affairs on this side of the atlantic seems to be fairly equally spread between various european contributors and the american contributors. The optimism seems equally spread, too.

According to other sides we're on our own because they're so high and mighty in fortress America. That is denial. GoV doesn't engage in that sort of thing and recognises that the problems are everywhere. The argument over who will go first is immaterial given that, if we keep arguing over who is the most in trouble instead of actually trying to solve the problem in our own nations, we'll all go under eventually. The triumphalism of "my country is safer than yours" gets my goat too, but the occurrence of that attitude is rare here, and quite common elsewhere.

Pleas, if you want schadenfreude, projection and denial about reality, go hang around on LGF for a few days. The belief that we europeans (since apparently we're all one country to those people) have it coming - deserve what we face - is so prevalent there that you'd be hard pressed to find anyone with a positive thing to say about any european country. Such arguments are uncritically accepted over there with perhaps token debates,. because they really do beleive all the tout about the US being impregnanble and european countries being existentially doomed and unredeemable. Show me the equivalent attitude here at GoV, that hasn't been thoroughly argued to the ground by other contributors, and you might convince me you have a point. Otherwise you're just p*ssing at windmills.

S'nice and sunny too, what's that guff about rain?