Yes To A Nobler Europe by William Shepherd
Troubadours & Princes Yes to a Nobler Europe Trapped Agenda The current European Movement organised and orchestrated by BIG (Banks, Industries and Governments) to impose the Maastricht Tricky (Trick or Treat as the Americans say on their Celtic Samhain celebrations) on the peoples of Europe is an attempt to win by stealth what the Nazis failed to win by force of arms. Nazis are of course after much the same thing as Jesuits, Templars, Zionists and all those of their conspiratorial ilk. The ends and means of the 1930s Nazis were to their credit more visible. Indeed Mein Kampf is still top of the German 20th century book sales listings.
Otherwise there is remarkably little to choose between one beast and the other. They all feed on lies and secrets, only the size varies. And they all take it as read that the end justifies the means. No doubt European airports are swarming with the initiates of all these mind games, all struggling ceaselessly towards the next golden dawn. Perhaps they should buy themselves an airline and spread some of the cost? Perhaps like our sixties generation they should read more Aldous Huxley? Island, The Doors of Perception, The Art of Seeing and Ways and Means for instance, instead of just Brave New World.
We should not make the mistake of becoming too obsessed about ‘defeating the Nazis’. One thing can take on many forms. And the one big thing they all have in common in Europe is to work for the rise to power of a Masters & Masses Party and the subjugation of all effective political and economic resistance by the opposition ‘We The Little People’ parties, with our belief in the celebration of creation and community rather than the pursuit of power, property and privilege as the organising principle for Tomorrow’s Europe. Indeed in our condemnation of the EuroAttitudes enshrined in the ways and manners of thought of the Brusselariat, we should follow Gandhi’s advice and speak truth to tyranny. Forswear forthwith the old Nazi formula of big business and mass production, of slick large-scale advertising and showmanship, of militarism and government by fear!
But the next task for the intellectual leading edge is not to harp on about destroying the old and enfeebled by crying ‘No! No! And No Again!’ to their United States of (the nation states of 19th Century) Europe. But instead to start the more daunting task of charting a different way. Our new, nobler European idea will base itself on the much maligned ‘balance of power’ principle and the forgotten Celtic ‘kleinstaaterei’ idea; the very corner stones that the Yes-sayers of Yesterday’s Maastricht Europe foolishly rejected for their nuclear powered folly. Our No-sayers need to know that they are saying yes to a nobler Europe of a thousand flags and of a hundred thousand walled gardens with little gates in them. Places where little people like to live. Not places that Big People flit to and from. Our sacred eternal places against their nomadic predatory and passing interests. A world of Troubadours & Princes
The problem of governance in Europe is dimensional. Scotland, Sweden, Denmark, Tuscany, Provence, Holland, Estonia, Catelonia, Lombard, Bavaria and Schleswig-Holstein are the right size for a confederation of European states. Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and of course Luxembourg, Liechenstein and Monaco are not. They are too big or too small. Indeed much recent moral philosophy and economic scholarship has been seeking to reclaim the ancient rights of cities, and their modern developments, the city regions, so that they might enjoy their own economic autonomy. And economic autonomy means the right to tax, to issue currency and coinage, and to impose tolls and duty on foreign goods, foreign services, foreign capital and foreign people.
The real Euroquestion for the 1990s is whether Wall Street, Berlin or your village and urban neighbourhood should be doing this. For most of the problems associated with ‘The Four Movements’ are imposed on little people by Big City Centre People. And lest you think that this is some whacko leftie idea I would refer you to the Salzburg School (von Mises, Hayek and Kohr) whose thinking has as much to do with left and right as your nose.
Farmers and fishermen in command of small estates and holding stewardship over property in significant amounts can strike deals and make fair and honest bargains to barter their time, effort and enterprise for that expended by city dwellers. That is an old Catholic idea and the defining idea of the Chesterbellocs’ political philosophy of ‘Distributism’. Or call it the AngloCatholic school and read up about it in Hilaire Belloc’s 1906 classic The Servile State. Even better join him in 1925 on The Cruise of The Nona.
Yes to Maastricht is yes to yesterday. No to Maastricht is no to the introduction by stealth of what our parents defeated 50 years ago by blood sweat and tears. No is yes to a broader, more inclusive conception of Europe’s future administrative structures; one that takes heed of both our Roman landed traditions and our Nordic and Celtic seafaring heritage. And there are four main fields of human activity that require different and varying forms of administration. In shorthand these can be labelled as the functions of the temporal leader or ‘king’, the warrior-diplomat, the poet-legislator and the priest. How shallow is the modern ‘Topside’ notion of administration compared with this Nordic-Celtic tradition.
No is yes to the recognition that it is our turn. We do not want you to replace your worn-out top hatted generation with grey-suited baby boom generation professional poolitical clones. We are calling for you to let the sixties generation take over the political game and replace your out-dated professional football with our village cricket. Maastricht is just the first of the skirmishes.
No is yes to retaining the Treaty of Rome and not forcing through constitutional changes on slender Admass engineered (or ballot box rigged) majority 51:49 votes, or as in the Church of England, on two third majorities achieved by Faustian bargains. Go talk to the Quakers and find out the true nature of a consensus decision.
No is yes to openess and a measured pace instead of the obsessive secrecy and mad unseemly rush of our self-styles EuroPlotters. Trust us. The sixties generation has been working together for a quarter of a century. All of us have friends and colleagues in the four corners of Europe and across the length and breadth of North America. We constitute a new English Speaking Union. We have got you to give up your nuclear weapons. We have made sure that you are all environmentalists now.
No is yes to a wider, more meaningful discussion of Our Nobler Europe. We will take the time we need, anyway. Your bluster and bombast no longer impresses anybody. Indeed it makes you look faintly ridiculous. We, and not you, will agree upon the place for governance and commercial monopolies in the home and foreign affairs of each of our European villages and urban neighbourhoods. Why fight us? You will die first. The kids are with us. We beat you in the schools...and you have only just noticed. Isn’t it time for you to retire graciously?
No is yes to a more noble vision of Europe than the one cobbled together by the clerks, shopkeepers and moneylenders of an intellectually bankrupt ruling caste of grey men in grey suits shuffling papers behind locked doors in unhealthy buildings that have never known the happy sound of children’s laughter or the joyful conviviality of good songs. Good riddance to bad rubbish!
We The Little People were demanding something much much better than your Common Mark-Up a quarter of a century ago. Our fathers were demanding much more than your Treaty of Rome a quarter of a century before that. And our grandfathers had The Money Power in their sights. You have had a good innings. Indeed we have much to be thankful for. But now you go too far. There are twenty times as many of us. And soon the media will be ours once again. Your monopolies are crumbling.
We have a bone to pick with you and yours. Take heed. Do not overplay your hand. We have taught our children well. We believe in the way of peace. We will talk with you and concern ourselves over your pensions. But they may not. They will take what is theirs by right. If necessary they will take it by force. Old men! Were you wise, you would deal with your children now! For, as sure as night follows day, if you drag your feet much longer, your children’s children will have no qualms about dragging you out by them. Think about it. Abort your BIG EuroNonsense. And start listening to little people and their ideas of a nobler Europe.
November 1992
Cinque Ports Europaper Number Six
Troubadours & Princes Yes to a Nobler Europe Trapped Agenda