By Steven J. Grisafi, PhD.
It is with great dismay that I learned of the agreement between the government of Greece and the European Monetary Union to enable Greece to continue to use the Euro-dollar as their currency. I tend to think, as do many others, that despite the great hardship it would entail, the people of Greece, and eventually other users of the Euro-dollar, would fare better to abandon the union currency. Yet what I found so remarkable throughout this engaging saga was the extreme dichotomy of views people have had regarding the primary participants within the saga. Most notable, from my perspective, has been the near villainous characterization of the German Finance Minister Wolfgang Shäuble. With my curiosity piqued, I was led to investigate whatever history is available regarding the Finance Minister and what I found was equally astonishing. My most cogent assessment of Dr. Shäuble is that America should be so fortunate as to have politicians such as him.
I found that, far from being the devil he has been characterized as, Dr. Shäuble has shown himself to be a thoughtful and compassionate man. While I recognize that he may have harbored, throughout all of the negotiations, the unspoken objective of persuading the Greek government to request permission to withdraw from the European Monetary Union, he perhaps was doing what would be best for all parties concerned. By virtue of their signatory to the Maastricht Treaty, Greece could not lawfully withdraw from the monetary union. However, if it had been the desire of the people of Greece to withdraw from the monetary union, such permission would have been granted. Dr. Shäuble was trying to make the government of Greece recognize this. While I do not believe that Dr. Shäuble harbors my opinion, that the monetary union is flawed and needs to be restructured, I do believe that he considered his adherence to the rule of law to be essential to any binding contract.
When America converted from analog to digital only television transmission signals I found myself without television. Although I live approximately seventy miles from the largest city in the United States, and sixty miles from the largest city in Pennsylvania, no television signal reaches the antenna on the roof of my home. Either rich or poor, the people of my region of Pennsylvania have had to subscribe to a commercial service to receive a television signal that is no longer free. Prior to the transition I could easily receive television signals from Philadelphia. It being a luxury that I cannot afford, I no longer view any television. Whatever free time I may now have I spend viewing the comics that are available on the Internet. Although the comics appear only in English, this appears to be a pastime of many persons throughout the world. That many such persons live outside the United States is evident through their taking the opportunity afforded to them to comment upon the comic strips posted on the websites. With the passing this year of St. Patrick”s Day, a day when many cartoonists draw a comic strip dedicated to the theme of the feast day, I took notice of a comment posted by a woman presumably of Mexican heritage. Although the identity of all visitors to the comics website is kept anonymous, one can usually surmise some identity from what a visitor does write. In this particular instance, the woman asked the question if the people of Ireland celebrated St. Patrick”s Day in the same manner as in the United States. She wondered this because she noticed that in Mexico the feast day of Cinco de Mayo, the Fifth of May, was not celebrated as it is in the United States. She did not refer to Cinco de Mayo as a feast day, but I being Catholic, knew it to be. With my curiosity piqued, I searched for Cinco de Mayo on Wikipedia and was astonished by what I found. According to Wikipedia, the celebration of Cinco de Mayo was in remembrance of the Battle of Puebla. I knew this to be nonsense and was astonished that such baloney could be published. Cinco de Mayo is the celebration of the feast day of the patron saint of Mexico, Our Lady, St. Mary, Queen of the Apostles. St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland. Yet, here in America, it is perceived to be a day for getting drunk; and so it is now for Cinco de Mayo, a day advertised as an opportunity to drink alcohol.
One might say that this is just a consequence of poor editing; that Wikipedia is written by anyone who cares to spread misinformation. Yet I see this as much more. American Commercialism exploits any opportunity to sway the masses to spend their money foolishly. That American Commercialism seeks to do to Cinco de Mayo what it has done to St. Patrick”s Day is, to me, just another manifestation of Protestant contempt for Catholicism and Anglo-Saxon contempt for Latin peoples. To some readers I suppose this would appear to be a bit of a stretch. Yet, consider this: America has fought no wars against France. We fought two against the English. Yet, contempt for France and the French is so ubiquitous within the United States that a member of Congress (from the Texas delegation) had the unmitigated temerity to utter the silly refrain that one hears constantly: “We are not French, we don”t surrender!” With people of many different cultures here in America, this contempt for Catholicism and Latin peoples is recognized and exploited by people who are neither Protestant nor of Anglo-Saxon heritage. Thus we often see professional comedians shamelessly telling jokes about the Pope. Each culture takes its own opportunity to keep America divided by exploiting the ancient antagonisms between the various cultures of the American people. The most astonishing example I have ever seen occurred one Sunday morning as I watched one of the now commonplace Sunday morning news shows on television. George Patacki was Governor of New York State at the time when one of two seated gentlemen on the show said, just as the show paused for commercial break, that Patacki should go back to Sicily. The man who said this was a Black Man. I do not know what is the heritage of George Patacki. But I do know that there is no letter “k” in the Italian alphabet so I doubt that George Patacki is of Italian ancestry.
George Patacki was a popular Republican governor of a traditionally Democratic state. I am often dismayed to see comments posted to the blogs of Europeans showing extreme contempt for the American Republican Party. In what was presumably a comment made by a German to a blog post of Professor Simon Wren-Lewis, the comment asserted that the people of Germany, in contrast to American Republicans, consider the welfare state to be a basic human right. While I do not disagree with this sentiment, and I have been greatly disappointed by the Republican Party”s obstruction of the will of most Americans I know to favor some form of socialized medicine, such comments display an ignorance of the evils the American people suffer from both political parties, the Democrats as well as the Republicans. Europeans need to understand that President Obama”s Affordable Care Act is a financial gift from Congress to insurance companies just as the transition from analog television transmission to digital transmission was a gift to the telecommunication companies. Members of Congress merely accept the legislation written by experts who lobby Congress on behalf of their clients. The issue with the transition from analog to digital television transmission signals was that the digital transmission signal could not reach as far as the analog signal could. This greatly expanded demand for cable television services and should be seen for exactly that: It was a gift to the cable companies. The Affordable Care Act is a similar betrayal of the American people. I understand that the Obama Administration, and loyal Democrats, would argue that it was the best they could accomplish in confrontation with intransigence from Republicans. Yet life-long, die-hard, Republicans, such as my mother and I, would have greatly preferred that Medicare be extended to everyone. It”s simpler, cost-effective, and by far the most practical solution. Yet, Members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat, ignored common sense and submitted to the pandering of the Insurance Industry and the Medical Profession. It is a nonsensical way of pricing insurance by basing it upon one”s income. This is precisely what the Affordable Care Act does. Subsidies a state may provide strip an individual of his dignity as one must submit to an invasion of one”s privacy. This is made ever more odious in that our nation permits multiculturalism to persist and assimilation is no longer required. A consequence of this multiculturalism is that your life, and all of its specifics, including cultural aspects, comes under review by government personnel, who may be of a different culture than your own, each and every time anyone seeks a government benefit. Had Medicare been extended to all Americans, instead of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, no person, no matter how poor or unfortunate, would ever be subjected to humiliation because of the circumstances and need for health-care that he cannot afford. Since culture defines a person, a multicultural nation is a nation of people with differences. In my opinion, the appropriate response to this choice of my country to choose to be multicultural, is to restrict the ability of the government to invade our lives. This has traditionally been a goal of the Republican Party. While the German who commented upon Professor Wren-Lewis” blog may perceive a welfare state to be beneficial to its people, and I do too, when my government taxes us it does not spend the money on the American people. It spends the money on needless, endless wars and military interventions. Europeans should recognize, that as flawed as current Republicans have shown themselves to be, there have been Republicans, such as Theodore Roosevelt and Fiorello Laguardia, who actually cared about common people. Laguardia stood on his chair in Congress shouting “Soak the Rich!” If any further persuasion is required, Europeans need to know that cities such as New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia have been cesspools of Democratic corruption for centuries.
Dr. Shäuble has shown great courage with his insistence upon adherence to the rule of law. This is the cornerstone of Western Civilization and without it we are toppled.