Migrants are on the rampage in Greece as they seek to enter Macedonia and parts north, ultimately to Germany. The Europeans are paying the price for their open-door welfare state migration policy and support for US interventionist foreign policy that lead to mass migrations. Is this the end of the political union?
Be sure to visit http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com for more libertarian commentary.
Migrants are on the rampage in Greece as they seek to enter Macedonia and parts north, ultimately to Germany. The Europeans are paying the price for their open-door welfare state migration policy and support for US interventionist foreign policy that lead to mass migrations. Is this the end of the political union?
Be sure to visit http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com for more libertarian commentary.
Migrants are on the rampage in Greece as they seek to enter Macedonia and parts north, ultimately to Germany. The Europeans are paying the price for their open-door welfare state migration policy and support for US interventionist foreign policy that lead to mass migrations. Is this the end of the political union?
Be sure to visit http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com for more libertarian commentary.
With me today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host, Daniel.
Good to see you.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
Good.
I want to visit about a subject that we have talked about many times.
It's ongoing, but it's a big geopolitical crisis going on in Europe.
Will the European Union hold together?
I always predicted from the very beginning that it didn't make a lot of sense thinking that the Germans are going to get along with the Italians and the Italians get along with Greece.
But I always believed in the marketplace that, you know, when it's in their interest to trade and travel and benefit, and if it's sort of voluntary, that you can have more integration.
But this whole idea of the European Union coming up with all these laws and rules and saying that you have to all follow the same entitlement systems, and if you just move from one country to another, your entitlements follow you and you can't prohibit anybody from coming in.
You know, due to the economic crisis that's going on and the geopolitical crisis in the Middle East, European Union is in there.
It's very much threatened right now.
And that's what I want to visit with you on.
And that has to do with a recent headline that talked about 500 Syrians stormed the barracks of trying to get in, are coming in and they want to get into Greece.
But at the same time, there's 6,500 that are trapped in a little village between Greece and Macedonia.
And there was one prediction that there could be, you know, 50 or 60,000 additional people flooding through Greece.
Greece has failed.
I mean, they had a failed economic system, and then they didn't get as much bailout as they thought.
But they're in crisis, and now they're in this crisis where Merkel, who's leading the charge, of saying, oh, open up the doors, it'll take care of itself.
And it's forced multiculturalism is exactly opposite of what a libertarian's approach would be to have voluntary integration.
But what in your mind do you think Greece can do?
You know, you can't be overly sympathetic for their bad economic policies, but they're in many ways trapped.
And as our title suggests, what's this going to do to the European Union, especially considering that there's a vote coming up in Britain here real soon?
I think it underscores the faulty concept of the whole political union from the first place.
I think really it started accelerating after the 92 Maastricht Treaty that started the motion in progress for a political union rather than the initial 1950s European coal and gas community, which would have liberalized trade within the countries and probably would have been a better thing.
But you've got a lot of very well-paid bureaucrats in Brussels who keep their jobs in these political unions.
They get to regulate how big a banana will be and what color an orange is or something.
So they do all this.
So they've gotten themselves in a huge pickle by adopting an EU-wide migration policy.
And as you point out, all of the features of the European welfare state.
Well, that's awfully attractive to economic migrants from whatever third world country or impoverished country.
So you have that huge welfare magnet, and then you just simply strike a match to a big vat of gasoline when you have an interventionist foreign policy or when you follow the interventionist foreign policy of a big power like the U.S. You know, there's a pretense that we're not managing things.
We don't run the European Union, but we're very much involved, at least indirectly.
I guess we're sitting back and watching this going on, but we certainly have a position because I think our government is always going to support bigger government and bigger units, and they would favor the European Union.
But I think time and the populations up there are against that.
But I know financially we're always involved, whether it's the bailout of Greece or anything else, we're always involved through our financial system and the Federal Reserve.
But how about the combination of here we have the European political union, but what about the military union of NATO?
I mean, most of those countries sort of like us to be there, but here we aggravate things.
We tend to put on sanctions and mess up the economy.
Then we go in and we put missiles, which aggravates the situation in Eastern Europe and sort of stir up trouble with the Russians.
But then we have a foreign policy that is directly related to European crisis.
Yeah, we can pretend that it's not our mismanagement of Europe, but what about the mismanagement of our affairs endorsed by many European governments and causing the chaos and the wars that creates most right now most in combination, of course, with the economic the refugees leaving.
So our policies have a lot of effect on what's going on here.
It's a perfect storm and I think what's being shown is a critical lack of leadership in the EU.
As you pointed out, Merkel is probably one of the worst German leaders in history.
There are a couple that are worse I can think of, but she's got to be up there.
So you open the floodgate, everyone come in, and then they had this amazing wake-up call on New Year's Eve when there were this enormous problems in Cologne with foreigners raping and attacking German women.
And so it was a real wake-up call for Germany.
But the other point is following U.S. foreign policy.
The Europeans follow the aggressive U.S. foreign policy, and they also have supported the disastrous foreign policy of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.
All four of these countries have been for years pushing for regime change in Syria and destabilize it.
But we don't face the same crisis in refugees as the Europeans do.
And certainly the Saudis and Israelis won't take a single refugee, even though they fomented the chaos.
And Turkey, for one, and we could talk about this in a minute, but Turkey is holding the rest of Europe policy.
They want money.
They've been negotiating for billions of dollars, and they say, if we don't get it, we're going to let loose a few hundred thousand refugees, and you'll see how you like it.
So, wow, what a mess.
Well, the refugees that are trapped in northern Greece can't get into Macedonia on this little border town, six to seven thousand of them are Iraqis and also Syrians.
So they're directly related to some of the real hot spots that we helped to create.
So I don't see an easy out, but I think we could look for some benefits from this.
This is once again, I think it's we have been pointing out the fact that interventionism and Keynesianism and inflationism and central bank, that's in the process of totally failing, just like communism and fascism failed in the 20th century.
But I think what we're seeing is this failure, of course, of our foreign policy as well.
But in the meantime, we have a major mess, but the good part is that this represents secession.
This is the reversal of this move for bigger government, you know, whether it's NATO, European Union, you know, the trade agreements that we have, entangling alliances.
So I think there would be a definite positive if they could do this with the wisdom that they need to move to free markets and say, this doesn't mean that we're going to lock the borders and close down, but we're going to move toward free markets and free trade and let people move and goods and services move, but not let the burden of the entitlement system move with them and not let the militarism move with it.
It's so different from what it would be like when you have a voluntary situation.
And, you know, though not perfect, but pretty darn good.
I say, well, they ask me, well, what kind of a border would you like?
Well, you know, in days gone by, I sort of like the border between the United States and Canada.
You know, we could go back and forth.
It's a little more difficult now, but people would work on both sides, and it wasn't a big deal.
I would think that working that way is absolutely opposite of these mandates and dictates and this entrapment that Greece is undergoing now.
Of course, what they need is they need independence and they need sound economic policy and they need to stay out of getting involved in these alliances that commit them to anything.
What's interesting, you talk about secession.
There really is an important movement happening in Europe right now and it's led by Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary.
He is resisting, they're a member of the EU, but he's resisting Brussels' demands that each EU member country settle thousands of refugees.
He's actually holding a nationwide referendum for people to vote on whether they should accept tens of thousands of refugees.
And now he's being joined really by the group of countries called the Visegrad Four, and that's Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary.
And they're resisting these dictates coming from Brussels.
You know, they had 40, 50, 60 years of dictates coming from Moscow, and they don't want to have the same thing coming from Brussels now.
So it's very interesting.
And talk about economic secession as well.
Viktor Orban had a meeting with Vladimir Putin a couple of weeks ago, and they agreed on some more increasing trade deals.
And that is also driving Brussels crazy because Brussels feels like they have to follow the U.S. sanctions policy against Russia.
So there is a move for some national sovereignty, some nationalism in Central Europe that I think is slightly encouraging.
What about the referendum in Britain coming up in June?
This is a big deal.
And our friends who are on the side of separating themselves are being resisted by all the establishment people, Cameron and others.
Boy, no, this is terrible, terrible, terrible.
And they want to make it more mellow and say, okay, we'll concede this.
But regardless, I hope the referendum comes out very favorably for secession from European Union.
But nevertheless, I think the die has been cast mainly because the economic and political results of a failed policy are evident.
So if they can hold it together for a little while longer, I don't think it's relevant because I think this is doomed to fail.
You just can't get people to agree to this type of system because they're going to go broke.
And Greece is already broke.
And then they come in and tax them and things like that to do this and then stuff these people in.
People can't get in.
They bang on the doors and use force to get in.
At the same time, they can't get out.
I mean, this is going to end.
If they could do it wisely, there shouldn't be any violence.
But right now, this may become more violent than it already has.
And I think this article we referred to indicated how rough they're getting.
They want to bang the doors down and bust through.
But that's a long way.
I mean, I think most of them claim or admit that, oh, well, Germany, they're the only tolerant people in Europe.
So we're all, we all want to go to Germany.
But there's going to be a day, and I'll bet you there's a bit of resistance going on in Germany as well right now.
There's a big resistance, and unfortunately, what this does is it channels energy to the real far right, who are pretty nasty bunch of people.
So what Merkel's policies are doing is emboldening the extremist parties.
But there is a real citizens' revolt in Europe, and I think it's something that is rising to the surface.
Europe has suffered under feckless leaders who have no real sense of national identity.
And so I think there is a real people's revolt that's brewing.
It's starting in Central and Eastern Europe, and I think it's spreading to Germany and elsewhere.
And of course, the challenges that we'll continue to get on this is, oh, you guys are just a bunch of isolationists.
And you know, for many years, I've tried to argue the case that we aren't the isolationists.
The people who invent these artificial governments, they're the isolationists.
They're the ones who use sanctions.
They're the ones that use military force.
And they're the ones who freeze assets.
And they're the ones who prevent trade with countries like Iran and Cuba.
People's Revolt Brewing00:01:08
And there's an improvement there.
So let's hope that momentum continues, that people realize that friendship and trade is the way to go rather than more political integration.
It's the political integration that causes so much trouble.
And I, of course, have argued this case for a long time.
And if we're looking for a bright light out of this, maybe this is the end of the expansion of government because financially, big government can't be financed anymore.
And this is for us too.
When our economy breaks down, there's going to be a much greater invitation for the states to deal with their problems and individuals to deal with providing for their own well-being because governments won't be able to.
But this is a very important issue.
It's going to be around here, around for a long time.
And it's just hopefully that we can help influence the debate and have them move in the direction of freedom, property rights, and free trade and sound money.
It would be a much better way to go.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.