RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/brexit-new-referendum-proposal/

For those seeking to undo the voters’ decision, the clock never runs out.

London — The European Union is the new Hotel California: You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Any hopes that the British government might actually go ahead and achieve Brexit, after more voters supported it than have ever voted for anything in the entire history of this formerly great country, were pretty well dashed this week when Prime Minister Boris Johnson suffered a spectacular series of defeats in the House of Commons, capped by the utterly humiliating departure of his own brother Jo, a Remainer, who quit both his brother’s government and his seat in the Commons rather than be an ally for the Brexit Johnson has repeatedly promised would occur, “do or die,” on October 31. Jo Johnson said he was putting “the national interest” ahead of party and family.

After many in his own party deserted him, and, more to the point, deserted the country, by joining the pro-EU coalition in Parliament, a bill set to become law on Monday will require Johnson to go on bended knee to the EU to seek a second extension. After that outcome is secured, a general election looms.

In proving that it is terrified of a no-deal Brexit, Parliament has effectively stripped the United Kingdom of all its negotiating leverage and made it probable that nothing like a clean break with the EU will occur. What Britain will wind up with will evidently either be continued EU membership or some sort of sham Brexit like the one that was repeatedly rejected when Theresa May tried to sell it to the Commons.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/robert_mugabe_socialist_curse_of_humanity_is_gone.html

Zimbabwe’s preening socialist strongman, Robert Mugabe, a man who left his once prosperous country a hellhole, is gone, and his end didn’t come soon enough.  He went out as one of the world’s worst curses against humanity.

Here’s the New York Times announcement:

Robert Mugabe, the first prime minister and later president of independent Zimbabwe, who traded the mantle of liberator for the armor of a tyrant and presided over the decline of one of Africa’s most prosperous lands, died on Friday. He was 95.

The death was announced by his successor, President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

“It is with the utmost sadness that I announce the passing on of Zimbabwe’s founding father and former President, Cde Robert Mugabe,” he wrote on Twitter on Friday, using the abbreviation for comrade. “Mugabe was an icon of liberation, a pan-Africanist who dedicated his life to the emancipation and empowerment of his people. His contribution to the history of our nation and continent will never be forgotten.”

What a shame he died in his bed.  In more serious times, he would have gone out like Mussolini.

But just the fact that he was able to hang on for as long as he did draws attention worth looking at.

A truly good summary of his life and times appears in the London Telegraph’s obituary of the man this morning:

Robert Mugabe, the former president of Zimbabwe who has died aged 95, began his 37 years in power as a Nobel Peace Prize nominee credited with creating Africa’s most successful multiracial state.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/09/the_europeans_keep_rejecting_liberty.html

Modern continental Europe keeps trying to solve its political problem — and then to impose its solution on everyone within reach.  Recognizing this historical process can help us understand European anti-Americanism, strongest perhaps in Germany.  America created the Europeans’ political predicament, and we keep preventing them from adopting the solutions they come up with.

America created the Europeans’ political problem by the magnificent example of the American Revolution and the astonishing, world-changing success of America.  In an interesting version of the story of the emperor’s new clothes, rule by hereditary monarchs, hereditary aristocracies, and established churches was suddenly revealed to be absurd and indefensible.

The only problem was that continental Europe was for the most part incapable of self-rule.  The attempts, for example, by Germany, Italy, and France to achieve reasonably stable regimes of rule by their own people would be comical but for the terrible human consequences of their repeated failures.

With the exception of the Netherlands and a few other European countries that, like Britain, have achieved rule by their own people, the modern history of continental Europe is the story of people trying various experiments in an ongoing effort to relieve themselves of the burden of self-rule.

For a while, it seemed certain that fascism was going to be the European solution.  The Germans and the Italians took the lead, but there were at the same time homegrown fascist movements throughout Europe, even in Britain.  The French earned from Homer Simpson the sobriquet “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” because of their feeble resistance to the Nazi invaders and their swift adoption of a policy of collaboration with their Nazi rulers.  If it weren’t for America’s military intervention, the Nazis would likely have defeated Britain, and fascist Europe would have reached from Ireland’s western shore to Moscow and beyond.