Germans In A Funk

THE GERMAN voters spoke clearly to their politicians in Sunday’s election. They are frightened. They are fed up with the status quo but they are afraid of change. They are fed up with 5 million unemployed but they don’t want to give their leaders a mandate to do anything about it.

That was clear from the reaction to the half-hearted trial balloon for a flat tax to replace Germany’s current complex system of income taxation. Chancellor candidate Angela Merkel brought flat-tax advocate Paul Kirchhof onto her staff and the SPD leader Schroeder jumped all over her. Obviously the German voters agree with him, since the substantial lead for the CDU/CSU coalition evaporated in the weeks after the flat-tax trial balloon.

It’s all so sad. The nation of Kant and Einstein is cowering in a cave like Wagner’s Fafner the dragon.

All in all, you could say that the Germans have had a rough time for the last century. Despite being the most advanced country in Europe they have been cursed with a second-rate political class. Bismarck was too smart for his own good and Kaiser Wilhelm too obtuse. The Weimar years were a lost weekend and Adolf Hitler was, unfortunately, the most brilliant politician of the twentieth century.

A new aged seemed to dawn when economist Ludwing Erhard jump-started the economy in 1948—when Germany had nothing left to lose—and sparked the twenty-year Wirtschaftwunder. Then the Social Democratic Party returned to power, followed by the corrupt CDU Chancellor Kohl.

Well, the Germans invented the welfare state, so it is understandable that, with pride of ownership, they should be reluctant to admit its dreadful flaws and try Anglo-Saxon supply-side economics instead. We are not talking rocket science here. People should have responsibility for their own lives, as much as possible. Government can’t be trusted with the welfare of the people. Tax rates should be low and government spending as low as possible.

But the Germans are not yet ready to take the plunge. And that’s a shame.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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