Tuesday, March 21, 2006

THE HOLLOW MEN

If you want to know why Europe is in decline and ripe for exploitation by the next totalitarian thug that comes along -- just take a peek at what is going on in France right now.

Hundreds of thousands of students in France are angrily protesting, and the major French labor unions, are threatening a general strike. About what, you may ask?
It is all about a new law in France that allows a company to fire a person under the age of 26, without cause, within two years of being hired.

Wow. Imagine that. You might get fired from your first job.

As it happens, the whole point of the law was to encourage companies to hire young people. The unemployment rate among young people in France is 23 percent. And in many suburbs, it is double that. Meanwhile, French companies are understandably loath to hire 22-year-olds when they cannot fire them except "for cause," which under union rules means something like committing mass murder in the workplace.

What these massive demonstrations reveal is the narcissism, laziness and irresponsibility inculcated by socialist societies.

Enough generations of socialist policies have now passed for us to judge their effects. They are bleak. Socialism undermines the character of a nation and of its citizens. In simpler words, socialism makes people worse.

These young people in France really believe that they should be able to be hired at their tender ages and that a company must not be allowed to fire them from their first day at work (except "for cause," which, as we are learning in America, is increasingly difficult to establish). In America, most of us would call the French young people's attitudes "spoiled."

Socialism teaches its citizens to expect everything, even if they contribute nothing.


In the U.S., we have only a mild socialist cold; but in Europe, they have evolved into the full-blown pneumonia. When they are near economic and political collapse from it and desperate for the cradle-to-grave security that erodes individual initiative; avoids personal responsibility; and deeply fears any kind of freedom, then they will be ready for shar'ia and for someone--anyone--to run their lives for them.

Socialism and communism were just symptomatic preludes for the mighty Allahgod and his fanatical believers who bring certain death for the ailing soul.

These are the hollow men, indeed; whispering together like rats' feet in their dry cellar. Waiting to be filled, eager to be filled by someone or something that will give their empty lives meaning, and promise them yet another kingdom.

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

or Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

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