The following quote is attributed to Carl Schurz, a 19th-century American army officer and politician:
Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny.
Ideals are essential to leadership in general and political leadership in particular. If those who aspire to prominent elected offices like president or prime minister want to be successful, they need to have ideals to follow.
If they do not have ideals—if they are not idealists—they will not become leaders. They will shrink to become mere managers of the state.
In government affairs, the difference between leaders and managers is the difference between a growing, thriving nation and a stagnant nation that slowly drifts into intellectual, cultural, social, and economic poverty. This difference is not new—it has always been identifiable in our history—but it has become a painful presence in Europe today.
Most countries in Europe are governed by state managers; there are praiseworthy exceptions, foremost among them Viktor Orbán in Hungary. A visionary leader, Prime Minister Orbán has for a decade and a half now shown that a leader can lift his nation out of mere static existence and inspire new levels of social accomplishment, cultural pride, and economic prosperity.
Orbán stands out as the most prominent among leaders with vision and ideals—and his exceptional status is only partly his achievement. While the Hungarians have stayed with steadfast political leadership, the large majority of European nations have purposely gone in the opposite direction: they have shunned leadership and instead elected state managers to govern them.
The divergence of leadership from management has been crystallizing across Europe for so long that we can now witness its clear and increasingly desperate consequences. Unlike Hungary, Poland, and a small number of other nations where leadership shines the light on a better future, most of Europe has deliberately chosen not to place their eyes on the horizon.
The political establishment, embodied in visionless elected officials, has formed governments in countries like Austria, Germany, France, Belgium, and Spain—not to mention the EU itself. They have done so not by electoral whim or political happenstance. Their plan for the static management of state affairs is deliberate—it is purposely void of visions and leadership.
The reason is as absurd as it is deliberate. Those who govern as managers, not leaders, do so with coalitions across ideological dividing lines because they want to prevent a clearly identified common adversary from gaining more influence, let alone political power.
That common adversary is a nationalist or national conservative party. It is the German AfD and the French RN. The Dutch PVV was recently invited into a coalition, but not for visionary purposes, and not without what can best be described as political self-torture among some of the coalition partners.
These nationalist parties and others like them are so feared, so reviled, so hated by the political establishment that, regardless of electoral outcomes, that entire establishment instinctively seeks to form a government together.
Regardless of how wide the ideological span is between the Left and the Right among the establishment parties, they are willing to disregard it and crowd into a coalition or provide reliable parliamentary support. The foundation for their coalition is their fire-breathing hatred for a party that puts their own country and their own people before the rest of the world.
The moment the coalition is formed, the political champagne flows in abundance. A sense of achievement reinforces the handshakes between otherwise ideologically incompatible political factions. The spoils of electoral victory—ministerial posts and other lucrative appointments—are divided up, and government ‘goes to work.’
Where a leader like Viktor Orbán, with solid voter support behind him, begins a long, difficult walk toward the end goal for his nation, the state manager begins herding the cats of his sprawling coalition. United by nothing other than their desire to keep one specific party out of power, the bundle of state managers starts looking exactly like the Frankenstein coalition it is.
By definition, state managers have no vision for the future. One reason is that they never had one; another reason is agonizingly displayed by the Frankenstein coalition. The partners who join hands in hatred come from the Left, the center, and the Right. They are socialists, social liberals, Christian democrats, and sometimes also moderate conservatives.
They often represent diametrically opposed political platforms—yes, ideals. However, in the name of preserving their coalition, they bury or even abandon their ideals. They try their best to stay united around the fact that they all abhor patriotism, nationalism, and national conservatism. It is not easy: the only way to govern a Frankenstein coalition is by static state management. The prime minister becomes the bureaucrat-in-chief whose duty it is to pour political glue into the coalition’s cracks of dissent. It becomes his job to preserve a parliamentary and political status quo.
Europe is rife with examples of why the Frankenstein coalition is doomed to fail. It does not take more than a government budget to sever the fragile ties that keep the band of haters together. A budget is the most likely place where ideological divides are laid bare—even among establishment parties. At some point, the compromises the individual parties make for their coalition become stressful enough for the party leadership that they break ranks with their Frankenstein formation.
At this point, the common-sense-minded citizen would expect his elected representatives to come to their senses and try a different approach to government. This does not happen, though. As we have seen in, e.g., France and Germany, the political establishment does not learn their lesson. Instead, they double down on forming a government based on the very same flawed unifying factor as the government that just failed.
The result is an endless stream of state management from the nation’s highest offices. But even when anti-patriotic, anti-nationalist governments do manage to stay in office for an extended period of time, the outcome is the same. A visionless bureaucrat like Angela Merkel is just as harmful to her country as a group of struggling coalition builders.
Since the state manager’s goal is to govern, not to lead, discord inevitably opens up between the needs of the nation and the wants of the political establishment. Every society, every country, is organically destined to evolve in one way or the other. With benevolent leadership at the helm, the organic evolution becomes a formative, constructive force for national betterment.
By contrast, with state managers at the helm, the organic evolution opens up a rift between the national needs and the limits on that evolution put in place by the static desire of a managerial government. On the one hand, the needs of a nation change over time; its demands on macroeconomic, macro-social, and, to some degree, political institutions evolve gradually. A multitude of demographic, cultural, and economic streams of influence inspire societal innovation. This innovative force challenges the status quo of a society’s institutional structure.
On the other hand, visionless political management—with or without a Frankenstein coalition—is preoccupied with the present. It lacks the willingness and the capability to comprehend the organic evolution of the nation it governs. Economic policies remain unchanged in the face of demands for reforms of taxes, welfare spending, and educational funding; social policies are frozen in time when evolving demographic and ethical circumstances call for transformative reform.
Under national leadership, the organic evolution of society becomes cohesive and forges a sense of common purpose. Under state management, that same organic evolution gradually fractures into disharmonious subcurrents. Lack of responsive acumen from the political establishment allows rifts to form in the economy, in society, in public culture, and in the public discourse. Those rifts grow with time—and with the absence of national leadership.
This is where Europe is today. Most of the continent is caught in a maelstrom of national disintegration. Its leadership has cemented its feet into the status quo; as reality drifts away from them, they resort to increasingly desperate measures to preserve what their illusions tell them they still have. In mortal fear of what Orbán-style national leadership would do to their countries, the state managers run out the list of mad methods for circumventing the will of the people.
The last item on that list is war. When a nation is at war, it is often legitimate for its government to suspend—virtually or actually—the normal rules of government. When a state manager has run out the clock and can no longer even pretend to have a Frankenstein coalition behind him, God forbid he pushes the last-resort war button at the end of his rope of governance.
As Europe’s voters witness their political establishment cling tragically to the reins of power, concocting crises where none exist, they should hear the alarm bells ring. They should rise to the occasion and ask, with a voice of resolve and national pride:
Is war with Russia really preferable to a government under national, patriotic leadership?
The Systemic Failure of European Government
euconedit
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The following quote is attributed to Carl Schurz, a 19th-century American army officer and politician:
Ideals are essential to leadership in general and political leadership in particular. If those who aspire to prominent elected offices like president or prime minister want to be successful, they need to have ideals to follow.
If they do not have ideals—if they are not idealists—they will not become leaders. They will shrink to become mere managers of the state.
In government affairs, the difference between leaders and managers is the difference between a growing, thriving nation and a stagnant nation that slowly drifts into intellectual, cultural, social, and economic poverty. This difference is not new—it has always been identifiable in our history—but it has become a painful presence in Europe today.
Most countries in Europe are governed by state managers; there are praiseworthy exceptions, foremost among them Viktor Orbán in Hungary. A visionary leader, Prime Minister Orbán has for a decade and a half now shown that a leader can lift his nation out of mere static existence and inspire new levels of social accomplishment, cultural pride, and economic prosperity.
Orbán stands out as the most prominent among leaders with vision and ideals—and his exceptional status is only partly his achievement. While the Hungarians have stayed with steadfast political leadership, the large majority of European nations have purposely gone in the opposite direction: they have shunned leadership and instead elected state managers to govern them.
The divergence of leadership from management has been crystallizing across Europe for so long that we can now witness its clear and increasingly desperate consequences. Unlike Hungary, Poland, and a small number of other nations where leadership shines the light on a better future, most of Europe has deliberately chosen not to place their eyes on the horizon.
The political establishment, embodied in visionless elected officials, has formed governments in countries like Austria, Germany, France, Belgium, and Spain—not to mention the EU itself. They have done so not by electoral whim or political happenstance. Their plan for the static management of state affairs is deliberate—it is purposely void of visions and leadership.
The reason is as absurd as it is deliberate. Those who govern as managers, not leaders, do so with coalitions across ideological dividing lines because they want to prevent a clearly identified common adversary from gaining more influence, let alone political power.
That common adversary is a nationalist or national conservative party. It is the German AfD and the French RN. The Dutch PVV was recently invited into a coalition, but not for visionary purposes, and not without what can best be described as political self-torture among some of the coalition partners.
These nationalist parties and others like them are so feared, so reviled, so hated by the political establishment that, regardless of electoral outcomes, that entire establishment instinctively seeks to form a government together.
Regardless of how wide the ideological span is between the Left and the Right among the establishment parties, they are willing to disregard it and crowd into a coalition or provide reliable parliamentary support. The foundation for their coalition is their fire-breathing hatred for a party that puts their own country and their own people before the rest of the world.
The moment the coalition is formed, the political champagne flows in abundance. A sense of achievement reinforces the handshakes between otherwise ideologically incompatible political factions. The spoils of electoral victory—ministerial posts and other lucrative appointments—are divided up, and government ‘goes to work.’
Where a leader like Viktor Orbán, with solid voter support behind him, begins a long, difficult walk toward the end goal for his nation, the state manager begins herding the cats of his sprawling coalition. United by nothing other than their desire to keep one specific party out of power, the bundle of state managers starts looking exactly like the Frankenstein coalition it is.
By definition, state managers have no vision for the future. One reason is that they never had one; another reason is agonizingly displayed by the Frankenstein coalition. The partners who join hands in hatred come from the Left, the center, and the Right. They are socialists, social liberals, Christian democrats, and sometimes also moderate conservatives.
They often represent diametrically opposed political platforms—yes, ideals. However, in the name of preserving their coalition, they bury or even abandon their ideals. They try their best to stay united around the fact that they all abhor patriotism, nationalism, and national conservatism. It is not easy: the only way to govern a Frankenstein coalition is by static state management. The prime minister becomes the bureaucrat-in-chief whose duty it is to pour political glue into the coalition’s cracks of dissent. It becomes his job to preserve a parliamentary and political status quo.
Europe is rife with examples of why the Frankenstein coalition is doomed to fail. It does not take more than a government budget to sever the fragile ties that keep the band of haters together. A budget is the most likely place where ideological divides are laid bare—even among establishment parties. At some point, the compromises the individual parties make for their coalition become stressful enough for the party leadership that they break ranks with their Frankenstein formation.
At this point, the common-sense-minded citizen would expect his elected representatives to come to their senses and try a different approach to government. This does not happen, though. As we have seen in, e.g., France and Germany, the political establishment does not learn their lesson. Instead, they double down on forming a government based on the very same flawed unifying factor as the government that just failed.
The result is an endless stream of state management from the nation’s highest offices. But even when anti-patriotic, anti-nationalist governments do manage to stay in office for an extended period of time, the outcome is the same. A visionless bureaucrat like Angela Merkel is just as harmful to her country as a group of struggling coalition builders.
Since the state manager’s goal is to govern, not to lead, discord inevitably opens up between the needs of the nation and the wants of the political establishment. Every society, every country, is organically destined to evolve in one way or the other. With benevolent leadership at the helm, the organic evolution becomes a formative, constructive force for national betterment.
By contrast, with state managers at the helm, the organic evolution opens up a rift between the national needs and the limits on that evolution put in place by the static desire of a managerial government. On the one hand, the needs of a nation change over time; its demands on macroeconomic, macro-social, and, to some degree, political institutions evolve gradually. A multitude of demographic, cultural, and economic streams of influence inspire societal innovation. This innovative force challenges the status quo of a society’s institutional structure.
On the other hand, visionless political management—with or without a Frankenstein coalition—is preoccupied with the present. It lacks the willingness and the capability to comprehend the organic evolution of the nation it governs. Economic policies remain unchanged in the face of demands for reforms of taxes, welfare spending, and educational funding; social policies are frozen in time when evolving demographic and ethical circumstances call for transformative reform.
Under national leadership, the organic evolution of society becomes cohesive and forges a sense of common purpose. Under state management, that same organic evolution gradually fractures into disharmonious subcurrents. Lack of responsive acumen from the political establishment allows rifts to form in the economy, in society, in public culture, and in the public discourse. Those rifts grow with time—and with the absence of national leadership.
This is where Europe is today. Most of the continent is caught in a maelstrom of national disintegration. Its leadership has cemented its feet into the status quo; as reality drifts away from them, they resort to increasingly desperate measures to preserve what their illusions tell them they still have. In mortal fear of what Orbán-style national leadership would do to their countries, the state managers run out the list of mad methods for circumventing the will of the people.
The last item on that list is war. When a nation is at war, it is often legitimate for its government to suspend—virtually or actually—the normal rules of government. When a state manager has run out the clock and can no longer even pretend to have a Frankenstein coalition behind him, God forbid he pushes the last-resort war button at the end of his rope of governance.
As Europe’s voters witness their political establishment cling tragically to the reins of power, concocting crises where none exist, they should hear the alarm bells ring. They should rise to the occasion and ask, with a voice of resolve and national pride:
Is war with Russia really preferable to a government under national, patriotic leadership?
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