Governments — and all the menagerie of quasi- and supra-governmental organizations such as the European Union — will not bite the hand that feeds them. One may expect these organizations to support statism and its ideologies — such as socialism.
So when a cause with the noble-sounding name of European Union Human Rights Fund — whose stated goal is helping promote Western values in developing countries — spends nearly £20 million ($32.8 million) a year supposedly to advance the ideals of Western liberty, it is not surprising to find the money being used to indoctrinate Americans on the virtues of socialism and related causes of the left: the dangers of the fancied "manmade global warming," the need for “green” energy, the promotion of the International Criminal Court, and the morality of abolishing the death penalty, among other things.
The Heritage Foundation has discovered that an additional £4 million ($6.5 million) has been spent in the United States on publicity promoting the European Union; £3 million has been given to American universities to extol the virtues of European integration; and an equal amount to think tanks to study European Union affairs. Some of this money has gone to undisclosed “individual opinion formers” in America. Says the Heritage Foundation, "In other words, money from the European Union’s human rights budget is spent in the United States, one of the freest countries in the world." (Emphasis in original.)
Several prominent citizens of the United Kingdom are speaking out against this EU interference in American affairs. British author Sally McNamara (pictured above) declared, “It is impossible to justify the European Union’s human rights budgets being spent in one of the world’s freest nations.” Conservative Member of Parliament Douglas Carswell noted, “The United States was founded by North Americans fed up with Europeans interfering in its internal affairs. The United States as a country has done more to bring liberty and human rights to the world than anyone in Europe. They [Americans] don’t need any lessons from Brussels [capital of the European Union].” Stephen Booth, research director of the Open Europe think tank, commented, "The EU has absolutely no mandate to wade in to politically sensitive debates in the U.S."
What makes such actions by the EU even more surreal is that the supranational body appears to be falling apart at the seams. In the Netherlands, for instance — where Dutch politician Geert Wilders is being prosecuted for the “hate crime” of telling the truth in his homeland (once a blossom on the tree of liberty) – just a few kilometers from Brussels, one of the most Kafkaesque scenes in modern European history is unfolding.
Belgium itself, the nation in which the European Union is headquartered, has gone longer than any other modern democratic country without a legitimate government. Part of the problem is the Flemish Belgians no longer wish to be joined in an artificial nation with the Walloon Belgians. It is ludicrous that the principles of representative democratic rule — supposedly promoted by the Human Rights Fund of the European Union — are dead in Brussels, the capital of that Union.
One wonders how the precious campaign finance laws of the United States can be enforced when other nations — or supranational organizations such as the EU — funnel millions to “individual opinion formers” in this country. How are those monies unscrambled from ordinary political campaigns and lobbying efforts? Also, would the European Union welcome a vast expenditure by U.S. governmental agencies to instruct, say, Swedes in the value of Americanism?
One might also think that the taxpayers who support the European Union bureaucracies and programs might find better uses for their tax monies than haranguing Americans. The economic woes of the so-called “PIGS” nations — Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain — are threatening to unravel the whole structure of European public finance and currency. A few programs on topics such as “Ethics in Pension Benefits” or “Honesty in Public Accounting Practices” might have proven a tremendous investment in EU member-states such as Greece and Ireland.
Beyond just the Ponzi scheme of public financing in much of Europe, a more sinister threat is emerging. Young Muslim men are terrorizing young European women in parts of Europe where the imposition of Sharia law is a clear agenda. In fact, the very values which have made Europe relatively free and peaceful are being compromised each day, not by greedy American businessmen, but by non-Europeans from Third World countries who have a clear idea of the world they want to create.
The core problem is that those who spend government monies for anything — especially something as nebulous as “public awareness” or “civic education” — always have vested interests. Thus it is no surprise that the Eurocrats, lauded as secular saints, will continue to promote (through the European Union and other supranational organizations) their philosophy of total government control.
