Quotulatiousness

May 13, 2026

“Electoral authoritarian” regimes

Filed under: Europe, Germany, Government, Law, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

eugyppius points out that the reflexive descriptions of the former Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s government as “electoral authoritarian” fail to note just how authoritarian the rest of the EU’s national governments have become:

this description of an “electoral authoritarian” regime applies far more aptly to Germany than to Hungary. What did Orbán do, defund a few NGOs? meanwhile our police, intelligence agencies & state media have all collaborated for years to keep the opposition out of power.

And after some harumphing from the cheap seats, he followed up with:

Various people are clapping back at this, so let me tell you what is happen in liberal democratic non-authoritarian Germany:

– Getting raided by police, charged with speech crimes, etc. because you post online is a professional risk, I personally know various people to whom this has happened and I live my life with a bunch of opsec annoyances for the day it happens to me.

– State media coordinates with intelligence agencies to smear and harass not only the political opposition but their prominent supporters, for example by doxxing them, getting them fired, subjecting them to harassment.

– The state funds a vast “civil society” network of violent street thugs to intimidate the political opposition and also anybody identified by state-sanctioned ops like those detailed in the above item. Opposition party congresses, other events routinely disrupted by coordinated civil society protests, where the local population is sympathetic (as in many east German venues) they bus in protesters from the west and the big cities to create the necessary atmosphere.

– Domestic intelligence agencies use espionage methods to surveil and compromise the political opposition; among other things they pay informants, tap telephones, read emails, and so on. We’ve had various indications that materials gathered in these operations are then used for state media smear campaigns.

– Yes, domestic intelligence openly coordinates with state media and certain private media elements too. Various aspects of political coverage in Germany are staged by secretive unelected bureaucrats.

– Procedural rules, other laws are routinely changed in ad hoc ways to disadvantage political opposition, though we haven’t had any outright gerrymandering like in the US so that means Our Democracy is safe. 👍

And:

I’m sure I’m forgetting some things. I’ve spent years documenting this shit on my blog and literally none of the present Hungary hyperventilators have ever given the slightest shit. Orbán was a guy who observed the Euro freak show as it is manifested in countries like Germany and tried in a kind of inept half-hearted way to imitate this machine from the right, the results were ridiculous and transparent and like 25% as effective as what the German state gets up to but nevertheless all these clowns confronted with a hint of their own methods started shrieking about FaSciSm.

“The dark genius of bureaucracy”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Europe, Government, Health, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Auto-translation on the social media site formerly known as Twitter has brought some posts from Brivael Le Pogam to my attention, like this one:

The Invisible Cemetery

Milton Friedman said a phrase that should haunt every European legislator for the rest of their life. On the FDA, he said this: there is overwhelming evidence that they have caused more deaths through delayed approvals than they have saved through early approvals.

Read it twice. More deaths from excessive caution than lives saved by caution.

And no one sees it. That’s the dark genius of bureaucracy.

Bastiat theorized the principle 175 years ago. “What is seen and what is not seen.” The economist, he said, is not distinguished from the bad economist by the ability to see the immediate effect of a decision. Everyone sees that. He is distinguished by the ability to see the invisible effects, the delayed ones, the ones diffused across the entire population.

The self-driving car is the perfect example. And it’s playing out right before our eyes.

Tesla publishes the numbers. One accident every 7 million miles in Autopilot. One accident every 700,000 miles in the average American human. Autopilot is, at this stage, ten times safer than a human. And it’s only getting better, with every release.

Now France. 3,200 deaths on the roads in 2024. 91% involve human error. Speed, alcohol, fatigue, distraction. If we deployed a self-driving car ten times safer tomorrow, we’d divide the carnage by ten. We’re talking about 2,800 lives a year. Over ten years, 28,000 people. The equivalent of an average French town that disappears, because no one pressed the right button in Brussels.

You’ll never see them. No newspaper will headline: “Today, 8 people died because the self-driving car is banned in Europe”. No parliamentary commission will investigate. No bureaucrat will be fired. Those deaths will go in the “road fatality” box. We’ll run moving campaigns with their photos on 4×3 billboards. We’ll say it’s sad, that’s life.

Meanwhile, the first accident of a self-driving car will be front-page news in every paper for three weeks. The regulator will summon the manufacturers. NGOs will call for preventive bans. Deputies will write op-eds. The minister will decree a moratorium.

Five visible deaths will outweigh, in the media and political balance, five thousand invisible deaths. That’s the iron law of bureaucracy. The bureaucrat who authorizes something that goes wrong loses their career. The bureaucrat who bans something that would have saved thousands of lives is never troubled. No one holds them accountable for the deaths they could have prevented. They don’t exist in their statistics. They don’t exist in their trial.

Friedman had identified the exact mechanism: when a regulator errs on the side of laxity, their victims have names, faces, families, lawyers. When they err on the side of caution, their victims are anonymous, scattered, statistical, ghosts. The structure of incentives makes over-regulation rationally inevitable. And the invisible cemetery grows, generation after generation.

Europe is going to sit out 10 years on the self-driving car, just as it sat out on AI, as it sat out on genetic engineering, as it sat out on fourth-generation nuclear. Every time, the same playbook. Precaution, moratorium, ethics committee, white paper, directive, transposition. And every time, behind the curtain of words, deaths that appear in no official statistics.

These are deaths. Not opportunity costs. Not “economic losses”. Human beings who were alive and who died because an innovation that could have saved them was delayed by people whose literal job it is.

That’s what needs to be built, and it’s probably the most important political project of the century that’s opening. A system for accounting for invisible deaths. A registry of the cemetery that no one sees.

For every regulation, every moratorium, every preventive ban, we should be able to produce a signed, dated, quantified estimate of the human cost in lives of the decision. Not direct effects. Delayed effects, indirect ones, statistical ones. How many deaths per year caused by banning a technology that works elsewhere.

Imagine. On the desk of the European commissioner about to sign a moratorium on the self-driving car, a document: “Central estimate, 2,800 deaths per year for the duration of the moratorium. High-end range, 4,100. Low-end range, 1,900. Source: comparative analysis Tesla Autopilot vs. human average, NHTSA and ONISR data, public and audited method.”

On the desk of the European deputy who will vote on the AI Act: “Central estimate, 38 billion euros in lost GDP, 240,000 jobs not created, X deaths per year due to delays in AI medical diagnostics, Y deaths per year due to delays in deploying autonomous drones for medical delivery in rural areas.”

Today, we sign blindly. We sign without cost. We sign with a clear conscience because the deaths we cause are anonymous and the lives we protect have faces. That’s what needs to be broken.

A bureaucracy is an institution that operates without being held accountable for the invisible consequences of its decisions. As long as invisible deaths are not counted, bureaucracy is mechanically, structurally, inevitably a machine for producing deaths it will never see.

Europe isn’t losing a technological battle. It’s filling a cemetery. Year after year. And no one wears mourning. No one lays flowers. No one knows they’re there.

Friedman saw them before everyone else. Bastiat before him. Williams after him. And each posed the same question, which echoes like an accusation through the centuries: who weeps for the deaths we didn’t see coming?

That’s the work ahead of us. Making the invisible cemetery visible. Accounting for it. Auditing it. Publishing it. Confronting every bureaucrat, every day, with the exact list of lives that their signature takes with it.

Before the list becomes ours.

May 6, 2026

Carney panders to the Euro elites and his TDS-afflicted base

Filed under: Cancon, Europe, Media, Military, Politics, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Ben Woodfinden explains Prime Minister Mark Carney’s constant pandering on the international stage:

The average voter won’t care, but the more Carney lays out his worldview the more the contradictions and incongruences in his thinking (or lack of sincerity) become apparent.

In his famous Davos speech he said “we actively take on the world as it is, not wait around for a world we wish to be”. But the way he talks about and sees Europe does not fit this, and this statement is bizarre.

We should absolutely be pursuing closer ties to Europe, but it is delusional if he actually believes the new international order will be “rebuilt out of Europe”.

Europe for all its grand aspirations cannot even defend Ukraine by itself and without American help. Europe would need something like 300,000 additional troops and €250 billion a year in extra defence spending just to deter Russia without the Americans.

NATO’s own Secretary General told the European Parliament in January that Europe “cannot at the moment provide nearly enough of what Ukraine needs to defend itself today, and to deter tomorrow”, and that without American weapons “we cannot keep Ukraine in the fight. Literally not.” Rutte told European lawmakers that anyone who thinks Europe can defend itself without the US should “keep on dreaming”. Four years into the most serious land war on the continent since 1945 and this is where we are. That is not a continent about to anchor a new international order.

The world order is quickly is reorganising, yes. But around a US-China axis, not Brussels. The eurozone is forecast to grow 0.9% this year. China at 4.5%. China accounts for roughly 30% of global growth, Europe’s share of global GDP keeps shrinking. Europe is just one of many players. Again if you take Carney seriously here, it’s silly. Build closer ties with Europe yes but do not believe this is the next superpower.

But I suspect this is actually just another sign that Carney is good at politics — he knows exactly what the Davos crowd, his boomer base and media admirers want to hear and he is very good at giving it to them. Flattery has done him enormous favours in European capitals. But telling European elites the future runs through them is not realism, it is the opposite of realism. It is telling people what they want to hear, not the truth.

L. Wayne Mathison also comments on Carney’s profound europhiliac positions:

Europe is not the model. It is the warning label.

High regulation. Weak growth. Expensive energy. Soft defence. Endless bureaucracy.

America built. Europe managed. America innovated. Europe regulated.

And Carney wants Canada rebuilt “out of Europe”?

No thanks. Canada needs strength, productivity, energy, defence, and sovereignty, not Brussels-style decline with better catering.

May 1, 2026

Spain joins the awkward squad

Filed under: Europe, Government, Media, Politics, Russia — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At The Conservative Woman, Bepi Pezzulli outlines a few ways that the Spanish government is moving in quite different directions than their NATO allies and fellow EU members:

Torre del Oro (Tower of Gold) – Calle Almirante Lobo, Seville – Spanish flag” by ell brown is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 .

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez wants the privileges of alliance without the duties of one. Madrid remains in Nato, hosts critical American military infrastructure, and speaks the language of Atlantic solidarity – but only when convenient. On the central strategic questions of the age – Russia, Israel, and the wider Western posture in the Mediterranean – it increasingly behaves like a spoiler. What is troubling is that Spain is not merely posturing: it is rewriting its entire conception of statecraft, treating alliance as a shield, hostility as leverage, and strategic ambiguity as a governing doctrine.

When Washington needed alignment, Sánchez offered obstruction. When Israel faced existential war, Madrid offered moral lectures. When the West sought energy discipline against Moscow, Spain found room for Russian gas. All while preserving the old imperial obsession with Gibraltar and extracting advantages from London over the Rock.

Spain has discovered the pleasures of consequence-free hostility. That needs to end.

Anti-Americanism with diplomatic immunity

Sánchez has carefully cultivated the old European left’s anti-American reflexes: Nato when subsidised, moral neutrality when sacrifice is required. His government publicly resisted support for American military operations linked to Iran escalation and signalled clear reluctance to facilitate use of Spanish bases such as Rota and Morón for operations that might implicate Madrid politically. The message was unmistakable: American security guarantees are welcome but strategic co-operation is negotiable. The rhetoric matched the policy. “No to war” was not merely a slogan for domestic consumption. Sánchez is deliberately positioning Spain as the righteous dissenter against Washington’s harder strategic line.

At the same time, Spain maintained substantial imports of Russian gas well into the European sanctions era. While pipeline politics consumed Brussels, Madrid benefited from a convenient moral distinction: condemning Moscow loudly while continuing commercial accommodation where useful. The formal sanctions architecture left open some loopholes, and Spain was happy to live inside them.

An ally that profits from ambiguity while others bear the strategic burden is not an ally in the full sense. As US War Secretary Pete Hegseth noted, “An alliance cannot be ironclad if in reality or perception it is seen as one-sided”.

From criticism of Israel to open diplomatic hostility

On Israel, Sánchez has moved beyond criticism into active diplomatic confrontation. Recognition of Palestine was presented as humanitarian principle. In practice, it rewarded maximalism at the worst possible moment. Madrid helped transform October 7 from a terrorist massacre demanding strategic clarity into another European seminar on Israeli restraint. Spain became one of the loudest governmental amplifiers of the anti-Zionist campaign in Western Europe. Ministers normalised rhetoric that blurred the distinction between criticism of Israeli policy and systematic delegitimisation of the Jewish state itself. Arms restrictions followed. Then diplomatic actions. Symbolism became policy.

Gibraltar: Madrid’s imperial nostalgia

Spain’s sanctimony would be easier to tolerate if it were not paired with its own colonial fixation. For decades, Madrid has pursued sovereignty claims over Gibraltar with theological persistence. Brexit offered a fresh opening. With Brussels behind it, Spain extracted a remarkably favourable negotiating posture over the future relationship of the Rock with both the European Union and the United Kingdom. London, in the hands of the most Europhile government in recent history, conceded far more than many British voters imagined when they heard the word “sovereignty”. Spain never abandoned the long game. It simply learned to play it through institutions until a weaker opponent appeared. Madrid insists Gibraltar is unfinished history. Fair enough: is it not time then to conclude the same about Ceuta and Melilla?

April 25, 2026

Frank Furedi’s In Defence Of Populism

Filed under: Books, Europe — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

On his Substack, Frank Furedi explains why he wrote his new book In Defence Of Populism with especial reference to the recent Hungarian election results:

Photo from Roots & Wings with Frank Furedi

Have you noticed the flood of commentaries and articles appearing in the mainstream media dwelling on the topic of how to crush populism once and for all? The recent electoral defeat of Viktór Orbán’s Fidesz Party in Hungary has emboldened the European centrist technocratic elite to hope that this result spells the end of populist surge on both sides of the Atlantic.

The “is this the end of populism?” literature has been around for some time. To this day, mainstream commentators frequently express the hope that populism is a passing phenomenon. “Has Europe reached peak populism?”, asked a commentator in Politico in 2019, before expressing the hope that “the tide could be turning against the anti-establishment nationalist movements that have upended politics across the Continent, leaving the barbarians howling in frustration at the gates”.1 “We seem to have passed peak populism”, predicted Andrew Adonis, a leading British anti-Brexit voice.2

The outcome the Hungarian elections has led to an explosion of commentaries that are driven by the anti-populist dream of a world where populism is forced back into the margins of society. Polly Toynbee of The Guardian noted that “Viktor Orbán inspired rightwingers across the EU and in Britain. His defeat could represent a turning of the tide”.3

[…]

The main reason why I wrote In Defence of Populism is because it is necessary to counter the anti-populist hysteria about populism. Populism is surrounded by ceaseless hostility and mystification. Just about everything you are likely to read about populism in the specialist academic literature is motivated by their authors’ animosity and contempt towards their subject matter. Their sentiments are reproduced in an intensely polemical form by the mainstream media which habitually dismisses populists as far right and even fascists. According to the dominant media narrative, populists are racist xenophobes, homophobes and a variety of other phobes. At times the media hysteria regarding the so-called populist threat echoes the Red Scare of the 1920s and 1950s in the United States.

The populist voice has been systematically distorted by its opponents. I argue that this movement has been subjected to ideological warfare and recast through a teleology of evil. It is important to grasp the systematic attempt to demonise populism because, in the media and public life, a distorted and fundamentally flawed characterisation of populism prevails. What’s remarkable about this subject is that virtually everything that is communicated in the media and in the literature about populism is framed by individuals who are external to it. The definitions authored by these individuals communicate their bias and suspicion towards populism. Consequently, the way that populism is represented in public life is an invention of its opponents. Those who are ascribed the label populist do not get to decide who they are nor what populism means.

So although the populist movement is in the ascendancy, its actual definition is still unresolved and remains interpreted though the medium of a modern mythology. Almost everything you are likely to read about contemporary populism bears little relationship to the real impulses that drive this movement forward. In Defence of Populism offers an antidote to the confusions and distortions peddled by the anti-populist idealogues. I look forward to getting your feedback regarding what you think about the case for populism advanced in my book.

  1. Paul Taylor, “Has Europe reached peak populism?”, Politico, 5 September 2019 https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-reached-peak-populism-far-right-anti-european-government-election/
  2. Andrew Adonis, “We seem to have passed peak populism”, Prospect, 11 January 2023 https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/peak-populism-donald-trump-boris-johnson-jair-bolsonaro
  3. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/14/viktor-orban-europe-britain-hard-right-populism

April 21, 2026

Hungary in the news

Filed under: Europe, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Theodore Dalrymple considers the recent change in government as Victor Orbán was replaced by Péter Magyar, who had been an Orbán supporter until the last few years:

Hungarian Prime Minister-elect Péter Magyar, on 15 March 2026 during a national day demonstration at Heroes’ Square in Budapest. Magyar is wearing a traditional bocskai jacket and a national cockade.
Photo by Norbert Banhalmi and released under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

It is perfectly normal and healthy that in an electoral democracy a government should be voted out of office after 16 years in power. One of the complaints often heard in such democracies is that “they are all the same”, they being members of the political class of whatever political party.

But there is benefit in a change of government personnel irrespective of all else, for those who remain too long in power come to think of that power as their right, and the citizenry as their servants rather than of themselves as servants of the citizenry.

The recent removal from power by election of Viktor Orbán in Hungary after so long as prime minister (and his full acceptance of the defeat, despite accusations that he was like an authoritarian dictator) was perfectly normal. He had been replaced by a man who is no fire-eating radical, Péter Magyar, a young man who was, until comparatively recently, a supporter of the leader he has replaced.

The electorate, according to polls, was concerned about the state of the economy and the level of corruption in the country. Governments that come into power promising to eradicate corruption often reveal themselves to be no different in this respect from the last: the fruits of corruption are distributed to different people, that is all.

The new prime minister differs greatly from the old in two attitudes: firstly, to the war in Ukraine and secondly to the European Union. Unlike Mr. Orbán, he is no friend of Vladimir Putin’s; and unlike Mr. Orbán, he is more likely to do the Union’s bidding in order to gain access to the latter’s funds. One important question is whether he will be forced to change Hungary’s attitude to mass immigration, opposition to which was a source not only of Mr. Orbán’s conflict with the Union, but of his long domestic popularity.

His policy was regarded as xenophobic, but this was an unjustified slur. Xenophobia is a hatred or fear of foreigners as such, ex officio, and on my visits to Hungary I found none of this. I met, for example, a Kurdish physiotherapist well integrated into Hungary, and a Moroccan academic likewise, who did not complain of personal antagonism to them. Other foreign residents whom I met did not complain of it either. A desire to protect a small country from the effects of mass immigration that have been seen in Sweden (a country of similar size of population), for example, is not xenophobia: it might on the contrary be regarded as both prudent and as a manifestation of love of one’s country. It is part of the malign legacy of Hitler and the Nazis that love of one’s country is now felt by many European intellectuals to be inherently vicious and aggressive. But love of one’s country is not the same as hatred of everyone else’s, though it is true that patriotism can sometimes degenerate into such hatred.

The European Union’s attitude to mass immigration is contradictory. It regards ethnic and cultural diversity as good in themselves, as if what existed before was lacking some important ingredient that such diversity will automatically bring.

April 17, 2026

Hungary in the news

Filed under: Europe, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The way the mainstream media reacted to the recent Hungarian election results, you’d think it was the 2020s equivalent to the fall of the Iron Curtain. Outgoing leader Viktor Orbán has been portrayed as Hungary’s Trump when he hasn’t been discussed as Hungary’s Mussolini. His successor, Péter Magyar is largely unknown outside Hungary where he had been a member of Orbán’s Fidesz party before leaving to join his current party, Tisza. In The Critic, Ben Sixsmith provides some useful background on the state of politics in Hungary today:

Hungarian Prime Minister-elect Péter Magyar, on 15 March 2026 during a national day demonstration at Heroes’ Square in Budapest. Magyar is wearing a traditional bocskai jacket and a national cockade.
Photo by Norbert Banhalmi and released under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Tisza — the name being a portmanteau of the Hungarian words tisztelet (respect) and szabadság (freedom), and a reference to the nation’s second largest river — was founded in 2020 and registered in 2022. It was a very marginal conservative party with policies like “raise the minimum pension” and “stop migration”.

In the 2022 parliamentary elections, the party fielded no candidates at all.

Tisza became a major force in Hungarian elections when Péter Magyar joined the party. Magyar, who has a legal background, had been a member of Viktor Orbán’s party Fidesz. More significantly, he had been married to the Hungarian Minister of Justice, Judit Varga, from 2006 to 2023.

In 2024, Varga resigned, along with Hungarian president Katalin Novák, after both were exposed as having signed a pardon for a convicted paedophile who had been a director of a state-run children’s home. Magyar resigned from Fidesz, accusing Orbán of “hiding behind women’s skirts”.

“For a long time I believed in an idea, a national, sovereign, civic Hungary,” wrote Magyar in a much-quoted statement, “But in recent years, I have slowly and finally realized that all of this is really just a political product.”

Magyar became a ferocious critic of alleged government corruption. His ex-wife responded to his anti-Orbán activities by accusing him of domestic abuse. Magyar denied this. Undaunted, he led various anti-government demonstrations, which attracted tens of thousands of Hungarians. He was also chosen to lead Tisza.

Magyar has profited from good timing. He is also a photogenic man who has performed well on social media. His politics are more mysterious. He has called himself a “critical pro-European and a conservative liberal”.

He is not the sort of liberal that anti-Orbán Westerners might want him to be. While he has said that he will “move away from the current, uncritically friendly approach towards Russia”, he has also said that it will take time to stop buying Russian fuel, and he has criticised the Ukrainian approach to Hungarian minorities. He has sometimes tried to outflank Orbán on sovereignty, saying that Fidesz have brought in too many guest workers, and even questionably saying that migrants have been stealing ducks from Hungarian ponds. Still, it remains to be seen if the pro-EU Magyar will maintain his more right-wing opinions or be swept along by European orthodoxy — not least when he has emphasised the importance of unlocking EU funds.

At The Sceptic, James Alexander says that the situation is more complicated than a split between Orbán and what he terms “the Roral Response”:

President Donald Trump and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban pose for a photo in the Oval Office, Friday, November 7, 2025.
Official White House photo by Daniel Torok via Wikimedia Commons.

What is the Orbán-Roral Divide? It is the Manichaean yin-yang binary of the simplistic political imagination, which supposes that, on one side, we have Orbán, Putin, Trump etc., and that, on the other side, we have von der Leyen, Merz, Starmer, Carney, Zelensky and of course the man after whom I name the category: Rory Stewart.

It has some truth in it, but it is bewildering when we see the binary exalted as if it is the only truth of politics. The downfall of Orbán illustrates this almost perfectly.

The subject today is Orbán Developments. And the Roral Response.

News.

As you all know, Orbán, after 16 years of power, fell in the recent election.

  • Viktor Orbán = Fidezs = 37.8% = 55 seats
  • Peter Magyar = Tisza = 53.6% = 138 seats

“Who loses and who wins, who’s in, who’s out,” quoth King Lear.

Orbán lost.

Now, I like Orbán, symbolically. I don’t know about actually: never studied him. I read one of his speeches once, and it read as more intelligent than any equivalent political speech. I have one thing in common with him, which is that he was present at the funeral of Norman Stone. Anyhow, like him or loathe him, we have to be philosophical. And we have to respect him, even if he is an Oxford man.

  • Oxford: Obsessed with power. Corrupt. Cecil Rhodes, Lord Milner, Tony Blair, David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, Viktor Orbán etc.
  • Cambridge: Lord Acton: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

So let us look at what people say. The amusing thing is that people immediately editorialise. Twitter, X, Whatyouwill.com, turns everyone into William Rees-Mogg. Look at all these Editors.

Here is Ferenc Horcher, a very important Hungarian scholar:

    Time to face reality: the Hungarian electorate ousted the ruling power. The electoral system Fidesz introduced gave its opponent a two-thirds majority. Orbán established a one-man rule, tailored the campaign to himself, he is responsible for the defeat, he has to resign.

That’s grim talk from a conservative. So here on the jolly side is Sam Moyn, a very important Yale Law School professor:

    Yay for Hungary. What if the answer to illiberalism is democracy?

Ho hum. I sigh a bit over the innocence of making a contrast between illiberalism and democracy, as if liberalism = democracy.

(more…)

Canada joining the EU is a terrible idea

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Economics, Europe, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Dean Allison explains a few of the reasons Canada should not be attempting to join the European Union, despite Prime Minister Carney’s obvious love for the idea:

One of the dumbest ideas floating around right now: Canada joining the European Union.

This isn’t a trade deal. This is a surrender.

You don’t “partner” with the EU. You hand power to unelected technocrats in Brussels who dictate policy across 27 countries.

Let’s be clear what that means for Canada:

  • You lose control of monetary policy. Goodbye independent Bank of Canada.
  • Your federal budget gets reviewed and constrained by foreign bureaucrats.
  • Regulations get imposed from overseas with zero accountability to Canadians.

And if you think Ottawa is slow now, wait until every decision requires EU-level consensus. Nothing gets done without layers of approvals, committees, and political trade-offs across continents.

Then there’s censorship.

The EU is aggressively regulating online speech, platforms, and content. Handing them influence over Canada means more control over what you see, say, and share.

This isn’t sovereignty. It’s outsourcing it.

As Brian Lilley points out, we’d be giving up more control than in any U.S. trade deal.

Rejecting becoming the 51st state of the U.S. only to become the 28th state of Europe isn’t strategy, it’s pure stupidity!

And Canadians will pay the price.

April 16, 2026

The EU has managed to revive smuggling as a viable career

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Europe, Government, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

We’ve all read reports on how bold and forward-focussed the European Union is, but do we give them equal credit for their diligent efforts to revive dying industries?

Title page of a book covering the trial of seven smugglers for the murder of two revenue officers. In the preface the author says “I do assure the Public that I took down the facts in writing from the mouths of the witnesses, that I frequently conversed with the prisoners, both before and after condemnation; by which I had an opportunity of procuring those letters which are herein after inserted, and other intelligence of some secret transactions among them, which were never communicated to any other person.”
W.J. Smith, Smuggling and Smugglers in Sussex, 1749, via Wikimedia Commons.

In late March, European Union (E.U.) officials announced they had taken down a five-country cigarette-smuggling operation and seized over 40 tons of tobacco products. The ambitious network reportedly transshipped the cigarettes far and wide to obscure their sources and destinations, while also hiding them in hidden compartments built into cargo containers. Why would smugglers go through such effort to move perfectly legal products, and why would the authorities care? In Europe, as in the United States, the answer is the same: sky-high taxes.

Smuggled Smokes in Hidden Compartments

In announcing its efforts against the smuggling network operating in Italy, France, Poland, Switzerland, and the U.K., the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, which worked with international law enforcement agencies as well as police in all five countries, noted the smugglers used “maritime and commercial routes designed to evade customs inspections”, passed shipments “through Georgia, Kenya, the Netherlands and Turkey, in order to hide the true origin of the illicit goods”, and that “false bottoms were used as hidden compartments built into containers to conceal the tobacco”.

At the conclusion of the investigation, “enforcement activities were carried out at the Port of Genoa, leading to the seizure of close to 41 tonnes of manufactured cigarettes, with an estimated loss of customs duties, excise duties and VAT exceeding €10 million”.

Absolutely nothing motivates government officials like the extraction of taxes from the public. And lots of tax money is at stake when it comes to cigarettes.

Taxes Make Up Most of the Price of Cigarettes

This month, the Tax Foundation, which has a branch in Brussels, reported that “cigarette smokers in the European Union pay far more in excise taxes than they do for the cigarettes themselves”. Report authors Jacob Macumber-Rosin and Adam Hoffer wrote that excise taxes in the E.U., which are intended to deter smoking as much as to raise revenue, start at the equivalent of $2.11 per pack and that the “total excise duty is at least 60 percent of the national weighted average retail price”. Value-added taxes are tallied after excise duties are levied.

“The highest tax in the EU is levied in Ireland at €10.71 ($12.58) per pack of 20 cigarettes, followed by France at €8.09 ($9.51) and the Netherlands at €7.77 ($9.13)”, they added.

February 28, 2026

Corruption and red tape rise in lockstep

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Europe, Government, Law, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

J.D. Tuccille notes that corruption — at least corruption being brought to our attention — is rising at the same rate as bureaucratic red tape. It’s almost as though there’s a correlation between making things harder to do and officials accepting “sweeteners” to make things easier to do …

At the moment, corruption investigations and trials of political figures are taking place in jurisdictions around the U.S. including Hawaii, Mississippi, and Washington, D.C. These aren’t isolated scandals; the latest edition of an international corruption index finds corruption worsening globally, with the United States earning its worst score to date. Given that corruption involves government officials peddling favors for compensation, it shouldn’t be surprising that evidence suggests the solution lies in reducing the power and role of the state.

[…]

Regulation Breeds Corruption

“EU regulation is not only becoming more cumbersome but it is also pilling in”, Oscar Guinea and Oscar du Roy of the European Centre for Political Economy wrote in 2024. “The amount of new regulation accumulated during the last years has been staggering.”

That matters. In its advice for reducing corruption, Transparency International emphasizes, “there is a broad consensus that unnecessary and excessive administrative requirements for complying with regulations create both incentives and opportunities for bribery and corruption”.

The means by which this occurs is logical enough. Government-imposed permitting and licensing requirements, administrative procedures, prolonged decision-making, and contract awards create a temptation to shorten delays and reduce costs by padding officials’ pockets. In many cases, selling exceptions becomes the real reason for red tape. That phenomenon applies to the entire world, including the United States.

In the U.S., the More Regulations, the More Bribery

In a paper published in the European Journal of Political Economy in 2020, Oguzhan Dincer of the Department of Economics at Illinois State University and Burak Gunalp of the Department of Economics at Turkey’s Cankaya University looked at the relative effects of federal regulations on the corruption levels in U.S. states.

“Power to enforce the regulations gives government officials power to extort bribes”, they wrote. “Government officials have an opportunity to extort bribes from the firms trying to enter an industry because they have the power to issue the industry licenses. They also have an opportunity to extort bribes from the incumbent firms by simply colluding with them and keeping the regulations unchanged and/or strengthening the regulations to increase the costs of entry for new firms. Finally, regulations and the discretionary power given to government officials to extract bribes create incentives for firms to operate in the unofficial economy.”

Specific to the U.S., they examined two decades of data to see how red tape affected the honesty of public officials.

What they found shouldn’t be surprising: “Using the U.S. Justice Department’s data on the number of federal convictions for the crimes related to corruption, and controlling for several economic and demographic variables, we find a positive and statistically significant relationship between federal regulations and corruption.”

February 21, 2026

Oh Look, They Want a Mercenary Army

Filed under: Europe, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Akkad Daily
Published 20 Feb 2026

Get a country worth fighting for. Join Restore: https://www.restorebritain.org.uk/joi…

February 14, 2026

The EU’s plans to drain the “wine lake” … again

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Europe, Government, Wine — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Canada isn’t the only place with rigidly governed agricultural cartels … the European Union has always been a big fan of governing agricultural markets by fiat rather than allowing the markets to sort out how much of which product should be produced. One of the biggest markets actively distorted by EU regulation is the wine industry, where faulty regulations ended up paying for a vast over-supply of wine in the 1980s and 90s. Rather than eliminating the regulatory structures, the EU continues to prefer letting bureaucrats dictate to producers:

When the Common Agricultural Policy was established, it was quickly determined that one of its core objectives would be the protection of farmers, ensuring stable incomes and food security. In the wine sector, this logic translated into strong interventionism aimed at expanding and stabilizing production.

For decades, Brussels subsidized vineyard planting, protected minimum prices, and absorbed producers’ economic risk, disconnecting production decisions from signals of demand. Producing more ceased to be an economic choice and became a politically safe decision.

This approach created a structural market distortion. As wine consumption began to decline across Europe for demographic, cultural, and economic reasons, the artificially incentivized productive structure remained intact and unable to adjust.

It was in this context that, during the 1980s and 1990s, the first major shock occurred, known as the wine lake: massive wine surpluses with no outlet. Even then, Brussels treated this episode as an isolated and temporary phenomenon, ignoring the fact that it was the direct consequence of existing policies. By persisting with the same strategies, the problem ceased to be episodic and became structural.

In the early 2000s, the European Union was finally forced to recognize that the wine crisis was not temporary. However, instead of removing production incentives and restoring the market’s adjustment function, it opted for a new form of intervention: subsidizing the voluntary uprooting of vineyards. The decision to destroy productive capacity ceased to be economic and became administrative, decreed from the European political center, with profound effects across several countries.

This model, presented as temporary, set a dangerous precedent. Rather than allowing less viable producers to exit the market through prices and economic choice, the state began paying for withdrawal, subsidizing the costs of adjustment and normalizing the idea that the correction of public policy errors should be financed with more public money.

This policy did not solve the underlying problem. It merely reduced cultivated area temporarily, while leaving intact the regulatory architecture which had created the initial distortion. The sector became trapped in a cycle of incentivized expansion, predictable crisis, and administrative correction.

It is within this framework that the Wine Package emerges as the European Union’s latest set of measures for the wine sector. The package relies on an administratively planned reduction of supply through financial incentives for vineyard uprooting, complemented by regulatory adjustments, temporary support measures, and crisis management instruments. Instead of allowing the market to adjust to declining consumption, Brussels once again opts for the destruction of productive capacity as a policy tool. Although the package includes support measures and environmental framing, its central axis remains the administrative reduction of supply.

The impact of these decisions is not marginal. The European wine sector represents a significant share of the European Union’s economy, sustaining approximately 2.9 million direct and indirect jobs and contributing more than €130 billion to EU GDP.

February 13, 2026

To be accepted as a true European, you must performatively hate Trump

Filed under: Europe, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In Spiked, Frank Furedi explains why European elites and the poseurs who aspire to be counted among the elites must now ostentatiously and performatively hate US President Donald Trump (even more than they hated George Bush, if possible). Comment on dit “eLbOwS uP”?

AI-generated image from AndrewSullivan.substack.com

In recent months, anti-Americanism has emerged yet again as a respectable prejudice in Europe. It is widely promoted through the mainstream media and enthusiastically endorsed by the continent’s cultural elites. There are now even numerous campaigns to boycott American goods – most respondents to a survey in France said they would support a boycott of US brands like Tesla, McDonald’s and Coca-Cola. As a piece in Euractiv put it, anti-Americanism is “in vogue across Europe”.

This has become all too clear at the Winter Olympics, currently being held in northern Italy. At the opening ceremony for Milano Cortina 2026, Team USA and vice-president JD Vance were booed by a crowd of over 65,000 people. Someone I know who attended the event told me that the booing was spontaneous and quickly became widespread. According to the European Union’s foreign-policy chief, Kaja Kallas, those booing were displaying “European pride“. It seems that for the Brussels elites, anti-Americanism bolsters Europe’s self-esteem.

The explicit target of this resurgent anti-American animus is, of course, US president Donald Trump. But it’s implicitly aimed at all those who voted for him, too. In a piece on boycotting American goods in the normally sober Financial Times, published last March, the author gave the game away. While saying it is “wrong to conflate Americans and their president”, he argued that “it’s [also] wrong to disentangle them entirely … Trump reflects half of America. He reflects a society where a democratic majority is prepared to tolerate mass shootings and a warped political system”.

Certain politicians are being boosted by this wave of anti-Americanism. Canadian prime minister Mark Carney, in particular, has been turned into the unexpected hero of the European political establishment. His defiance of Washington has turned him into the posterboy for this new brand of anti-Americanism. “Europe has a lot to learn from Mark Carney”, was the verdict of the New Statesman. The Guardian echoed this sentiment: “Europe must heed Mark Carney – and embrace a painful emancipation from the US”.

Expressing anger against America appears to be the one emotion that binds the European political establishment. As one Financial Times commentator explained earlier this month, “Trump is Europe’s best enemy yet”. He has apparently provided Europe with the “common foe” it needs. It appears that anti-Americanism is now the glue holding together otherwise disoriented and divided European elites.

The reason usually given for this turn against the US is Trump’s behaviour towards Europe, specifically his threats to annex Greenland, impose tariffs and downgrade America’s NATO commitments. No doubt these policies have played an important role in putting Europe’s ruling classes on the defensive. However, they are not the leading cause of this wave of anti-Americanism. Rather, they have merely brought to the surface pre-existing prejudices deeply entrenched within Western Europe’s elite culture.

In his fascinating study, Anti-Americanism in Europe (2004), Russell Berman linked the growth of anti-Americanism during the 1990s and 2000s to the project of European unification. Berman claimed that, in the absence of an actual pan-European identity, anti-Americanism “proved to be a useful ideology for the definition of a new European identity”. He noted that the main way Europe defines itself as European is precisely by underscoring its difference from the United States.

January 27, 2026

QotD: “Two world wars and one World Cup!”

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Military, Quotations, Soccer — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

As a child of postwar England, I found that there was no love lost for the Germans. So I set out to find that lost love. I don’t remember how many times I encountered unthinking hostility towards them, but it was often enough to make me think there must be something to be said for them.

“Don’t let’s be beastly to the Germans,” Noël Coward had jeered in 1943. “It was just those nasty Nazis who persuaded them to fight.” It hadn’t been true then, of course, and the wartime generation still hadn’t quite forgiven the Germans, not only for their crimes against humanity, but for bouncing back faster than the British in the 1950s.

Erhard’s “economic miracle” had rubbed salt in the wounds of a nation that had sacrificed its status as a great power in order to save Europe. And now that same Europe had cold-shouldered the British, excluding us not once but twice from their new “economic community”. In the 1960s and 70s it was often the British, not the Germans, who felt despised and rejected. After 1966, Germanophobic football fans would chant “Two world wars and one World Cup”, but that was mere bravado. Everyone knew that the boot was now firmly on the other foot — and in many British eyes, it was a jackboot.

Daniel Johnson, “How I discovered Germany”, The Critic, 2020-08-02.

December 28, 2025

It may seem petty to deny entry to EUrocrats, but it’s all they will understand

Filed under: Europe, Government, Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At first, I thought it was just another bout of Trump being deliberately petty over trivial stuff, but on reflection, it’s actually a neat way to bring home the message to the EU bureaucrats personally that they will be held responsible for their actions:

RE: Free Speech & Denying Visas to Euro Autocrats

The very most Orwellian mind game happening in the world today is the way authoritarian globalists are attempting to redefine the concept of “free speech”.

In America, “free speech” has long meant that we are free to say or write virtually anything without fear of government intervention or suppression. It is this ability to express whatever we want that makes it “free”.

The authoritarian globalists, however, have stood this on its head. They have decided that in order for their citizens to be “free”, they must be free of ever hearing or reading any speech that might offend someone or sow doubt as to government policies. To these fascists, “free speech” means GOVERNMENT MODERATED speech which somehow — through its moderation — sets people “free” from ever hearing conflicting views. As I said — straight out of Orwell.

Europe is, of course, the hotbed of this fascist redefinition of what free speech means, but we in America have only narrowly escaped this plague by electing Trump. Remember, Biden and his team were reliant on institutionally stamping out so-called “disinformation” as a means of control over the populace. We must be ever vigilant here in the USA that such thuggish government criminality never again be allowed to prosper.

I think it is very important that every citizen of the USA and the world understand the depths of depravity these people will sink to in order to control ordinary people. This is about mind control, and nothing else.

Ultimately, the value of true free speech is that it embraces the idea that we all have agency over ourselves; that we are free individuals who can and should hear conflicting views, and decide for ourselves what is true and just, and what is untrue and unjust. This is sovereignty over the self, and unfortunately Europe has never let go of the concept of serfdom, so self-sovereignty is a threat that must be stamped out.

The Trump Administration has been prescient, bold and effective in denying visas to the Eurotrash autocrats who would see free speech reduced to whatever speech unelected bureaucrats deem acceptable. I cannot commend Trump enough for the thoughtfulness and importance of that action.

In a world where almost all humans are linked by essentially the same communications platform, only one world leader is truly standing for free speech: Donald Trump. And I thank him for it. We all should — even the TDS sufferers.

For a relevant example, Dries Van Langenhove:

Update, 29 December: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.

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