A HITLER/STALIN PACT FOR THE NEW CENTURY:

The Franco-German Alliance Against Market Freedom (Grant M. Nülle, July 19, 2004, Mises.org)

Since the Second World War, the deep-seated enmity between France and Germany, whose governments waged war against each other thrice in less than a century, has been exhausted.

Restrained from resuming their fratricidal tendencies by the bonds of the
corporatist European Coal and Steel Community, eventually superseded by the
European Union (EU), the countries no longer contemplate warfare as a means
of settling bilateral disputes. Rather, these two founding members of the EU
‚s original six have cooperated quite closely in forging today‚s common
market encompassing 450m people, a twelve-country currency union and a
nascent superstate.

As their markedly similar postwar social market systems reel from the
onslaught of globalization and the economic consequences of the rampant
interventionism championed by its architects and stewards, the Franco-German
axis has been reinvigorated. Unwilling and unable to scrap the welfare
state, the political establishments on both sides of the Rhine are jointly
mounting a tenacious offensive against all suspected assailants, domestic
and foreign alike.

Both peoples are more tolerable when they're killing each other and leaving the rest of us alone.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 19, 2004 11:14 AM