So apparently the EU has it's own parliament. Being the ignorant backwater American that I am, I had always thought that when the EU met it was just a bunch of ambassadors, not elected officials. You learn something new all the time.
A member of the EU's parliament made a splash recently with this invective against Britain's Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.
Can you hear me cheering over your modem? This is what liberty-minded individuals have been dying to say to American politicans for ages. Thanks, Daniel, for giving us such an eloquent voice.
Mr. Hannan maintains a blog, which I found informative and well written. I wish all politicians made the same effort to explain themselves on a regular basis.
He has a habit of liberally quoting Shakespeare, and ends most speeches with the latin phrase "Pactio Olisipiensis censenda est," which translates roughly as "The Treaty of Lisbon must be put to a referendum." It's a reference to a rhetorical tactic of the Roman statesman Cato the Elder, who made a point of ending every speech with the phrase "Carthago delenda est," "Carthage must be destroyed." Carthage was a military rival of Rome situated in northern Africa. Hannibal of alps-crossing fame was a Carthaginian general.
Can you imagine what people would say about a Shakespeare-quoting Latin-speaking conservative in the States? He or she'd be lambasted as an academic elitist and a snob. No wonder we seldom get to hear rhetoric as well-written as this.
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The lack of Latin and Shakespeare in the western world today and especially in the Anglo sphere is due to the utter failure we ourselves have made in letting post modernism dictate the agenda in schools. Those chickens are now roosting and laying rotten eggs. Recently, a well known Toronto rabbi told his congregation not to send their children to university. Imagine a Jewish leader telling Jews to not send their children to higher education. This is the extent to which the west has deconstructed itself, it's values and history. It is tragic that someone such as Hannan is an anachronism. A sign of cultural suicide.
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