Oh to be in Europe

I realize that most of you are not worked up over the internal politics of Slovakia; however the story of how the conservative Mikulas Dzurinda was unseated by socialist Robert Fico is interesting. As The Brussels Journal tells it:

The left-wing Slovakian Social-Democrat Smer (Direction) party of Robert Fico won last Saturday’s general election in Slovakia. Voters rejected the government of Mikulas Dzurinda, the longest serving Prime Minister in the region, who has turned the Slovakian economy into one of the most successful in Central Europe

[Snip]

During the election campaign Smer promised to scrap the 19% flat tax that is one of the central pillars of the Slovakian economic recovery. The flat tax is credited with generating strong economic growth – at 6.1% the highest in central Europe. However, Slovakia also faces high unemployment at 15.5%. Political analists say that Dzurinda lost because voters are dissatisfied with the widening gap between rich and poor. “We need a Slovakia with more solidarity and justice,” Fico said. “It means that, if we form the government, benefits from our country’s development will not be restricted to a small group of people.”

Scrapping the flat tax will be welcomed by the welfare state politicians in Western Europe, who are opposed to the system and aim for tax harmonization across the European Union.

Notice how the socialist came out and promised to kill the goose that is laying the economic “golden egg” for Slovakia, the flat tax. Notice how so many of the Slovakian people were willing to go along with this because of class envy. Notice how the European Union’s elites are happy with this turn of events.

After all European economies are highly taxed and have the double digit unemployment and microscopic growth rates to show for it. We can’t be having those upstart Eastern Europeans showing them up with prosperity gained in some other way than socialist redistribution, can we?

Oh, and what caused Mikulas Dzurinda’s governing coalition to collapse? That dear reader is the icing on the leftist cake:

Ironically this collapse was the direct result of EU interference. The Slovak government fell after an EU committee criticized the draft of a proposed treaty between Slovakia and the Vatican. The treaty included a guarantee that Catholic doctors and hospitals in Slovakia would not be legally obliged to perform abortions, and other acts violating their conscience. According to the EU “Network of Independent Experts on Fundamental Rights” doctors should sometimes be forced to perform abortions, even if they have conscientious objections, because the right to abort a child is an “international human right.”

The criticism of the EU experts killed off the draft treaty with the Vatican and led to a conflict between Dzurinda’s party and its coalition partner, the Christian-Democrat KDH. While Dzurinda, under pressure of the EU’s criticism, agreed to abandon the proposed treaty with the Vatican, the KDH defended it and left the government.

Isn’t that special? The EU objected to a treaty which would have allowed doctors who believe that abortion is murder to refrain from performing abortions (how tacky). The Eurocrat elites can’t understand why anyone would not want to force a doctor who is some kind of religious believer (are there even any of those left in Europe?) to terminate the life of an unborn child.

After all the Eurocrats have already skidded far past abortion on their slide down that slippery slope. They are currently into performing involuntary euthanasia on non-terminal patients.

Forcing someone to provide a service to someone against their will. . . there used to be a name for that. What was it? . . . Started with an “S”, I think. . . Oh well, it will come to me.

By now I’m sure that you can see why this story interested me. We have a socialist political party stirring up class envy in order to win an election on the platform of killing a flat tax which is the engine of a magnificent economic boom. All of this made possible by Eurotrash elites meddling into Slovakia’s internal affairs by objecting to a treaty which does nothing more than allow that nation’s physicians to NOT commit an act which their consciences tell them is murder.

It is a “perfect storm” of post-modern leftist evil breaking on a small Eastern European nation which had been doing a terrific job of digging itself out from under decades of Soviet Communist oppression.

There must be popping champagne corks in Brussels tonight.