--- On Fri, 7/4/08, Angelus Novus <fuerdenkommunismus at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Wojtek is the citizen of a Schengen country. As such,
> he enjoys all the privileges of free mobility within
> Fortress Europe.
[WS:] Actually, I have dual citizenship US and Polish, but I have been living in the US for the past twenty seven or so years. Most of my professional and personal relations are here - so my freedom to move to EU is mostly hypothetical - an option only in the worst case (an unlikely) scenario (e.g. something comparable to roundups in the post 1933 Germany.) I have all the global mobility I need (well outside the EU) with my US passport, and the Schengen agreement is quite irrelavent to my situation. So what does Schengen have to do with the price of tea in China?
> Instead, either due to ignorance or dishonesty, they
> spread the lie of a European welfare-statism
> (effectively abolished in Germany in 2004) and
> multiculturalism (cf. Fortress Europe).
>
--- snip
[WS:] As I understand, your main case against me (and Dennis) is that we do sing from they same hymn book as you do. This seems correct, I admit. I also appreciate that you limit your reaction to that difference of opinion to mere invective instaed of, say, calls for excommunication, intternment, or extermination.
There is, however, an old Sufi proverb "A fool tries to convince me with his arguments, a wise man - with my own." So If you are interested in a dialog instead of exhortations, I suggest you read what I (and Dennis) are actually saying and provide counterarguments. FYI, in the post to which you reacted I compared government social spending in EU (about 24-30% of GDP) and US (16% of GDP, most of it due to medical inflation.) If you belive that these figures are incorrect or not indicative of the level of social services available to citizens - I would be interested to hear why and see your facts and figures. By pronouncing that because I do not know what you do I must be an infidel or a traitor - you place yourself in a time honored tradition of Inquistion (or Stalinist purges) - which is more consistent with the European traditions that you impue to me.
Wojtek