By UWE SIEMON-NETTO
A
nauseating remark by Donald Trump on Fox News about Germany this week made me
wonder if today’s American and European conservatives are living on the same
planet – assuming for the sake of an argument that this network is the authentic
voice of conservatives in the U.S.A. Discussing the Euro crisis on Greta van
Susteren’s “On the Record” show, Trump said: “Germany is trying to take over
the world economically; they weren’t able to do it militarily.” This was
preceded by a breathtakingly boorish divination of dire prospects for French
President Nicolas’ marriage once he and his wife Carla Bruni have left the Elysée
Palace in Paris.
Now,
before I let off steam about this claptrap, let me disclose this much about
myself: I am a firm conservative of the European stripe. If I were a U.S.
citizen, I could never vote for “pro choice” candidates or politicians favoring
same-sex marriage. Like American conservatives, I want governments to be small
and taxes low. I oppose the nanny state and entitlements. I support free
enterprise, hard work and responsible lifestyles. I am a conservative because I
want to “conserve,” in the original sense of the Latin verb, conservare, the Christian civilization
we inherited including its religious, educational and cultural treasures, its
civility, good manners, its emphasis of historical knowledge and critical
thinking.
There
are differences of course: I do not consider myself depraved because I like
fast trains, speak foreign languages and never felt a desire to own a gun, and
I see no merit in ethnic or national bigotry; I have learned in my childhood in
Germany the hard way where this kind of rhetoric can lead. Still, irrespective
of these Old World peculiarities, I have always held it self-evident that conservatives
on both sides of the Atlantic are bound by shared values and presume this still
to be the case.
Yet
I feel politically homeless in contemporary America, a country I love; I
despise the mindlessness reflected in Mr. Trump’s glib statement, which is
emblematic of the discourse in the type of electronic media where he is seen
and heard. Is this conservative? Not in my book. It is unintelligent and
inelegant, two adjectives I do find incompatible with the grace of real
conservative thought. It troubles me that Americans seem unaware of the
catastrophic impression this makes on those Europeans who should be their
natural friends and allies. They watch Fox News’ lowbrow talk shows on the
Internet with dismay and see them, in the absence of alternatives, as true
mirrors of American traditionalism. When I telephoned friends in France and
Germany after the Socialist victory in the French elections, they emitted
identical sighs: “If only American conservatives would give us any reason for
hope!”
Back
to Trump: He seems clueless about the distasteful company he is keeping by
trumpeting out his ugly clichés before millions of Fox News spectators: the
company of Greek anarchists, neo-Nazis and Communists burning German flags in
the street of Athens and caricaturing Chancellor Angela Merkel as a
brown-shirted, swastika-toting fiend, or advocates of irresponsible
inflationary policies of the very type Fox News pretends to be fighting in
America. In his postmodern inability to think in proper analogies, it did not
occur to Trump that Germans abhor this behavior just as much as Americans
loathed morons burning their national flag and spelling the name of their
country Ameri-kkk-a in the 1960s.
Oh, now I get it! Perhaps in Trump’s mind solidarity is a leftist
term and not something conservatives do to each other, at least not from the
perspective of the kind of conservatives we are discussing here, the “me”-conservatives
unbound by codes of honor worth conserving, just as the rest of the “Me”
culture. Again,
I suspect that a majority of conservatives might not belong to the “Me”
variety; but they have chosen not to invest in a voice that can be heard and
seen around the globe, a shortsighted omission.
What
exactly is it that Trump, in line with European leftists and extremists,
dislikes about today’s Germans? I say today’s Germans, those 90-odd percent of
us who were not even around when Hitler came to power. He admits that Germans
have done “unbelievably well,” and he surely cannot claim that they have accomplished
this by force of arms or knavish tricks. I posit that they reaped the fruits of
doing what Germans always do best: hard work, precision engineering, making
beautiful products of the highest quality that sell well around the world,
maintaining sound labor relations, training their workers superbly, and
exercising fiscal responsibility. I believe Germans have by now earned the
right to grab Trump by the lapels and thunder: “How dare you liken our
honorable behavior to the shameful deeds a criminal regime has committed before
you were born!”
Or
is it that in his mind only Americans are virtuous when they work hard and well
and behave prudently, whereas Germans doing the very same thing are by
definition Nazis light? What must Germans do to receive the approbation of
Trump and similar hypocrites? Must they become sloppy? Must they go on strike
all the time like French railway workers? Must they produce rubbish in order
for others to get a larger share of the market? Should they have followed the
American example, much bemoaned by Trump and his fellow Fox commentators, of
destroying their own economy?
Trump’s
insult to Western Europe’s most populous nation could be dismissed as crude
drivel if it were not one exceedingly rare item of information about Germany,
or for that matter any other Western European country except Britain, broadcast
by America’s premier “conservative” cable network, which is too mean to base
foreign correspondents in continental capitals and apparently too hick to cover
the Continent instead of badmouthing it almost daily. I will never forget the
thigh-slapping hilarity in a Fox talk show when a panelist proclaimed a few
years ago: “The only trouble with Europe is that it has too many Europeans.” By
God, this was unadulterated Nazi diction! I am proud to say that in Germany
this kind of rhetoric would be treated as a hate crime.
As
a journalist who has learned his craft with the Associated Press, I am
disconsolate that for world coverage on the evening news I must go to the
English-language Al Jazeera program, compliments of PBS, if I want to avoid
networks whose liberal slant I find objectionable. Why don’t conservative
billionaires like Donald Trump see a need to invest in a restoration of
genuinely “fair and balanced” journalism in this country that used to be the
international leader in high media standards? Why for that matter don’t other
wealthy conservatives worried about the decrepit state of our craft? Why is it
that responsible media people, and here I include myself, only meet uncomprehending
stares when panhandling for funds to launch, not a mouthpiece for right
wingers, but simply a responsible, cosmopolitan, professionally well-crafted
mass publication, printed or electronic. For democracy to survive, we need an
abundance of solid facts to reach the electorate, not more half-baked opinions
posing as “conservative.”
Contrary
to what Fox’s smug talk show hosts will have you believe, the frightening
collapse of journalistic standards is by no means an exclusively left-wing
phenomenon. The so-called conservative media outlets are no better. Take
Germany. Fox’s listeners don’t know that Germany, the world’s second largest
exporter, maintains the third-largest NATO contingent in Afghanistan, after the
U.S. and the United Kingdom, and that German soldiers are also dying in the
Hindu Kush. Never do the journalistic poseurs talking over their interview
partners in prime time offer a detailed report of a compelling international
saga that is as much a human interest as a political story: Whether you like
Germans or not, the Herculean act of one middle-aged East German pastor’s
daughter and scientist, Angela Merkel, carrying the rest of Europe is a
stirring occurrence in the history of Western civilization, especially if you
consider that Germany has just had to spend nearly €2 trillion ($2,7 trillion)
to repair the disastrous damage 40 years of Communist have done to its eastern
territories. But to understand this you have to know history.
When
discussing health care, these pundits ridicule the British and Canadian systems
but never mention Germany’s, which is the world’s oldest, having been started
by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1883 in order to stave off socialist
alternatives. It is really irrelevant whether this omission is due to prejudice
or ignorance; the consequence is the same: these “journalists” keep their
public ill informed at a time when international perils call for well-educated
voters.
Donald
Trump said, “Germany is trying to help Germany.” So? He complained that the
euro was not created “for the betterment of the United States.” So? Isn’t it a
little narcissistic to demand that only things serving the betterment of one
country should be permitted elsewhere in the world? He also claimed that the
whole European project was directed against U.S.
No!
The European unification process resulted from the lessons wise and eminently
decent men of the caliber of Konrad Adenauer, Robert Schuman, Alcide de
Gasperi, Paul-Henri Spaak, Charles de Gaulle and others had drawn from the bloody
fratricide of two World Wars. It was a human endeavor and therefore subject to
human fallibility. Perhaps in hindsight Germany should never have agreed to a
joint currency that included Greece, which was not ready for it. But that was
one price she had to pay for France’s acquiescence to her reunification after
the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Instead
of ridiculing Germany or accusing her of ill intent, Mr. Trump should be
thankful that he has never experienced the horror that prompted Europeans to
act the way they did. I am ten years older than Trump; I have lived through it,
which is why I don’t long for a repetition. European wars have never been good
for Americans either. Mr. Trump should have thought of that, but he hasn’t.
Moreover,
it seems illogical for a champion of free enterprise to view the competitive
intentions of the European Union as detrimental to the United States, as Trump
insinuated in his interview with Greta van Susteren. Have I missed a class at
school? Is not competition what free enterprise is all about? Why should
peaceful competition be fine on a national but not on an international level,
as long as both sides subscribe to the same principles of freedom?
I
would not have lowered myself to venting my anger here about the utterances of
a billionaire buffoon had 55 years in international journalism not taught me to
appraise most somberly the state of the world we are living in. From this I can
only draw one conclusion: American and Continental conservatives need each
other today more than ever; but I mean real
conservatives determined to conserve
our civilization, including hard work, fiscal discipline, entrepreneurship, a
commitment to the sanctity of human life and, yes, international civility,
which I found lacking in Donald Trump’s superfluous remarks.
Uwe
Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs editor
of United Press International, has been an international journalist for 55
years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and Europe for German
publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto currently directs the League of Faithful Masks
and Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in Irvine, California.
