First They Come For Your Fireworks

Then they introduce a speed limit on your autobahn. “Whatever is not expressly permitted is strictly forbidden” in Germany.

Fireworks

Could Germany ban personal fireworks? – Across the world, fireworks are an essential part of New Year’s Eve celebrations. Germans especially love setting off their own pyrotechnics, but some places have now imposed limited bans — for good reason…

Germany’s laissez-faire approach to pyrotechnics, however, has serious consequences. Fireworks harm the environment, and exploding pyrotechnics can startle and shock animals as well as little children…

Alles was nicht ausdrücklich erlaubt ist, ist verboten.

Less Choice Is Always Germany’s First Choice

You can’t just go giving people the freedom to choose. Look at this Brexit mess, for example.

Uber

And this applies all the more when it comes to new business models in Germany. Especially if they come from US-Amerika. Then you would have Amerikanische Verhältnisse here in no time. And we certainly don’t want that. Once you start allowing customers to decide for themselves what services they prefer to use it’ll be Brexit all over again. Business Brexit. At least for the old overpriced, highly protected and monopolized business models so popular here in Germany, I mean.

Uber Hit With Fresh German Ban – After its core service was banned in 2015, Uber had begun offering rides through car-for-hire services

A regional court in Germany frustrated Uber Technologies Inc. UBER’s efforts to mount a comeback in the country, adding to regulatory pressure on the ride-hailing company, particularly in Europe.

Thursday’s ruling by a regional court in Frankfurt marks a fresh setback for the San Francisco-based transportation company, which is trying to repair its reputation among regulators after expanding rapidly and challenging local transport laws where it operated.

Among the countries that have been the most resistant to Uber is Germany, where the company had been experimenting with ways to overcome a nationwide ban imposed in 2015.

German Of The Day: German Mut

Nope, that doesn’t mean German pooch or mongrel. That means German courage.

German Mut

And it takes quite a bit of German courage for a German political party to come out in support of economic-liberal policies and free choice in a country like Germany these days (in the end, most Germans want everything regulated for them and prefer equality and conformity to free choice). But that is what the FDP (FDP 2.0?) is trying to do. They’re still on the outside looking in after their ousting in 2013 but appear to be bouncing back, at least for the moment.

They are currently so courageous, in fact, that they must be high. Not only are the Free Democrats now proposing that marijuana be legalized, which isn’t all that original these days, they also think it’s time for Germany to introduce a flat tax. Good luck on that. That’ll be a real hard one to sell here, as elsewhere. Who’s going to “eat the rich” then?

“Die erste Reform, die wir unserem Land empfehlen, ist eine Reform der Mentalität.”

Tugendterror

Or “virtue/politically correct terror,” if you prefer. Even some Germans now (in this case Thea Dorn for Die Zeit – “Deutsche Sitten” – no link yet) have come to realize that those who might still prefer to have the right to choose for themselves are losing Lebensraum (their habitat) fast.

Tutelage

A German Opera house decides to cancel a production from their repertoire because several spectators needed medical attention (they were traumatized) after the premiere. A leading SPD politician openly discusses the possibility of limiting the speed limit to 120 kmh on German autobahns. The Greens specify in their party program to do away with the reduced value added tax rate currently granted for fast-food and to forbid the use of wild animals in circuses.

The German (or European) citizen who still expects to be able to decide for him- or herself on matters of this nature  (whether to attend the opera performance or not, drive the speed he/she wishes on certain stretches of the autobahn, eat fast-food, etc.)  is frowned upon ever more these days because, well, there are others out/up there more enlightened than him/her to make these decisions for them. This is the essence of socialist and/or Green thinking. This makes everything safe. And predictable. And correct sowieso (at the very least).

Autonomy means being able to assess what I can expect of myself and of my environment to put up with. Living means not letting myself be knocked down by injuries or setbacks. But how can I learn either of these things if our society becomes an omnipresent governess keenly taking care that her wards never get carried away?

How indeed. They don’t want you to get carried away. Or get away at all, for that matter, ever. That’s the point. Just curb your enthusiasm already and keep on voting for more tutelage.

Man kann sein Leben zu Tode verschwenden, andere zu Tode schinden. Wir sind dabei, uns zu Tode zu schonen.

Tyrannischer Tugendstaat Deutschland

I’m tellin’ y’all, the Green Shirts are taking over here. Don’t say later that you hadn’t been warned. It’s just what the Germans ordered, or wanted all along: A new Tyrannical German State of Goodness and Niceness.* And don’t think it isn’t coming because we all know it is.

Now that the only German party that even pretended to want to give its citizen’s the freedom to choose has shot itself in the foot and will most likely bleed to death (the FDP, the anti-Greens), now that the tsunami in Japan has carried the Greens in Germany to major Volkspartei status, good green intentions will soon begin paving the way to hell in a big way and there is not a thing any of you out there can do about it.

Germans were never able to stomach Liberalismus in the first place (I don’t mean liberalism as in being “left,” I mean liberalism as in advocating the freedom of the individual) and now that the latest advocates of politically correct collectivism have ridden into town to guide their constituents down the proper party path (“I’m from the government and I’m here to help”),  everything is going to be alright because, well, we say it is and all are thrilled about the thrilling changes about to appear on the Green horizon.

Some examples of things to come: Now a “traffic light” sticker will be introduced at German restaurants, for instance. This will let potential visitors know (by using the pretty colors green, yellow and red) just how good the hygienic condition of the restaurant they were about to visit might have been. More anti-smoking, women’s quotas, anti-discrimination laws, better waste separation and stricter speed limit laws are soon to follow, along with the solar energy, eco-power and electro cars that will need to be more heavily subsidised because, well, they are the only solution (the final solution?) and that’s why they have to be heavily subsidised, not to mention the host of other environmental protection measures that haven’t even been thought up yet (did I mention the part about shutting down all nuclear power plants?). Laws, laws, laws. It’s not that these are just any old laws however, every state makes laws, these are laws designed to make Germans better Germans, just like the Greens meant them to be. Kontrolle ist besser. Father knows best. I mean Mother does.

This is a great leap forward for Nanny State-kind, in other words. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any more nanny-like, too. Liberalism was yesterday, dude. Actually, no. Come to think of it, it has never been tried here yet. But still.

And the reason why it’s never been tried here? “Liberalism knows that what is good in society does not come about through good intention and central planning but through the competition of ideas and their agents.”

“Der Begriff Wachstum ist überholt. Wir brauchen eine neue Größe, die Auskunft darüber gibt, ob das Wachstum auch die Wohlfahrt erhöht.” Eine Bestimmung der Lebensqualität, des zufriedenen Bürgerbefindens, als Maßstab für die ökonomische und gesellschaftliche Entwicklung?

* Read the Zeit article Verschont uns! by Jan Ross (page 10, Die Zeit number 22) on which this post is based. And take a look at Hexenverbrennung on the same page while you’re at it (it’s about retro-feminist terror). Sorry, couldn’t find the links.

PS: Thanks for the Hexenverbrennung link, Indeterminacy.