Macedonia @ 26
Macedonia turns 26 years young this Friday and celebrates independence as a modern-day nation-state. Yet in those 26 years, the nation-state as we know it and especially in the West, has been under attack by a certain class of individuals within the nation-state. Every state has these individuals — men and women who seek to create a system of global governance, super-states and a managerial class of elites through extensive control of government and all that government touches. While most the world seeks to solidify and build up the nation-state, there are many in this class who seek to consolidate their own power, prestige, and position by weakening the individual nation-states and transferring the traditional powers and rights of the nation-state to themselves through the global institutions they are building. These individuals are the unelected, the unaccountable, those put into power by others, and those who ruthlessly claw their way to the top. They are embedded in government, big business, the media, academia, the NGO community, the scientific community, think-tanks and faith institutions as well. They are a high priesthood that worships at the altar of mankind, secular humanism, a priesthood that believes deeply in the perfectibility of mankind and it is these people and their ideas that are the greatest threat to Macedonia’s survival. It therefore stands that any Macedonian government, individual, or organization which pursues an agenda in this service is a threat to the very survival of Macedonia.
When Macedonia declared independence on September 8, 1991 and asserted its rights as a modern-day independent nation-state it started with a serious handicap: a political party running government whose individual members held a flawed understanding of human nature, a socialist mindset, and a deep belief in the ever expanding and curative powers of government. In 26 years we have seen that party and those individuals go in and out of government; this has had the unfortunate effect of never allowing for a culture of true political liberty to take hold. Those individuals in turn have made alliances with their kind in other countries and spawned organizations that in turn are a part of that high priesthood. And this troubles me greatly because in those 26 years the individuals who make up that party, whether they realize it or not, have enthusiastically pursued the weakening of Macedonia as a modern-day nation-state because it benefits them.
Austrian economist F. A. Hayek (1899–1992), writing the forward to his 1956 American edition of The Road to Serfdom, explains it best stating that the most important change that takes place when such a government is allowed to implement its policies is a “psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people.” This change is very slow, he writes, “a process which extends not over a few years but perhaps over one or two generations.” What happens, he continues, is that the spirit or desire for freedom and political liberty diminishes over this time period as that government control eats away at it. Stepping back for just a moment we realize that Macedonia has never really had a “strong tradition of political liberty” as, when it was a part of Yugoslavia, no such thing existed. In its modern-day incarnation as a sovereign nation-state, there have been tides of hope over the past 26 years when some have tried to create and instill that “strong tradition of political liberty” but that hope has always been up against the relentless waves of individuals of a party who are against it. Or, put another way, two steps forward, three steps back.
What to do about it? How to reverse the trend of this high priesthood and get Macedonia back to a place where that “strong tradition of political liberty” — even the tiniest bit of it — can begin to take hold and then flourish? The only solution is for individuals who truly care about Macedonia and its future to stand athwart the short history of Macedonia as a sovereign nation-state and yell “Stop!”
Even then, the work is just beginning. The only individuals who can keep Macedonia safe, sovereign, and give all Macedonians a fighting chance at prosperity are those who acknowledge and support the rule of law; acknowledge and support individual liberty and the limits that go with it as well as the limits that must be placed on government; acknowledge and affirm freedom of religion and free speech, even if some people think that speech is “hateful;” acknowledge and affirm that human life, above all else, is the most precious thing beginning with the life of the unborn (since science says that life begins at conception and to deny that makes one a science denier); acknowledge and affirm that the family is the basic building block of any society and that for any society to succeed measures must be put in place the uplift and support the family, beginning with the recognition that marriage is between a man and woman; acknowledge and affirm that the free market economy is the best path for a society (low or flat taxes, minimal government regulation, respect for private property, a rejection of socialist policies such as the redistribution of wealth, to name but a few); acknowledge and affirm individual rights above collective rights; acknowledge and affirm that society must pursue equality of opportunity not equality of outcome, a socialist idea; and acknowledge and affirm that, while maintaining friendly relations with Macedonia’s neighbors is an excellent foreign policy position, first and most importantly believes in the primacy of the nation-state and does everything possible to support and affirm the nation-state as its sovereignty.
The idea of Macedonia is timeless. Macedonia exists because of the Macedonians and the Macedonians exist because of Macedonia. It would be a tragedy if Macedonians threw all of that away along with its sovereignty in pursuit of some chimera promising them an impossible utopia.
