The dead, the unborn, the living, and a contract

So, here we are three years after the failed September 30, 2018 referendum that Zoran Zaev and his handlers in the US State Department, the EU, and NATO rammed through. The results are well known: the referendum was an absolute failure despite Zaev reassuring his handlers that all would be well.

No matter. When it failed to achieve the necessary percentage to even be considered legitimate, Zaev merely ignored it and used Johannes Hahn’s famous “Balkan tactics” to ram through the name and identity change of Macedonia and Macedonians — threats, arrests, intimidation, corruption, and more. And the US State Department, the EU, and NATO praise him to this very day for his acts of sabotage.

At this point I would say “a pox on all of them and their households” but if you even merely glance at news headlines today you’ll note that, well, things are not going very well in the West. The institutions of the West, mortally wounded, are lurching toward their sickbeds, first, and then their graves, as the center does not hold and eventually gives way. I will spare you my writing a column titled “Fear not, for the worst is yet to come,” but for now, consider the following:

The famously touted transatlantic alliance between the US and Europe is an open wound. It is not the Taliban that have an existential crisis as President Joe Biden said in an interview in August, but NATO. And in this NATO alliance, some members, such as Germany, refuse to meet their financial obligations while purchasing Russian gas through the soon-to-be-finished Nord Stream 2 which the Transatlanticists say is bad for Europe and NATO and yet it goes forward (and don’t bother asking Ukraine how they feel about it). Beyond the Transatlantic alliance, there is the expansion of China in so many ways, the ongoing debacle that is Afghanistan, inflation, overbearing Western debt, Iran and their terrorism, North Korea and their nukes, the false anxiety and fear-mongering of climate change, and much more, not to mention the myriad crises affecting Joe Biden’s Administration and the US, plus the civilization-ripping-apart culture wars of the West in the form of Wokeism.

Let me return to Macedonia and the Macedonians: these various crises, briefly noted above, will eventually affect you in our famously interconnected and globalized world. That is simply the way the world is. But even though you cannot control such events, you do still have control over your own lives and territory even if the nay-sayers among you emphatically state that you are controlled by others. No, you still have agency. It is still up to you.

And it is not only up to you. Your ancestors and those yet to be born have a voice in this as well.

The Anglo-Irish statesman and member of the British parliament Edmund Burke (1729–1797), famously wrote in “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” that there is a contact between generations writing “Society is indeed a contract … The state … is … a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” In other words, each current generation is responsible for those past and those yet to come.

If this is true — and I think upon reflection any thinking individual must come to that conclusion — then the generations of Macedonians who have passed on, combined with the generations of Macedonians yet to be born — also have a vote in what direction Macedonia takes.

We know that under the Zaev regime there has been injustice piled upon injustice, starting with the name and identity change and continuing to this day.

So, what I am getting at is the following: literally millions of Macedonians — those who have passed on, those how have yet to be born and those currently living — get a vote in Macedonia’s past, present, and future.

And we certainly know what vote the Macedonians of the past made: for an independent, sovereign Macedonia, full stop.

And we have our vote from the September 30, 2018 referendum; we know that Macedonians voted, through their boycotts, not to change the name but to keep the name and the identity.

And we have a pretty good idea of how Macedonians of the future would vote because we know their parents would raise them right: to believe in Macedonia and the Macedonian identity, no change.

Given all of that we come to this contract which stipulates that Macedonia’s rightful name must be returned and its rightful identity must be recognized.

None of this is easy. The wounded West will not only not like this, but they will push back. After all, they put their reputations on the line and said “all will be well and there will be peace” in Macedonia and the region when the name and identity are changed. Is there? I’ll let you answer that question. So they have a very personal interest in keeping the “N” word in the name and in the Macedonian identity.

Then there are Macedonians who, for money, glory, power, or a combination, will resist this. And of course there are other Macedonians who believe that the name and identity change was worth it because they put their full faith in NATO and the EU (I understand their motivation, but I disagree with them — and it is our role to help them understand why this is wrong). And then there are those who are simply tired of all of this. I get that as well.

Because of this contract between the generations, Macedonia needs a re-focus and a rescuing. And I’ll address that in next week’s column.