result may be the loss of millions of livesrnagain, perhaps forever dooming U.S. influencernon the Old Continent, just asrnWorld War I ended the Austro-HungarianrnEmpire.rnWhat kind of Europe may emergernfrom all this? A feudal one: not in termsrnof the tools of production, but in thernsense that nation-states may break up intornsmaller, more manageable regionalrnstatelets, mosdy along ethnic lines.rnIf so, this may be a roimd-about way tornrealize an old idea. At the Hme of fullblownrnglobalism in post-Cold War Europe,rnthe idea sounded so “off the wall”rnthat even its author called it “Eurotopia.”rnProfessor A.H. Heineken of the Amsterdam-rnbased Stichting voor de HistorischernWetenshap (Historical Research Institute),rndusted off some old ideas and polishedrnthem up into a proposal for arn”United States of Europe.” According tornhis plan, Europe’s 350 million inhabitantsrnwould live in 75 independentrnstates, each with a population of aboutrnfive to ten million.rnWhy the five-to-ten million limit?rn”Because where the population exceedsrn10 million, there is a manifest case forrndecentralization,” as C. NorthcoternParkinson argued in his 1970 report. Inrnother words, it’s a matter of efficiency.rn”A state of 30 to 50 million is hopelesslyrninefficient,” Professor Heineken concurred.rnA state of 150 million inhabitantsrnor more could only be much worse.rnBoth Heineken and Parkinson drewrnupon the ideas of Austrian sociologistrnLeopold Kohr, who wrote in The Breakdownrnof Nations (1957) that “it is alwaysrnbigness, and only bigness, which is thernproblem of existence—social, as well asrnphysical.” Yet here are Wall Street andrnWashington still trying to build ever biggerrninstitutions —both at home andrnabroad! If a “feudal” Europe were tornemerge from the ruins of the globalistrnNew World Order, it would certainlyrnspell the end of the world as we know it,rnbut not the end of the world. Whatrnemerges after a fire or an avalanchernwreaks havoc in a forest? A life richerrnand more vibrant than the one which therncataclysm had destroyed.rnBob Djurdjevic heads up Annex Researchrn(www.djurdjevic.com) and Truth inrnMedia (www.beograd.com/truth).rnT O S U B S C R I B E . . .rn1-800-877-5459rnMEDIArnRich Snitrnby Janet Scott BarlowrnFrank Rich, op-ed columnist for thernNew York Times, is an annoyingrnpublic presence. He is paid by the Newspaperrnof Record to work himself into arntwice-weekly snit, his love of the suit-staternmaking clear that he would do it all forrnfree if he had to. Rich spends much ofrnhis professional time in high outragernover the actions or ideas of politicians, especiallyrnconservahve politicians. He isrnoften wrong, of course, but who cares?rnNot political Washington, which simplyrnignores him, although this surely wouldrncome as news to Frank Rich.rnBut even inconsequential public voicesrncan go too far. In his column of Junern27, Frank Rich got his shorts in a wadrnover—well, over Ozzie and Harriet. Itrnseems that the Nelsons and their longrunningrntelevision comedy, The Adventuresrnof Ozzie and Harriet, were responsiblernfor chronic emotional pain duringrnthe years of Rich’s TV-watching boyhood.rnBoth young Frank and his divorced,rnworking mom were made to feelrn”woefully deficient” by Ozzie and Harriet,rna show that “created the cultural templaternfor suburban family values in thernpostwar era.” Chief among those valuesrnwas the importance to a family of thernpresence of a father, a value the grownuprnFrank Rich, to close his tortured looprnof thought, now dismisses as a highly suspectrn”truism.”rnAs if all that weren’t bad enough, hererncomes the knife-twist in Rich’s still freshrnwounds, the final injushce: He shouldrnnever have had to suffer in the first place.rnIt has come to light that the TV Nelsonrnfamily was not simply a filmed version ofrnthe real-life Nelson family. You see, theyrnmade a lot of that stuff up, and the resultantrnentertainment product was, it canrnnow be said, “unrealistic.” Having justrndiscovered that fact, Frank Rich, all inadequaternand deficient, is pained anew:rnThose hundreds of hours of Ozzie andrnHarriet were, my God, just a televisionrnshowlrnAs one of many who “grew up measuringrnour homes against the Nelson idealrn—and finding them wanting,” FrankrnRich now has his revenge. A new Nelsonrnfamily documentar’, shown on the cablernshow Biography, reveals that thernoff-screen Ozzie and Harriet and theirrnsons endured problems, conflicts, andrnheartaches, a revelation that renders thernNelsons, as Rich puts it, “naked at last.”rnAnd what were the deceitful Nelsonsrndoing when they weren’t busy misleadingrnyoung Frank Rich about the naturernof family life? It seems that Ozzie, ratherrnthan wandering around the house andrngrinning, as he did on television, workedrnlong and hard to create success for himselfrnand his family. Harriet? Brace yourselfrn—not only did she not stand aroundrnthe kitchen wearing an apron, she partookrnof a cocktail now and then. Wliat’srnmore, the ideas “propagated” by the Nelsons’rnTV show were, according to F’rankrnRich, essentially hypocritical since thernNelsons were “both itinerant show peoplernbefore they married” — meaning, Irnsuppose, that having a past which variesrnfrom your present makes your present,rnipso facto, a sham.rnI watched Biography on the samernevening as did Frank Rich. Wliat I sawrnwas a father who did, as fathers sometimesrndo, the best he could for his childrenrnwithout truly trying to imderstandrnhis children. I saw the story of a couplernwho stayed married, apparently happily,rnfor decades, a couple whose grandchildrenrnspeak of them today with real love.rnI saw a family in which one son, Ricky,rnlost his way in middle-age and maderndeadly choices long after blaming his fatherrnfor his problems was an option. Irnsaw, in other words, a real family. WliatrnFrank Rich saw was a “stink bomb” inrnwhich the effect of Ozzie Nelson’s workrnhabits rendered irrelevant his parentingrnskills — a fact that, according to Rich’srnlogic, now challenges the validit)’ of thernneed for a father in the home. If he’s justrngoing to screw up, who needs Dad? Andrnhow do we know Dad? How else: He’srnthe one who screws up.rnThe gist of Frank Rich’s column wasrnthis: “The discrepancy between who thernNelsons were and what they preachedrn[has become] a lasting model for hypocriticalrnpublic discourse.” He must bernworking under the burden of one snit toornmany. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harrietrnwas probably the least “preachy”rnshow ever on television, and Rich’s usernof that term reveals not only his defensiveness,rnbut the reason he finds his wayrnso easily to the word hypocritical. I toorn44/CHRONICLESrnrnrn