There were elections recently in Germany. And as many people and pollsters had predicted, the conservative parties, and there are two of them, won nearly, almost, 50% of the vote.
The Christian Democratic Union, under Mr. Friedrich Merz, will be the—probably the new chancellor. And then there is the Alternative für Deutschland, the AfD. This is the more controversial conservative.
We in the United States wouldn’t see them so controversial. But for European socialists, they are considered ultra-ultra-right. They believe in things like the ability to buy guns or to close borders. And in the United States that would be normative, not in Europe.
But here’s my point, even though they have about half of the support of all German voters, it’s likely that the Alternative for Germany will not be represented. And the seats that will comprise the majority will be made up by either a socialist party or the green party, or both.
Here’s my point, again, there’s a populist, nationalist backlash, a counterrevolution to the craziness of Europe. And we know U.S. Vice President JD Vance has outlined that craziness: low fertility, high energy prices, bans against fracking, open borders, dishonorment, deindustrialization, etc. But the conservatives will not have a voice under their parliamentary democracy, even though they earned a voice. And that’s only going to make them more polarized.
But here’s what I also want to talk about, Mr. Merz said in a speech that given the trajectory of America under President Donald Trump, he’s distancing himself and he doesn’t really consider the United States an ally anymore, at least he said Trump’s America.
Think about that for a second.
Now, I don’t want to go through ancient history, but we fought two wars with Germany. And we defeated them both, but we also came to their rescue. I think we rescued them in World War I from kaiserism. And that allowed them to have a brief romance with democracy. And then we rescued them from Nazism. They paid a terrible price. But they did lose two wars they should have lost. And then we protected them in the Cold War.
But here’s another point, we have right now about 40 bases and over 50,000 American soldiers in Germany. Germany spends 1.5% of gross domestic product. People look up to it in NATO and then say, we don’t have to meet the 2% benchmark that’s required of us over a decade because Germany doesn’t.
Because it’s disarmed. Because they will not frack. And they will not use nuclear energy. And they are ambiguous about their coal. They are paying four times more in electricity. We’ve mentioned before their birth rate is about 1.45. They have open borders. Sixteen percent of their population is not native-born.
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