Unforeseen Contingencies

I'm stunned speechless by the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2012.  How could the Nobel Committee have done such a thing?  I mean, after all, how could they not have awarded it (a second time) to Barack Obama for running for reelection, and against a (shudder) Republican?  What a hero of peace!

Frankly, giving the Peace Prize to the EU is more idiotic than any absurdist award I can imagine.  As Andrew Roberts (Bloomberg) observes, "Nothing better represents this degradation of the Nobel Peace Prize than the ludicrous decision to award it to the EU, an organization that has done nothing whatever to bring peace, and is currently spawning riots and mayhem in many of its vassal states."

Roberts has it right: "A Nobel Prize for Idiots."

Additionally, Daniel Hannan in Britain's Telegraph has some serious analysis.  After observing that this award confirms (for the umpteenth time) Tom Lehrer's observation that "satire is obsolete," he notes that nationalism was not the root cause of Europe's incessant bloodletting -- it was always ideological conflict.  And further, forcing people of radically different cultural backgrounds into a single polity, often as not against their will, doesn't work.

A Nobel Prize for the EU. good grief.  Let's be honest, if the Nobel Committee wants to give an award for "peace in Europe," they ought to award it to the United States.  In the last 100 years, whenever stupid European twits have begun a bloodletting, it's Americans who have stopped it -- usually having to kill a few of the idiots in the process.

Photo: Happy Greeks celebrate union with their German friends.