Cemetery Civics in Poland

As the European Union hashes out yet another charter, Poland is demanding that six million dead Poles be considered in the allocation of voting rights:

Under the EU's new voting proposal, which aims to streamline decision-making in the now more cumbersome union, the population of a country is critical. The Kaczynski brothers, right-of-centre populists [and leaders of Poland], have argued that 20 per cent of the Polish population was killed, mainly by Nazi Germany, during the war and that this handicap should be compensated for.

"The situation still does not satisfy us," Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the Prime Minister, told the Polish newspaper, Rzeczpospolita today. "We should do everything to push through our proposal or to obtain some other solution that would equally satisfy our ambitions. Either we obtain that, or there will be a veto."

Comments

Jennifer | June 21, 2007, 11:56am | #

Corpses, like slaves, could count as three-fifths of a person, maybe.

thoreau | June 21, 2007, 11:58am | #

See, I always thought that the dead Polish guys voting in Chicago was just a Chicago thing.

But now I'm thinking it's a Polish thing.

crimethink | June 21, 2007, 11:59am | #

Hmm...considering that the city with the second-largest number of Polish speakers in the world is Chicago, I think I see a pattern...

bzial, concerned Republican vote fraud investigator | June 21, 2007, 12:01pm | #

What about dead Polish felons?

MP | June 21, 2007, 12:03pm | #

Sounds like a new way to exercise the ADA.

ADA Lawyer: So why again are we suing Mr. Smith?
Client: Because Mr. Smith's grandfather killed my grandfather when he was only 35. If my grandfather had lived a full life, I would have gotten a kick-ass inheritance. But because of the murder, I was disabled.

VM | June 21, 2007, 12:11pm | #

Well spake, hr. Doktor T.

(and the Polish announcer at Chicago Fire games at Soldier Field sounded really wasted)

jkp | June 21, 2007, 12:11pm | #

Ordinarily, I'd be in favor of anyone trying to stick it to the E.U., but this just sounds a little nutty.

Warren | June 21, 2007, 12:23pm | #

Yeah, good luck with that

Taktix® | June 21, 2007, 12:26pm | #

How about compensating for those killed under the Warsaw Pact?

While we're at it, I want the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rebellion in Ireland to have veto power.

And we can't forget about the Jews slaughtered during the Spanish Inquisition, the Muslims killed in Kosovo, the Carthaginians slaughtered during the Punic Wars, anyone who pissed off Nero or Caligula, victims of the plague...

I think there's enough dead souls spread about Europe that it likely ends up even. I'm sure there was plenty of killing done by even the Polish (see: Jagiellon Dynasty).

lunchstealer | June 21, 2007, 12:27pm | #

The dead have risen and they're voting Prawo i Sprawiedliwość!

Abdul | June 21, 2007, 12:38pm | #

GK Chesterton said that a society's traditions are the voting rights of the dead.

Pig Mannix | June 21, 2007, 12:48pm | #

For some reason this book comes to mind.....

Pro Libertate | June 21, 2007, 1:05pm | #

If I were Polish, I'd ask for cash. Not only did millions of Poles get slaughtered by the Germans and millions more oppressed by the same, the war also resulted in Poland living under the horrors of Soviet rule. Nice.

J sub D | June 21, 2007, 1:48pm | #

We need some sort of statute of limitations or a sunset clause for national/ethnic grievences. I'm of Irish ancestry (Yeah!) so can I hate the English until ??? We have people bitching and complaining about crap that happened more than a millenium ago. Hell, they're killing each other over ancient history. That's way too long to hold a grudge. On the other hand if the injustice happened last year, I can understand a little resentment.
My tentative propsal is 50 years. Not that anyone will pay attention to it, but it does limit who I have to dole out my finite amount of sympathy to.

joe | June 21, 2007, 1:50pm | #

The Kaczynski brothers are a couple of thugs.

Russ 2000 | June 21, 2007, 2:00pm | #

Isn't this the kind of reasoning that gave every state in the US 2 senators?

It doesn't surprise me that with Merkel in charge the Poles would demand reparations of some kind. When a German is in cahrge of "further unifying social and foreign policy across the continent" it makes sense to be extremely leery, but as was the case 70 years ago, the rest of Europe outside of Britain and Poland just goes along with it.

paddy | June 21, 2007, 2:05pm | #

. . . Irish ancestry (Yeah!) so can I hate the English until ???

Scientists have identified a new mental illness call Irish Alzheimer's . . . you forget everything but the grudges.

joe | June 21, 2007, 2:09pm | #

When a German is in charge of "further unifying social and foreign policy across the continent..."

...he can express that goal in a single word?

Eric the .5b | June 21, 2007, 2:13pm | #

How many of those dead Poles were Jews that everyone else enthusiastically helped round up?

That's some chutzpah, right there.

Pro Libertate | June 21, 2007, 2:14pm | #

joe,

Ja. Wiedervereinigung.

grumpy realist | June 21, 2007, 2:32pm | #

This could get really interesting considering who killed whom in Europe's religious wars (and all the other wars as well.)

Germany asking for reparations for the 30-years war? Hot damn.

And I guess the Brits can ask for at least a slice of Normandy and Brittany back.

Considering how many times Russia got invaded by others during its history, I guess they could use this as a good argument to claim a sizeable percentage of Europe.

Where's Jack Vance and The Blue Prince when you need them?

jtuf | June 21, 2007, 2:41pm | #

J sub D,

I agree with a statute of limitations. I just think that 50 years is too short. Global life expectancy is 68. How about 75 or 100 years as the statute of limitation?

Granting extra representation in perpetuity doesn't make sense. Equal representation for each country for say the next 25 years and porportional representation after that could work. They could also set up a bicameral system.

jh | June 21, 2007, 2:46pm | #

I'm all for letting dead people be represented -- so long as they're represented by dead people. Talk about gridlock -- hard to get a quorum. And then there'd be the Nonspeaker of the House ...

thoreau | June 21, 2007, 3:11pm | #

The Kaczynski brothers are a couple of thugs.

Don't they play for the Green Bay Packers?

Or are you referring to somebody else?

Seriously, though, I think the idea of twin brothers running a country could make for an awesome romantic comedy. "What happens when a woman who never follows the news gets a secretarial job in Warsaw and falls in love with her boss's brother?"

LarryA | June 21, 2007, 3:53pm | #

Seriously, though, I think the idea of twin brothers running a country could make for an awesome romantic comedy.

More likely adventure. See The Man in the Iron Mask.

Pro Libertate | June 21, 2007, 4:37pm | #

LarryA,

It is a sin to cite the recent movie "version" of Dumas' The Man in the Iron Mask. It was a travesty, albeit with some really good actors in the roles of the musketeers.

As penance, please go read the unabridged book. In the original French.

Pepe | June 21, 2007, 8:23pm | #

"How many of those dead Poles were Jews that everyone else enthusiastically helped round up?"

3 million of them. The other 3 million were ethnic Poles and other Slavic groups that are largely forgotten about as victims of the holocaust.

And for as many Poles that might have helped the Nazi's round up Jews, there were those that risked their lives to save them. Poland was one of the only Nazi occupied areas where hiding Jews held a penalty of death. Poland has more members listed under "Righteous among the Nations" in Israel, than any other country.

Under Hitler's philosophy, Poles were as much Untermenschen as Jews, and the complete eradication of the Polish people was one of the Nazi's stated goals. They needed the Lebensraum, you know.

Sean Healy | June 22, 2007, 7:50am | #

Under Hitler's philosophy, Poles were as much Untermenschen as Jews, and the complete eradication of the Polish people was one of the Nazi's stated goals.

It must be comforting to believe that, but it's untrue. Apart from maybe the gypsies, the Jews were the only people explicitly scheduled for eradication. Jew-hatred was the touchstone of Nazi ideology; it pervaded everything they did from the 1920s until the end. And while Hitler had diabolical plans for Poland, too - acquisition of territory, enslavement - the death of 3 million Poles was incidental to his program. That's not meant to mitigate the horror, only to make the important distinction between what happened to the Jews and what happened to everyone else.

Seamus | June 22, 2007, 9:28am | #

The Kaczynski brothers are a couple of thugs.

Ted, sure, but don't you think you're a bit unfair to David. David, after all, is the guy who pointed the FBI to Ted.