American Thought Leaders - How Western Europe is Copying Communist China’s Policies: MEP Cristian Terhes

Episode Date: May 4, 2024

“How is it possible that the churches, or many churches, decided to close their doors exactly during those times when they were supposed to have their doors open?”Cristian Terhes is a Romanian-Greek Catholic priest and a Member of the European Parliament, representing Romania as a member of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group. Growing up under communism made him vigilant against creeping totalitarianism.“You will have unelected officials, bureaucrats, often unknown bureaucrats, deciding on behalf of your state. And if they decide that something is wrong for the people, they will not be accountable because you don’t even know who those people are,” says MEP Terhes.In this episode, he shares a warning about the consolidation of power he sees in international bodies like the European Union and the World Health Organization.“We are witnessing the ‘Chinafication’ of Europe. And I gave the example of the digital COVID certificate, but it did not stop there,” says MEP Terhes.We discuss the cultural and political transformation of Europe since the start of the COVID pandemic, from radical gender policy to the erosion of national constitutions.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

How is it possible that the churches decided to close their doors exactly during those times when they were supposed to have their doors open? Cristian Terhes is both a priest and a member of the European Parliament representing Romania in the European Conservatives and Reformists group. Growing up under communism made him vigilant of creeping totalitarianism. You will have unelected officials, bureaucrats, often unknown bureaucrats, deciding on behalf of your state. And if they decide that something is wrong for the people, they will not be accountable

because you don't even know who those people are. In this episode, he shares a warning about the consolidation of power he sees in international bodies, like the EU and the World Health Organization. We are witnessing the Chinafication of Europe. And I gave the example of the World Health Organization. We are witnessing the Chinification of Europe. And I gave the example of the digital COVID certificate. But it did not stop there.

This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Christian Terhes, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Thanks for having me. So a lot of people are familiar with you as someone who stood up against all sorts of COVID policy, like mandates, you know, questions about some of the any forced protocols that were actually happening. Now, the other part a lot of people aren't familiar with, perhaps, is that you're also an American. So, you know, before we start, why don't you just tell me a little bit about your background? I was born in 1978 during the ugliest times in communist Romania. I was 11 years old when communism collapsed in Romania.

And because of the religious position that my family had, I'm part of the Romanian Greek Catholic community from Romania, which was the only church abolished by communists in 1948 in Romania for its anti-communist positions. We were persecuted for that reason, but we had a second reason, for political reason. Members of my family were part of a national conservative party before 1946, and for that reason they were persecuted by communists as well. On top of that, in 1969, an uncle of mine, the brother of my grandfather, fled Romania. He swam over the Danube River to Yugoslavia. From Yugoslavia, he went to Austria, from Austria to Germany, and from Germany to the States. So my family was kind of

constantly watched by the Securitate, the equivalent of KGB in the USSR. This is how I grew up. After the fall of communism in 1989, you know, we tried to do whatever we considered that it's appropriate. After I finished high school, I went to the seminary. And then in 2002, I immigrated to the United States. I got married here. My wife, who is a Romanian-American, she was already in the States since 1997 and I've been in the US for 17 years until 2019 when I was elected in the European Parliament. In

2006 I went back to Romania and I was ordained a priest. I came back to the States. I opened a church in California in Tustin and I served my community there until I left for the European Parliament. In the meanwhile, I worked as a programmer for a medical company. That was kind of the job, I would say, that I had. And I was doing all of this on the church side, and I was also heavily involved in the civic advocacy for human rights and religious freedom in Romania.

So with this background, I would say, I stepped in the European Parliament in 2019. And I have to tell you that I was kind of concerned initially that, oh my God, you know, this is a new job, you have to learn so much stuff, you know, how to read the budget, how to do this, how to do that. And then at the end of 2019, the COVID pandemic started. And then I realized that just focusing and talking about basic fundamental rights, it was something that nobody else was talking about.

And I have to tell you that living for so long in the US, I have dual citizenship. I'm a registered Republican in California, one of the few, I would say. But I was constantly listening after 2002 to many of the conservative commentators in the States. And one of the commentators, I would say, that kind of helped me understand better the American society and, you know, all this struggle, Warsaw Rastrelimbo. Everything that I experienced, I would say, under communism helped me clearly deciding what is right, or not only deciding, knowing, I would say, what is right and what is wrong.

So when I had the chance to take a stand and defend what is right, I was not afraid to do it. How is it that you were actually elected out of the United States into the European Parliament? Just if you could just clarify that for me. That's something that many people asked. As I mentioned earlier, I was very involved in issues related to human rights and religious freedom and defense of defending democracy and rule of law in Romania. And because of this, I was very well known in Romania. So in 2019, one of the parties in Romania, in order to get more votes and get more seats in the parliament, they ran a survey who exactly they

could have on their list outside of their party base that they could have there and then bring more votes. And I was that person. So they offered me this position. I was on the fourth position on their list. And this was a social democratic party. I was not a social democrat ever. So the agreement that I had with them, you know, after, you know, deeply considering that offer, you know, I had to talk to the church because being an active priest, I mean, in the Catholic churches, you know, it's kind of very difficult for an active priest to also be involved in politics. I had to talk to my church to relieve me of my duties while I'm in the public square, I would say. The bishop said, well, I will give you a waiver, you know,

and I said, no, I don't want that because I'm elected by everybody. And I'm in that office, you know, at the end of the day, I serve my people regardless of their religious denomination. When I preach at the altar, when I serve my mass, I do it for my constituency, let's say, you know, but when I do what I do in the European Parliament, I do it for everybody. So I don't want the Romanians who are not sharing my faith to be kind of offended, maybe by, you know, being an active priest serving in the Parliament. So we got to that agreement and a discussion that I had with the party was, look, I will stay a year in your party because in the European Parliament, it's a system where based on how many members you have,

then you get certain positions, you know, administrative positions in the parliament. And after a year I will join the conservative group, which I did. So I'm currently in Romania, the president of the National Romanian Conservative Party, which is a very young party that we just started. And we are working to explain to the Romanians the importance of the conservative values, and we already have a lot of people who are joining our party. So kind of watching the stuff that I've done in the parliament

for the past three, in the European Parliament for the past three years, they say, well, we trust you, we trust you values you know we want to join your party so this is where we are right now fascinating when did you first realize with the pandemic that something was off i had some friends you know who told me that in november of, the Taiwanese authorities notified WHO about a virus that was kind of deadly or presumably deadly in China. And I knew about that in December of 2019, the mainstream media started to talk about it. And then I started asking around. You know, I was not so much aware of what WHO was and what WHO was doing and stuff. So out of the blue, everybody was talking about WHO, WHO.

Obviously, then I started searching more, looking more into it. And I always ask that question, why WHO did not say anything? I remember in the month of January, February 2020, even the current general director of WHO, Tedros, which later on I found out that he was part of a Marxist organization and supported by USSR during the Cold War. He did not say anything and when Trump in the US, he was calling all the time that this is the Chinese virus, the Chinese virus, you know, he was trying to kind of calm down people, telling them that this is not a deadly virus. So out of the blue, in March of 2020, the narrative changed.

From a non-deadly virus, it became the most deadliest virus in the world, and everybody has to be locked down. And then when they said, well, the solution is the vaccine, and then the government is going to sign these contracts with this pharmaceutical companies to purchase we did not know at that time how many pieces of vaccines they will purchase and I'll get to that and we will give these vaccine for free if you don't get these these vaccine for freedom you will not be able to exercise certain fundamental

rights, like it happened in Europe, the right to travel, the right to go to work, the right to... Then I said, hold on, something is mali here, you know. Ronald Reagan used to say that the worst words that you can hear is, I'm from the government and I'm here to help you. Well, that's the kind of words that we heard there, you know. We are from the government and I'm here to help you. Well, that's the kind of words that we heard there. We are from the government. We just purchased some very good vaccines for you. And if you don't take them, we will force them into your body. So considering my background, I would say, and my strong faith in individual liberty and national sovereignty, when I saw what was happening, I could see it, that the end goal is to suppress people's rights, people's liberties, and nevertheless, the national sovereignty of the European member states. And this is the reason why I like slowly, I, you know, started speaking up. So then I talked to

my colleagues, we had other three colleagues that, you know, kind of started this movement in the parliament. We said we got to go and talk to the media. And that's when we had the first press conference and kind of we exposed many of these facts. But I would say everything started with December 2019 when I found out that the Taiwanese authorities notified WHO about this virus. They did not do anything. And knowing that fact, looking at the, on how all the, you know, saga unveiled, it's, I realized something is mali and then, you know, we had to do our- Like that something is very, just very wrong with this whole picture.

Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense. On top of that, as an elected official, I mean, I see, because I'm in that position now, I have to vote on certain things that I realize it's affecting people's lives, you know, exposing people at risk. So I tried raising these questions, you know, even in private discussions. And they said, well, yeah, we agree with you. I said, well, take a stand. And they said, many of them said, and I quote, the media is going to crucify us. I said, man, doesn't matter. Imagine people, you cannot play with people's lives. And, you know, I was one of the very few people and very few members of the European Parliament who refused to play with people's lives. And, you know, I was one of the very few people and very few members of the European Parliament

who refused to play with people's lives. At the end of the day, if they want to get the vaccine, I don't have anything against it. But as the Oviedo Convention says, as the European Charter of Fundamental Rights states, such a decision should be based on a free and informed consent. There is a point at which this digital certificate, this is what you're talking about, this coercive measures, right, was being adopted. So tell me about your experience,

you had to deal with that directly, right? You were voting for it. And I think it was April of 2021. At that time, many of us were working from home. We were told not to come to Brussels. We were voting online. And we got this message that we have to go to Brussels and talk about this urgent procedure that has to be adopted in order to adopt the digital COVID certificate in an urgent procedure. And then I started asking questions. What is an urgent procedure?

How is this done? Because it never happened, at least in my mandate. And they said, well, we don't have time to debate. The legislation has to be voted fast. And I said, hey, hold on a second. What do you mean we cannot debate this? So when we read the draft, I realized that people will not be able to exercise certain rights unless they are vaccinated or tested or they show proof of vaccination.

And all of this will be done in an electronic system. You'll have a QR code on your phone. And with this, you will be able to open certain doors. If you don't have it, then you will not be able to do that. And when we had that initial meeting, someone from the European Commission came and tried to kind of persuade us to vote in favor of this piece of legislation. And I asked the person if someone can die after being injected with this so-called vaccine. Because as it happened, usually with the medical product, you know, you might have counterindications, as they call them. Sure. Every product has.

Exactly. So, I mean, you cannot pass a law to force everybody to take a piece of medicine. It just doesn't make any sense because probabilistically someone might have a side effect. So, I mean, we cannot play with people's lives like that. And this is what I asked them. Can someone die after being injected with this medical product? And the person said,

yeah, but look how many people we save? I said, that was not the question. Can someone die after being injected with this medical product? And they say, well, they also can die after getting Advil. I said, maybe that is true, but the difference is we are not voting a piece of legislation in which we are forced to get Advil in order to travel via plane or to cross the border from one country to another. So I raised my question, can someone die? And they said, well, probabilistically they can die because you have an adverse effect and stuff. So I said, in this case, I'm against it. I will vote against it and I will be speaking

up against it. And they said, why? I said, because we are not God here. We cannot play God, you know, being in an elected office and play a Russian roulette with people's lives. I said, our job, if you think that this product is so good, then persuade people to take it, but do not force them to take it because you don't know. I mean, it's absurd for us as elected officials to vote on prescriptions, you know, for different illnesses. It's absurd.

Then let's get off doctors. Why should we have a doctor, you know, doctors if we have to agree and negotiate in a political parliament the kind of medical treatment people should take, you know, against an illness? It's absolutely absurd. At that point, I was in the minority, and this group that I kind of represented, we were in the minority. But at the end of the day, the time, unfortunately, I would say, proved us right. And we are where we are right now.

In the European Union, for example, just to understand the situation right now, countries with the highest vaccination rate have the highest mortality rate. So five years before the pandemic, they came up with an average of deaths, and then they compared the average of deaths before the pandemic with the average of deaths per month after the pandemic. So now, in many Western European countries, more people are dying now than they died during the pandemic. So now in many Western European countries, more people are dying now than they died during the pandemic. Countries with the highest vaccination rate

have the highest mortality rate. Countries with the lowest vaccination rate, like Romania, have the lowest mortality rate. So who can explain this? Why does Romania have such a low vaccination rate? First of all, I would say the main reason was that people did not trust the government. I mean, we've been through a totalitarian regime and when the government says, well, I have this, you know, wonderful thing for you, you take it and you will be saved as like caution i would say from the people and then

i would say that myself and my partners political partners from another party from from the romanian parliament what i was doing in the european parliament they were doing in the in the romanian parliament so we were constantly using you know different procedures just to find out what was going on they used in the romanian parliament all the all the loopholes in the rules of procedures just to postpone the the piece of legislation that was kind of mandating the the people to be vaccinated we took it to the streets okay so when people start calling and say look if you vote for this i will not ever vote for you and for your party anymore so they realize that you know the majority of the population are against it and they refuse to pass that piece of legislation so for

that reason we did not have a mandate in roman, one of the fewest European Union countries that didn't have a mandate. So whomever wanted to be vaccinated, they had the option to do it. I mean, we had like 30-some percent of the people being vaccinated in Romania. But the reality right now, the data is showing that the countries with the highest vaccination rate have the highest mortality rate. Countries with the lowest vaccination rate have the highest mortality rate, countries with the lowest vaccination rate have the lowest mortality rate. What was the reaction of fellow EU Parliament members to your position? Depends. Members of the Parliament from the Western European countries, they looked at us and they said, you guys are unbelievable. You are against science.

You are risking people's lives. Are you telling us that our governments want to kill us? So I remember I talked to someone from Finland. I mean, for them, and Sweden, for them, it's like unconceivable. It was unconceivable that the government could pass something that would jeopardize the life of their own citizens. They haven't been through a totalitarian regime. We've been through that. That's the reason why we were more cautious. I mean, out of the four people that started the first press conference, myself was from Romania, Eastern Europe. Ivan Sinčić was from Croatia, Eastern Europe.

Christine Anderson, she was from Germany, but she came from East Germany. And then we have Francesca Donato from Italy, who was a former judge. So she knew, kind of, you know, she had the proper values, I would say, when it came to human rights and stuff. So we started this, but I have to tell you that now many, many of our colleagues are approaching us and telling us that we were right because they have adverse effects. And I told some of them, I said, you should go public and tell everybody about it. Well, you know, it's going to look bad. At the European Parliament, you can go to any private hospital, you know, and get whatever treatment you want. The European Parliament will pay for it.

And I told them, I said, the majority of the people do not have the coverage that you have. So at least use your experience and tell them, you know, especially for women to go and test themselves and stuff. Can I just touch on this a little bit? This is super interesting, you know, because most European countries, certainly Western European countries have, you know, basically medical coverage is guaranteed by, you is guaranteed by the government and so forth. But you're saying at the European Parliament you get some sort of extra coverage. Yes. Just briefly tell me about that.

Yeah. I mean, they will cover everything. Because you realize when you have a socialized medical system that everybody could use for free, that's not enough for everybody. So if you give everything up for free, everybody will take it, but when you really need it, there's not enough for you. So that is what is happening in many European countries, including Romania.

So this is the reason why people with money, for example, they prefer to go to private hospitals and to private clinics. Well, in this case, the European Parliament is paying for everything. This is one of the problems, for example, that many people have, even in my country, Romania, because many of the hospitals, for example, were built under the communist regime. Many of them are not modern anymore, I would say, according to the modern standards. So a lot of politicians, they go to different countries, to Western European countries to get these better medical treatments, I would say, while the regular people go to those bad hospitals.

So let's talk about the media. Now you've twice mentioned people saying, well, I don't know if I'm going to do that because the media is going to crucify me for this, right? This seems to be, you know, an important theme here. I mean, it's not just in Romania. It's not just in the European Parliament, obviously. But tell me about that. Well, the role of the media is, especially in democracy, is to properly inform the people. It's to be a watchdog for the people, not against them, not to be like a PR company for the government, but to actually watch what is happening in the government and properly inform the population. Well, what we saw happening during the pandemic,

media did exactly the opposite of what the media is supposed to be doing in a democracy. And I emphasize this, in a democracy. Because also in countries like China, North Korea, Russia, communist Romania, we also had the media. But the media was not doing what it's supposed to be doing in a democracy. The media was indoctrinating people. The media was not doing what they're supposed to be doing in a democracy. The media was indoctrinating people. The media was lying to people. The media was misleading people.

And the media was crucifying people if they had to say anything against the government. So we have these two roles of the media in a democracy and in a totalitarian regime. And for me, coming from a former communist country, seeing that the media in the West was behaving exactly like the media in a totalitarian regime, that for me was inconceivable. Not only that they were passive when they should have been active into asking questions and stuff, but they were very active into hammering people who were

asking the right questions. Maybe the questions were not right. It doesn't matter. In a free society, we have the right to ask questions, whatever questions we want. On top of that, they were hammering people, raising serious concerns. This is the reason why, for example, when I found out about the International COVID summit, as it was called initially, after the first edition in Rome, I talked to my colleague Ivan Sinchigen. We said, well, let's bring those people in the European Parliament. Let's give them a stage where they can present their findings. Because again, I'm not a medical expert. If anybody's looking at my statements, I never ever, at least at the beginning of the pandemic,

ever mentioned anything about how bad the vaccine is or how bad or good the vaccine is or what's in the vaccine because I don't know that. I was relying strictly on legal arguments and logical arguments. That was my strength, I would say. And for that reason, nobody could criticize me claiming that I'm an anti-vax or something like that, because I never said people should not be injected with that medical product in particular. But I said, I want to hear

what all these experts have to say. And that's when we have the International COVID Summit number three in the European Parliament in Brussels, talking to them and talking to my colleagues from the Romanian Parliament. The decision was to have the fourth edition in Bucharest. Inside of the Romanian Parliament, it was important to have it in Parliament because that's where the legislative body is. And then in Bucharest, the decision was to have the fifth edition of this ICS. Now it's called the International Crisis Summit here in Washington, D.C. So at the beginning of the pandemic, when they talked about these vaccines, they said you get one shot and you will have immunity and then you're safe.

So many people believe that narrative and they go on shot then they got ill again infected again then they got the second one then they said well you need the booster then the second booster the third booster the fourth booster and out of the blue they changed the narrative they did not use that these injections are providing you immunity, but protection. That's a totally different thing. In the U.S., for example, CDC changed the definition of a vaccine from providing you immunity to providing you protection. In 24 hours or 48 hours, the entire mainstream media in the world, when they refer to these medical products,

they all said well they provide you protection they provide you protection so a journalist that is supposed to be seeking for the truth and exposing the truth how come out of the blue just change that narrative and embrace the narrative without explaining why and hammering people who are asking the question, why? I would not say that all of them were like bought off, but clearly the majority of the mainstream media outlets or the leadership or the people who own them had an interest in this. And what we find out now, later on,

is that different NGOs, like the one from Bill Gates or the one that Bill Gates and Melinda Gates have, or Soros or other people, paid many of these media outlets. So it was more convenient for many of them just to copy and paste and repeat the same narrative instead of actually doing the job that they were supposed to be doing, you know, to seek the truth and expose the truth and nothing but the truth. It seems to me like something changed. Something has changed. Even the top journalism schools in America, for example, they teach what's called activist journalism. Yes. Which, you know,

some people would describe as propaganda creation. But there's also this strange kind of profound lack of curiosity. As you're talking to me, I keep thinking back to that. You would think people would wonder. Well, they turn a blind eye, I would say, to everything that happened. And this is what we need to understand in a democratic society. We need to go back to the basis. We need to understand the importance of freedom. Freedom, period.

And this freedom has multiple ramifications. You know, freedom of thoughts, freedom of movement, freedom of whatever, of worship. I mean, imagine during that time, and I'm talking right now from a perspective of a priest. How is it possible that the churches, or many churches, decided to close their doors exactly during those times when they were supposed to have their doors open. I saw what happened in Italy, for example. I was in northern Italy, for example, on behalf of this COVID committee from the European Parliament. I mean, imagine that we were over there in an official capacity to see what happened and how the pandemic started and stuff.

Myself and my colleague, Christine Anderson, we were not allowed to enter the hospital because we were not vaccinated. And we are talking about 2020, the beginning of 2023. So we could not enter in an official capacity a hospital in Italy to talk to those doctors to tell us what happened in the beginning of the pandemic because that's something very interesting that happened there because we were not vaccinated so i asked the security guard so if a patient comes and he's not vaccinated then what do you do well they have to be vaccinated

i don't accept you know this kind of society to be imposed around me for and for as long i will as long as i will be in that office, I will fight for freedom for all and for restore of democracy and liberty in Europe. You said something very interesting at one point, and you described what was happening in Europe broadly as a Chinification or someone else may call it Sinicization. Or another way to describe it would be Europe with Chinese characteristics. Exactly.

Which is to use the language of the Chinese communists. But tell me about this. The current leadership of the European Union, which is led by Ursula von der Leyen, or I used to call her Ursula von der Leyen, or I used to call her Ursula von der Leyer. In her position as the president of the European Commission, since she is in this office since 2019, she's pushing for all these policies that are kind of,

were pretty much copied and pasted from the Chinese society. I was the first one who called her to say in the European Parliament that under the leadership of Ursula von der Leyen, we are witnessing the Chinafication of Europe. And I gave the example of the digital Covid certificate. But it did not stop there. In 2019, for example, when she ran to be elected as president of the European Commission in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, she said the following, and I quote, emissions, carbon emissions, but that she said emissions must have a price that will change our behavior, end quote. And when she said that, and I was a newly elected member in the parliament,

I remember what happened in California with all of these laws that we see right now, that this golden state is pretty much destroyed by the parliament. I remember what happened in California with all of these laws that we see right now that this golden state is pretty much destroyed by the left. And this is the reason why I did not vote for her to be president of the European Commission. But since then, I kept an eye on all of these policies and regulations that were proposed by the European Commission under the pretext of fighting the carbon emissions. But she said it in 2019, the objective of all of these policies is not to save the planet, but to change our behavior. So it's a social construct. It has nothing to do with

ecology, with saving the planet. It's talking and it's referring to a system that will fully control the population, to force the population or to educate or to domesticate people, as they used to call it, in a certain way. And we saw that happening during the pandemic. I'll give you the example of Italy. Italy has many islands. When Draghi was the prime minister of Italy, he passed this legislation in the national law that if you don't have the digital COVID certificate, you cannot use mass public transportation. So for us inland, mass public transportation means either a train or a bus or whatever.

Well, for those people on the islands, the mass public transportation was the ferry boat that was taking them from the island to the mainland. Well, they could not use that and they could not go anywhere. So they were like entrapped. And I had people, because we have many Romanians working in Italy, I had families, Romanian families from Italy calling me, crying that they had to make a decision, you know, at night during the dinner table, which one of the parents should be vaccinated in order to be able to get out and, you know, go to work. Well, I don't want that kind of Europe. It's unconceivable. What do you mean that you cannot work if you don't inject something in your body? That's the reason why in Europe we have the so-called Nuremberg

Code. Then you have the Oviedo Convention, which is clearly stipulating that no one should be forced to a medical treatment unless the person is decided based on a free and informed consent. Then we have this provision mentioned in the European Charter of Basic Fundamental Rights. So, I mean, there's, there's, we have legal guarantees. But we saw, what we saw happening during the pandemic, it's the total reverse of those guarantees. And one by one, under the line, the European Union is copying these policies from China. I mean, in China, there is a social credit system where you cannot do certain things. You cannot use your bank account if you write something online against the government in euro. If you criticize the government, then there are people already who have problems. You know, their social media

accounts are shut down. Their videos are deleted from the internet. I mean, we see all of this. You've been very against the WHO pandemic treaty and the international health regulations that are being proposed. This is something that's very concerning here in the U.S. It's concerning in Canada for many people. Why is this all happening? As a parenthesis, I was very reluctant, for example, to all these theories. Some people are calling them conspiracy theories about World Economic Forum. But when the pandemic started

and I started talking about what was going on, I received many messages, you know, and private messages from people and say, hey, stuff they are criticizing, you know, was mentioned a few years ago in the WEF, whatever, summit somewhere. Then I start looking, and I realize, oh, my God. I mean, in the European Parliament in the years of 2020, 2021, 2022, there's regulations proposed by the European Commission that are copied from whatever they mentioned at WEF a few years before. So, I mean, in one case, let's say it's a coincidence,

but when you have too many of this, then you're raising your eyebrows. So, going back to what was going on during that period, I looked into the WHO institution, I would say, and that's when they came up with this proposal of a treaty, because it's not ratified yet, but it's in the early stage, I would say, that will force pretty much the countries that are ratifying it to move a lot of the decision-making process from their national authorities to WHO. So when WHO, for example, is stating that there's a pandemic, they can exercise many of the authorities above that or on behalf of the state. You will have unelected officials, bureaucrats, often unknown bureaucrats deciding on behalf of your state.

And if they decide that something that is wrong for the people, they will not be accountable because you don't even know who those people are. In Europe right now, for example, they are imposing a new vision of the European treaties where there's no supremacy of the national constitution. In other words, as in the States, for example, when you want to become a U.S. citizen, you have to learn a hundred questions. And one of the questions is, what is the constitution? And the answer is the supreme law of the land. Well, imagine that in Europe, the new vision of the European Commission is that the Constitution is not the supreme law of the land.

There's the European law which is above the Constitution. Well you cannot have anything above the Constitution. Even an international treaty or an international convention when you ratify it that convention cannot be against your constitution because exactly as you have an NGO, for example, with certain bylaws and without those bylaws the NGO cannot operate, it's the same thing with the state. So what we see right now happening is the transfer of many of these powers that the national states and national governments have to these international institutions that are in control of people that we don't even know.

In the case of WHO, for example, the majority of the budget is not coming from the states. It's coming from private entities, including Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. So we get to the point, why in the world someone would accept something like that? But this is something that has to be constantly exposed. And I'm sure that the more people will hear about it, the more they will educate themselves. And I hope they will take a stand and ask their elected officials in different parliaments or Congress or whatever to vote against the ratification of such a treaty. What do you think is going on?

Well, I mean, I'm looking at what Karl Schwab said. They are all talking about a global government and a unique government. But we live right now in a kind of a world order that is post-Second World War that started with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, which states that all men are created equal in dignity and rights. They want to change this world order that we used to live in, where the individual is more important than the state, and then the government and the bureaucrats into a new world where the

government, where the unelected officials, where the bureaucrats are more important than the people. And this is exactly the Marxist ideology. Since we are here in the States, you know, if you look historically every time when the U.S. went through a crisis, you will hear many commentators constantly claiming and stating, you know, what was the idea of the founding fathers? So what was the vision of the founding fathers? And I think the Western world has to do that because they all talk about future, about these, you know, futuristic plans. We want this world, we want this, but okay, hold on a second. Where are we? Where we are and where we are heading? Because you have a flower, you cut the flower, you give it to a woman, for example,

it's not going to last for long, a day or two, three days, then it's going to die. It's the same with a tree. You need deep roots in order for that tree to survive any kind of storm. So what they are doing right now, they are cutting these roots. So the next generations are not even realizing who they are because they don't know who they were. So in order to control the future, it's enough not necessarily to control the present, but to cut the connection with the past.

So for us in the West, it's very important that every generation will be reminded about the importance of individual freedom, national sovereignty, respect for fundamental rights, supremacy of national constitution. Any final thoughts as we finish?

Freedom is not free and freedom is just one generation away from extinction. And I would say it's the job, the duty, the call and the obligation of our generation to fight for freedom, not only for our generation, but for the next generations. Well, Christian Terhes, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you all for joining member of European Parliament Christian Terhes and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.