UKIP set to grab 20% in Euro poll (REJECTING THE EU UPDATE)

The Sunday Times ^ | June 13, 2004 | David Cracknell and David Smith

[KangarooJacqui]

Interesting you should ping me to this, risk (my great-grandparents were Irish). I think of myself as far more American than British (no offence, Ivan) - DESPITE what persists on the top left-hand corner of my national flag (the Union Jack, for those not aware).

Relatives of mine who HAVE been to the UK, though, have been much incensed that the customs and immigration lines at Heathrow have been replaced by signs saying "EU and UK passports only" "and "others", whereas it used to be "UK and Commonwealth passport holders" and "others". Seems having the Queen on the back of your coins doesn't mean anything these days. Vive la Republic Australienne (or at least do what Canada did in the sixties and change that bloody flag!)

[VaBthang4]

Okay... thanks. I grew tired of trying to discern what was actually happening through a cloud of media spin and excuse making.

What if any real impact will all of this have on England first and then secondly, Europe and the EUtopian dream?

[Desdemona]

At the same time, the UKIP did well. Which means that the Conservatives could have done even better if they found some way to appeal to the same audience. In any event, this is a country where approximately half the votes went to conservative parties - this is a large change from the last couple of general elections where Labour won.

So, does this look like a movement that can be sustained or is this a one-election showing of unhappiness.

[NZerFromHK]

It's scary isn't it? From what we read here and some other Euro thread (believe it or not, I have noticed not fewer than 10 Euro posters active on this board), there are lots of pro-EU British people when you could say there weren't even half of them around when Thatcher was the British PM. The way I see it, Scotland is hopeless, Wales is at the crossroads, and even England itself is on shaky grounds now. I have an uneasy feeling that the first nail to the coffin of the historically great British nation is already there and Britain is on its way to become an English-speaking Belgium or Germany.

I agree: time to become a republic (for NZ as well, although I will say no thanks to the Helen Clark model) and change that flag!

[KangarooJacqui]

You can have a big Kiwi on your flag, and we'll have a Kangaroo with the Southen Cross in the left hand corner in ours. :-)

I'm no graphic designer but I'm sure after a couple of hours messing about on PaintShopPro, I could come up with something better than that execrable Union Jack.

[VaBthang4]

"But here's a puzzle. we all know the Bible prophesises that before Jesus returns, there will be a revived Roman Empire which will come out of Europe or Europe-Mediterrenean or the West-Mediterrenean and the Antichrist will come out of this structure. I can't figure out how today's relativist, pacifist, and wimpy socialist Euros will come out and support someone in which the Bible says will trust in nothing but only in materials and military prowness?"

Oh that's easy. The Bible [or those particular scriptures] is simply swept aside as a fairy tale or a scenario that has long ago passed us all.

A. There is no God [save Man himself].
B. There is no Heaven or Hell [save tolerant heaven and intolerant hell].
B. The only serious religion is that of politics.

2 Timothy 3;

1 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them...

...always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth. Men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.

[NZerFromHK]

Even though many think Americans fit the model the most (I admit many Americans are obsessed with money and sin a lot like murder, abortion, and porns), I think what Paul says seem to be literally describing the current state of Europe and Britain:

lovers of themselves - pacifism, chickening out, appeasement of Islam

money - both the traditional materialism and consumerism we know and the newer form of welfare queen mentality

boastful - "We will regain our place as the premier powerdriver of history and the US domination of world economies is over"

proud - see boastful

abusive - crime rate in major European cities is up substantially from 1996. London now has more crimes per capita than New York City.

disobedient to their parents - France. 2003. Heat waves. More than 10,000 died, mainly retired elderly people.

ungrateful - WWII. Response of Europeans today.

unholy - only 5% of Dutch people could be classified as Christians using Bible standards (and if you include Catholics there - using a more biblical criteria the figure would be 2.5%)

without love - divorce rate

unforgiving - see the "my rights" mentality rampant in Britain

slanderous - British tabloids

without self-control - British teenagers are reported to be even more vulgar in behaviours on average than their American counterparts.

brutal - violent crime

treacherous - German and French corporate scandals.

rash - "now, now, now! I want this now!'

conceited - British Labour and Lib Democrat, and their Dutch counterparts on EU constitutions

lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God - Euro 2004. European Championships League. Italian Serie A soccer.

Having a form of godliness but denying its power - socialism tries to "enforce kindness" in the social gospel understanding of Jesus's acts. while it managed to fool many thinking it as compassionate, it breeds far more cold hearts, welfare delinquents, than the free market system.

Need to say more? ;-)

[risk]

Interesting you should ping me to this, risk (my great-grandparents were Irish).

That's nice, although I pinged you because I figured liberty-minded Aussies ought to weigh in on the EU issue.

The argument I hear from GB, Ireland, and commonwealth citizens is that they fear their economies will collapse if they don't participate in the EU. Is that any reason? "We have to give up a degree of our self-rule because we can't maintain our own economic viability alone." That sounds like collectivism to me.

[cyborg]

[risk]

But here's a puzzle. we all know the Bible prophesises that before Jesus returns, there will be a revived Roman Empire which will come out of Europe or Europe-Mediterrenean or the West-Mediterrenean and the Antichrist will come out of this structure.

A civilization's eschatology is fascinating. Civilizations do end. As far as I've seen, most have a religious or mystical explanation for where they arose and where they are going. Often the story ends with their own destruction. But do the stories coincide with the eventualities? One would suspect that in many cases, only hindsight is capable of melding story with reality.

Ours is no exception: we have a variety of Judeo-Christian eschatologies. And of course it's impossible to get Christians to agree on the meanings of Daniel and Revelations, and the other relevant portions of the Bible that discuss the end. Moreover, Jews have their own range of ideas about how it will all end.

I'm somewhere between VaBthang4 and a different point from where NZerFromHK is heading in my point of view. I think the end always comes as a surprise. The cultural epicenter is based on simple components that simply don't allow a civilization to grasp why its downfall is imminent. This downfall can come from an intellectual inability to extend the civilization beyond a self-destructive phase, or its seeds can be either in environmental changes or threats from outside. I would say that Rome experienced all three.

I don't believe we are at the end, especially not in America. Ronald Reagan said that the best years were ahead, and I think he is right! And I think Israel is nowhere near collapse either. That puts our modern Judeo-Christian civilization on unsteady but strong footing.

What are the immediate dangers besides loss of morals and atheism? (I.e. rejecting the tenets of our civilization altogether.) I think those problems have indeed put us at an intellectual crossroads, but they don't necessarily lead to our downfall. Our story is still being told. We're still dynamic, alive, and interested in living. We still want to do what is right, for the most part. Besides, isn't it possible to live in a cultural millieu where the strongly religious and the strongly secular can coexist? I think it can. In fact, I think we have to achieve that goal, and I think it is one that our founding fathers believed was central to the health of our own republic.

If Europe suffers further collapse, it could lead to conflict between western Europeans and the Coalition. This conflict could destroy us, but I think it is not likely to occur. When things get worse, the Franco-German axis will undergo a massive revision as its own peoples realize there has been a mistake. America and Britain will be forgiving at that point. In many ways, I am addressing internal threats of moral lack of clarity and weak policies on immigration. We're finding across the northern hemisphere that if people were created equally, their cultures were not. Under those circumstances we must act to preserve English, French, German, and American "culture." I include the other countries in Europe and free Asia as well.

These issues lead to further economic problems, especially in Europe. But western European countries may have their own Margaret Thatchers just waiting to step forward. I am not too pessimistic about this. I'm an optimist, in fact.

We face major threats from outside, including China and those who would bring a third Caliphate. I think the key to those threats is in western Europe's handling of its own internal crisis. If it can recenter itself economically, Europe won't be tempted to sell out western civilization to the Chinese and continue selling out to the moslems. If it does, then we will all face a deeper crisis. But there, too, I think Americans can and would defend western civilization again.

By all means, keep consulting your religious eschatologies. But I think the right way to conduct our lives is to live the best we can according to the morals we gain from our civilization's underpinnings, and do our best to protect the future for the next generation.

But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.
--- Mark 13:32

[KangarooJacqui]

LOL... nice try, but not quite the Kiwi I was thinking of. I was thinking more along the lines of this:

[KangarooJacqui]

I pinged you because I figured liberty-minded Aussies ought to weigh in on the EU issue. The argument I hear from GB, Ireland, and commonwealth citizens is that they fear their economies will collapse if they don't participate in the EU. Is that any reason? "We have to give up a degree of our self-rule because we can't maintain our own economic viability alone." That sounds like collectivism to me.

I'm not arguing with you on the collectivism issue, but the fact remains that this issue has stuff-all to do with the Commonwealth (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, Fiji and various Pacific Islands, a couple of countries in Africa etc)... have you looked at a map lately? The UK effectively turned its back on us (the Commonwealth) because we are not, by any stretch of the imagination, part of Europe.

That was my issue with being pinged to the thread. The UK told us to go jump in a lake years ago, and whilst there might still be wailing and gnashing of teeth over that on the other side of the Tasman, by and large Australians have just shrugged their shoulders and gotten on with life as a British "colony" in name only. If anything, we look more towards the United States, and have done since the post-World War II era. We might be a small nation in numbers (20 million), but we do know which way the cookie crumbles... and by the looks of it, the British insistence upon the EU is the final crumble of their cookie.

[risk]

I'm in total agreement with you there: the Brits might go all soft on us. I doubt that's going to happen in Australia. I want the Brits on our side, but until the situation is really desperate for either us or themselves, so desperate that they remember that Operation Sealion was only kept from happening by America's assistance with the Lend Lease program, I'm not sure we can count on the Brits. We'll see.

Then again, some stalwart Brits, Aussies, and Poles may be wondering what we're going to do after this next election in November 2004!

[NZerFromHK]

I agree with your points. The way I feel it, the British are going the German way and meanwhile the UK's infatuation with the European ideology has caused lots of confusion over this side of the Tasman. Many are still gnashing over Britain's joining of the then EEC in 1973 as Jacqui said, but I also sense that many Kiwis are still very devoted to Britain, so much so that they are following the fads of British establishment chattering classes with enthusiasm. The British Left all went ballistic over the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the early 1980s? We followed suit in 1984 and enacted the no-nukes law in 1987. The European Union has a appeasement policy? No worries, just implement the same set in wellington.

Kiwis know that they can never be a European Union member (of course, how can you join it when you are situated at the eastern part of the South Pacific Ocean?), they thought they could internalize what they think is the current British sentiment. This, is why NZ looks a lot like an honorary EU member from a distance.

[Atlantic Friend]

I concur with your Irish friends : the EU is a great thing - economically. There's no mistaken the huge progress that were made in every member nation when they entered the European Economic Community. Most of the problems we have now do not come from the EU economic policies, but of the evolution of the EU as something that has begun to compete with the nation-states in terms of sovereignty.

I'm a "sovereignist" - that is, I believe in nation-states, which until now are the sole viable political entity and also enjoy a solid democratic basis. I doubt, given Europe history, culture, languages and traditions, that we will ever be able to go over that phase. And I'm not sure we'd benefit from it, because what made Europe the dominant seat of power from 1400 to 1800 was the internal competition, the race between the regional powers to ascend to regional or global dominance.

No jingoism there, the days where that race resulted in conflict is behind us, because the Western democracies have built a world where their competition is played differently, and where zero-sum games, while not entirely impossible, are now too expensive and not cost-efficient enough to be contemplated by rational leaders. Or by their citizens.

I want France's foreign policy to be decided by France's national interests, and I suppose Polish citizens would also prefer deciding things for themselves instead of having a French or Irish or Hungarian official overruling their elected officials.

Being a sovereignist does not mean I think France, Italy, Poland or Hungary should not talk about their respective interests or plan a common policy in such sensitive areas as outsourcing jobs, inter-EU immigration or agricultural subsidies. But I really think the nations-states should step up to the plate and reclaim what is really their own.

[VaBthang4]

The word is quite clear as to the end times for the entire planet. As to individual societies, it gets into some and completely ignores others.

The Bible seems to paint in broad strokes concerning the end of this age. But the strokes are telling in that they discuss the things that are 'important'[relative] from God's perspective and not our own.

Reality is that the World is opposed to truth. Anybody standing for it will be opposed to one degree or another. If you have an entire nation attempting to stand for truth then it to will be opposed...and if the antithetical perspective is desperate enough, it will oppose it violently/militarily.

As to America's impact on end time events. The Word mentions none. This for me is quite profound. Adding that to the reality that Europe itself seems to impose it's will on Israel and the end of the math seems quite clear.

[risk]

I really think the nations-states should step up to the plate and reclaim what is really their own.

Thanks for the post, AF. I think the small but significant voter "cold feet" around the EU toward its endorsement is a sign that people aren't satisfied with the issues surrounding sovereignty; I think it could relate to the lack of progress in that direction. For example, if I were living in England and the Euro were to replace its currency, I would miss the British pound, for example. It expresses history and nationality, and every citizen whose hands it contacts is reminded where he is and why that's important.

Furthermore, I don't think the EU constitution is a trivial issue. It has sovereignty implications. As you so aptly put it, "[T]he evolution of the EU as something that has begun to compete with the nation-states in terms of sovereignty." I think the challenge of these states is to focus on improved freedom and commerce -- both among themselves and for other people outside the EU. To the extent that the EU can encourage those goals, it can benefit Europeans of every member country. To the extent that it serves as a Trojan horse for socialism, collectivism, and the decay of European culture, I want to fight it, and put everything I can lend Europe into fighting it. Which will it be? Americans are not so sure. If Europeans aren't so sure, then isn't there a lot more work to do?

I realize that to the average "multiculturalist" European, there is no risk involved with unlimited immigration, diluted empire, and a resignation to one-continent government. But in the days after the 60th anniversary of D-day, this American is not so willing to go in that direction. I would like to stir up a Reagan Revolution of sorts in Europe. I want to reignite an enthusiasm for independence from government, passion for the Anglo-Saxon definition of freedom, and the respect for human dignity and life that fueled the American revolution, the industrial revolution, and most recently unified us in opposition to Hitler and Stalin. I want Europeans to put down their lattes for just long enough to realize that WWII is still being fought out in our own minds, and we could lose it if we're not careful. This surreal sense of freedom and economic "independence" we share across the northern hemisphere, including Japan, may not last if we do not revisit the formative principles that set us on a course for modernity and intellectual progress.

We could lose it all to apathy and indifference. The arrogance of humanism, and of assuming that history is continually progressive will end all that we have paid so dearly in blood over the past 400 years to achieve. I am not at all certain that an EU is going to help us rekindle the spirit of watchfulness and guardianship that we most need now. In that sense, I find it irrelevant.

Our American universities are filled with Marxist professors who detest dead, white European intellectuals. Must we have the collapse of their homelands, as well? I want the western half of the northern hemisphere to continue leading the world toward Liberte, egalite, and fraternite, only perhaps with a little less Rousseau and a little more Benjamin Franklin. With what we've seen in the last 35 years, I think it's safe to say that our pan-Atlantic obligation to fan the flames of freedom is on shaky ground. It's one reason we are so lucky to have you online with us and striving for a vantage point from which both sides of the Atlantic can see the way forward together. As we have often discussed, the war for hearts and minds is also being fought at home, right here on our own university campuses, in our own media, and in our own primary schools.

I'm sure Margaret Thatcher would say something about there being no such thing as society. And she would say that the battle is being lost at the family level. American, British, French, and German families should be raising their young to idealize a bright future for the separate nations of the North Atlantic separately on an individual basis and together on an economic one; there is a lot to share culturally, as well as to appreciate in our differences. But the EU will fail if it doesn't take the latter into consideration.

Ten years ago now, I was thrilled by the music of Zbigniew Preisner in Krzysztof Kieslowski's of Rouge, a film that indirectly addressed the groundbreaking effort to create the EU. The central character's husband had been a composer who was writing a symphony to celebrate the inauguration of the union, but he was killed in a car accident. The optimism of the early 1990s was very strong in this film, and it was contagious. Was I for the EU? Then, I can say yes. Now? Many of the assumptions we all were making then have fallen away. I now have an even deeper sense of optimism, but it comes with the painful knowledge that history is not over, and war is always only as far away as a free peoples' unwillingness to sacrifice to preserve it. Today I think there is a global union of those who strive for freedom. We know each other, and we know ourselves. It transcends states, and it transcends cultures. Today, I would take more of a lesson from the Poles in their struggle for their freedom. I wonder what would Kieslowski have Van den Budenmayer composing today?

Valentine contemplating the music of her lost husband.

[risk]

A correction: it was Juliette Binoche as "Julie" in Blue, not Red. (I guess it's been a while!)

At that link you'll find the words to the music composed for the EU. I think you'll find it in stark contrast to what has happened since 1984, but not totally.

1 Corinthians, 13:1-13:
Song for the Unification of Europe - Zbigniew Preisner
CHORUS:

''Though I speak with the tongues of angels,

If I have not love...

My words would resound with but a tinkling of a cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophecy...

And understand all mysteries...

and all knowledge...

And though I have all faith

So that I could remove mountains,

if I have not love...

I am nothing.

Love is patient, full of goodness;

Love tolerates all things,

Aspires to all things,

Love never dies,

while the prophecies shall be done away,

tongues shall be silenced,

knowledge shall fade...

thus then shall linger only

faith, hope, and love...

but greatest of these...

is love. ''