Posted on 05/29/2005 2:39:29 AM PDT by xjcsa
Following Sunday's vote in France, on Wednesday Dutch voters get to express their opinion on the proposed "European Constitution." Heartening to see democracy in action, notwithstanding the European elite's hysterical warnings that, without the constitution, the continent will be set back on the path to Auschwitz. I haven't seen the official ballot, but the choice seems to be: "Check Box A to support the new constitution; check Box B for genocide and conflagration."
Alas, this tactic doesn't seem to have worked. So, a couple of days before the first referendum, Jean-Claude Juncker, the "president" of the European Union, let French and Dutch voters know how much he values their opinion:
"If at the end of the ratification process, we do not manage to solve the problems, the countries that would have said No, would have to ask themselves the question again," "President" Juncker told the Belgian newspaper Le Soir.
Got that? You have the right to vote, but only if you give the answer your rulers want you to give. But don't worry, if you don't, we'll treat you like a particularly backward nursery school and keep asking the question until you get the answer right. Even America's bossiest nanny-state Democrats don't usually express their contempt for the will of the people quite so crudely.
Juncker is a man from Luxembourg, a country two-thirds the size of your rec room, and, under the agreeably clubby EU arrangements, he gets to serve as "president" without anything so tiresome as having to be voted into the job by "ordinary people." His remarks capture precisely the difference between the new Europe and the American republic.
Sick in bed a couple of months back, I started reading A Declaration of Interdependence: Why America Should Join the World by Will Hutton, and found it such a laugh I was soon hurling my medication away and doing cartwheels round the room. Hutton was a sort of eminence grise to Tony Blair, at least in his pre-warmongering pre-Bush-poodle phase. Hutton is the master of the dead language of statism that distinguishes the complacent Europhile from a good percentage of Americans, not all of them Republicans.
That said, even as a fully paid-up Eurobore, Hutton's at pains to establish how much he loves America: "I enjoy Sheryl Crow and Clint Eastwood alike, delight in Woody Allen . . ."
I'd wager he's faking at least two of these enthusiasms. As for the third, Woody Allen is the man the French government turned to for assistance with a commercial intended to restore their nation's image in America after anger at post-9/11 Gallic obstructionism began to have commercial implications for France. In the advertisement, Woody said he disliked the notion of renaming French fries "freedom fries." What next, he wondered. Freedom kissing?
Despite the queasy mental image of Woody French-kissing, I'm with him on that one: If you don't like the phrase "French fries," there's a perfectly good British word: "chip." It conveniently covers both the menu item, and what the French have on their shoulder. That the French government could think that an endorsement by Woody Allen would improve their standing with the American people is itself a sad testament to the ever-widening Atlantic chasm. And that Will Hutton could think his appreciation of Woody is proof of his own pro-Americanism only widens the gap by another half-mile.
But, having brandished his credentials, Hutton says that it's his "affection for the best of America that makes me so angry that it has fallen so far from the standards it expects of itself." The great Euro-thinker is not arguing that America is betraying the Founding Fathers, but that the Founding Fathers themselves got it hopelessly wrong. He compares the American and French Revolutions, and decides the latter was better because instead of the radical individualism of the 13 colonies the French promoted "a new social contract."
Well, you never know. It may be the defects of America's Founders that help explain why the United States has lagged so far behind France in technological innovation, economic growth, military performance, standard of living, etc. Entranced by his Europhilia, Hutton insists that "all western democracies subscribe to a broad family of ideas that are liberal or leftist."
Given that New Hampshire has been a continuous democracy for two centuries longer than Germany, this seems a doubtful proposition. It would be more accurate to say that almost all European nations subscribe to a broad family of ideas that are statist. Or, as Hutton has it, "the European tradition is much more mindful that men and women are social animals and that individual liberty is only one of a spectrum of values that generate a good society."
Precisely. And it's the willingness to subordinate individual liberty to what Hutton calls "the primacy of society" that has blighted the continent for over a century: Statism -- or "the primacy of society" -- is what fascism, Nazism, communism and now European Union all have in common. In fairness, after the first three, European Union seems a comparatively benign strain of the disease -- not a Blitzkrieg, just a Bitzkrieg, an accumulation of fluffy trivial pan-European laws that nevertheless takes for granted that the natural order is a world in which every itsy-bitsy activity is licensed and regulated and constitutionally defined by government.
That's why Will Hutton feels almost physically insecure when he's in one of the spots on the planet where the virtues of the state religion are questioned.
"In a world that is wholly private," he says of America, "we lose our bearings; deprived of any public anchor, all we have are our individual subjective values to guide us." He deplores the First Amendment and misses government-regulated media, which in the EU ensures that all public expression is within approved parameters (left to center-left). "Europe," he explains, "acts to ensure that television and radio conform to public interest criteria."
"Public interest criteria" doesn't mean criteria that the public decide is in their interest. It means that the elite -- via various appointed bodies -- decide what the public's interest is. Will Hutton is a member of the European elite, so that suits him fine. But it's never going to catch on in America -- I hope.
As European "president" Juncker spelled out to the French and Dutch electorates, a culture that subordinates the will of the people to the "primacy of society" is unlikely to take no for an answer. And, if you ignore referendum results, a frustrated citizenry turns to other outlets.
Oh thats a hoot!
Huttons seems to forget we have national parks the size of some euroweenie countries!
This country is covered with public lands
Thanks for the ping, Pokey! Another wonderful article from our esteemed and brilliant Mr. Steyn.
Yellowstone Park is 4 times the size of Luxembourg!
Id be willing to bet that more than half of arizona is open to public use.
Prop 187. There's only one form of government above the village level and that's oligarchy. The only advantage of democracy is that it has somewhat more power to influence the oligarchs than other forms of government.
"Good Lord."
Really. Evertime I read something like the sentence you quoted, I'm reminded of the ponytailed nitwit during the first Clitnon run for President that said, "I want you to treat us like we're your children".
It's everything that's wrong with modern leftist thinking in one sentence.
The joke is the French are rejecting the EU for all the wrong reasons. Because it interferes with their 35 hour mandated work week, and their 6 weeks of vacation, and subsidized protected socialist lifestyle. NOT out of a rejection of the concept, or demand for liberty.
Thanks for the ping - big Steyn fan here. Does he still write for the Irish times? (can't bring myself to buy that liberal rag)
State and local gov't is even more tyrranical than federal
I know what you mean. Here in Black Hawk County (Waterloo/Cedar Falls), the casino boat gambling referendum passed last year -- on its third attempt. I'm guessing there won't be a fourth attempt just to make sure.
Thanks for the Steyn ping and pic!
I can't bring myself to do so either - even though Kevin Myers and Mark Steyn should override the IDIOTS who are Vincent Browne, Tintin O'Fool and Conor Clery (he can't even spell his own name right!!!!)
I'd be willing to bet that Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg fit nice and tidy inside a corner of Arizona - I'm an Irishman - I too live in a small country - but it is a Hell of a lot bigger than those countries - the aforementioned countries would even fit inside Ireland together, at the same time!!! LOL!!!
And...God Bless it my friend, the Irish wont buckle to socialism.
They suffered forever resisting.
And looky looky now! Ireland leads europe in prosperity!
Not while I'm around - we have Sinn Fein/IRA though!!!
Im 2 generations removed from the emerald isles
I dont know much of the green and the orange but an pleased that Ireland is entering into its sovereignty
Im glad to see the land prosper
I want a free soveriegn Ireland.
The two parts of the island are doing their own thing!
One thing the Euros actually do seem to love about America is our pedophiles.
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