Posted on 06/12/2005 11:24:40 AM PDT by quidnunc
For decades now, advocates of a "greater Europe" — to serve as a counterbalance to the United States, to secure greater prosperity for European inhabitants, to restore former glory, or perhaps to enhance the power of European Union bureaucrats in Brussels — has been a dream of European statesmen, leaders and the aforementioned Brussels bureaucrats.
That dream seems to be dying — or is it?
With the rejection by French voters of the proposed new EU constitution, the even more resounding defeat at the hands of Dutch voters, and the decision by the United Kingdom to postpone a scheduled vote, perhaps indefinitely, the prospect for European unity, at least in the form contemplated by EU leaders, has suffered a setback. Can European unity be reconstituted, perhaps in a different form? Would that be good for Europeans? What would be the impact on the United States and the rest of the world? Or would Europe be better advised to stick with economic integration and forget about further steps toward political unification?
EU leaders are scheduled to meet June 16-17. Instead of basking in the glory of successful referenda, they are likely to be asking themselves some hard questions about Europe's future.
In some ways the handwringing might be unnecessary. As Jeffrey Vanke, who teaches history at Kaplan University, recently wrote for the History News Network:
"Europe has had a constitution since 1951, and the 2004 Treaty of Rome [the formal title of what was called a constitution] contained only marginal changes in it. So the treaty's defeat will make little difference in European affairs, not to mention European history."
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
Preserving the greater economic cooperation & freedom of the current EU arrangement while rejecting the centralization of political power included in the proposed European Constitution was a wise thing for the French and Dutch people to do.
As a former European I say: let them relive the past all over again, clearly they have forgotten over 600 years of fighting against the Ottoman Empire (for the Rio Linda readers that's Turkey). If they chose to be so elitist in their beliefs and so blind about the lessons of the past, they clearly never learned anything from history.
Would you mind tagging these with "registration required" if your link does not point directly to the article? People can then choose whether to bother with bugmenot.
Thanks.
I'm reminded about the "angry white men" thing in this country that turned out to be the "angry at all Democrats" thing. Republicans took over Congress before the MSM figured out what was happening.
Absolutely...the last EU vote of the French and the Dutch was clear indication on how "the people" really felt! Chirac has the lowest job approval rate in French history and the French people are fed up with his rhetoric.
I'm registered in so many registration-only sites where my computer automatically logs me in that I can't keep track of which require registration and which don't.
HA! I agree with Karsh -- Europe was at its most unified under Hitler, Stalin, Napoleon, et al. The problem was not nationalism, but these tyrants' lack of respect for nationalism (i.e., sovereignity). How I wish Orwell were alive today.
Got it. Okay, I will note "registration only" when I run across it.
Good article.
I don't think this is a case of Europeans as a whole being more conservative than their leaders (some are, some are even more liberal). I think this is more about people wanting to chart their own destinies, even if said destiny is a socialist pit.
The first step to 'saving the dream' would be to permanently nix Turkish membership. So long as that question looms on the horizon, further integration efforts will fail. That's really the basic problem right now, and points to an even more fundamental impediment: the failure to articulate what Europe is ultimately meant to become.
Don't forget to toss in the Magna Carta.
The Constitution and the Magna Carta are the foundation of the "Anglo-American" system that the French are so deathly afraid of.
This is courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration: When representatives of the young republic of the United States gathered to draft a constitution, they turned to the legal system they knew and admired--English common law as evolved from Magna Carta. The conceptual debt to the great charter is particularly obvious: the American Constitution is "the Supreme Law of the Land," just as the rights granted by Magna Carta were not to be arbitrarily canceled by subsequent English laws.
This heritage is most clearly apparent in our Bill of Rights. The fifth amendment guarantees
No person shall...be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law
and the sixth states
...the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury.
Written 575 years earlier, Magna Carta declares
No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned,...or in any other way destroyed...except by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to none will we deny or delay, right or justice. --NARA
Again, not to diminish the document that humbled Kings, and helped to change the course of the world.
And H.G. Wells.
I agree with both sentiments but you do realize don't you that Jefferson had nought to do with writing the Constitution? (He wrote the Declaration of Independence).
The document that humbled Kings and changed the course of the world was the Declaration of Independence - which established the revolutionary, fundamental principle that governments existed only by virtue of the "consent of the governed" who had the Right to withdraw said consent at their discretion..
Everything else is details.
See post #17.
Oh yes. I just admire him greatly.
While the U.S. Constitution was being written, Thomas Jefferson was in France.
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