The European Dis-Union

In a column last week veteran foreign correspondent Eric Margulis diagnosed the French fiasco as the result of a convergence between the French left and the French right united by their fears. On the French Left, which is so far left  it makes the displaced Moscow's Communist  leadership look moderate by comparison, the fear is that the EU and its ridiculous multi-page constitution would destroy their cherished welfare state.

On the right, the natavist segment of the population saw France under the EU as being swallowed up by the continuing surge of Muslim immigration - there are now over 5 million Muslims in France, which has the largest number of Muslim immigrants in all of Western Europe.

Last week, Margulis wrote that "The almighty unions ... bitterly oppose the vote fearing it will usher in `Anglo-Saxon’ economic practices: sharper competition, flexible labor markets, reduced government intervention and an end to France’s lavish but unaffordable social services. France’s truculent farmers fear their absurd subsidies will be cut.

"France and Germany in particular," he reported "are afflicted by chronic double-digit unemployment and stagnant economies caused by too high taxes, inability to fire workers, oppressive regulation and state-sponsored laziness typified by six week paid vacations, innumerable holidays, short working hours and ludicrously early retirement. Pension payments have run amok. Investment has plummeted. Unions fear a yes vote will derail their gravy train."

In plain terms, the Left is convinced that the majority of EU nations having discovered that the Marxist belief that a cow can fatten itself by feeding on its own udders is wacky, will impose that dose of reality on the spoiled rotten working class who will be forced to face the facts of economic life.

Writing in the Chicago Tribune June 5,  foreign correspondent Tom Hundley blamed the debacle on the dislike of many Europeans of the arrogant unelected petty dictators who run the EU bureaucracy from Brussels.

"In the end, the vote against the European Union," Hundley wrote, "wasn't a vote against Europe; it was a vote against one particular city in Europe: Brussels. For many ordinary Europeans, 'Brussels,' the city that houses the European Union's headquarters, has become a kind of shorthand for the imperious ways of an overweening bureaucracy that seems increasingly unresponsive to their concerns.

"So when ordinary Europeans in France and the Netherlands got a chance last week to express their feelings on the latest diktat from Brussels--the new "Constitution for Europe," a 200-page, 448-article document of turgid prose and numbing detail--they trashed it. Enthusiastically and emphatically."

The attitude superieur of the EU's aristocracy came out full blown when France's Valery Giscard d'Estaing said he was at a loss to understand why his countrymen had turned their noses up at the Constitution which he proclaimed to be an incisive and brilliantly written document, adding that he should know since he wrote it. And he wasn't kidding!

While I don't know beans about the inner workings of the Brussels-based EU, I do know that the idea of a United States of Europe is the kind of goofy idea to which Utopians of all stripes seem to be addicted. Among them inconvenient facts must be supplanted by hopes, no matter how unrealistic the hopes might be.

On this side of the Atlantic, our native utopians go ga-ga over the idea of a united Europe, reasoning I suppose that since it works here why should it not also work in Europe? Especially since Europe's governing ethos, like their own, is rooted in the ideas of Karl Marx, themselves rooted in the doctrine of Brussels-style statist coercion.

Here in the U.S., the colonies were able, with great difficulty it must be said, to form "a more perfect union" because their populations were for the most part ethnically identical, had a tradition of self-government that disdained the very idea that an all-powerful government knew better than did they what was good for them, and spoke a common language. They also had enjoyed a common currency, the pound sterling, and had no difficulty in creating a successor means of exchange, the dollar. Most importantly, they were also universally Christian and motivated by the ideas and doctrines of Christendom from which the came.

Europe, on the other hand, is multi-ethnic with a burgeoning Muslim population making it more so, has a long tradition of governance by remote and authoritative regimes, has no common language and has had to create, not without great opposition by many of its own people  an entirely new currency to supplant the continent's multiple currencies.

What united our forefathers disunites Europe. Having cast aside the traditions of its ancient heritage western Europe today is rootless. Despite centuries of warfare among themselves, Europe was for century upon century  united by its Christian faith. Europe was the seat of Christiandom, and for a millennia and more it was Christianity alone which preserved the best aspects of Greco-Roman civilization.

None of that exists any longer. Europe is pagan, Europe is Marxist, and  the majority of the people of modern Europe make themselves the sole judges of what is appropriate conduct and what is not. In modern Europe, anything goes. Europeans no longer mark victories over misfortune by going to cathedrals and singing Te Deums, instead they celebrate by going to that institution to which they have given birth: the topless beach.

The barbarian societies tamed by Christianity and the protocols of Roman civilization are back, in droves. It's as if nothing has changed since the Germanic tribes butchered the legions of Quinctilius Varus and sowed the seeds of the ultimate destruction of Pax Romanum, ushering in the Dark Ages.

Up until the 16th century, Europe was under the periodic siege of Muslim invaders who nearly succeeded in subjugating  most of the continent. Islam was turned back only because of the force of Christianity which despite the hostility between various regimes, united Europe in a common cause. Had they failed, we'd all be speaking Arabic today, and given the backwardness of Islamic regimes, it's doubtful that there would be a United States of America - North America would still be inhabited largely by Indian Tribes and refugees from Sharia, Islamic law.

Today there are no Don Juan's of Austria around to bring Islamic aggression to heel. Today's Saladins have a new and successful tactic: invasion by immigration.

A united Europe? Forgetaboutit.