Posted on 03/13/2015 7:19:26 AM PDT by Kaslin
As the European Coal and Steel Community of Jean Monnet evolved into the EU, we were told a "United States of Europe" was at hand, modeled on the USA. And other countries and continents will inevitably follow Europe's example.
There will be a North American Union of the U.S., Canada and Mexico, and a Latin America Union of the Mercosur trade partnership.
In an essay, "The E.U. Experiment Has Failed," Bruce Thornton of Hoover Institution makes the case that the verdict is in, the dream is dead, the EU is unraveling, One Europe is finished.
Consider, first, economics. In 2013, Europe grew by 1 percent compared to the U.S.'s 2.2 percent. In December, unemployment in Europe was 11.4 percent. In the U.S., 5.6 percent. Americans are alarmed by the lowest labor force participation rate since Reagan, 62.7 percent. In Europe, in 2013, it was 57.5 percent.
Europeans may wail over German-imposed "austerity," but the government share of Europe's GDP has gone from 45 percent in 2008 to 49 percent today. In Greece, it is 59 percent.
Most critical is the demographic crisis. For a nation to survive, its women must produce on average 2.1 children. Europe has not seen that high a fertility rate in 40 years. Today, it is down to 1.6 children.
Europeans are an aging, shrinking, disappearing, dying race.
And the places of Europe's unborn are being filled by growing "concentrations of unassimilated and disaffected Muslim immigrants, segregated in neighborhoods like the banlieues of Paris or the satellite 'dish cities' of Amsterdam.
"Shut out from labor markets, plied with generous social welfare payments and allowed to cultivate beliefs and cultural practices inimical to democracy, many of these immigrants despise their new homes, and find the religious commitment and certainty of radical Islam an attractive alternative."
"Some turn to terrorism," like the French-Algerian brothers who carried out the slaughter at the magazine Charlie Hebdo.
"Such violence," writes Thornton, "along with cultural practices like honor killings, forced marriages and polygamy ... are stoking a political backlash against Muslims."
Populist parties are surging -- the U.K. Independence Party in Britain, the National Front in France, and now the "Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident," PEGIDA, in Germany, These parties will soon be strong enough to enter governments, impose restrictions on immigration and demand assimilation.
Then the cultural conflicts may turn violent.
A fundamental question has troubled European unification since the Treaty of Rome in 1957, writes Thornton: "What comprises the collective beliefs of and values that can form the foundations of a genuine European-wide community? What is it that all Europeans believe?
"Europe and its nations were forged in the matrix of ideas, ideals, and beliefs of Christianity, which gives divine sanction to notions like human rights, the sanctity of the individual, political freedom and equality. Today across Europe Christian belief is a shadow of its former self.
"Fewer and fewer Europeans regularly go to Church. ... It is common for many European cathedrals to have more tourists during a service than parishioners. ... This process of secularization -- already well advanced in 1887 when Nietzsche famously said, 'God is no more than a faded word today, not even a concept' -- is nearly complete today, leaving Europe without its historical principle of unity."
Political religions -- communism, fascism, Nazism -- are substitute gods that failed. "Nor has secular social democracy ... provided people with a transcendent principle that justifies sacrifice for the greater good, or even gives people a reason to reproduce.
"A shared commitment to leisure, a short workweek, and a generous social safety net is nothing worth killing or dying for."
And who will die for Donetsk, Luhansk or Crimea?
Pacifism beckons. Every major European nation in NATO -- Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland -- will see defense spending in 2015 below 2 percent of GDP.
The idea of One Europe has depended on "the denigration of patriotism and national pride," writes Thornton, "Yet all peoples are the products of a particular culture, language, mores, traditions, histories, landscapes. ... That sense of belonging to a community defined by a shared identity cannot be created by a single currency."
Christianity gave Europe its faith, identity, purpose and will to conquer and convert the world. Christianity created Europe. And the death of Christianity leaves the continent with no unifying principle save a watery commitment to democracy and La Dolce Vita.
From Marine Le Pen's France to Putin's Russia, nationalism and patriotism are surging across Europe because peoples, deprived of or disbelieving in the old faith, want a new faith to give meaning, purpose, vitality to their lives, something to live for, fight for, die for.
Countless millions of Muslims have found in their old faith their new faith. And the descendants of fallen-away European Christians of the 19th and 20th centuries are finding their new faith in old tribal and national identities.
Less and less does multiculturalism look like the wave of the future.
“Europe and its nations were forged in the matrix of ideas, ideals, and beliefs of Christianity, which gives divine sanction to notions like human rights, the sanctity of the individual, political freedom and equality. Today across Europe Christian belief is a shadow of its former self.”
Even when all of Europe was Christian, there was constant strife and squabbling among the city-states, kingdoms, and tribes. If Jesus can’t keep them together, I doubt any human government will be able to.
The EU was dead on day one when they decided to mask fascism as common currency.
It was a dumb idea, but it’s not going away.
The goal was to eliminate each European country and to expand the central government, much as the U.S. federal government is doing now.
“As the European Coal and Steel Community of Jean Monnet evolved into the EU, we were told a “United States of Europe” was at hand, modeled on the USA. And other countries and continents will inevitably follow Europe’s example. “
Did these people not read how hard it was to just make the “American Union” happen? And that was with 13-14 nations that all spoke English! Not to mention it only happened with a constitution that was made to restrict a large government and was shorter than many kids books, you know, the OPPOSITE of what the EU came up with.
The EU on the other hand imposes rules from above on very different established nations. One rule fits all can't work. There are winners and losers, and Germany's banks and elitists are the big winners.
What will irreversibly kill Europe is the invasion they face. It's beyond bizarre that any nation has given up its right to control who resides there.
The EU is a mixture of iron and clay. It will hold together for a few more years until the vision of the Babylonian king is complete.
EU, I like the idea as a tourist. It’s great to travel from one country to the next and as long as they are in the EU, you don’t have to worry about border checks or exchanging currency (at least the Eurozone part). However, I would not want to be a citizen of the EU. Having another central government on top of my own central government, no thanks. For the Eurozone countries, they share a monetary policy without sharing an economic policy, that’s when you end up with Greece and bailouts and all the weaker countries being a drag on the stronger ones.
I think at least the Eurozone part will not be long for this world. In the next five to ten years I can see people leaving the Eurozone and going back to their original currency.
About eight years ago, I was expecting the Euro$ to fail due to the lack of common budget requirements in the various countries. I am still waiting for that failure, amazed that it has not yet occurred. I suspect that the huge deficit of the US has helped to mask the problems with the Euro thus far. If the US finally gets our financial house in order, that comparative difference will be even more stark, and I expect the Euro$ will be burned toast.
I didn't know "European" was a race.
Learn something new every day.
Jesus Christ: You can’t impeach Him and He ain’t gonna resign.
I disagree.
This argument is common among those who advocate for mass immigration (Please note: the author, Pat Buchanan, has never advocated for mass immigration).
America would survive just fine, with its current population, if we focused our multi-billion dollar R&D budget on keeping our citizens healthy and productive for more years, and if we focused on robotics, automation, and intelligent software, which would reduce our economic dependence on physical labor.
Europeans are mostly Caucasians, so yes you could say it is a race
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