A Lesson on Europe Day: Limited Government Works Best

The Brussels Journal ^ | may 8th, 2006 | Paul Belien

[Palpatine]

Today [May 9th, 2006] is Europe Day. On 9 May 1950, the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman called upon France, Germany and other European countries to pool together their coal and steel production. Part of the original mystique of the movement for European unification can be found in the name of the Brussels building which for more than 50 years has housed the Council of Ministers of the organisations that were first known as the European Coal and Steel Community (ESCS), Euratom and the European Economic Community (EEC), and which later merged to become the European Communities (EC) and finally the European Union (EU). This building is called the Charlemagne Building.

We should return to Carolingian times to understand something about the aims of the founding fathers of the European Union and the original nature of this supranational institution. The Treaty of Verdun of 843 divided the old empire of Charlemagne not just into two parts – a West-Frankish kingdom for Charles the Bald, the first king of France, and an East-Frankish kingdom for his brother, Louis the German, the first king of Germany. There was also a third brother, Lothar, who inherited the imperial crown and the lands lying between France and Germany: the Middle-Frankish kingdom. This Kingdom of the Middle was named after him: Lotharii Regnum or Lotharingia (“Lorraine” in French, “Lothringen” in German, “Lotharingen” in Dutch).

[Palpatine]

It is hard to believe these days that the ideas of limited government and capitalism were once fundamentally European. As Paul Belien writes, the capitalist idea came to England from the Netherlands, part of the Carolingian Middle Lands. It was also the Dutch who established Nieuw Amsterdam (New York) and imported capitalist ideas to the 'New World'.

The European Economic Community did not start out with superstate ambitions and had it's roots in the Carolingian Middle Lands where ideas about capitalism and limited government originated. But unfortunately, almost immediately pro-superstate politicians such as Jean Monnet managed to pervert the EEC's original intention of simply being an economic union of sovereign states and started pushing for political integration. A political integration that was specifically non-democratic. Monnet and his crowd believed (and his successors believe to this day) in the idea of an unelected political elite running the show from a centralized location. The EU today stands for many things, but democracy, capitalism and limited government are not amongst those things.

[jla]

I often wonder, if every country in the world was left to fend for itself, no foreign trade, no mutual defense pacts, etc., which would not only survive but be prosperous and strong in doing so.

I've concluded that in this scenario we would be left with a single 'first world' nation...the United States of America.
And I think Israel would survive quite well, although a little battered from extinguishing her enemies.

[Palpatine]

I've concluded that in this scenario we would be left with a single 'first world' nation...the United States of America.

And I think Israel would survive quite well, although a little battered from extinguishing her enemies.

I would more or less agree with that. But please, wait until I've immigrated to the USA :-)