Free Republic

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...

"A Strange War," observed a 20 July 1939 New York Times editorial about the fighting between the Soviet Army and the Japanese Army on the Mongolian steppes. The Times derided both combatants' claims as exaggerated but inadvertently touched on the distinctive feature of the fighting when it described the battle as "raging in a thoroughly out-of-the-way corner of the world where it cannot attract a great deal of attention."1 Geography, the combatants' compulsive secrecy, and the subsequent outbreak of World War II in September 1939 all combined to overshadow the most massive use of tanks theretofore recorded. The Soviets used...

The Prime Minister claims to be defending liberty but a barely noticed Bill will rip the heart out of parliamentary democracy. The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill is hardly an aerodynamic title; it doesn't fly from the lips. People have difficulty remembering the order of the words and what exactly will be the effect of this apparently dull piece of lawmaking. But in the dusty cradle of Committee A, a monster has been stirring and will, in due course, take flight to join the other measures in the government's attack on parliamentary democracy and the rights of the people. The...

BRITAIN’S tax burden will surge ahead of Germany’s for the first time in a generation this year. It signals the end of an era for the UK as it decisively turns its back on economic liberalism, a report reveals this weekend. The news, which confirms that Chancellor Gordon Brown has Europeanised the British economy by stealth through a massive programme of extra public spending and higher taxes, was condemned by top City of London economists this weekend. They said higher taxes will lead to an inevitable collapse in Britain’s economic performance, a rise in unemployment and a decline in foreign...