Perhaps. Certainly the EU bureaucrats are no fascists. Not today, anyway. I am sure they have the best intentions. But I do think the proposed EU will erode freedom and eventually take liberty away under smothering layers of regulations. The bureaucracy will become a dead hand ruling all and accepting no deviation and no questions from the people. The elites in Brussels will do what they know is best and to hell with democracy. Freedom will die in an EU superstate.
And given that the EU will not deal with the Islam problem in Europe until it is too late to address it constructively, one day the EU will go postal rather than surrender to Islam's rising tide. A final solution will be imposed and the Islamic ghettos will be isolated and destroyed by force while Europe still has the military means to do so.
Is this too dark a future? I sure hope so. But the attitude of the EU elites make me fear that EUzis is exactly what they will become in fifty years if they get to define and run a united Europe.
And though I am glad that France voted decisively to defeat the EU, will the EU elite let it die when mere commoners have said no?
Chirac, who had urged voters to approve the charter in the bitterly contested referendum, announced the result in a brief, televised address. He said the process of ratifying the treaty would continue in other EU countries.
"It is your sovereign decision, and I take note," Chirac said. "Make no mistake, France's decision inevitably creates a difficult context for the defense of our interests in Europe."
With votes counted in all of France and its overseas territories, the "no" camp had 54.87 percent, with only 45.13 percent voting "yes," the Interior Ministry said.
The treaty's rejection in France — the architect of the European project — could set the continent's plans back by years and amounts to a personal humiliation for the veteran French leader.
Chirac "takes note" of the vote. He didn't "accept" it. And the article says it could set the plans back years. Not stop it as a "no" vote might imply--just delay it. And though any one nation saying no should stop unification, the French say that the process will go on. Surely the French will be given another chance to give the "right" answer.
Hopefully, the Dutch will also say no on June 1 so the French rejection won't stand out as an aberration. Is this a first step to a sane European future?
Europe deserves better than the political class and the political discourse (to use a European formulation) that it has been stuck with. In this respect, the leftists rallying in Paris against the constitution last Wednesday were right to insist that their "No" was "A hopeful No." This is a moment of hope--for the prospects for a strong, pro-American, pro-liberty, more or less free-market and free-trade, socially and morally reinvigorated Europe. In any case, as Le Figaro's Ivan Rioufol suggests, the referendum, whatever its outcome, has already had a "liberating effect." Rioufol explains, "It introduced freedom of speech into the French political debate. Until now, the political oligarchy and the media's politically correct group-think had silenced any critical mind. . . . The people's revolt and their demand for 'true talk' are sweeping away the old political scene and its political correctness."
I have little hope for a liberating effect. The fall of the Soviet Union ended any reason for a united Europe. Currency and economic cooperation is surely good, but political unity? Do we insist Canada and Mexico be absorbed into a political NAFTA? No. And Europe should keep their nation-states. It will be good for us and Europe. And it will certainly help keep Europe free.
The EUzis will not give up. A mere vote will not stop them. I suspect the EU elites will learn their lesson and they will work hard to make sure the French and Dutch votes are the last real votes there will ever be on the EU project.
