The leaders of 27 member states of the European Union met this month in Lisbon, Portugal, to sign a new constitutional treaty that will, they hope, replace the previous draft that was rejected in 2005. With his typical penchant for hyperbole, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso declared, "From this old continent, a new Europe is born." In fact, the planned ratification of the Lisbon Treaty smacks of old Europe - when the ruling elite got its way regardless of the wishes of the people over whom it ruled.
The Lisbon Treaty is a major new step toward the United States of Europe. It would be reasonable to expect, therefore, for the people of Europe to be given a say over its adoption in national referenda. So far, only the government of Ireland, where the EU is very popular, has decided to hold a referendum. Other governments will try to ram the Treaty through national parliaments. This is a blatant attempt to short-circuit the political process in countries where the EU's popularity is on the decline.
Clearly, the EU elite is trying to avoid the fate of the original EU constitution that was resoundingly defeated by the French and Dutch voters. Since unanimous approval among Europe's then 25 members was necessary for the constitution to come into effect, the elated opposition pronounced the document dead and declared victory. Abandoning the constitution was never seriously contemplated by the bureaucrats in Brussels, who declared a period of Europe-wide "reflection" and "consultation" - a meaningless drivel that turned out to be nothing but a prelude to a reintroduction of a "simplified" Lisbon Treaty two years later. Like a zombie, the EU constitution rose from the dead. Killing it for the second time will be much more difficult, however.
It is truly simple. The Euro elites will impose a political union on fragmented European states and micro-principalities and the people will be ground down with repeated attempts to create the European Union until the people give up and let the EU be born. Simple, eh?
It is a tremendous failure of our diplomacy that the Bush administration has continued to formally back European political union. While admirably adapting our foreign policy from the Cold War to fight Islamo-fascist terrorism, this adminstration remains locked in a Cold War template that saw a unified Europe as a bulwark against Soviet aggression instead of an abomination that must die.
Europe will not be our friend. European states can be our friend. And Europeans even in countries without governments friendly to us can be our friends. Why let these sources of support, friendship, and alliance be submerged in an EU supra-elite culture of hatred for America?
Our European friends need our help to resist the relentless drive for power that the Brussels elite and their national rulers have decided is good for Europe. They will divide Europeans into entities too small to effectively resist the will of the elites. If those elites succeed, we won't like the new Union of European Socialist Republics that will arise. The Euro elites think they are going to control the warlike impulses of the people wrongly blamed for Europe's violent past. In reality, these elites will commit bloodshed on the scale of past killing sprees in the name of unity and stability.
If the European Union becomes a reality, we will see our struggle during the long Cold War to keep the Soviet empire at bay lost by essentially creating a socialist empire across Western and Central Europe. The blindness of our own elites to this likely outcome is amazing.
Have a nice day.
