Neither Holy Nor Roman

I've long called the European Union a proto-empire eager to erase the prefix. I'm not the only one to notice.

Yes, the EU will be an empire. And an empire of so many different people will ultimately have to be held down with force. Especially, I'll note, if Britain fails to exit the EU peacefully because Brussels makes a peaceful exit too difficult to carry out and if the British falter and succumb to the continental empire.

And as I've noted, the EU is not going to be our friend. Our longstanding goal has been to prevent a hostile power from controlling Europe, and here we are just whistling past the graveyard while Euros in expensive suits clamp down on states and dissent. We think that because cheese regulations rather than tanks are being used that somehow it doesn't count as a conquest.

But it is a conquest of Europe by a transnational European elite that has no use for nations other than as tourist attractions for their colorful local flavor.

For now, a proto-empire can be held together with intrusive cheese regulations building an "ever closer union."

Will centrifugal forces pull apart the proto-empire before Brussels gains the capacity to unleash troops and spies to hold the actual empire by force?

Will NATO and America be ejected from the continent by then, by hostile European imperial officials jealous of their own political authority?

And will Russia find an opening to make gains for restoring their own empire if America is leveraged out of Europe?

It should be our policy to help Britain escape the EU and to resist the creation of a political EU as opposed to a trade-oriented EU defended by a robust American-led NATO.

As I've written, the political European Union should die with festering boils.