EUReferendum links to an article on the appalling rhetoric and mindset of leading advocates of political unification:
A senior European Commissioner marked VE Day yesterday by accusing Eurosceptics of risking a return to the Holocaust by clinging to “nationalistic pride”.
Margot Wallstrom, a Swede and the commissioner who must sell the draft constitution to voters, argued that politicians who resisted pooling national sovereignty risked a return to Nazi horrors of the 1930s and 1940s.
Mrs Wallstrom, vice-president of the commission for institutional relations and communications, was speaking in the former Jewish ghetto of Terezin in the Czech Republic.
She blamed the Second World War on “nationalistic pride and greed, and … international rivalry for wealth and power”. The EU had replaced such rivalry with an historic agreement to share national sovereignty.
Her fellow commissioners also issued a joint declaration, stating that EU citizens should pay tribute to the dead of the Second World War by voting Yes to the draft constitution for Europe.
The commissioners also gave the EU sole credit for ending the Cold War, making no mention of the role of Nato and the United States.
This sort of thing is, of course, yet more evidence that the “world government” crowd is more than a figment of the fevered imaginations of the American black-helicopter crowd. These people have actually convinced themselves – assuming they believe their own rhetoric – that demolishing national sovereignty is a workable plan for peace rather than what it really is, the removal of power from the sources of democratic accountability and the consent of the governed.
America liberates one continent (Europe) and while we’re sorting out another (Asia, Mid-East specifically), the former decides they don’t like democracy any more. Fantastic…
How would you compare the european idea of national sovereignty v. “world government” to the balance of power between the states and the federal government? Considering how much the balance of power has shifted to the federal government over the past 200 years, I’m not sure I see too much of a difference. I’m not sure that the framers would believe the extent that the federal system now dominates.
The difference is that the EU’s government is not, unlike our federal government, directly elected by the people. If it were, I would be far less concerned by the EU’s aggregation of power.