July 13, 2005
In Defense of the EU
A long conversation that Alex & I had with a very smart French libertarian last night resulted in me changing my mind on the EU: I didn't think I could be optimistic about the EU's meta-national semi-socialist government, but now I am--or, more specifically, I think it's the lesser of all evils. THis is a fundamental shift in viewing the EU and its future for me.
The French libertarian wouldn't agree with the following analysis--he made different points, but hinting at these--and what follows below are the logical conclusions of his insights, framed strongly.
There are two key insights that I've been overlooking in analyzing the EU. First, the EU is undemocratic and, for all its socialism, is fundamentally committed to maintaining some form of the basic rights of liberty, like the freedom of speech. (Not in an ideal, perfect form; but in some form at least.)
The second point is that, it is inevitable that various European countries, such as France, will have a Muslim majority (that is largely extremist and unintegrated into French society) within the next 50 years. It is somewhat likely that, once they are a majority, that--through democratically electing men with such ideologies--they will try to impose various undemocratic and profoundly anti-libertarian ideas, perhaps even modified forms of the Sharia. And, when this happens, the EU--if it is still around and still powerful--would never let this happen in one of its states and would use force to make sure it doesn't happen; the EU is powerful enough to prevent such problems in any individual countries.
Therefore: Europe is now faced with a choice between two evils. One evil is a meta-national semi-socialist undemocratic government, whose petty regulations on every aspect of economic life will result in the increasing impovershment of the European people. But this government will prevent a civil war from erupting when majorities of extremist Muslims in European nations try to use democratic methods to impose Sharia on the populations. The other alternative is, no EU or a very weak EU, which--when this happens in one of his member states--is unable to adequately do anything, and the result of this is civil war in Europe.
And the powerful, socialist EU is the lesser of these two evils. The EU is the only force capable of preventing France from becoming Saudi Arabia.
Posted by Morgan at 11:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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