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May 31, 2005 It's a beautiful word, in fact it's about the only word of French that I know. Now I am usually hard on Europeans, and the French in particular. Now I am not going to apologize for past remarks about them, but today I am going to cut them a little slack because for once the snail slurping, bribe taking surrender machines managed to do something right, even if they did it for the wrong reason. What did they do right? They voted "no" on the European constitution. Ever since the Roman empire collapsed great men, or mediocre men that wanted to be thought of as great tried to unite Europe under a single rule. Charlemagne accomplished this in the 9th century, but his empire didn't last long without him. Charles of Sweden took a crack at it but fell short, Napolean almost did it, Hitler tried making an Aryan reich out of Europe and was thankfully defeated.(note to reader, I don't include Hitler among great men.) So ever since World War two the Europeans have been looking for beaureacratic ways to unite the continent. It seemed to work well enough, the single currency was adopted without protest but then came the constitution. This would have given a great deal of power to the new European government. It probably will never see the light of day as the French have rejected it and the Dutch and the British are expected to reject it. So why did the French reject it for the wrong reason? It would seem that they don't object to the whole one Europe thing, they object to Chirac. I can understand, he is objectional. Socialists and De Gaullists alike wanted the constitution passed. Here's the problem. There is no such thing as a European. Even if proponents of the constitution call themselves Europeans. People are Italian, Dutch, Dane, German, English and so on. Secondly the process to adopt the constitution was about as democratic as the vote to keep Hugo Chavez in office. Only Spain has accepted the constitution by vote, all other countries had it ratified over their heads. So will the Europeans learn their lesson? Personally I doubt it. Even if the voters reject it in Great Britain and the Netherlands I expect them to try to force it on people anyway. I guess supernationalism is something that has to be created despite the will of the people. ------------ About the author: Craig Chamberlain has written more than 100 articles for Useless-Knowledge.com. Email: craig_chamberlain@hotmail.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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