by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n
FrontPage Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n The foreign minister of Spain recently compared the troubled EU to the Titanic, a metaphor not quite so trite given the new research into why the world\u2019s biggest ocean liner collided with an iceberg. Titanic historian Tim Maltin argues that a cold-water mirage may have obscured the iceberg from the watchmen until it was too late. So too with the EU: ideological illusions have for decades fooled the EUrophiles into thinking that they could speed full steam ahead to their utopian destination, a United States of Europe that could rival the United States for global power and influence. Now that the fiscal iceberg is looming ever closer, the enthusiastic effusions of those who once touted Europe as a \u201cbold new experiment in living\u201d and \u201cthe best hope in an insecure age\u201d sound more and more like the White Star Line\u2019s assurances that the Titanic was unsinkable.<\/p>\n The mirage that has blinded the EU\u2019s creators and champions is not hard to explain. For two centuries many Europeans have been deluded by the notion that nationalist loyalties and identity could be subordinated to a transnational institution run by elites with superior knowledge and technical skills. Loyalty to and affection for one\u2019s own people, land, customs, governments, and mores were seen as primitive holdovers from a less enlightened age. Like religious faith, these exclusionary, divisive values were barbaric instigators of war and civil strife, predicated as they were on ignorance and superstition. Sweep those loyalties and beliefs away, and the human race could progress to peace and prosperity by relying instead on science, technology, and the elites who possessed the knowledge of both.<\/p>\n And why not? History offered evidence of such progress. In the 19th century, communication and transport technologies like the telegraph, railroad, and steamship shrank the world, making possible a global trade and exchange of ideas that seemingly bound people into a \u201csolidarity which unites the members of the society of civilized nations,\u201d as the Preamble to the First Hague Convention put it in 1899. For many internationalist idealists, what Immanuel Kant a century earlier had called the \u201cprogress of the human mind\u201d was creating a global community of shared values and aims, a \u201charmony of interests\u201d that could be codified in international laws and institutions superior to the parochial cultures, irrational customs, and retrograde values of any individual country or people. An imagined consequence of this increasing unification of peoples was Kant\u2019s imagined \u201cfederation of free states\u201d that could create global peace and prosperity by transcending the zero-sum and often irrational, destructive interests of individual states and peoples.<\/p>\n World War I should have put paid to the illusion that humans could progress beyond the local and particular cultures in which most people lived and found their identities. From 1914-1918 millions of Europeans slaughtered each other on behalf of those national loyalties, even the universalist, transnational socialists fighting and dying in the trenches under their nations\u2019 banners. In 1918, G. K. Chesterton explained why: \u201cNobody has any such ecstatic regard for the mere relations of different people to each other, as one would gather from the rhetoric of idealistic internationalism . . . Now, too much cosmopolitan culture is mere praise of machinery. It turns ultimately upon the point that a telegram can be sent from one end of the earth to the other, irrespective of what is in the telegram.\u201d In the end, Chesterton says, \u201cMen care more for the rag that is called a flag than for the rag that is called a newspaper. Men care more for Rome, Paris, Prague, Warsaw than for the international railways connecting these towns.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, the \u201cglobal community\u201d is a mirage, no more a real human community than an online chat room. Our collective identities and loyalties are necessarily local, a consequence of particular ways of life lived in particular landscapes defined in part by their differences from those of other peoples, an existential fact no amount of technological advances can change. This means that we want to be ruled by people who live and speak like us, and whom we can hold politically accountable. And it means that our own national interests will necessarily differ from those of other states, and sometimes those different interests will lead to conflict.<\/p>\n After World War I, the persistence of internationalist idealism institutionalized a fatal incoherence in the Versailles Treaty\u2019s supranational League of Nations. The designers of the League intended it to be the creator and guarantor of global peace and order, and thus avoid the sort of nationalist-driven carnage of the Great War. Yet the League also enshrined the notion of what Woodrow Wilson called \u201cnational aspirations\u201d and ethnic self-determination. The two ideals were contradictory, since sovereign nations defined by their distinct identities did not want to surrender their sovereignty or subordinate their particular interests to a body comprising alien peoples that would at times have to pursue aims contrary to those nations\u2019 own. The failure of the League in resolving this contradiction quickly became evident in the two decades between the wars, when it was powerless to stop the escalating inter-state violence that paved the way for World War II. Nor should we be surprised at this failure: as long as there are sovereign, self-ruling states comprising peoples with different languages, cultures, and customs, nations and peoples will collide, sometimes violently.<\/p>\n Yet the failure of the League, along with that of its equally incoherent offspring the UN, did not inhibit the creation of the EU, yet another \u201cfederation of free states\u201d whose purpose is to subordinate national interests to loftier goals. Yet the incoherence remains and is obvious in the EU monetary union, which is made up of sovereign states, each with its own peculiar economic and political interests, histories, cultural norms regarding work and leisure, laws, and fiscal systems. These different customs, different virtues, and different attitudes towards work, leisure, and the good life all derive from the particular histories, geographies, and cultures that define a people and a nation. These differences will not disappear because states share a currency or economic regulations.<\/p>\n The increasingly bitter divide among the EU nations is evidenced over the past few years in the elections of leaders skeptical about the leadership of the EU\u2019s economic powerhouse and financier, Germany, and its prescriptions about how to solve the fiscal disaster. These divisions increasingly illustrate the continuing power of national identity and culture that always has compromised the whole EU project. As Walter Russell Mead succinctly put it, \u201cClub Med doesn\u2019t want to live under German rules and Germany doesn\u2019t want a Club Med currency. Club Med can\u2019t make Germany underwrite the Club\u2019s lavish lifestyle and Germany can\u2019t make Club Med live by German rules.\u201d That\u2019s because Germans, French, Italians, Greeks, Spaniards, and the rest are all profoundlydifferent<\/em>\u00a0peoples, and no amount of internationalist mirages can change the reality of those differences. Like that iceberg in 1912, the cultural and nationalist peculiarities of the EU countries are the stubborn and unchanging realities with which the EU project is destined to collide.<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The foreign minister of Spain recently compared the troubled EU to the Titanic, a metaphor not quite so trite given the new research into why the world\u2019s biggest ocean liner collided with an iceberg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,121],"tags":[234,1028,365,122,1056,1037,363,364,1072,1068],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-d2","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":706,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/dont-let-america-imitate-a-burning-eu\/","url_meta":{"origin":808,"position":0},"title":"Don’t Let America Imitate a Burning EU","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine Traveling through Europe can obscure the looming crisis threatening the continent. Visiting the medieval villages of Alsace, the castles on the Rhine, or the magnificent cathedrals in Basel or Cologne, it\u2019s easy to forget that Europe is on the brink of disaster. But these\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Economy"","block_context":{"text":"Economy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/economy-europe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1932,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-end-of-the-euro\/","url_meta":{"origin":808,"position":1},"title":"The End of the Euro?","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Good riddance to a bad idea. by Bruce S. Thornton Defining Ideas The champions of the European Union once touted it as a \u201cbold new experiment in living\u201d and \u201cthe best hope in an insecure age.\u201d But these days \u201cfear is coursing through the corridors of Brussels,\u201d as the BBC\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The EU"","block_context":{"text":"The EU","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/the-eu\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10306,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/europe-is-still-ailing\/","url_meta":{"origin":808,"position":2},"title":"Europe Is Still Ailing","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 21, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Strategika by Bruce Thornton Tuesday, June 20, 2017 Image credit:\u00a0Poster Collection, GE 2678, Hoover Institution Archives. Recent elections in France, the Netherlands, and Austria, in which Eurosceptic populist and patriotic parties did poorly in national elections, suggest to some that the EU is still strong despite Britain\u2019s vote to leave\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Strategika"","block_context":{"text":"Strategika","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/strategika\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":396,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-nobel-committee-and-its-orwellian-peace-prize\/","url_meta":{"origin":808,"position":3},"title":"The Nobel Committee and Its Orwellian Peace Prize","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton FrontPage Magazine Norway\u2019s Nobel Committee added yet another absurd pick to its long list of politicized and shameful Peace Prize awards. Giving the prize to the disintegrating European Union is not as despicable as giving it to the bloodstained terrorist Yasser Arafat, or as laughably naive as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":868,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/appeasement-bode-war-not-peace\/","url_meta":{"origin":808,"position":4},"title":"Appeasement Bode War Not Peace","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 3, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Terry Scambray New Oxford Review A review of\u00a0The Wages of Appeasement: Ancient Athens, Munich, and Obama's America\u00a0by Bruce S. Thornton. (Encounter Books, 2011 pp. 283) Winston Churchill famously said, \"An appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last.\" In\u00a0The Wages of Appeasement: Ancient Athens,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3447,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/of-hawks-and-flies\/","url_meta":{"origin":808,"position":5},"title":"Of Hawks and Flies","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 8, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society The international order \u2014 comprising the United Nations, interstate diplomacy, organizations like NATO, and all the other transnational institutions that are supposed to keep the global peace and deter aggression \u2014 reminds me of the Spanish proverb about laws: they catch flies\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":809,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808\/revisions\/809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}