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Is the European Union unraveling? After Brexit many
commentators predicted that the EU was on the road to obsolescence. A
primary reason was German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to open the
nation to a flood of Muslim refugees. Subjecting your nation to an alien invasion is not good politics.
While Merkel has been trying to step back from her signature
policy, the German people want to reclaim their national identity. For now it is not quite a majority, but who knows what will happen if the issue
becomes a real referendum.
The Daily Mail reports on a recent survey:
Nearly
half of Germans have indicated they want to follow Britain in holding a
referendum on their EU membership.
A
survey found 42 percent of citizens want a similar vote that led to Brexit,
while two thirds of the population believe the European Union 'is heading in
the wrong direction'.
It will
be seen as a blow to German Chancellor Angela Merkel who has been criticised
for her open-door policy on immigration which saw one million migrants enter
the country last year.
And also:
Figures show 67 percent of Germans want the EU to change its political course and a massive 96 percent want the bloc to be 'more transparent and closer to the people', according to RT.
Figures show 67 percent of Germans want the EU to change its political course and a massive 96 percent want the bloc to be 'more transparent and closer to the people', according to RT.
Only 39
percent of citizens think country's deal with Europe is a positive thing and a
quarter believe it could threaten their national identity with the majority of
those asked considering themselves German and not European.
Again, the problem is immigration:
Germany's
migrant crisis is still considered the biggest modern challenge, according to RT.
Seven
in 10 respondents want to see the EU's external borders better protected, a
fifth of Germans want to see them completely closed.
And finally:
In a
separate study, four out of ten Germans fear their country is being subverted
by Islam, according to a new study into attitudes towards immigration and
religion.
And
34.7 per cent say they feel like a stranger in their own country.
New
research has also revealed that 28 per cent of people say they can no longer
express an opinion 'without getting into trouble'.
Interesting last point: too many refugees and with too much
guilt have produced a witch hunt against dissidents, against Islamophobia. To
the leftist mind the only problem with mass immigration is the bad attitude of
the local population. So much for free expression.
4 comments:
"New research has also revealed that 28 per cent of people say they can no longer express an opinion 'without getting into trouble'."
The people are realizing that the government does not have the people's interests in mind, except to thwart them.
Well, I guess the Muslim thing is pretty important as a mears of getting EU problems into EU-nik faces, but I think the more serious problem is the attempt to knit together economic policy across an invented superstate.
Europe didn't end up with a Germany, a France, an Italy, a Netherlands, and a UK by chance. Anyone who has traveled among these countries knows there are very deep cultural differences between them. New York and Pennsylvania are much more alike than Italy and France. And Wyoming and Massachusetts are more culturally similar than Denmark and Greece. Historically, European countries managed their very different economies very differently, and managed to get by. An economy dominated by machine tools and chemicals is going to be very different from an economy dominated by tourism and sales of tourist tchotchkes. Now they have a common currency, with pictures of imaginary artifacts, managed by a Keynesean central bank that is trying, and failing, to maximize all the variables simultaneously. Any student of linear programming knows that, in any complex system, whtether it's traveling salesmen or economic flows, one can never maximize all the variables simultaneously.
The refugee debacle simply made German policy a lightning rod for disaffected EU-nikism because Germany is large, rich, and powerful within the EU.
I don't think the EU is necessarily going to disappear, bud I predict in a quartey-century the EU will be very different, and much more confederal than the one we see today.
There's also the EU itself, with "Representatives" to its "Parliament" that are not beholden to their people, if I understand correctly what I've read.
Tolerance, plurality and hyper-specialized education have their limits. To be a tribe or nation, you have to have unifying principles and shared values. The European Union does not possess these features. So what's the value? The value is that the same powerful people share cross-border, cross-cultural ideas about what Europe should be. Their citizenry does not agree. Yet the powerful technocrats persist... sounds like there's a lot in it for them. Meanwhile, the citizens are finding there's not a lot in it for them. Common sense has demonstrated that Brussels experts have not made their lives better. So long as there are elections -- look for "common sense reforms" to get rid of such pesky democratic events -- the Eurocrats will not be able to get away with everything they want. The EU constitution is 70,000 words of impenetrable language. The U.S. Constitution is about 7,600, including the Amendments, and it's relatively easy to understand. Go figure.
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