Methinks superposed on the Nine/Ten Nations of North America, there is a US-countrywide trend of uniformity. This trend is the moving-around, the high mobility of the US population. This trend is not new, but it was greatly facilitated by the government-encouraged construction of the suburban-spread-plus-cars settlement structure. The underlyíing architectural, city-structural uniformity made a much stronger cultural uniformisation possible than the EU's basic right of free movement across borders will ever do. Thus both the regional and ancestral identities are hollowed out, its remains often 'worn' in a fetishistic way, in the sense redstar wrote about. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
What all the free movement of persons is doing in the UK is fostering the appearence of hundreds of expatriate businesses, like Polish bakeries distributing Polish bread to the whole of England, or Lithuanian corner stores, or Turkish convenience stores with signs announcing "we have Czech/Polish/Slovak food" in the respective language, or carrying Italian, German, Portuguese, Spanish [yummy childhood flavours!], Danish products without announcing them.
We'll see whether the free movement of services [such as construction] and the participation of expatriates in local elections will have an impact on local development of housing and infrastructure. I doubt it, so the various EU member states (and regions within them) are likely to preserve their distinctive flavour, and the American "no-place" [for if, as in suburbia, every place looks like every place else, there are no separate places to speak of] won't happen. Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
The American frontier economy was based on settlement in newly taken land, building up the economic value of the settlement by establishing a local export-based economy, and then the next generation moving on to the next zone of newly taken land.
After the frontier closed around 1900, America eventually settled on the highway system as a way to engineer new frontiers to engage in the same process.
Even as dimly as I see a European model, and as briefly as I sketch that above, it is easier to see how it becomes a sustainable steady state system by providing for a regular outmigration from the urban centre to the hinterland (which may be smaller centre in the hinterland).
Making a frontier expansion model sustainable is tougher, and I am sure some would argue it is impossible. My outer-suburban retrofit ideas diaried in the Daily Kos involves using an interegional public transport line as the infrastructure subsidy for a process of frontier settlement of low density outer suburbs with a network of higher density outer suburban villages.
However, on its own it is only a transitional system. The hope is that it is a transition in the direction of sustainability, rather than another transition trying to avoid sustainability.
{NB. I try to speak very carefully here of A pattern IN Europe as opposed to THE pattern OF Europe. "Singular and comprehensive" pattern is not assumed.} I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
In addition to neo-colonialism, of course. Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
The EU in that regards is, in other words, far more like the US of 1800, when most people thought of themselves as a State citizen first, and a US citizen as well.
Of course, if there is a tendency among USofAmericans to equate Real_World=USA, there is also a tendency in Europe to equate Real_World=Europe.
What makes the Nine Nations thesis so useful for analysing events in the US is the very strength of the myth of a common national identity. That is what makes the understanding of the main regional identities so important in understanding social and political events in the US.
However, it must be recognised that if the myth was firmly establish that the US is a confederation of Eight (or more likely Nine) Regional Nations, using a state federal system as the arena to decide upon cooperative confederation-wide actions, it would be equally necessary to point out how the common impacts of those common actions makes for very real threads of common identify contained within the national boundaries.
An attempt to understand current social, political and economic events WRT the Nine Nations thesis alone would not stand up, not without substantial further political evolution. It would be incoherent to pretend there are no coherent differences that line up on the US-Canadian border that runs through New England, Foundry, Breadbasket, Empty Quarter and Pacific Northwest, and the Mexican-American border that runs through Mexamerica. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Yes, people in the EU are more likely to encounter a broader range of diversity than people in the US, but there are fewer people in the EU who imagine themselves to be Europeans first and foremost, and French and Pole and Slovak and Spanish and Scottish after.
How many MEPs does Newropeans reckon to obtain in the European elections of 2009? Newropeans reckons to obtain between 5% and 10% of the votes in the European elections of 2009 and therefore between 50 and 75 MEPs. This would immediately turn Newropeans into a key political actor in the European Parliament: the only one with a European group from the same political movement, and the only one to have a direct relationship with European citizens from all over the continent. That will allow us to implement the programme, and to attract MEPs and other movements represented in the European Parliament. In function of such a result, Newropeans would hope to obtain over 150 seats in 2014.
Newropeans reckons to obtain between 5% and 10% of the votes in the European elections of 2009 and therefore between 50 and 75 MEPs. This would immediately turn Newropeans into a key political actor in the European Parliament: the only one with a European group from the same political movement, and the only one to have a direct relationship with European citizens from all over the continent. That will allow us to implement the programme, and to attract MEPs and other movements represented in the European Parliament. In function of such a result, Newropeans would hope to obtain over 150 seats in 2014.
Of course, maximum entropy estimates are admissions of ignorance, and therefore an inducement to fill in the blanks with knowledge. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
