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  "The French "non" killed off the possibility of a politically legitimate, democratic Europe for a generation."

   It's your right to view it that way.  I see it differently.

   "I say that political legitimacy prevents neoliberalism, which is all about not refusing the right to make political choices on economic issues in the name of freedom and pretending that any restriction on corporates is dictature."

   And likewise for the above.  In my view, by the time of France's vote, it was already beyond any reasonable doubt that "legitimacy", even assuming either that it  existed somewhere, or might result from a "Yes" vote, was not going to even slow neoliberalism (already far advanced) down, much less prevent it.

   I think that it's also safe to say that no matter what happens, as for "Some have argued that this is not such a bad thing in the current context, when political legitimacy would have been used for neolib purposes," proponents of neoliberalism will seek to use any legitimacy present, past or future, for their cause's purposes.  To expect anything else wouldn't make sense.  Opponents of neoliberalism, after all, would do the same.

    If one day we're so fortunate as to live under a system which can lay fair claim to legitimacy, then surely every party on every side would seek to lay its claim to that legitimacy. (Now I'm in danger of sounding pontifical, but this is only my personal opinion) Legitimacy, if it exists, is something apart from any party's property.

   Neither I nor any party I support "won" anything which today still has effect.  To say that the "Non" proponents acted in "bad faith" (merely by voting "Non"?) is to assume that on this question there could be no legitimate alternative to a "Oui", which was indeed exactly what the "Oui" proponents did assert, not figuratively but absolutely literally.  But, I know we've been all through these arguments already.

    There are numerous points we agree on.  But this isn't and apparently can't be one of them.  We have fundamentally differing views about even such things as what constitutes good faith, legitimacy and what promotes them.  I also want "a politically legitimate, democratic Europe" and I wouldn't have voted against anything which I thought would hasten its advent.  So---and I know you see it, too---we differ over just that point, what would hasten or delay or preclude it.

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge

by proximity1 on Tue Nov 3rd, 2009 at 11:05:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]
you're the one who came up with insulting words, yet again, for those that supported the Constitution an the Lisbon Treaty.

I have argued on substance for these. I have no problems with arguments on the substance against it (and many of the regulars on ET, like Migeru, DoDo or others, have argued, often forcefully, against me on this topic), but the sneering words for he partisans of the 'yes' are nothing of the sort.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Tue Nov 3rd, 2009 at 12:53:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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