Is the EU really a break from history, or is it just the latest attempt at pan-European governance, a project that many have tried, and has even seen success, since the end of Roman power on the continent? The Habsburg system was an elected means of providing for peace, trade, and mutual defense among European powers within it. The Catholic Church provided an international governance structure by adjudicating questions succession and sovereignty in European principalities. Both were actually elected positions, not much different from the institutional selection of an EU president that we witness today. I think it is actually really important, if honesty is part of anything at all, to get away from the idea, much expressed in various forms in this forum, that history somehow began anew in Europe after WWII. The major difference, since then, has been that a major part of sovereign responsibility -- military defense -- has been provided and governed by a power outside of Europe. It would be foolish to presume that that has no impact on European governance, just as it would be naive to presume that the model of statecraft in Europe is significantly different from the basic models provided by the political sciences, which began with Machiavelli's "The Prince."
Both were relatively strong executive positions, elected by non-democratic rulers. The President of the European Council is not an executive position, nor strong (at least now), and the governments and heads of states at the table are elected. And the power of none of those two was counterbalanced by a parliament.
If you are not troll-baiting, then you ignore roughly 800 years of political development. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
What you said was a deliberately provocative short-cut of the kind that doesn't produce dialogue. And it can be seen as flame-baiting, troll-baiting, trouble-making - I don't care what it's called, but please stop it.
I've no more time to waste on your disruptive behaviour.
Two reasons - to me he is a hypocrit and war criminal. Hope that is not hyperbol - at least it doesn't feel like to me. :-)
Hope that is not hyperbol - at least it doesn't feel like to me. :-)
A half-serious, half-playful response to a half serious comment. I didn't realize that ET was just an anti-Blair mosh pit, with no sense of humor at all regarding European politics.
The EU pretends to be a post-Enlightenment project, and you insist on saying it's an ancien régime project.
Ironically, Chomsky examines these very narratives --"post-Enlightment" and "ancien régime"-- in Hegemony or Survival (of Yurp and the USA since, oh, 1900). I happen to be in my first reading of it at the moment.
Next is Dallek's Nixon and Kissinger. hehehe. Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
Specifically:
Such ratings should never be used to indicate that you disagree with the comment.
Thank you.
It simply never occurred to me that anyone here is actually embarrassed by those episodes of European history, instead of animated by it.
hilarious...
charlemange sounds like a dog's skin infection.
oh, yes, animated is exactly the word one might use to describe reacting to the mercenary, bloodthirsty, creepily underhanded, morally reprehensible machinations of the vatican through european history. 'embarrassed' is very mild... may i suggest 'totally disgusted' as more appropriate?
very droll, you wag, you! ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
Is the EU really a break from history
...is called a strawman. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
