perfidy

Henry Brighous of Crooked Timber comments on (well... sort of Fisks) an Iain Murray post about a speech by British MP Roger Helmer (isn't the internet grand???).

Helmer claims that federalism in the European Union doesn't have much in common with its American equivalent; it isn't democratic, and it isn't really federalism either. He's trying to square a rather inconvenient circle for the righties - by and large, right-wingers in the UK and US approve of federalism in the US (more rights for the states), but disapprove of it in Europe. Helmer's basic argument is that federalism is only legitimate if it applies within a single nation-state, where people share a common national identity and common sympathies. Thus, EU federalism is Bad - there's no such thing as a European national identity. However, US federalism is Good - after all America is "One Nation under God."

There's one small problem with this argument. Any half-way intelligent reading of American history will tell you that it's utter nonsense. 150 years ago, the US bore a remarkable resemblance to the EU today; a scattering of loosely affiliated states without all that much of a shared national identity. Then, from the Civil War on, it began to centralize. If Helmer and Murray are right, then, the modern American political system is at best a massive mistake, and at worst, a democratically illegitimate usurpation of powers by a centralizing federal government.

I hadn't though of it this way. Very interesting. My main concern about the EU federalizing is the way they are going about it-- the proposed Constitution could have been written by the IRS's pointy-heads for all the clarity it offers. But I must admit that the notion of many disaggregate nations coming together under one roof seemed, well, alien to me (and I call myself a historian....). Moreover the main objection the American Right has had to the EU's proposed constitution and further consolidation has in fact been the decrease in individual national sovereignty (and they call themselves Conservatives....). I'm going to have to think deeply about Iain Murray's assertion that "Europe cannot be democratic without destroying old nation-states," and whether that is true and desirable. The USA needed a massive internal war to unify totally... Lord knows that Europe has had a few of those. The Spaniard in the works in Europe's case, however, is that the EU formed in part to specifically prevent such a war from happening again. I wonder if greater consolidation could happen anyway, if Europe continues down the internally pacifist, carefully modulated collectivist road it's on. Of course, a war isn't out of the question either.

In short, this is a lot of food for thought for historians, political scientists, and the chattering classes. This blog has all three, so we'll be busy.