Leave or stay in the EU?

[Angantyr]

I wish 'reform the EU' would be the third option besides 'leave' or 'stay. I'm afraid if the UK decides to stay, and I have a feeling it will, it would be seized upon by the eurocrats and their allies in national parliaments as a great victory for the current direction the institution is heading in.

[Osiris]

Problem with the reform the EU option is David Cameron was pretty much like "ill show you the EU can be reformed as i get a new deal!" and the EU gave him nothing. Hard to cheer for the reform vote if it has shown very little willingness to reform. They could have pretty much lied and offered all these nice changes and then changed them after the referendum and our govt would be ok with that and never hold another one again.

I think the Remain and EU camp underestimated how much people hate being told they will fail and become a third world country if they vote leave. The UK has generally considered itself apart from Europe so a different tactic was needed.

[Angantyr]

There's also the option of reservations on certain points of EU policy such as we have here in Denmark. After a 'no' to Maastricht in 1992, Denmark chose to have four points of reservation, legal, defense and citizenship reservations and we also voted against the Euro, which is why we still have our Crown.

[Thomek]

Main problems with the current union include things such as:
A monetary union without shared economy policy, highly impractical and considered by many to be impossible.

Not impossible, works fine for most. Problem was mainly corrupt Greek politicians. Now they are paying the price, and are forced to reform.

The prospect of Turkish membership, effectively putting Europe's borders in the most unstable and militarized region in the world and flooding the EU with migrants whom are generally undesired by the local populations.

Flooding with EU with third world immigrants as part of some neo-liberal strategy against the working classes. I buy the argument that this would have happened under the national governments aswell but I think it is clear the development is much easier to turn at a national level, as we are seeing right now in many EU countries, my own included.

1st, Turkey will never be a member, unless they make leaps and bounds of progress. Never in the state they are in now, and where they are heading atm.

"Neoliberal strategy against working classes.." Uhm, what? The only thing I see is a growing realization that we have enough, and sooner or later it will lead to stricter border control.

A bloated bureaucracy far from public scrutiny.

Member states are paying less than 1% of their GDP towards the EU.

The lack of a coherent European identity necessary to have not only law abiding tax payers but the kind of dilligent, self-sacrificing citizens whom join in the social and political life (Chaplin's 'virtous citizen'), the kind of collective thinking that has made the European nation states great to begin with. As the EU has tried its best to erase national identities across the continent a new pan-European identity has not risen to take its place, instead popular national movements have been result.

Erase national identities? This is getting crazier and crazier. Aren't Britons still britons, germans still germans, and french still french? I've yet to meet, see or hear about 1 singular person with a Pan-European identity. This is just crazytalk.

Often completely different interests, economies, cultures, ethnicities, mindsets, histories and political landscapes of the member states. Which is why smaller regional unions would make more sense.

But there are! They are called countries, states within countries, local councils etc..

The problem is we can't really wait and see when it changes because these developments, and I'm talking mass-immigration here specifically, are not comparable to the occasional slip in domestic politics; the citizens of these countries, new aswell as old, have to live with the consequences for who knows how long into the future, these people are not going away and the inevitable results of ethnic friction are well-documented, we are talking immigration (in many cases practical colonization) from the third world on a scale never seen before in Europe, to the point where an actual population replacement is taking place, like in the UK where migration has been the main engine of population growth since the 90s.

Mass immigration to Europe will be stopped. I think the people have made a case. Even the swedes are beginning to wake up. This is democracy in action, in its own slow and boring way.

From what I can see, Durkheimian sociologists and social psychologists like Jonathan Haidt are on to something when they talk about humans working best in smaller in-groups where people are similar and share similar values and then to work with others through alliance systems and economic cooperation. To me something like the United States with all the violence, identity politics and cultural battles (and the political correctness that naturally follows from this) would be a most unfortunate future for Europe.

US is on top of the world when it comes to most respects. Yes they have their problems, but their cultural, economical, and scientific impact on the world is simply dominating. There really IS a lot of power and freedom in letting people live and work where and when they want to.

Let me be politically incorrect. The Brits are acting based on vague, distorted memories of a great nation, of so called independence! Of some kind of harry potterish land of style, dignity and adventure! In reality, your Empire was one of the worst oppressors the world has ever seen, most Brits lived in utter poverty, and you still live in endless mazes of hobbit-sized townhouses and your gray, rainy reality. Now you are afraid your misery will be destroyed by brown people? And Poles? And Gypsies? Yeah sure, this is why Britain sucks balls, and not your ugly-failure prone cars, archaic systems and bureaucracy, the ineptitude of the upper class, and the general hapless attitude of your working class?

Rant over.

Essentially, I think the British problem lays in the class system. It is lack of meritocracy that lead to your industrial decline. Bad ideas, not bad work or lack of effort. Some are above the others, and they know it very well. In Belfast I met several "working class" people, and it was most depressing to me, how they seemed to fully embrace the idea that they would never amount to anything. The class system lives in the mind as well as in structures, most of all the educational system.

[Butan]

A United States of Europe, god i hope i die long before that happens. Europe is not like the USA, we have different cultures and different languages and i hope it stays that way for a long long time, its what makes Europe special.

USA is the biggest cultural melting pot in the world, your point stands only on language. And on that subject, a common tongue is also a worthy goal.
Leave the tribes to Oberyn and join mankind Osiris 



Anyway, it wont happen without a big worldwide crisis, because as it is, every elected leaders of every countries in Europe have far too much interest in remaining independant from one another, and just keep pillaging EU's purse as deeply as they can, which is a shame.

[Kafein]

I find the idea of "sovereignty" being taken as a goal in and of itself to be completely ridiculous. A country is just some way to organize people, like a region or a county. What we should strive for is the schema that is the most efficient for every one of us. Apparently that's way too rational. Do the leave voters genuinely think British politicians are less corrupt and more interested in their well-being than EU politicians? How incredibly naive.

[Angantyr]

Not impossible, works fine for most. Problem was mainly corrupt Greek politicians. Now they are paying the price, and are forced to reform.

You sound very sure about something that experts and economists around the world are not at all sure of. The adoption of the Euro has been a catastrophe in Southern Europe. But let's see what the future brings, though a recent study from a Syddansk University shows that there simply is no demonstrable relationship between economic growth and EU membership, no matter what your gut feeling tells you.

1st, Turkey will never be a member, unless they make leaps and bounds of progress. Never in the state they are in now, and where they are heading atm.

Again, you seem very sure about something that has been a project for much of the EU leadership for a very long time. I wish I shared your optimism. Though I wouldn't want Turkey anywhere near the union even if they did.

"Neoliberal strategy against working classes.." Uhm, what? The only thing I see is a growing realization that we have enough, and sooner or later it will lead to stricter border control.

Cheap foreign labour is used as leverage to bring labour costs down, meaning worse wages, work conditions and less benefits for the western workers when they have to compete with for example Poles who work for far less, but which is many times what they get back in back in Poland.

Member states are paying less than 1% of their GDP towards the EU.

I wrote 'bloated bureaucracy' in the sense of the political infrastructure, not the economy.

Erase national identities? This is getting crazier and crazier. Aren't Britons still britons, germans still germans, and french still french? I've yet to meet, see or hear about 1 singular person with a Pan-European identity. This is just crazytalk.

Yet that is what some of the eurocrats ultimately want, as you would know if you had paid any attention. New flag, new 'national' anthem, its own army, own currency, a new collective identity, increasingly giving up national sovereignity to Brussels, be it judicial or economic or otherwise. The .eu domain's introduction campaign specifically uses the tagline 'Your European Identity'.
I've met people who described themselves not as their nationalities but as 'Europeans', btw.
Not saying it's going to happen, in fact it seems it's going the other way, but it's clearly what some people are working towards.

But there are! They are called countries, states within countries, local councils etc..

Indeed, but we were talking supranational entities.

Mass immigration to Europe will be stopped. I think the people have made a case. Even the swedes are beginning to wake up. This is democracy in action, in its own slow and boring way.

Yes, but not by the EU, which was my whole point. On the contrary the EU is working towards continued third world immigration.

US is on top of the world when it comes to most respects. Yes they have their problems, but their cultural, economical, and scientific impact on the world is simply dominating. There really IS a lot of power and freedom in letting people live and work where and when they want to.

What would be extremely extraordinary is if the country wasn't dominating. With the size, natural security, immense natural ressources and western culture (yet) of the United States it has been bound for a domineering role ever since its founding, as also recognized by contemporary writers. But, and what no one could foresee at the time, helped immensively along by the two world wars where the rest of the industrial world destroyed itself leaving the US with literally half the world's wealth in 1945 and no industrial competition, and a transfer of all the old European colonial interests into American hands. It has gone downhill since, however, as the rest of the world has rebuilt.

Let me be politically incorrect. The Brits are acting based on vague, distorted memories of a great nation, of so called independence! Of some kind of harry potterish land of style, dignity and adventure! In reality, your Empire was one of the worst oppressors the world has ever seen, most Brits lived in utter poverty, and you still live in endless mazes of hobbit-sized townhouses and your gray, rainy reality. Now you are afraid your misery will be destroyed by brown people? And Poles? And Gypsies? Yeah sure, this is why Britain sucks balls, and not your ugly-failure prone cars, archaic systems and bureaucracy, the ineptitude of the upper class, and the general hapless attitude of your working class?

There is another side of Empire, one in which the British and French and others actually also did a lot of good in the world. It's a general consensus among modern historians that the picture is not at all black and white. Just look at some of the most developed countries in the world outside of Europe right now, they are usually old British possessions. The British and the French did away with a lot of the most backwards thinking in certain parts of their empires (such as widow burning) they built modern infrastructure like railroads and the Suez Canal, wrote laws, constitutions, organized, brought western medicine, technology etc. And yes, a lot of plundering aswell.

But no, despite its faults, Great Britain really was one of the most influential nations in history, in philosophy, industry, trade, politics, colonization etc.

Essentially, I think the British problem lays in the class system. It is lack of meritocracy that lead to your industrial decline. Bad ideas, not bad work or lack of effort. Some are above the others, and they know it very well. In Belfast I met several "working class" people, and it was most depressing to me, how they seemed to fully embrace the idea that they would never amount to anything. The class system lives in the mind as well as in structures, most of all the educational system.

As for the last part I wholeheartedly agree with the criticism of the class system, but I see the mass migration to the country as only exacerbating that, favourizing people from abroad instead of taking care of its own poor countrymen, especially young white men from the old working class areas. I think it's a travesty and unworthy of a western nation.

[Butan]

Yet that is what some of the eurocrats ultimately want, as you would know if you had paid any attention. New flag, new 'national' anthem, its own army, own currency, a new collective identity, increasingly giving up national sovereignity to Brussels, be it judicial or economic or otherwise. The .eu domain's introduction campaign specifically uses the tagline 'Your European Identity'.
I've met people who described themselves not as their nationalities but as 'Europeans', btw.

I even met some people that described themselves as "humans", btw.

[Angantyr]

So? What bearing has that on a conversation about Pan-European identity exactly?

[Oberyn]

USA is the biggest cultural melting pot in the world, your point stands only on language. And on that subject, a common tongue is also a worthy goal.
Leave the tribes to Oberyn and join mankind Osiris 

You can't compare the forced assimilation of the 19th and early 20th century in the US to the multicultural salad bowl of today. They don't even call it a melting pot anymore, for very good reasons. Do you have any fucking idea how many institutional and cultural mechanisms were devoted to eradicating as much as possible of the previous culture of immigrants to forcely integrate them into anglo-american language and world view? Mechanisms that would be considered opressive totalitarian fascist racism as a matter of course by modern perspectives.

I have no idea where people get the impression that the end-result of millions of Europeans migrating to the US and the melting pot that gave rise to modern-american culture was achieved by some sort of gentle, unobtrusive, multigenerational tolerance, and not a concerted attempt at integration on every level by the powers that be. It certainly cannot be compared to the modern attempts in the US and elsewhere, where "integration" is a dirty word ladden with racist, colonialist overtones, and thus avoided in every way.

One could use the entire history of South Louisiana as an easy proof of this (and the people of Acadiana were effectively sold to the United States by France, they weren't even immigrants.) The United States went as far as to burn their schools and libraries, jailing those who spoke languages other than English in public. These policies weren't lifted until the 1970's and some linger even now. It is so bizarre the way Americans seem to treat these things as if they aren't the reason that places like Louisiana became what they are today and tout the line of "American Exceptionalism" as the reason that there were 1,000,000+ French speaking Acadians in Louisiana in 1921, and about 40,000 today. They just wanted to be American so much, apparently! For reference to put that into perspective, Louisiana's total population now is only about 4,500,000. That kind of decline does not occur naturally.

This case repeats itself over and over again, though usually on a much smaller and less violent scale, with the history of the United States. It is relevant because it demonstrates than Anglo-Americans very much considered themselves an ethnic group, separate from other cultures, and acted no differently than those back in Europe when confronted with most situations. To pretend what is happening today across the western world is in any way, shape or form similar is borne entirely out of brainwashing ignorance, just bold statements repeated over and over again with no proof and accepted with no digestion.

[Butan]

So? What bearing has that on a conversation about Pan-European identity exactly?

What I meant is that identities dont exclude themselves. Even before the European Union, we were europeans by definition, and we were men too.
To voice a preference for your european identity or your national identity is one thing, and yes it shows how we progress toward a globalized state. However, whatever is your opinion on the matter, nations never superceded the world. Local < region < country < continent < world. They all exist at the same time, at all time.

Even since we progressed from feodalism to nationalism, we still have local identities and cultures, so for the same reasons I dont see why noticing that people can describe themselves as Europeans, means that national cultures will disappear.

[Butan]

You can't compare the forced assimilation of the 19th and early 20th century in the US to the multicultural salad bowl of today. They don't even call it a melting pot anymore, for very good reasons. Do you have any fucking idea how many institutional and cultural mechanisms were devoted to eradicating as much as possible of the previous culture of immigrants to forcely integrate them into anglo-american language and world view? Mechanisms that would be considered opressive totalitarian fascist racism as a matter of course by modern perspectives.

I have no idea where people get the impression that the end-result of millions of Europeans migrating to the US and the melting pot that gave rise to modern-american culture was achieved by some sort of gentle, unobtrusive, multigenerational tolerance, and not a concerted attempt at integration on every level by the powers that be. It certainly cannot be compared to the modern attempts in the US and elsewhere, where "integration" is a dirty word ladden with racist, colonialist overtones, and thus avoided in every way.

The fact that I said melting pot without flinching should tell you that I am in favor of forced assimilation. So what would stop a united states of europe from being as succesfull as the united states of america if we used the same methods they did?

We dont agree often but sometimes we do Oberyn...

[Angantyr]

What I meant is that identities dont exclude themselves. Even before the European Union, we were europeans by definition, and we were men too.
To voice a preference for your european identity or your national identity is one thing, and yes it shows how we progress toward a globalized state. However, whatever is your opinion on the matter, nations never superceded the world. Local < region < country < continent < world. They all exist at the same time, at all time.

Even since we progressed from feodalism to nationalism, we still have local identities and cultures, so for the same reasons I dont see why noticing that people can describe themselves as Europeans, means that national cultures will disappear.

What I wrote needs to be seen in relation to what I was answering from Thomek; 'I've yet to meet, see or hear about 1 singular person with a Pan-European identity. This is just crazytalk.'

I personally also feel like a European. Dane first, Scandinavian second, European third. The people I referred to feel more connected to some Pan-European identity than their national.

[Overdriven]

Just watched Gangs of New York again yesterday. Realized it had some interesting parallels to today's immigration 'crisis'.

Bill Cutting is pretty much the leave camp.

[Angantyr]

Yes, 'crisis' really needs those apostrophes, only the biggest migration from Africa and the ME to Europe in written history, clearly way overdramatized.

Gangs of New York is a great movie btw., it reminds me of the long tradition of corruption and gang violence in major US cities and brutal tribal conflicts on the frontiers of western civilization in exactly the same historical period in which my own country went through its golden age in art, litterature and philosophy.