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Thursday, June 02, 2005What's going wrong with Europe...Austin Bay now has more analysis on what's gone wrong with the European Constitution. But the short answer has already been talked about elsewhere: it's too damn big. Continent-wide civilizations are formalized in law, not created in it. If all the EU fans really want a European superstate, there's an easy way for them to get it: wait. It's noted that the U.S. Constitution is a pretty small document, and that even with 200 years to add to it we've only tacked on a few pages. How come? Because that's all we could get consensus on for the permanent structure of our society. Is that tenable? Well, we're the most powerful nation on earth right now, possibly in history. And yet, it seems, there's not a single word in the Constitution about wheat farming in Nebraska, dairy farming in Wisconsin or defense contracting in California. By creating a Constitution that described how to make laws and in what matters laws could be made, the US got itself a framework for loosely confederated mini-states to work together 200 years ago on the things they trusted each other on. It also got a framework for a federal behemoth as the dominant force in a society where you couldn't do business if you had to visit the customs office and your attorney every time you wanted to ship cheese from Madison to Indianapolis. If the Europeans truly want a superstate, they will realize that no bureaucracy, however smart, can actually make one - ask the Soviets -, it can only tame one as it emerges. If the Eurocrats could just sit on their hands fifteen years, refraining from adding more rules and regulations, they'd have a mass of businesses and workers that, after 30 years of hopping across borders without a thought, were clamoring for harmonization of trade and other rules to make it easier to work cross-border jobs and do cross-border business. Instead of a committee figuring out what the European identity should be, they'd see it emerging in French folks who'd picked up Swiss ideas about efficiency, German citizens who admired the laissez-faire attitude of Northern Italians and Spaniards eager to bring to their products the cachet implied in all things French. The U.S. wasn't formed by bureaucrats deciding what America should be. We weren't even supposed to be a single nation, just a union of states. Our coming together has been one of the pols and the people alternately leading us toward a nation state on those areas where we had become too closely enmeshed to function as independent units. Hence, we have 50 different sets of rules concerning murder, robbery and the like but harmonized rules where cross-border trade makes it necessary. We've also got lots of nationalized nonsense, but at least it took legislatures a couple hundred years to stretch our understanding of the Constitution enough to get away with it - and even then only because we'd come to think of ourselves as Americans, not Minnesotans, Michiganders, Californians, etc. The EU, in contrast to the US, is trying to create the superstate first and fit the people in afterward. This is the classic European approach. We'll see how it works. It didn't work so well with Napoleon, Hitler or Stalin, however. It barely worked for Bismarck. Our best hope for the EU is that it will kill fewer people over the course of its rise and fall than its forerunners. And then, one day, should the EU manage not to scrap the open borders when the rest falls apart, a foundation will be laid for a real Europe - one made by real Europeans whose identity came not from political planning but the practical necessities of finding more and better common ground with the folks next door. 
posted by gbarto at 8:39 PM Wednesday, June 01, 2005Why not Sarkozy?Chirac is slipping and in a few years may be behind bars. My evidence? His appointment of Villepin and the new Prime Minister. Why not Sarkozy? Sarkozy, for those unfamiliar with him, is probably the strongest challenger to Chirac for leadership of the center-right. Everything I read suggests, then, that if the center-right can hold the only threat to Chirac's death-grip on power is this one man. Unless he turned it down, why didn't Chirac saddle him with the Prime Ministership? The latest news out of France is that Villepin barely got sworn in before the rail workers went on strike. A few years back, Chirac faced another formidable foe, Eduoard Balladur. Silver-tongued, humble and honest seeming, Balladur had everything it took to send Chirac out of the Elysée and into the arms of his prosecutors. Everything, that is, except the supernatural flying ability necessary to rise above having been in charge of France a few years. There is still time, of course. If early trends continue, there could be time for Villepin to get canned and Sarkozy to go bust trying to save the day. But that risks creating a scenario where even the French left is no longer so much an implausibility for the French leadership. Chirac's either playing this real close or he's off his game.
posted by gbarto at 12:06 PM It says in Scripture that God is the Judge of Judges (sometimes, Judge of Gods, the Hebrew is elohim) (Psalms 82.1) What if She's a liberal judge? A new ramble at Wittgenstein's Bastard. By the way, I recommend the linked Scripture source, TheSkepticsAnnotatedBible to any and all sincere believers. Traditional commentaries have answers; this edition has questions. But are we called to read the Scripture the better to confirm other people's answers? This edition, designed to irritate, abuse and challenge faith should force a more serious consideration of the confusions, contradictions and complexities within the Bible, allowing the sincere believer a space in which to truly exercise reason and select his or her own path to understanding. By the way, there's a Koran too.
posted by gbarto at 11:17 AM Thoughts: When somebody starts waving Scripture in your face, a really nasty response would be to remark that now you know how Jesus felt after healing a blind man on the Sabbath. - - - It's understandable that Andrew Sullivan would spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about men having sex with other men. But why are Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson so caught up in the subject? Isn't the extent of their interest a touch... unhealthy? Like many others, I think Andrew has gotten a bit hysterical. He'll have to deal with that or deal with lost readership down the road. At the same time, I think his readership has gotten a bit hysterical, or at least unrealistic. Andrew hit his stride with a sharp take on a select set of issues everyone was talking about before the WOT really took off. Since then, the hot topics have changed, frankly altering the direction at which most of us approach the world to one degree or another. Waiting to cross the street yesterday, I watched a guy who looked Amish-punk - old-fashioned beard, overalls (but blue-jean) and a tattoo on his forearm as he lectured his wife and two kids on how in an era of capitalism it's me, me, me and nobody respects what ordinary people are trying to do. Then he got bored and led them across the street, against the light, causing horns to honk, cars to stop and people to miss their turn. I smiled as I waited for the light, knowing that this person would never change - for good or ill. His approach to the world would be the same no matter what happened, and too bad for those who know him. Andrew has changed, we hear. As I say, so has the world. I think he went round the bend in the wrong direction and - here's the rough part - stopped having interesting things to say. Had he gone so completely nuts as to have the occasional stark, insane insight that was dead wrong but still made your brain go ouch as you thought of things you hadn't before, I'd read him, however offended I got. But if he hadn't changed, if he'd kept being the person who launched the Dish lo these many years, I would have also stopped reading. I like a little character development, even - especially - in my blogs.
posted by gbarto at 10:18 AM Sunday, May 29, 2005VIVE LA(via Instapundit)
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