I’m sorry if my comments ever seemed to imply a personal criticism. My opinion about you is far from negative, as I think you know. I wouldn’t bother discussing, if it weren’t.
My contention is about the low level of argumentation and discussion in the Brexit debate.
In my opinion patriotism and civic national pride are, of course, positive characteristics which can be well separated from chauvinism.
However, appeals to the defense of national identity, especially when it is not even threatened to start with, are almost universally symptoms of political manipulation. The fact that the Brexit supporters fall back on this tactic time anda again is, in my book, a clear sign against them as a movement and against their position.
“A common fiscal policy would not permit such incredible rates. Fortunately the European Authorities imposed an “auto cutter” on the public expenditures and we hope that this last increase from 23% to 24% will be the final!”
I don’t think what you call the “common” fiscal policy can solve the economic problem. It might just reduce the autonomy of the member countries. It will just deprive the member countries of available policy choices. Whether the EU is a family or a jungle, each country should have its own autonomy in some important policy areas. Even in a country, “local” autonomy in some important policy areas should be maintained and respected. This is not a matter of nationalism or national sovereignty. This is a matter of democracy and decentralization of power.
To Yutaka.
“I don’t think what you call the “common” fiscal policy can solve the economic problem. It might just reduce the autonomy of the member countries. It will just deprive the member countries of available policy choices. Whether the EU is a family or a jungle, each country should have its own autonomy in some important policy areas. Even in a country, “local” autonomy in some important policy areas should be maintained and respected. This is not a matter of nationalism or national sovereignty. This is a matter of democracy and decentralization of power.”
In democracies the matters of decentralized administration are usually the secondary issues.
For the subjects of national sovereignty, from the time that each member participates in one Union, the concession of some sovereign rights to this Union is deemed self-evident.
And as regards my own country, the only that the EU Institutions could deprive the Greek politicians is the “right” to appoint their relatives, friends and the members of their political parties in the jobs of the public sector of economy! Ha!
And certainly one common fiscal policy could make the economy to work, to produce goods and profits!
In my country the taxes (direct, indirect and extraordinary) and the inflexible expenditures reach the rate of 85% on the profits! So, good!
As for the available policy choices, we haven’t seen any unconventional ideas yet on the table of think tanks, neither there is a vast variety of solutions for the current deadlocks. We ruminate the ideas of the past! So, at least all together we have more possibilities to achieve to form a better Union.
Timothy Snyder offers a different interpretation of the origins of the EU: Lecture by Timothy Snyder: "Europe after 1914: Integrations and Disintegrations” - YouTube
His theory intreges me, but I haven’t read as much about European integration as I probably should have
Oh and he speaks some Ukrainian at the start of his talk…
“The sad thing is that a lower-level political debate has repeated them so often that they have become acceptable and even “self-evident” by a great number of otherwise intelligent members of the public.”
I agree, and this happens, because if you accustom the sight of the “monster”, at the end you start resembling to it! It is a part of the human’s nature!
@Ftornay
I agree that some of the tactics from leave side have been disgraceful (in an earlier comment I even likened it to Neo-Nazi propaganda!) But I think it is important to realise that this has not been a one way street! There have been attempted emotive appeals and manipulation from both sides. To a large extent, the pro-EU side has not campaigned positively and factually on the advantages of EU membership, but has instead repeatedly appealed to fear - talking about war, threatening pensioners, for example.
Arguably the hardcore anti-immigrant tone was a reaction against this so-called “project fear” from the remain side. If one side in a political fight is perceived to be hitting below the belt, the other side will almost inevitably reciprocate, and thus we see a kind of “rush to the bottom”, if you will.
Either way, I think the campaign has been disappointing in both tone and content. Whatever the result, there will now be a huge rift in the Conservative Party, I think.
What really strikes me is how some Europeans view pro-Brexit British as morons who don’t understand anything, who just listen to populist politicians, as if pro-EU people were better, more intelligent and reasonable.
We experienced that in France and the Netherlands in 2005. When asked if we should ratify the European Constitution, both countries voted against but our politicians decided they would ratify it anyway! How democratic is that?
In this Brexit campaign there have been false threats on both sides, and from what I see most pro-EU Brits just want to stay in because “it’ll be better for their economy” (Cameron and the City are the best examples of that). Sorry but the EU should be more than that, you have to want to be part of it, not only out of pure opportunism but because you somewhat believe in it. We all know that the UK has never really liked being in the EU, so what’s so awful about them leaving? Lots of countries only joined in order to get protection and funds to build roads. This is what has been killing the EU, the lack of real pro-EU sentiments that would allow to build something strong…
Do you really think that if they stay, all of a sudden they’ll fall in love with the EU, accept everything? Not at all, they will keep on asking more things, and other countries will do the same. If they stay and the EU has to make more concessions to them, we too should have the right to vote on that.
Unfortunately I think the Yes side is going to win. Nationalism will continue rising in Europe and someday the EU will explode because it will have been too stupid to stay alive.
Not to mention The Economist, which spends its time telling everybody how bad the EU is, and which is now telling its readers that they should vote “Remain”.
Well at least two-faced people like them or Cameron are truly British, they can smile to your face and then stab you in the back. This time they’re doing it the other way round. 
Bloody rosbifs.
“…What really strikes me is how some Europeans view pro-Brexit British as morons who don’t understand anything, who just listen to populist politicians, as if pro-EU people were better, more intelligent and reasonable…”
I agree - and this says it very nicely.
In the German press such as Spiegel and FAZ (which I also follow) almost all of the coverage and commentary is underpinned by a kind of self-evident assumption that the EU is good, and any contrary opinion is evil, stupid, etc.
There are, of course, some good positive arguments for Britain remaining in the EU. But wanting to withdraw is not an extremist or unreasonable point of view.
To Jorgis
“What really strikes me is how some Europeans view pro-Brexit British as morons who don’t understand anything, who just listen to populist politicians, as if pro-EU people were better, more intelligent and reasonable.”
I think, it is because the negative criticism usually hides an element of sketchiness, the easiness to require the perfection from the others, who make the “work”.
I have a lot of negative thoughts for the politicians, especially of my country, but some times I see their own view, when they have to do with a society far from the political matters. It is not rare the fact, that during the day of the elections a lot of people prefer to go to the beach instead to go to the polling stations.
But when the things are going worse, the only responsible are the politicians. Ha!
In France we say we have the politicians we deserve / who look like us.
In France I can’t really tell, I only read Le Monde but we’ve been having our own political issues over the last few months and now there’s football. In general we’re not really interested in foreign politics except US elections which get much more coverage.
I think French people (and the press) have mixed feelings regarding the Brexit issue. First we’re not so fond of the EU ourselves with far-right and far-left, both strongly anti-EU, rising and the left and right always blaming the EU for everything. We also strongly believe you should never have joined the EU in the first place so we won’t cry should you leave. There’s no real fear of the EU collapsing among us, it doesn’t interest us, mostly because of our own politicians who never talk about Europe, except when they blame it for their own mistakes / actions. During last presidential campaign, nobody talked about the EU and Hollande seems not to care either and has abandoned Europe to Merkel. We must admit though that it’s hard to lead the EU when you keep breaking its rules. So we’ve chosen to abandon it.
This morning I was watching the replay of a daily 1h-program where 4 guests, “experts” in their field, address current events. It’s generally the same ones who are invited. Friday’s topic was Jo Cox murder and Brexit. As usual there were that journalist from The Economist who is used to saying how bad is the EU, how unfair it is to the UK and a convinced pro-EU guy who believe that anybody criticising the EU is a moron. They use to sit across from each other of course since they usually don’t agree on anything but on Friday they were side by side, both portraying the Brexit campaign as:
“people with rational, reasonable arguments against irrational ones only driven by emotion and populism, just like what happened in France in 2005”
They spent the whole hour saying it was impossible for pro-EU people to debate with pro-Brexit ones since their side hold the truth and the other one does not.
@Colin.
Got around to watching it. I think he makes some interesting points - although it is really nothing that commentators from the Times and the Guardian haven’t been sprouting for months. Like these guys, he seems very confident and certain of being right. I am instinctively wary of someone who tries to brand those who take a different view on matters of political policy as “biblical creationists” - something which is almost inevitably a vacuous jibe. Anyone who thinks that (even allowing for any kind of religious conviction, etc) it would be reasonable to describe someone like Michael Gove in those terms is simply out of touch with reality, IMO.
I do find there is an element of sophistry to his comments about the primacy of UK laws over EU laws. It may be technically true, but that isn’t the way it has ever been interpreted in practise. (Moreover it is kind of hard to see how the union would work, if it were not so.)
Anyway, if we do vote to leave, it will be interesting to see whether his confident predictions about (for example) the time it would take us to achieve alternative trading deals would prove to be accurate? Apparently most academics and economists made similar prophesies of doom in Norway in 1994 - none of which proved to be true.
In Greece we say the same!
According to a poll (published in Germany) more than a third of Germans and almost half of French people are saying they would vote to leave the EU, if they were given the chance.
Surely something is going on here? It used not to be the case back in the 70s and 80s, that significant numbers of people wanted out of the EU.
I saw this on the subreddit Change My View about Goodwin’s Law. I wonder if the Prinz is the OP (original poster).
https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/4p2pmc/cmv_godwins_law_is_a_stupid_idea/
Er no.
As far as I am concerned this “law” is just childish nonsense. As I explained in a comment to Ftornay, one might as well suggest that any discussion will eventually mention American foreign policy (or globalisation, or terrorism, etc, etc.) Well, yes…and?
In any case, I didn’t mention either Uncle Adolf or his political party. What I did was wonder aloud whether Austria would be “stronger together” in a complete political union with Germany? The reason this rattles people is because the obvious answer to the question is “yes”. If Bavaria is stronger as part of Germany then certainly so too would be Austria.
BTW I just saw this this presentation by a panel of top academics, explaining in a mature and intelligent way why Britain should vote to leave:
(Sorry! :-D)
There are various reasons for that phenomenon:
-
Euro changeover: French people in their vast majority have the impression that with the Euro, prices rose, especially those of basic commodities such as coffee or our beloved bread. It’s still very commented, almost 15 years afterwards and even though there have been numerous studies showing it’s a myth.
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Eastern enlargement: it was mostly seen as “why are we accepting so many poor countries that have nothing in common with us and we will have to pay for their roads and bridges and in return the famous Polish plumber is going to take our jobs”. Well it seems the Polish plumber went to the UK instead but we got Roma people…
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2005 referendum: a denial of democracy still very much alive in our minds
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the financial crisis and the Greek one: lots of different things, some wonder why such a country was allowed to join in the first place, others believe Germany should stop bullying honest citizens, others think it’s a shame we have the Euro because if we had our own money we could devalue, etc…
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in the last years, being in the EU has been seen as a burden, we have to comply with its deficit rules while most French (Hollande being the first one of them) think we cannot return to growth and job creation with austerity.
As a result, the EU as it is today is quite unpopular. For far-left and far-right parties, it’s the Public Enemy No 1. For right and left parties, it’s the reason of lots of our problems even though they’re not against it. Only the ecologists (but they’ve become so unpopular) and the centre parties are very openly pro-EU. Plus, as I mentioned before, Hollande seems to have abandoned the EU to Merkel and is much more concerned by foreign topics (Syria, Mali, COP 21) than by the refugee crisis or that kind of topics. The only time they appeared united was on the Ukraine.
I think that if the UK leaves and survives alone (and there’s no reason it won’t), holding a referendum in France will be called for. Far-right and far-left themes have a strong influence on left and right parties (which already have a lot of anti-EU people in their ranks), and I don’t see how we could avoid a debate like the one you’re having.
Since referendums are feared by our politicians (De Gaulle had to resign because of one, in 2005 we didn’t vote as they wanted us to, …), I think there won’t be one with traditional parties governing. If things don’t get better during the next 5 years, the 2022 presidential election could well be that referendum on the EU.
The day of doom is here! :-0
I have literally no idea what will happen. The opinion polls are showing a dead heat between the two sides. But then again, they were wrong by as much as 7 points at the last British general election, and wrong by 5 points at the Scottish independence referendum. So how much can they be believed?
Whichever way it goes, I am hoping the result will be by a clear margin. If it comes down to a tiny fraction of 1%, neither side will accept the result as valid.
Bumpy times ahead, perhaps?