Brits would much rather have a closer economic relationship with EU than US

  • Thread starter Thread starter Vouthon
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Ridgerunner said:
But I still don’t see why you would give up your national right of self-determination. Whatever happened to the principle of subsidiarity?
Click to expand...
Nor do I. No European country has given up its right to national self-determination. The EU enshrines it constitutionally. Art. 4 of the Treaty on European Union states: “The Union shall respect the equality of Member States before the Treaties as well as their national identities, inherent in their fundamental structures, political and constitutional, inclusive of regional and local self-government”.

You know this, of course, given that you have seen a member state actually secede freely.

Here was how the EU waved Britain goodbye:


Man, it’s so threatening to British national identity.
 
niceatheist said:
This has to be one of the most abused Catholic doctrines out there.
Click to expand...
Not to mention misunderstood.

What it means is that everything should be handled by authority at the appropriate level. If a lower order can more efficiently deal with said issue, then it should.

If it can’t, then a higher order has the right to handle it.

Some American conservatives want to think that this is a raison d’etre for small government and unbridled libertarianism.

They presumably don’t read the actual encyclicals, scholastics and the Patristics. It’s just political misuse of religious principles for partisan electoral advantage. And poorly done as well because one can effortlessly rebut it by citing the actual source material.
 
Last edited:
Ridgerunner said:
although it most certainly excludes American products unfairly and practically invites trade wars.
Click to expand...
I’m not seeing an issue with a country protecting its own interests by banning or limiting imports to assure its own nations ability to compete. India requires that ant technology sold in their country has some portion manufactured in India. It helps assure that their their own workers get some benefit.

How does having an EU promote trade wars? Sorry, I’m really trying to understand an area that I’m rather uneducated in! So, a really dumb question…why are trade wars bad? (Please be kind…I’m trying to learn)
 
Free trade is all Canadians, Americans and Mexicans wanted. None wanted to be governed by the other or any combination of the three countries, politically. And there’s no reason why they should.
 
Ultimately, it might not matter, but unfair trade practices frequently lead to retaliatory practices that can cause unneccesarily high prices and job losses. Maybe in many cases that wouldn’t matter. But in the EU’s case, exclusion of American agricultural products has certainly made food more expensive than it needed to be.

If the European economy would crash and burn without excluding American products, then it’s hard to say they shouldn’t do it. But I am not convinced that’s the situation. I do think, though, that as long as Trump remains in office, there will ultimately be a “rebalancing” with Europe as well as with China.
 
niceatheist said:
I’m really trying to understand this peculiar American fetish with deriding the EU.
Click to expand...
I think you misread it.

I expect and mentally support their increased cooperation and integration. I just think the EU messed up in their balance between ‘states rights’ and ‘federal rights’. I think they should have kept a more limited federal role. There was no need to dictate the minutia, like what size your beer mugs must be, etc etc.
 
My favourite being the “bendy banana” law made up by Boris Johnson when he was Brussels correspondent at the Daily Telegraph in the 1990s.
 
Theo520 said:
There was no need to dictate the minutia, like what size your beer mugs must be, etc etc
Click to expand...
Our beer mugs are the same size they were before we joined the EU: imperial pints and imperial half pints.
 
Please do not generalize all Americans as having one sorts of attitude towards the EU or towards anything else.

The more vociferous of us trash the EU, some like the EU and I’m sure most of us which includes me are neutral. We don’t really think about the EU.

Believe it or not Americans don’t have a hive mind.
 
It’s probably the One World conspiracy which conservatives fear.

I notice some of the conservative Evangelical bent tend to hold this theory.
 
I’m not of that bent. I’m bent quite otherwise. But I’m a maximalist national sovereignty-ist.
 
Speaking from personal experience, I’ve met many people who say that the EU is a stepping stone to the One World scenario of which the Catholic Church had in mind all along.

Of course these same people subscribe to Jack Chick theology. They believe the power in the EU resides not in Brussels but in the Vatican.

Met a lot of them when I lived in Indiana.

I’ve since moved to New York and here people don’t think of the EU.
 
Last edited:
Vouthon said:
My favourite being the “ bendy banana ” law made up by Boris Johnson when he was Brussels correspondent at the Daily Telegraph in the 1990s.
Click to expand...
Dude I’ve heard of that one! I read it in some conservative journal, reportedly told to the American author by a European guy.

As an American, my opinion on the EU is that it is a flawed idea for various reasons. I’m very localist and prefer describing myself as a Michigander rather than American. But, in the end I don’t really care if Europeans decide to organize themselves that way. It’s not my business.
 
Last edited:
GKMotley said:
God save the Queen
Click to expand...
Yes, please.

As to imperial measures, we live in a strange borderland of metric plus imperial. The metric is, of course, more sensible, the imperial more interesting. The metric will win, but those of us of such an age that we must be teetering on the edge of the hour of farewell still have to reckon in the back of our minds that a kilo is more or less two pounds, and that “a litre of water’s a pint and three quarters”.

Anyway, any system of measurement should be based on cricket. The distance between the wickets is one chain and there are ten chains to the furlong, so an acre is ten square cricket wickets.
 
I think of my country’s national sovereignty. I can worry about that without worrying about what specific threat to it might present itself, including looney tunes versions.

When I was a freshman in college, I noticed a known radical, fellow freshman, reading at a table in the library. Which table I had to later cleanup, being a library assistant tasked with such menial things. Where I found a pencil left, among the scattered newspapers, with a slogan imprinted: “SUPPORT THE UNITED NATIONS. The Nation-State Concept Is Obsolete. World Peace Through World Law”. Still have the pencil. Still on the alert, 57 years later. Stay away from my beer mugs.
 
I’ll have no truck with atheistic, French measures of measurement. Furlongs per fortnight is my motto.

I’ll go with your last para.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top