Europe, The Heroic delusion - TruePublica
The EU is now literally falling apart at the seams:
http://truepublica.org.uk/eu/europe-the-heroic-delusion/
political philosopher Leo Strauss might have called a “heroic delusion.”
It is a noble dream, a dream that the only thing necessary for peace in
Europe is shared prosperity. And for a time, the EU was living the
dream. The hardships of the 2008 financial crisis, however, showed what a
flimsy basis shared prosperity was for the EU’s future. Much of the
infighting we observe today within the EU is a last-ditch effort by some
to give the EU the types of powers it would need to forge an effective
and politically sovereign entity. They are unlikely to succeed.
Take the bureaucratic spat
between Poland and the European Commission. The two have long been at
odds over the current Polish government’s desire to reform Poland’s
judicial system in a way that gives it more power to select and remove
judges. The latest chapter in the saga began Aug. 28, when Poland’s
Foreign Ministry released a statement rejecting the commission’s
critiques of Poland as “groundless” and sent a 12-page document of legal
reasoning to Brussels to underscore the point. The European Commission
fired back Aug. 31, with the deputy head of the commission saying the
body would not drop the issue and would seek all means at its disposal
to bring Poland to heel. The same day, in an interview with Le Point,
French President Emmanuel Macron said Poland’s policies were “very
worrying,” saying they call into question European solidarity and even
the rule of law itself.
This kind of back-and-forth isn’t all that unusual for bureaucracies such as the EU’s,
but it ignores the inescapable dilemma: The Continent is populated not
by Europeans but by several vastly different nations. The inability or
unwillingness to understand as much was apparent in the rest of Macron’s
interview in Le Point. When asked how he would revive Europe, his first
answer was, “I believe in Europe.” To believe in Europe is to confess
that the existence of “Europe” as a political entity is based not on
fact or shared interest but on hope. Hope is a good thing, and there is a
time and a place for it. But hope is not what defines lasting political
realities.
