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Comment by redthrowaway | Hacker News Reader

The US did not magic itself into existence as a united state. It began in common purpose with a shared, very strong, external enemy. It then assigned itself a shared dream of settling the content. And, crucially, it already had a shared cultural identity, shared language, and shared religion when it began.

The EU does not have a common enemy to force it together. It does not have a shared language, or culture, or identity. Its dream, while noble, does not speak to ordinary people. And it is pretty damned incompetent at what duties it has assigned itself.

The prospect of a United States of Europe was extremely remote even before today. It's dead, now.

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I don't agree with that, the EU has a very strong cultural union that was created by the enunciation of the French Revolution principles. It's not by accident that, for example, there is no state in EU with death penalty. This makes states within the EU very similar at certain levels, otherwise a claim could be made that the cultural delta is the same between two different EU states and between an EU state and US, but this is not true, if you check a bit the fundamental values you'll see that EU nations have a lot in common.

Careful with the French Revolution. I'm sure you know but I was an adult before I understood how insanely brutal that thing was, not only towards former monarchy and nobility but also, or possibly even especially, towards common people.

The revolution set the stage for the modern world though, a world separated in sovereign states (instead of kingdoms) the three branches government etc. etc. For countries that are hanging on the edges of europe, which weren't strongly ethnically homogeneous, like my country, Greece, that style of government was vital for the definition of the nation.

That said, let's not derail the conversation with irrelevant historical anecdotes that are out of time anyway.

The revolution set the stage for the modern world though, a world separated in sovereign states (instead of kingdoms) the three branches government etc

I'm fairly certain that the US was already independent and had adopted the current Constitution by the time the French Revolution happened.

The Franco-American Revolution created via violence or a new model of governance who's moral authority wasn't challenged until the Russ-Sino Revolution nearly 100 years later which was also violent.

Why does HN pretend political revolutions are peaceful?

> Why does HN pretend political revolutions are peaceful?

So HN is a single-minded entity? Just because a couple of people say something you don't like, you paint all of HN, with its 1000s of members, with that?

The UK does not have that shared French Revolution tradition at all, and neither do a large number of European countries that are still monarchies. Instead of a violent French Revolution, the UK had a nonviolent change of power from royalty to the people. Instead of a civil war over slavery, the UK had a peaceful transition where the state bought the slaves from the slave owners. This referendum fits in a great tradition of nonviolent change.

Just to expand on this, because it isn't often mentioned in contrast to how awful colonial England was:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833

The UK abolished slavery, and even fought commonwealth territories that resisted. Maybe if parts of the US had still been in the commonwealth, slavery would have ended sooner there too.

It's even less mentioned that the French abolished slavery about 40 years before that.

Let's be honest, it is actually the brutality of the French revolution which forced the British royalty to hand over power to the people. And before doing these "peaceful" transitions, all neighbouring countries tried to smother the French with war in order to preserve the priviledges of the remaining monarchies.

You kinda throwing the thousand years of gradual maturing of democracy in UK out of the window with that common. The "royalty" didn't suddenly give power to the people after seing horrors of French revolution; it happened over ages of internal conflicts and civil wars.

Hrm, England had its own bloody Civil War, and if that wasn't enough there was also the Glorious Revolution. These were the 2 events that ultimately gave political power to the parliament.

If you look at the way Western Countries transitioned from one form of govt. to another its seems to have been very bloody. Glorious Revolution, French Revolution, American Revolution, German Revolutions, Russian Revolution etc.

Actually the Glorious Revolution had such relatively few deaths it is also known as the Bloodless Revolution.

> nonviolent change of power from royalty to the people

So regicide doesn't count as violence? Also, as mentioned down-thread, we had a pretty bloody civil war here, which replaced the monarchy with a 'Lord Protector' which ultimately amounted to the same thing by another name and so we decided the monarchy wasn't that bad, as long as parliament kept the worst excesses in check.

What on earth are you talking about? Not only did the UK have the 'French Revolution tradition', it's arguable that they got there first. I take it you're not that familiar with the English Civil War...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War

Not that England/Britain didn't have their own bloody, violent civil wars along the way to get there. The English were ahead of the curve by just over a hundred years, as far as executing their king and instituting a military dictatorship goes.

What culture do Germans, Greeks, Latvians, Bulgarians, Fins, and Spaniards share? It takes more than vastly differing attachments to a vague sense of liberalism and a desire to not blow the continent to high hell again.

Coca cola, modern sports, national health care, the Internet, videogames and on a more serious side a higher degree of respect for minorities that countries bordering the EU, no death penalty, gun control, a will to improve civil rights and liberties, ... should I go on?

Once you start meeting people from all those countries you realize even more how similar your cultures are. Some common sayings, some common tales, very similar political divisions, etc

There's a reason why Europe is many times referred as a whole. "They do it like this in Europe", "In Europe they prefer that" (and it's not always ignorance ;)).

> Coca cola, modern sports, national health care, the Internet, videogames and on a more serious side a higher degree of respect for minorities that countries bordering the EU, no death penalty, gun control, a will to improve civil rights and liberties, ... should I go on?

This is interesting to me. As an American, our national identity certainly looks similar; it's composed of favorite pastimes and products and shared political values.

But is that true in Europe? The cultures of European countries are much older, predating capitalism and the democratic governments they have today. Most of them are more or less homogenous, whereas the US has always been a nation of immigrants, and the whole "melting pot" idea has been around for most of our history, even if our behavior and policies sometimes clash with it.

Also, I'd argue some of the nation states in Europe are invented, like Italy and Germany, which each were basically just a bunch of city states that were more or less force ably amalgamated into one country. I don't know much about modern German or Italian nationalism, but I think that might have a negative impact on an overall European identity.

Granted, I'm speculating here. At the end of the day I'm an American who doesn't know what he's talking about. Though I do think it's telling that a good number of things you offered as components of a shared European identity were invented in America.

> There's a reason why Europe is many times referred as a whole. "They do it like this in Europe", "In Europe they prefer that" (and it's not always ignorance ;)).

Do actual Europeans say that? Sounds more like the typical American who just got back from a vacation in Europe.

As a non-american / non-european, I find this interesting.

For a lot of things, I see countries of the EU are _more_ unanimous on topics than the US is internally.

The death penalty is a prime example. It varies state to state in the US, but (AFAIK) is consistent across EU countries.

Gambling is another, I didn't realize it was actually illegal in some US states. I'm not aware of any individual countries in the EU that differ from the majority there.

I disagree. I do not identify with New Yorkers (or north east coast), Florida, Texas, California, Oregon, the rust belt, or the southwest. You probably guessed by now I'm from the Midwest. I also don't identify with the blacks, Hispanics, Cubans, Irish or Italians. All of these have rich and interesting cultures. I respect them, but they are not mine. When I meet one of them, we often have difficulty finding commonality. My point is that you would be hard pressed to find one specific example of something that relates to all American backgrounds. I think this is a good thing.

Let's start from the basics: All nation states are invented. You've mentioned Italy and Germany. Let me add the UK (England conquered others), Spain (Castille and the Kingdom of Aragon merged, then Castille imposed their culture over the years), France (many different tribes and many different languages apart from French), Belgium (what is Belgium?), etc

Even some more homogeneous (apparently) countries are melting pots. Romania: Some regions speak only Hungarian (and they're not bordering Hungary) and some others speak also Ukrainian. Their borders have changed a lot in the last 150 years. Hungary itself is nothing like it used to be (and it was the same country / empire with Austria... go figure!). Let's also not start with disastrous examples like the former Yugoslavia...

The difference is that the US assumed and took advantage of the "melting pot" idea whereas nationalistic views in Europe have been making the world think we have some special character or culture (and each of us different than its neighbour). Two World Wars mostly based on nationalism haven't helped either.

In many European countries it is frowned upon to worship the national flag or at least it's considered potentially close to extreme right wing and racism. Why? Because as opposed to the US flag which represents a melting pot and freedom, European flags represent nationalistic ideas. Ask and Englishman about Saint George's cross or a Spaniard about their flag. In both cases they'll only wave the flag during sporting events like the current Eurocup. Outside that, the above applies.

> Though I do think it's telling that a good number of things you offered as components of a shared European identity were invented in America.

Globalisation. Also, America didn't just happen. America is a branch of older European cultures (British, Irish, Dutch, Spanish and French at least), so in a sense the American culture is child of European culture, hence why it's not difficult for us Europeans to make it our own too.

American ideas and ideals come from Europe and / or Christianity. Some of them even predate the idea of Europe, coming from the Romans or Greeks. This is a long heritage than you guys and us have shared for long time. Globalisation is just making the rest.

> Do actual Europeans say that? Sounds more like the typical American who just got back from a vacation in Europe.

Not unheard of, specially if we're talking to someone not European. A clear example is political views: In Europe we consider American elections a choice between right wing and righter wing ;) whereas some of our social democratic (or labour) parties might look communist to you guys.

Times change and this might not be true anymore in a few decades, but a majority of Europeans would always choose Democrats over Republicans (and Bernie over Hillary).

Except if you go to England they don't like to be referred to as Europeans even if they are technically.

These countries like their distinct identities. They like to visit other European countries but they really don't want a melting pot at home.

As a European I say that you are wrong. Of course there are quite a few right wing extremists in Europe, but in general we are very happy with people from other European countries coming to study or work in our own home countries. (Those who come to beg are seen as more problematic.)

In addition, we as everyone else are capable of identifying with many things, and what is important at the moment depends on the context. When I speak to an American or Chinese, I'm European, when I speak to an Englishman I'm a Swede and if I speak to another Swede I'm from Stockholm.

In Europe, I identify as Spaniard.

In Spain, I identify as Catalan.

In Catalonia, I identify as someone from Barcelona.

In most world affairs, I identify as European.

It is human nature to look for your own identity; and sharing that with your neighbours substracts from your own personality. On the other hand, against external competition you would look for group membership.

What I'm saying is, the Brits are not special or different on their aspirations than their neighbours. Their main difference is who owns the media and the aspirations of those media moguls.

The western civilization?

From philosophy, to mathematics, to physics, arts, and to democracy, we built everything based on each others past ideas.

Our foundations are really the same.

Don't forget morality. There are many atheists in Europe nowadays and not all countries are Catholic or even Christian, but I think we share a very similar set of moral values.

I agree, ethics are pretty much the same across Europe too.

>mathematics >physics

The foundations here are not all and only western though.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply the foundations of mathematics and physics are European. Rather that mathematics, physics, etc... are themselves the foundations of the Western civilization.

But they are still common to all of Europe.

As a expat Spaniard living in Germany, I can tell you, we have much more in common as one would intuitively think.

I would go to the extend to say, I am culturally much closer to the Germans, than to other American nations, even if we share the language, Spanish.

But to the news at hand, many English people don't like to be referred to as Europeans. They don't think they have much in common with Spaniards as an example.

And no offense or disrespect, but Spain has a history with Latin American countries that they don't have with the Germans. That cannot be ignored.

Spain has a history with Latin American countries, that's true. It's something that all former colonial empires share. UK has also a history with the Commonwealth members.

Said this... do you seriously think that UK is closer culturally to India than to Germany?

To me, it seems they are deliberately trying to differentiate themselves, when reality is they are very similar.

There is a difference between wishing/thinking to be different and actually being different. The moral code, greater world view, etc. is very much alike. We celebrate our differences, as we should, but it seems that Britain forgot the common base we share. I fear it will hurt them more than they realize.

Spain was ruled by the Habsburgs for a long time, the same dynasty that infested central Europe. Spain also fought central European powers regularly, intermarried with them, so on and so forth. It's crazy to say that half a millenia of Spain and Central Europe being entwined politically is somehow less of a cultural bond than colonisation, where slaves were shipped out-of-sight, out-of-mind to produce wealth for the people 'back home'.

> What culture do Germans, Greeks, Latvians, Bulgarians, Fins, and Spaniards share?

What culture does a hill billy from the Ozarks share with a Bostonian? (And no, it is not a function of social status only; it really are deep cultural differences.)

> What culture does a hill billy from the Ozarks share with a Bostonian?

TV.

From east to west to north to south everyone in the States has this common bond, television, and through this medium our "culture" is propagated.

Flip on the TV in Europe and not only will the language very likely vary from country to country, so to will the content, which is based on the cultural norms of that particular country (or language group from which the country evolved).

Also, given how new the country is, the "united" in United States is easily traced to the American Revolution and Civil War. In Europe there is no such common identity given the rich and varied history.

Historically they would likely share a belief in American exceptionalism. Although that widespread cultural belief may be coming to an end.

1776.

> What culture do Germans, Greeks, Latvians, Bulgarians, Fins, and Spaniards share?

Eurovision?

We've been warring with each other for 2000 years. Also, the same space was very integrated culturally.

And what are those big differences, other than the language?

I'd propose sport, namely football. Take a look at how the Euro16 tournament is going, and how the fans are interacting together in France.

Whatever is happening between football factions in Euro16 is nothing specific to international European matches; violence is very frequent even for national ones.

Latin

Finnish is one of the few European languages with no connection to Latin

What about Greek, the family of the Slavic languages like Polish, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Kroatian, the family of Finno-Ugric languages Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian, the isolated language Basque and finally the big share of the Germanic languages: English, German, Dutch, Swedish and Danish?

If we want to define language as a common value for the European Countries, then it might be some Indo-European proto-language (even then it's not clear where Basque comes from).

I agree that Latin had a huge influence in most of the European languages, but this mostly through the Roman Empire and later through the Catholic Church.

Greek =/= Latin!

Christianity

That's something they share with South Korea, Ethiopia or Russia. I would not call them as a culturally coherent group - thus I would not hold having a major christian population in a country very uniting. Especially since parts of those are protestant and partly catholic - and that creates hugely divisive cultural views on e.g. womens rights even today. So one could claim 'christianity' a thing which culturally divides them as well.

Just travel a few times outside the continent and you'll have your answer.

What culture do bavarians and frisians share?

beer

1000 years of religious oppression.

The answer is Nokia.

> I don't agree with that, the EU has a very strong cultural union that was created by the enunciation of the French Revolution principles. It's not by accident that, for example, there is no state in EU with death penalty.

The conjunction of those two sentences is a bit hilarious, considering the wanton abuse of the death penalty during the Reign of Terror.

And I think that the lack of capital punishment is an indicator of one of the EU's problems: it's stunningly undemocratic. Polls (until recently?) have shown for decades strong popular support for capital punishment, and yet countries have been forced by the EU to ban it.

> forced by the EU to ban it

The death penalty is prohibited by protocol 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights [1]. Ratifying the convention is a requirement for joining the EU, but it isn't the EU that is doing the banning. The ECHR is an instrument of the Council of Europe, which is not connected to (and pre-dates) the European Union.

[1] http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/standardsetting/hrpolicy/Others_is...

I am unaware of anyone in any of the EU countries who support the death penalty nor capital punishment. It is overwhelmingly frowned upon. Now I admit I haven't asked everyone in every EU country. And I'm sure there are those in Central/Eastern Europe who still support it (I know life was especially brutal under the communist regimes).

Polls (until recently?) Which polls? I'm honestly curious.

Well, I'm in an EU country, and I support the death penalty for the most severe crimes; as execution method I only propose that the condemned shall be kept in prison until he or she dies. A lethal injection or bullet in the neck is too easy.

(However, this is forbidden by EU.)

While you're mostly right (and associating the abolishment of death penalty with French Revolution made me chuckle too), it's not actually true that the EU banned death penalty outright. EU institutions surely oppose death penalty, and there would be political/diplomatic repercussions if a member state tried to restore it, but this is not imposed upon any state in legal sense.

There are of course lots of principles that European citizens all share. But there are also some principles that they don't. France, for example, is significantly more socialist than the UK.

Unfortunately the EU sees differences as a disease which must be wiped out with always the same prescription: more EU. Literally so. They talk of voting as a "contagion".

I'd like to see some evidence for your statement. Subsidiarity is a general principle taken into account for all EU decisions. It's the opposite of "seeing difference as a disease" IMO.

Just look at how they talk. Voting is a contagion that might "spread" to other countries, as if it was the bubonic plague. The EU has constantly increased its power. The goal of the people who actually run it is federalism. They hate the idea of countries picking and choosing integration from a menu, they are literally dead-set against the idea.

And why would you insist on a deal being all or nothing, bad with the good? Because you know that's the only way to get the bad ideas through. Same reason Congress attaches riders to bills they know will be strongly supported, when those same riders got rejected earlier.

As an immigrant living in London the "bad" ideas are in the eye of the beholder surely? Can you enumerate a few ideas that are bad?

Also, to me an institution keeping the peace also trying to contain the "contagion" of instability makes perfect sense. It's what I want and I contacted all my representatives to that end.

Of course they are in the eye of the beholder.

A few that I personally think are bad:

- Recent VAT reforms

- Cookie law

- Treating low taxes as "state aid" (EU Commission will be setting tax rates across the EU soon, just wait)

- Having a Parliament that can't make its own laws

But if you asked others you might get an answer like "the euro".

The EU has no relevance to peace or war. The USA is a much more strongly federalised union than the EU and had a brutal civil war. Most wars today are civil wars. There is absolutely nothing that'd stop the EU having a civil war even if it was incredibly federalised and had become practically a single country, like the USA. What has kept the peace in Europe was avoiding a repeat of the Treaty of Versaille, nuclear weapons, NATO, and the fact that European countries are now all mature democracies (the latter is imo the most important).

Exactly that's what sickens me the most. Not many politicians actually champion democracy and the populace's ability to decide for themselves what they want. They only want more power for themselves.

Does it really "sicken" you?

This is the first objective of the Maastricht treaty:

"strengthen the democratic legitimacy of the institutions;"

That sounds like championing democracy to me?

> Unfortunately the EU sees differences as a disease which must be wiped out with always the same prescription: more EU.

I don't see how the EU has pushed or facilitated any kind of political homogeneization. Apart from the short rise of the liberal democrat party, it seems UK politics have been the same for centuries.

And that in itself is not a big difference. Neither france or UK in general are advocates of totaliatarian communism.

"Totalitarian communism" sounds like the very definition of EU.

that very is disrespectful to people who lived through it...

No it isn't. I was born in totalitarian communist country and living in EU gives me a deja vu.

The great irony is the EU motto is literally “United in diversity” (In Varietate Concordia). Apparently what they really meant was “United > diversity.”

I would think two World Wars fought over the continent would be more incentive to make it work. Considering how long ago the French Revolution took place it does seem no one there learned much until so many were killed it appalled all involved.

One major advantage the US has is a single main language. That is something that will in time possibly occur within the EU but language is a barrier that cannot be over estimated

Language, national identity. The US and EU are not the same

I could be wrong but even the French are still a monarchy. In fact the only case of a dissolved monarchy I've read of lately is the Spanish monarchy.

When Napoleon took the reins of government, he decided to call himself an emperor rather than a king. Emperor is a temporal title, it's not intended to be passed down to heirs the same way a throne is. French emperors rule at the will of the people, and it's up to them to decide whether they want a monarch or not.

Napoleon III, the last French monarch, was captured during the Franco-Prussian war, and after his death, the French decided they'd had enough of monarchs and the third French republic lasted until WWII. It was replaced by the Germans with Vichy, and then after the war, the fourth and fifth republics.

It's highly unlikely that the French will ever accept another monarch. There are Bonapartist and a Orléanist (Bourbon) pretenders to the throne, but none hold any public office. If the government falls apart again like it did in 1958, it should be replaced with another republic as it was then. Nobody can really rule out a third French empire, but the trend of democracy worldwide has been towards devolution of power rather than centralization, France is more likely to break apart than it is to re-imperialize.

Ahem. France is a republic, and Spain is a constitutional monarchy.

> EU has a very strong cultural union that was created by the enunciation of the French Revolution principles. It's not by accident that, for example, there is no state in EU with death penalty.

This is a somewhat funny thing to say, considering how many people were given the death penalty in the French revolution and its aftermath. Executions for "crimes against liberty" and whatever are estimated to have been between 16,000 and 40,000. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine

Wait, hold on. Are saying that the EU doesn't like the death penalty because of French Revolution principles?! This is the same French Revolution that famously involved the guillotine, no?

No, we all agree that, both historically and presently, our political leaders are incompetent and not to be trusted with such a sharp blade. They get children's scissors and should be happy about it.

Adjacent EU nations do have a lot in common, but the differences add up across the continent.

It's all relative. I live in Eastern Europe part of EU and I can tell that either it's London, or Stockholm or Vilnius, they all look and feel very alike. Biggest difference is amount of non-white people in western cities.

French Revolution or Emperor Napoleon & the Napoleonic Code? Italy was hugely influenced by the latter, as I am sure you know.

It's not enough to have things in common. The point the previous post make is that it requires a common enemy to forge unification as strong as the US and even here there are talks about some states wanting to go independent from time to time.

Without this external factor it's hard to find something to really feel the same about.

Is that why the US seems so hell-bent at creating new enemies for themselves?

Would one of the states exiting the US be thinkable, were it not for the unity in waging wars against external (and some internal) enemies?

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-usa-secession-i...

And yes. Leo Strauss was of that opinion and you will find a whole suite of argument that talk about how the middle east became the new enemy out of need rather than actual threat.

This was part of the PNAC (Project for New American Century) which identified the need for a new enemy after the fall of the wall.

Now whether they were actually successful is another discussion but it was part of the Bush administrations fundamental belief as several of it's key members where students under Strauss.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Strauss

Yes. I believe Texas Republicans call for independence with some frequency.

Let them go and watch the hellfire of their economic explosion i say.

I'm skeptical that Europe will ever be as united by culture as the US is as long as Europe is divided into different language communities.

(Although there are millions of Americans who do not speak English, only the tiniest fraction of those have any influence on American culture.)

Actually, the US did kind of magic itself into existence due to a domestic labor and civil rights dispute. The states were primarily independent after the declaration of independence. It was not until Shay's Rebellion 10 years later that spooked the aristocrats into drawing our current constitution.

And to bypass your essentialized romantic patriotic history for a moment while utilizing your "common enemy" rhetoric, the EU has many common enemies and innumerable common and unique struggles. Consider immigration, the struggle for democracy, ecological responsibility, social justice, annexation by Russia. All issues individually more compelling than the rich coalescing their power to maintain control of the poor in a relatively isolated country with the population of Houston. The EU has so many good reasons to exist.

Yeah the original post above is pretty starry-eyed and ignorant of American history. Forget the Shay Rebellion, we also had a civil war to sort out the "shared vision" thing. Lots wrong with such a silly analysis, so dunno why it spawned so much discussion.

The point stands though. US of E would be a beautiful thing.

> Its dream, while noble, does not speak to ordinary people.

Maybe not ordinary old guya. Many young people have a cosmopolitan attitude. They see themselves as Europeans first, and they like the freedom to live and work anywhere, not just within some postage stamp sized area like Slovenia.

I disagree that the dream is "dead"---in fact, Brexit might make it easier to integrate, since the biggest integration opponent is now gone

The question is - what is the dream exactly?

I am as cosmopolitan as they get, but I also abhor central planning and elitism. And, unfortunately, this is what EU has become.

Can you give some examples of such central planning, and your objections to it? FAFAIK the only "planning" the EU does is to regulate exploitation of the commons (like fisheries). Other than that, the EU mostly concerns itself with setting minimally accepted baselines for all member states to follow (i.e. harmonizing existing policies).

Plans to force all member countries to have higher taxes, for instance. Or regulated VAT rates.

Makes doing business and order of magnitude easier.

How? Honestly curious.

From what I've been able to find, the EU established a common format for VAT invoices, so it's now easier to scan and file your tax receipts, especially when dealing with businesses in many different countries. Also, VAT declaration forms now have a similar layout in all member countries.

Also, it appears that for international consumer sales, the seller may now apply its own country's VAT instead of needing to know the VAT regulations of the buyer's country.

What plans? (honest question).

There is always a new biggest integration opponent. I don't know who it would be right now, but I could easily imagine France if Marine Le Pen becomes their next president.

Evaporative cooling.

As long as the new biggest integration opponent is less opposing to integration than UK was, it will still be beneficial to integration efforts.

I propose NL under Geert Wilders. It will be a total disaster but it could actually happen.

Germany has benefited from being able to be a swing voter in the council votes due to QMV. With the UK gone it will now have to nail its colours to the mast if it wishes to resist significantly more redistributive and socialist policies supported by the southern countries, instead of acting as a decider knowing what the UK will do. This could change the politics in Germany in unpredictable ways.

Money transfers are necessary for eurozone to stop blowing up in people's faces, sadly

A United States of Europe would not a beautiful thing.

And I voted remain

The U.S. Congress is also pretty damned incompetent at its duties. In many ways the EU institutions are functioning better than their American counterparts. Sometimes it's better to have 20 different opinions to reconcile, rather than two polarised factions that can't concede on anything.

Yes, but too many of the EU leaders and elites want to create a United States of Europe, with the Commission/Parliament hybrid as an even more dysfunctional equivalent of Congress (imagine how productive Congress would be if everyone had to speak through an interpreter).

It's actually worse than that though. The EU Parliament doesn't really deserve the name. It can't actually initiate legisliation, so it's meaningless for EUP parties to have any actual policies, so they don't, so there's no formal opposition either, so nobody cares about them and ... therefore ... (phew) turnout in European elections is extremely low. Most people can't even name their MEP, and why should they be able to? That MEP has no power to speak of.

Federalists (like me) who want to create United States of Europe usually want to get rid of the current institutions, and replace them with proper executive and legislative entities, elected by European citizens.

But the focus on Commission/Parliament is misguided: they are a just a smoke screen, as neither has much power. In the EU power is held by the European Council and The Council of the European Union [1]. These two institutions are composed, respectively, of the head of states (Merkel, Hollande, Renzi, Cameron, etc.) and the various ministers of each branch of government (economy, education, agriculture, etc.). The former controls the commission, and the latter holds most of the legislative power.

[1] Not sure I got the English name rights, as they are pretty confusing.

The elites are one thing, and actual European people are another. Of course the elites have a disproportionate amount of control but that's true of any institution but it doesn't invalidate the institution. European people by and large enjoy a better quality of life because of free trade, movement and most importantly peace. That there's one set of scoundrels at the top vs another isn't as important as is made out. At the end of the day all that will happen in the UK now is a new set of elites take control (the old rule Britannia brigade that were previously on the wane) and there won't be the buffer of a larger enveloping organisation to help smooth over the bumps. Britain has been declining recently because that's what happens to spent colonial powers, not because they were in the EU.

Of course people benefit. And if the EU had never existed, many of those same benefits would have been created via a patchwork of treaties and deals anyway.

The EU is not a choice between integration and chaos, despite what Brussels wants people to believe. European economies were integrating before the EU anyway.

Many benefits for sure, especially if you live in one of the richer countries. But what the EU gives you are certain rights, which are guaranteed to any EU citizen. Movement is no longer governed by treaties, but a right. As a business, you have the right to sell across Europe, without local regulations being able to ban you unilaterally.

Peace in Europe? You gotta be kidding. NATO bombed down Yugoslavia less than 20 years ago.

> The U.S. Congress is also pretty damned incompetent at its duties.

People seem to forget that the American government has been made "incompetent" by design. The Founding Fathers never wanted a strong government.

As a german, there is a reason Hitler create a centralized government tuned for efficiency; and there is a reason Germany was rebuilt as an inefficient bureaucracy. Because in the latter you only get to move fast on something if every single involved person has a natural understanding that this is the right thing to do, has to be done, and why did it take so long?

Inefficient government makes it harder to move against your own population without open military action.

Was the US an european colony? With people speaking French, English, Spanish and Portuguese? I guess it was a mix and match of many human being that decided to be free : no more, no less. Freedom was the driver, not the enemy.

Also maybe you should consider the actual state of US : What's the percentage of english/spanish people speaking? What about Catholics/Jews/Muslim? Should we expect an USbreak ?

Saying that, I do not believe that we need a common enemy to be united. There is better values and challenges for all of us : environment, peace, love. Europe will stand strong, refine its vision to the current context. After a few years, UK we be back and we will all make love peacefully in a better environment.

Long live to Europe.

Actually German came very close to being an official language of the USA at one point.

http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/german.asp

Huh, I'd argue that the united states as we know it today is wholly a product of the civil war. Before that Virginians felt loyal to Virginia, New Yorkers felt loyal to New Yorkers, and frankly the United States right before the civil war was not all that different from the EU today. They spoke Spanish in California, the western territories, and Florida; French along the Mississippi river, etc.

I think this view of the US having a shared cultural identity at any point before the 20th century is very far-fetched.

Agreed we tend to reason from the perspective that we are in and see all things thru that lens, but antebellum America was a very different place from where we are at today. At the onset of the war and even before with the nullification crisis even antebellum America was very different than early post revolution America.

Federalization, centralization and bureaucracy are the natural order of empires and America has been on a slow roll towards them since at least the early 1800's and the barons. Honestly probably since it's inception, Hamilton was a devout federalist and Modern America would be a realization of his dream. I think Jefferson and Franklin would be horrified to say the least.

With all that said, it always seemed to me that the EU wanted to be America 2.0 and modeled the empire and not the early confederation that got us here. America used to look like a coalition of distinct states where basic rights (albeit for only some at times), where guaranteed so that a citizen has a host of options to find a representative government. More and more the states look like cookie cutter copies of each other and more and more legislation gets pushed to the federal level because there is little distinction between them. This makes for an efficient business environment but it comes at the cost of a representative government for the people. From the outside it seemed to me that the EU tried to fast track this homogenization in the interest of being a competitive business environment.

In my view the EU took it one step further and fully embraced unrepresentative bureaucracies and set up, for the better part, a technocracy. The people of Britain felt that they had no reach into these un-elected representatives and therefore made the choice to exit as it was the only ripcord they had.

"They spoke Spanish in California, the western territories, and Florida; French along the Mississippi river, etc."

This is a completely inaccurate and hamfisted statement. By the time of the Civil War, California was already predominantly Anglo. The only Spanish speaking parts at that point were the southern part of the state, which was sparsely populated compared to the Bay Area.

Florida was already filled with Anglo settlers as well. Spain had a number of horrifically protectionist policies that doomed their outlying North American colonies to poverty and depopulation, making them extremely vulnerable to infiltration by settlers from the US, who ironically, were illegal immigrants.

I should've been less broad, I wasn't saying that the entire state has Spanish speakers, just that a very large community was there. There was a significant Spanish speaking population in California though, they are called californios and I believe they were a significant minority (probably 1/3 of the population) at least in 1850.

Also you're right,I was completely wrong about Florida.

>> The EU does not have a common enemy to force it together. It does not have a shared language, or culture, or identity. Its dream, while noble, does not speak to ordinary people. And it is pretty damned incompetent at what duties it has assigned itself.

I believe mentalities are changing slowly. My generation (generation "Erasmus") is the first that identifies itself more as an European citizen than a national citizen [1] but our parent's generation doesn't feel the same yet.

By the other hand I think the main reason for Brexit is economics and not identity: UK thinks that they are not having a positive ROI by staying in the EU. Puting it roughly: Germany "exchanges" money for leadership. Peripheral countries "exchange" leadership for money. And UK? The "exchange rate" doesn't seem favourable..

[1] http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/young-voters-wanted-bre...

> The prospect of a United States of Europe was extremely remote even before today. It's dead, now.

Not necessarily. There's no reason why the UK would have to be a vital part of that union. Quite the contrary, in fact: the UK has always been the biggest opponent of such a closer union. Without the UK, it's possible that the EU might actually be able to move ahead in that direction again.

The EU, to me, is basically the Fourth Reich. Germany failed to rule the continent militarily, so they did it instead economically. The Euro is backed mostly by the strength of the Deutschmark, the ECB is in Frankfurt. They are dominant on the continent politically and economically.

If the other 20-something nations are ok with being basically ruled by Germany, that's fine. But no way in hell would Britain want to play second fiddle to Germany. Ever. They have always seen themselves as slightly more separate, more different, more "special" to the rest of the "the Continent".

But there's no way the UK was not a vital part of the union. 5th largest economy, a very strong military, still large sphere of influence outside of Europe. Losing Greece is one thing, but the UK...I don't know.

The entire world is moving in a direction I don't like. Populist policies, protectionism, "us-vs-them"....that usually leads to war.

There's a theory that after war, the people want to make it never happen again. Then they get older and die, and the fourth or so generation lacks all of that experience or motivation, and so someone is bound to start a war because people don't learn from the past.

The EU itself is likely still very far from starting that war. China and its superiority complex seems much more likely if they can find someone willing to stand up to them. Or maybe Russia is going to overstep its boundaries for real sometime. Either way we're probably close to our 80 or so years of "Western" (relative) peace, certainly fear and populism are not helping to avoid that path.

Or they want to make it never happen again so they institute hundreds of bureaucratic processes that only a select class of insiders have the ability to navigate, thus forming the political power bottlenecks which will lead to the corruption and waste that sparks the next war.

Well, ok, so what is the US then? It may have a few centuries of a headstart, but it's the same thing, with 13 colonies invading the rest of the continent. You just overlay the Third Reich onto the new union.

The UK is as important as Germany. But they didn't want a closer union so they just stayed out there while Germany played a more active role. So did France, by the way, but they're looked upon as losers so that makes Germany the "ruler" in the eyes of people.

And yeah, UK was special over a century ago, maybe they need a few decades to realize they're not anymore.

It was. Greece is too, but they can also leave if they want. It would just completely destroy them.

The entire world is moving in a direction I don't like. Populist policies, protectionism, "us-vs-them"....that usually leads to war.

Always been like that.

One thing which excited me about the EU was, that the peoples of Europe unified without a war or an enemy at hand. That would be an incredibly good sign for humanity and give hope to some future, where the globe isn't split into entirely separate nations.

I agree that would be a good sign but it's hard to support the claim there was no enemy at hand with a heavily militarized USSR almost next door

This is exactly why Germany secretly supplies Russia with top notch military tech today. If there is no enemy, you should create one.

Heh, just buying equipment from Germany does not make it some conspiracy of them supporting Russia.

Military industries need to sell stuff. France, Belgium, the UK, and others do the same.

They are not buying end products. Germany supplies plants (!) for conventional military production. And Rheinmetal financed creation of testing grounds at Mulino.

Source?

http://jbpress.ismedia.jp/articles/-/44305. Despite official sanctions Germany and the US (!) continue to supply Russia. Just like the US sold to both Russia and Germany before WW2.

Here about 30% of export increase from Germany to Russia at Deutche Welle - http://www.dw.com/ru/экспорт-из-германии-в-россию-вырос-на-3.... I bet they did not exported beer. Its Siemens, Rheinmetall and alike.

Also look in Gardner Research. The World Machine-Tool Output & Consumption Survey

The experiences of the second world war definitely played a role as something that should be avoided at all costs and put up infrastructure and friendship against, so it wasn't really without a war.

> The US does not have a common enemy to force it together. It does not have a shared language, or culture, or identity. Its dream, while noble, does not speak to ordinary people. And it is pretty damned incompetent at what duties it has assigned itself. The prospect of a United States was extremely remote even before today. It's dead, now.

FTFY. In all seriousness, this whole UK thing sounds like a good excuse for California and The Bay Area to attempt to secede from the union. I'm about sick of our broken consensus mechanisms here.

If it's anyone in the US, it will be Texas. They've done it before, California has not.

Unfortunately this will also be reflected on other countries, give it a few months and we'll be dealing with the same kind of shit in Italy, France etc... The saddest part is that older people(fact) practically decided for the future of the younger ones.

The backlash towards older people in UK isn't because they decided the future for younger ones, it's because they decided the future the media and politicians don't want. Unlike most European countries, in Poland young people, especially the ones just entering the voting age, vote overwhelmingly right-wing, and they are also criticized. But this time it isn't "deciding future for younger ones", it's "lack of experience and wisdom that comes with age".

> The saddest part is that older people(fact) practically decided for the future of the younger ones.

Why is it sad? Do you think the vote of young people should weigh more than the vote of old people? That'd be discrimination.

Well the young people have to note live in the world much longer. They have to get educated, finds jobs, develop their politics, grow their selves. The old people mostly have done all that and don't have a primary interest making those things easy. The ramifications won't be felt for perhaps 3 years and then not fully for perhaps a decade.

It's not sad, to me (not the parent) that the voting power of each person is the same; it's sad - though expected - that older people seemingly looked to their own interests and not those of the people who will have to live through it more.

>"that older people seemingly looked to their own interests and not those of the people who will have to live through it more."

You're making assumptions there as to peoples' individual motivations. Just because someone voted in a way that you deem is not in the best interests of another group doesn't mean that they didn't have that group's best interest in mind.

I personally think this is a good thing for both young and old people. So in your mind, me voting to "leave" would actually be me not-voting in the interests of the young?

You're right of course, the young people (I'm off course talking in generality of the modal opinion) could be misguided in what they wanted, but they wanted it.

I suppose it's also possible there was a cadre of older people who felt the young would be better out of the EU - the same problems but no say in how to fix them and less cooperation, that's got to help /s - but who choose to keep silent about that position?

On the other hand, I have three children and I'm voting to make life good for them more than myself. They are old enough to vote, yes, but they have far less experience of looking at political life than I do. I'm not at all ashamed to vote the way I see best, and perhaps even tell it to my kids, even if I don't think it is wise to push that too much, or at all indeed.

Think of that quote attributed to Churchill - not liberal at 20 has no heart, and not conservative at 40 has no brain.

> that older people seemingly looked to their own interests

That's an assumption. You could even look at it another way and say it's the other way around where they've lived in the UK prior to being in the EU and know what the UK is capable of on it's own.

> Do you think the vote of young people should weigh more than the vote of old people?

Sure, why not? At a shareholders meeting, people with more shares get more say. Young people had much more at stake in this vote than old people.

This isn't like a normal election where there can be a course correction in a few years. In all likelihood this was a once in a generation decision, and the old folks voted to take away young peoples' right to live and work anywhere in Europe.

Perhaps the older voters are wiser and should receive a greater voting share.

Is it really discrimination? Why do older people get to decide the fate of a world they won't experience?

As soon as you start limiting people's ability to vote based on the perceived stake they have in the future, you start down a dangerous path.

It is discrimination by definition, whether you think it is justified or not.

The case could be made that not letting the people who will have to deal with the consequences for longer have a larger say is also discrimination. To be clear I'm not advocating for this to be put into practice however I do think that elderly should vote with this point in the back of their minds.

By this line of reasoning you could indeed decide to give less of a voting power to old people, arguing that all political decisions have important long term consequences.

There are plenty of reasons why that would be unacceptable, and I'm sure that's why human right conventions prohibit this kind of discrimination.

Is it really discrimination? Why do younger people get to make decisions with so little experience?

“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” I'm curious how you will act when you have grand children.

You could easily make the argument that the younger people lack the experience to make sound decisions on the future.

You won't experience my life. So why should you get a vote on anything that affects me?

Based on the views in this subthread, it seems votes should be weighted by inclusive fitness.

Everyone gets a vote. But old people have more experience and more are more invested. Maybe they remember something we don't know.

i used to think the same when younger... not anymore. old have experience, true. Most of it is coming from different era, different world than current one. Apart from basic moral principles, for which you don't need age to conform to, their experiences didn't transfer well. Most of old are more or less completely lost in current fast-pacing world. they cling desperately to anything/anybody that still speaks to them and makes sense to them, no matter the content.

I can see it clearly all around, including my family. my parents, and I love them with all my heart, have simplistic views on politics (although both have university degree). easily to be persuaded, missing bigger picture and view beyond couple of months/years. my grandparents, they are completely lost in this world. they mostly look only what would affect their pension payouts and medical care fees. it doesn't matter if a proper gangster would be handling small financial favors to them, they would go that way.

older people are more invested? nope - we young will live much more of our lives in system that is coming compared to them. We have much more motivation to live in system that is stable and working well in long run (>20 years). it's fair to have same voting rights, but how much do we expect from usual > 70 years old in terms of clever voting decisions? Zero, and politicians know this, hence campaigns are quite emotional to work with them.

I can guarantee that a lot of "old" people think young voters are idiots who have no clue and are easily manipulated through their emotions.

Don't sell your friends and loved ones short. You might want to have a look at Bryan Caplan's book "The Myth of the Rational Voter". Quite eye opening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter

My 94 year old grandfather flew a spitfire in WW2 and voted in he said precisely because he remembers the mess the UK was in before joining the union - the British economy and infrastructure was in a sorry state in the 70s.

> My 94 year old grandfather flew a spitfire in WW2 and voted in he said precisely because he remembers the mess the UK was in before joining the union - the British economy and infrastructure was in a sorry state in the 70s.

That was due to Labour's insane economic policies and the Tories failure to fix them. It wasn't until Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister that the UK started to be well-run again.

"Well run" The housing insaninty is a direct effect of her crazy policies. Yes, she did do some good, but at great, needless cost It's like amputating both legs and a hand just because a pinky went bad...

Should've just left things as they were, right?

> But old people have more experience and more are more invested

In what way are they more invested? They have ~5-25 more years left and then it makes no difference to them. Furthermore, they're likely pretty settled in their life and already retired.

Young people are still building their lives, trying to establish their career. They're likely going to be denied the opportunity to live and work in 27 countries. I think it's pretty disgraceful that they've torpedoed our future based on their hazy rose-coloured memories of some supposedly-better past.

"Denied the opportunity" is a gross exaggeration, given in most European Union member states the number of foreign-born residents is made up primarily from people born outside the European Union. EU member states are generally regarded as generous when it comes to migration, much to the dismay and consistent criticism of their respective tabloid papers.

I'm also skeptical of your conclusion as to why people voted leave. In case you missed the poll, it wasn't just the 65+ age range that voted this way. Even down to the 25-49 group you're looking at a 45% leave vote. Age distribution isn't equal either - the majority of the UK falls in the 25-64 group band, which varies between voting leave or voting remain depending on which poll you look at.

"It does not have a shared language, or culture, or identity. Its dream, while noble, does not speak to ordinary people."

I think you speak of real challenges that the EU has; but to put it in context, other countries have similar challenges. Spend some time in the US, and you will see cultural and language differences among the states. You can also find the same differences in India and China.

Assuming you are American, like me, it's very easy to see the differences in European culture because each state is still a sovereign nation. Chinese and Indian states don't bring their separate flags to the Olympics, so we just assume it's one culture. We go out for "Indian" or "Chinese" food in restaurants that gloss over their internal differences.

You make it sound as if we are living the dawn of Nation-states. We live in a globalized world. Nations are now trading areas. EU is well positioned as one, (if it ever manages to become productive). No nation is an island in this world (including britain). UK will now have to re-pick its allies, and pick them carefully. I can see the pieces of commonwealth that are left in europe denouncing their british past (Gibraltar is a start).

Gibraltar, Scotland, Northern Ireland (what will become of the peace process?). Effectively the UK is left with Wales. Is it even a 'K' any more? Would that take the 'G' out of GB?

Wales isn't and wasn't a kingdom, the union that formed GB was that of the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland initially under personal union of King James. The Welsh counties were annexed to England long before that in a similar way to the other counties of Britain.

The geographical state of Wales being birthed now never was a unified Kingdom though it was very briefly conquered by Gwynedd (Northern principality in Wales), only for so much time as it took the English crown to realise and quell the 'rebellion'.

For GB there are about another quarter million people who are subjects of Her Majesty who remain in overseas territories.

Sir Thomas More: "it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales?"

"Great Britain" is the name of the island, there's no reason for it to change. It is opposed to "lesser Britain", the Brittany part of France.

Yeah, but it's used as a shorthand for the full name of the UK: "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". If Northern Ireland leaves, that makes it "The United Kingdom of Great Britain". If Scotland leaves, that makes it ... what exactly? The United Kingdom of England and Wales? I guess they'd also have to change the flag but I'm not sure what a cross between the English and Welsh flags would look like.

Sorry got it backwards :-) no U or B

You're mistaken. We became Great Britain when England and Scotland unified. When all the peripheries split off again, it'll be back to good old England with John Bull, warm beer and less jobs.

Scarblac is correct. We became the United Kingdom.

More like Cyprus and Malta. I figure the UK is not ready to split yet, no?

I expect Scotland to split and join the EU shortly. Just look at the map in the linked article.

Perhaps. If they did, so be it.

But the arguments at the time of the referendum didn't get stronger. The EU would require Scotland to join the Euro, join Schengen (means a border wall), and the primary argument for an independent Scotland was "we'll take all the oil money for ourselves". But now oil is cheap thanks to US fracking and the North Sea oil industry is going bust.

I think the future probably has more devolution in it. Which is fine.

One of the key arguments against independence was uncertainty over if/how soon we would join the EU. At the time that vs just staying in. Now it's vs definitely leaving. So while the argument hasn't changed the alternative has.

We've also had almost 2 years of Westminster failing to deliver any of the promised devolution. We get these things are slow to happen but there's been pitiful progress towards them so far. Lots of people voted No on the basis of more devolution.

So while the arguments haven't changed the alternative to independence has for the worse. I'm honestly struggling to see a future without an independent Scotland tbh.

The delay on devolution was caused by the SNP insisting that it still receive the same or bigger subsidies from the rest of the UK, even though that struck many as unfair (part of independence is paying your own way). It's not like Parliament refused to hand over powers.

>means a border wall

Hadrian's wall and miles of rural waste should already be sufficient for these purposes.

What, against immigrants?

Seems like it'd be easier to get illegally directly to England, than go through Scotland...

There's talk of London trying to do the same. That'd be a way to solve a lot, but I can't see it happening.

And London too.

Just a couple of years ago Scotland were all set. Then some EPP crony said something about not being in the EU any more and swung the vote.

As for NI - for the sake of peace that would be a more drawn out process.

I can see Northern Ireland, Scotland and London splitting and rejoining the EU. The rest can go wallow in the mess they made for themselves.

Northern Ireland won't split from Great Britain. Too many people there are too heavily invested in their identity as British and would happily follow the rest of the UK over the edge of a cliff so long as they get to keep their Union Jacks and framed photos of the Queen.

Sinn Féin have called for an Ireland-wide referendum on unification because obviously they have. Even if you grant that they don't have the ulterior motive of being Irish Republicans and that they genuinely want Northern Ireland to remain part of the EU (and there's no reason both of these things can't be true), that's probably the only way to ensure that the six counties of Northern Ireland do remain part of the EU in some fashion. And, of course, if it did pass, you'd simply end up with a resurgence in sectarian violence as Unionist hardliners rebel.

You're probably right on all counts apart from leaving Great Britain (though its's also possible you're right on that too). As an Irishman I'm not sure a united Ireland is desirable as the problems of the north may spill into the south. I would personally support an independent Northern Ireland in the EU more than a united Ireland.

Great Britain sounds fine to me.

Chances are you're English though.

No sir I'm not.

Well Sir, what is it then that qualifies your otherwise unqualified remark?

Freedom?

> (if it ever manages to become productive)

It is productive.

Actually I think this makes the eventual prospect of United States of Europe more probable, not less. The UK is the country who has most strongly opposed political integration in the EU. It has a history of watering down, or outright vetoing, proposals that would delegate more sovereignty to the EU or make it more tightly knit.

Unfortunately, with euroskepticism strong also in countries like France, it seems improbable that we are going towards an U.S.E. any time soon. But if Britain were not in the EU in the first place, maybe we would have achieved it already...

You say that like it's a good thing, but you should take a good look at what the EU is about. You may think that it's all about open borders and greater cultural and economic exchange, but at its core it's a vehicle for big business to control politics in the region.

You may think this is some form of conspiracy theory, but there's very strong evidence for it. I would recommend starting here...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xMuUEd6w54E

I saw it till about 23 minutes. The ERT did not seem like a secret organization to me. They left the building, which the NGOs had 'occupied' to go for lunch. Leaving all their documents for them to copy. Are there any ground breaking revelations after that (i.e. after 23 minutes)?

Also, in general, whats wrong with multinationals having a strong influence in the present world? They are the modern day 'kings' replacing their medieval counterparts. Of course I am not arguing for blanket powers for them at all. We of course have checks and balances like regulators/auditors/politicians. Even take the example of #Brexit, it happened didn't it? If corporations had absolute power it would not have.

The point is what's good for society in the long term? Who knows best? No easy answers. But I am willing to err on the side of doers (with checks and balances of course) rather than pure career politicians.

> The EU does not have a common enemy to force it together.

Yes it does, Russia.

Russia is not an enemy of the EU, although the NATO countries in Europe and Asia (Turkey) often treat it as such.

EDIT: Maybe some minority circles in the Russian Federation want to make it an enemy of the EU or the rest of Europe, but most people, rich and poor, don't want to. The former because of trade opportunities and the latter because of shared cultural heritage.

i agree most common Russian people are very europe-friendly, but the guy up there, for whom they repeatedly vote for, is quite old school and crystal-clear in his intentions (what else to expect from ex-KGB guy).

and old school means invading central European countries at whims (Czechoslovakia, Hungary, we have not forgotten), building iron curtain and so on. Or Ukraine now, exactly same approach. This is what world sees, so yes, Russia is the biggest threat to Europe, at least on par with current mass immigration.

Trying to argue that Putin is a common enemy doesn't fly. John Major (former PM) tried that tack, nobody cared. Ukraine broke up in a nasty civil war between pro-EU and pro-Russian camps. Putin hasn't done anything that seriously threatens even the eastern countries, let alone the UK.

Europe goes more to the east than some UK :) in fact it seems to be stopping just right before that these days. It seems to be your personal UK-centric view.

trust me, people from central/east Europe feel very threatened by Russia's attacks on Ukraine. You haven't been through in past what we have been and obviously it's sometimes hard to learn from other's lessons...

Maybe they feel threatened but that doesn't make their view necessarily realistic. They hate Russians out of a deep seated distrust that has its roots in historical Russian expansionism. Whilst I do understand why they think like this I also think their world view is not reflective of actual reality on the ground in the post-Soviet American expansionist world.

Czechoslovakia ??? It was invaded and brutally occupied by Poland,Hungary and Germany. How's Russia got to do with that?

The Prague Spring, 1968, and the ensuing Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia (Operation Danube).

Russia is a schoolyard bully and should be treated as such

A less sophisticated schoolyard bully than the US, but otherwise pretty much the same. It would actually make sense for Europe to make friends with Russia; they're, after all, kind of closer (geographically and culturally), and on the same slab of land.

Russia has been "sharing" culture with Romania and other eastern countries for decades during USSR. No, we do not have the same culture and we do not share the same values.

Friends you say? Oh, that's rich. Maybe when they give us back our national treasure, along with Basarabia and Northen Bukovina, which they took with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and apologize for crushing the national identity of those regions, for starving them to death and for the mass deportations and killings, maybe then we can be friends.

But that will never happen, especially given its leadership. So until hell freezes over, they can go fuck themselves.

I see the point, but to be honest, many European countries (my own included) suffered greatly under Nazi Germany - including mass deportations and killings (but maybe sans the starving part), and yet we've forgiven the Germans. Sure, the USSR times were more recent than II WW, but I hope in years people learn to forgive Russia for the soviet times too. Keeping an "eye for an eye" attitude can get you only so far, and it's better to be friendly and work towards ensuring atrocities such like these don't happen again.

Germans went to apologize and pay retributions. Also considerable soul seeking that lasts many decades now.

Russians (there are exceptions certainly, but statistically) are proud for the oppression they did upon the neighbours and cherish it as their golden years and action plan ahead.

You do realise that in modern Russia Stalin is considered a hero and role model?

There's forgiveness and then there's stupid ignorance. Germans apologized and changed their ways. Russia did not.

Not the same. Both aim to project geopolitical power, sure, but US still a political entity in the western tradition where totalitarian rulers are not accepted, and Russia is of the eastern tradition where total rulers are admired and loved. Most of europe falls to the western category (roughly). There is a east/west divide in political sensibilities, it's as old as antiquity, I don't know where it's coming from, but it's a real effect.

No, that would not make sense at all. Russia is run by an entirely different play-book than the rest of the EU.

There's a gradient of sophistication between western and eastern. Seems to me that Westerners like to hide things under the logic and courtlaw rug while easterners are more crude in how they express painful issues. For the East, West is devious, to the West, East is barbarian.

not the same at all, US hasn't annexed territories from its neighbours for 150 years now

No, but they bombed the shit out of several countries in the last 15 years.

Also, both US and Russia do more bullying on the economic level anyway.

There's a very simple real world test - Korea. Russia created North Korea, US created South Korea. So ask any other developing country - who would they rather be allies with?

So bombing the hell off the Iraq (for exmaple) is okay as long you are not grabbing the land?

Like you can kill 300000 people and everyone is okay as long as the territory is whole.

This is the most dumb thing I've read in this thread.

now russkies are bombing the hell out of Syria, do you like it better?

Apart from the Spanish-American war, of course.

right, I stand corrected, 118 years

Russia makes a habit of invading European countries.

Ehm... You are bad at history. Russia withstood several Polish invasions, several Swedish ones, several German ones. It lost Crimean war to allied 'EU' forces, but in the end took peninsula back by peaceful means. What you are referring to was WW2 and its not that simple. Would you like your parents burned in Auschwitz or similar European institution, or have their chance in Siberia?

I'd rather Auschwitz: you die faster, and you aren't contributing to your oppressor's bottom line.

Unlike European contries who never invaded Russia /s

You mean that Napoleon guy, once?

I think you'd want to dive into history books. Almost all European contries (that were close to Russia or Russian Empire) did that at some point of time.

The EU has many enemies. Bureaucracy, Greed, Idiotism to name a few. But Russia is not among those. Russian military is fueled by German tech and French avionics, Germany is a primary market for Rusdian gas. Kohl sits in Gazprom.

"Bureaucracy, Greed, Idiotism to name a few. " which country doesn't have these enemies?

btw: it's Gerhard Schroder, not Kohl. ;o)

Far from it. Besides, when was the last time the russians invaded europe [edit:EU]?

In 2014 Russia invaded southern Ukraine and annexed it.

Crimea had a referendum. Opinion polls and independent studies in the time since have shown that the referendum results match other forms of polling, it was not rigged. They wanted to join Russia, mostly because since the fall of the Soviet Union Russian salaries are now 10x higher than Ukraine despite starting in the same place.

People who try to argue that the cold war is still running don't get anywhere with me.

That's absurd, there was no referendum if special forces and unlabeled army forces of an invading country is there to "enforce peace" - and the rest of the world doesn't share that naive view and continues to punish Russia for it through trade deals and embargoes, lowering the quality of life of Russians and devaluing the ruble while increasing import costs for them. Tell me, how's that been going for Russia?

Well, I agree we shouldn't be encouraging it, but when I pay attention to the shadow government players like Kissinger and Brzenski, they seem hell bent on bringing back the Cold War (I call it the neocold-war), mostly because while no one really speaks about it publicly, resource wars are on the horizon.

Referendum was organized under supervision of Russian special forces and Russia acknowledged this. By all laws it was a military operation which is normally called annexation. Hitler made the same annexation in his times.

Interestingly, the survey conducted in 2013 in Crimea doesn't show any sign of Russian language discrimination at that time.

Which proves one more time that all Russian propaganda was just lie.

And you intentionally or unintentionally support Kremlin propaganda.

http://www.iri.org/sites/default/files/2013%20October%207%20...

It's scary that no one remembers this...

This was after the democratically elected president of Ukraine was overthrown by undemocratic means (protests) and went into exile in Russia. This subtext is conveniently ignored because the president was pro-Russia.

The Ukraine is not Europe (at least not if you contrast Europe and Russia like that) and the Crimean Peninsula has a disputed past.

Calling Ukraine "Europe" (again: in contrast with Russia) really just masks the power struggle that was going on before the annexation and the (Russia-supported) civil war. Ukraine was originally part of the "buffer zone" between Russia and the NATO. Both EU and NATO (i.e. US) were trying to change that (not that Ukrainians really complained or anything -- the prospect of EU membership was obviously exciting for many of them).

Does nobody remember the infamous "F### the EU" wiretap? It may have been published by Russia (though that was never confirmed AFAICT) but it was authentic.

The Ukraine is not Europe - google maps can help you ;)

Also it is much more Europe than Russia which is Asia by it's spirit and history despite has some European territories.

The US annexed Texas, ripping it off from Mexica in 1848. Give it back you bully state!

> The US annexed Texas, ripping it off from Mexica in 1848.

It annexed the Republic of Texas, which had been independent of Mexico since 1836, in 1846.

Freedom to Texas! Than we'll discuss Crimea.

Ukraine is not in the EU.

You can read, yes? He says Europe.

i edited it. the thread was about eu anyway

Are you for real?

Russia is in Europe.

Russians dont really see themselves that way, they call it northern Eurasia. Europe is now almost synonymous with the EU and it interest sphere.

May I ask you why do you think you can represent Russians' opinion here? I am certanly Russian and feel the way you discribe.

Quite so. Huge gas pipes are connecting it to the EU.

There are also gas pipelines connecting Algeria to the EU. Is Algeria in Europe?

Certainly. It was a part of the Roman Empire, state language is French, and most money flows from France. Its apity, that geographically its Africa. I propose to rename Northern Africa the Special European Economical Interest Area.

North Africa is quite distinct from the rest of Africa and the middle east either way you slice it.

As a Dutch citizen I very much feel kinship with people who happen to be from the other founding countries D, F, B, L, I. I speak their languages, I know their typical strengths and foibles, I've visited their cities, I know their history. We've been together for 70 stable years. The ministers of those countries are convening right now. And I very much agree with the words of the German minister Steinmeier "that those countries won't let anybody take that union away from them".

> The EU does not have a common enemy to force it together.

Considering two world wars and a history of war before that, EU's common enemy is itself, divided.

About 85 years after the U.S started, the south wanted to leave and that led to the most deadly war in U.S history.

> And, crucially, it already had a shared cultural identity, shared language

Isn't the US a conglomerate of former English, French and Spanish colonies?

The US took over former land claimed by France and Spain. Very few Spanish and French actually lived there. It was mostly territory claimed by Spain and France, but almost totally unsettled. The land was populated with Indians, but they had already seen their populations ravaged by European disease.

Somewhere like Illinois is littered with places named in French or Algonquin, but there is zero culture leftover.

Parts of Lousinana are all that's left from France.

I can't believe Nigel Farage and a lot of pro Brexit campaigners have been calling it UK's "Independence day". Apart from being a very bad (purposeful?) analogy, it's seems to me pretty disrespectful to their own and to US history. I'm not from USA (or UK) but would love to hear how US and UK people feel about it?

Many countries have am independence day, not just America. Granted most are celebrating independence from us brits through.

"Independence day" is not exclusive to the US.

The film with the aliens and Jeff Goldblum made that particularly clear.

>I'm not from USA (or UK) but would love to hear how US and UK people feel about it?

I think it sounds like populist grandstanding. We've been hearing that sort of thing for a year now. We (the US) seem to have a lot of people buying into it though. We get to see first hand how stepping back from globalization looks like before we vote for it ourselves come November.

I can understand the US shared dream, but are you really serious about the other points? In what is today called United States of America in the beginning there were indeed people with different languages, religions and radically opposite culture. Manhattan, hearth of New York and global economy, was Dutch. California (or at least part of it) was Mexican. The vast majority of the land was inhabited by Native Americans. And you are telling me that a United Europe is more difficult than unify that unbelievable potpourri that was US at the beginning? Before the Brexit that was an ongoing process that slowly was moving toward a common goal. Now I'm not sure if Europe still exists.

As always democracy proves itself very dangerous. If I'm ill I go to the doctor, I don't start asking around common people opinions.

A very sad European living in uk.

And even then USA had a civil war...

"The US did not magic itself into existence as a united state. It began in common purpose with a shared, very strong, external enemy. It then assigned itself a shared dream of settling the content. And, crucially, it already had a shared cultural identity, shared language, and shared religion when it began."

People keep making this comparison, but they also keep forgetting two elements:

1. After the revolution, parts I and II, as part of the shared dream, they identified an even better external enemy, one which was not only weaker but could easily be vilified.

2. Then there was that whole civil war thing, which killed something like 2-2.5% of the population. (I know, that's low by European standards. For comparison, WWI cost France something like 3.5%. Anyway, still...)

>I know, that's low by European standards. For comparison, WWI cost France something like 3.5%

That's only a matter of timing. If the civil war was delayed 50 years and was fought with WWI tech, it probably would have killed way more people. Trench warfare, machine guns, etc, just ate up lives.

2012 state petitions for secession

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_state_petitions_for_sec...

I'd extend the question. Can peace subsist long without a war ...

The EU has done a pretty good job. You'd have a hard time finding a 70 year period before the EU where none of the founder members were at war with one another.

that's an arbitrary number. The EU was officially created in 1993. So a better question would be, can we find a 23 year period before the EU where none of the founder members were at war with each other? Yeah you can. About 3 of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_union

The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC), formed by the Inner Six countries in 1951 and 1958 [..] The Maastricht Treaty established the European Union under its current name in 1993

If your position is that every major treaty establishes a new Union, then the EU is less than 10 years old (Treaty of Lisbon, 2009). Otherwise, the EU originated in 1951.

That has almost nothing to do with the EU and almost everything to do with NATO, the massive number of US troops (they outnumber all European troops in Europe), nuclear deterrents, and shared foreign policy goals (i.e. managing the rise of China, combating terrorism, and deterring Russian meddling).

It did work for a very long time but even then after a while things go south.

As a person who currently resides in Europe and expects to continue living on this planet for another 60 or so years, I ask, I plead - could people please consider trying to make things not go south? Petty political and economical differences are not worth another war.

Just in case people thought I was rooting for mess over peace. I'm just trying to find why things aren't stable so we can try to keep them stable longer.

Why do most societies resolve internal stress by communautarism, law of ancestry, blind and stupid racism. Why not by gathering and looking at what's wrong then fix it with wisdom.

I wasn't thinking you're rooting for war - but I had that on my chest and had to say it. I see people sometimes saying things like "oh well, every civilization has to end at some point", or noting that Europe is long overdue for another war. It's as if people didn't realize the war isn't some abstract shifting of borders, it's mostly innocent people dying terrible deaths from bullets, hunger and disease. While it is a true historical fact, it's something we should focus on figuring out and, as you said, "fixing it with wisdom".

Maybe I'm too sensitive on this topic, but ever since the Crimea debacle I've become much more worried about instabilities in Europe. I have only ~300km to the Ukrainian border. There are nights when I hear some weird aerial noises and I wonder if that's a missile, and if this is the day when my city turns into a CoD: MW map.

I'll add that I'm 101% against war. But again I'm a drop in the ocean. And again, society is too keen on forgetting the horror of the past while stepping on the rage pedal. Crimea worried me too. I didn't expect a big country doing such a violent thing. I hope Russians demote Putin ... I like to dream.

Europe's shared enemy, if you accept the concept, was the double-whammy of being ground zero for two world wars.

You forgot the part where the US tried one form of government and then ditched it for a different one 10 years later.

A whole lot of people missed your point and for some reason are trying to play semantics with history.

> The EU does not have a common enemy to force it together.

Yes it did, that enemy was "world war".

> And, crucially, it already had a shared cultural identity, shared language, and shared religion when it began.

I don't think this is true. German, for example, had a very strong presence.

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