12-11-2018, 06:04 PM
@"BIAD" - Thanks for that explanation. What it looks like to me then is a nascent "United States of Europe" along the same lines as the United States of America or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics... a super "nation" composed of various member "states", which states are more or less autonomous - getting less and less autonomous as time goes by, until the sovereignty of each simply vanishes or is subsumed by the super nation, at which point they exist as "states" only in name.
That's how it went here, anyhow. In the beginning, each "colony" was converted to a sovereign nation, with it's own military, economy, monetary supply minted in-house, etc. These states were then gathered together under a single umbrella "nation", whose purpose was simply to regulate commerce between the various member states, mediate disputes between them, and provide a unified stance to foreign nations.
Then we "needed" a national currency as an exchange medium between the various member nations, and the dollar was born, based more on Spanish dollars than British pounds. we went along merrily that way for around 80 years. Over those years, there was a gradual loss of autonomy in the states, that autonomy giving way to the "needs" of more powerful economic interests. Then, about 80 years into the experiment, some of those nations tried to extract themselves from the super nation due to them having been placed at economic disadvantage by monied individuals in far away locations, and the American Civil war was pitched as a means of showing those breakaway nations just how much autonomy they had lost to the money-men.
It was kinda like that line in the Eagles' song "Hotel California" - you could check out any time you liked, but you could never leave, and they damned well intended to show those break ways just who was really Boss, and who called the shots - the Money Men could not afford to lose the productive areas in the breakaway nations, as their own productivity relied on the raw materials produced there - the Money Men would have gone broke, so they pitched the war to keep those raw materials from leaving them and potentially trading those goods elsewhere for more profit.
At the end of that war, the landscape in the break away nations was devastated, and the political landscape of the entire "Union" had changed. No longer was it a collection of nations under an economic umbrella, it was a solidified nation, a political entity rather than economic, all directed from a far away centralized location - exactly what we fought the Revolution to get away from in the first place.
That's why the US has "states" as intermediate political entities between "counties" and "nation", a feature not found in most other organic nations.
That is what it appears to me that the EU is trying to emulate. In the beginning, the US eschewed a "standing army" as well, and we were promised that would NEVER happen - state military forces ruled supreme in the military arena here, and were mostly composed of militias that were called up as needed, and then disbanded again (except for obligatory training exercises) in the times between "emergencies"... but after the Civil War (AKA "War between the States"), we found ourselves with a standing super-national army, and have had it ever since.
I'm not as familiar with the history of the Soviet Union, but I suspect it developed along those same lines.
Over time, since the Civil War, the US central government has become more rigid, inflexible, controlling, and demanding. That is understandable, I suppose, when we realize that the sole reason for the existence of political entities is to perpetuate themselves. A government ceases to exist when it stops governing, and so in order to remain relevant, the government passes more and more laws simply to justify it's own existence. When that government runs out of useful laws to pass, it starts passing ridiculous laws - it has to, in order to justify it's own existence and survive. It must be seen to be "governing".
But we all know what happens to things when they become too rigid and inflexible. They snap, or shatter like a pane of glass under pressure, and cease to exist any way.
I told my dad in 1976 (the "bicentennial" celebration of the founding of the US) that we had made it 200 years, but I doubted like hell that we would make it another hundred years. I stand by that assessment to this day, and the foregoing explanation is the reason why. I think the EU might want to wait a bit and see what happens here before they try to follow in our footsteps.
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That's how it went here, anyhow. In the beginning, each "colony" was converted to a sovereign nation, with it's own military, economy, monetary supply minted in-house, etc. These states were then gathered together under a single umbrella "nation", whose purpose was simply to regulate commerce between the various member states, mediate disputes between them, and provide a unified stance to foreign nations.
Then we "needed" a national currency as an exchange medium between the various member nations, and the dollar was born, based more on Spanish dollars than British pounds. we went along merrily that way for around 80 years. Over those years, there was a gradual loss of autonomy in the states, that autonomy giving way to the "needs" of more powerful economic interests. Then, about 80 years into the experiment, some of those nations tried to extract themselves from the super nation due to them having been placed at economic disadvantage by monied individuals in far away locations, and the American Civil war was pitched as a means of showing those breakaway nations just how much autonomy they had lost to the money-men.
It was kinda like that line in the Eagles' song "Hotel California" - you could check out any time you liked, but you could never leave, and they damned well intended to show those break ways just who was really Boss, and who called the shots - the Money Men could not afford to lose the productive areas in the breakaway nations, as their own productivity relied on the raw materials produced there - the Money Men would have gone broke, so they pitched the war to keep those raw materials from leaving them and potentially trading those goods elsewhere for more profit.
At the end of that war, the landscape in the break away nations was devastated, and the political landscape of the entire "Union" had changed. No longer was it a collection of nations under an economic umbrella, it was a solidified nation, a political entity rather than economic, all directed from a far away centralized location - exactly what we fought the Revolution to get away from in the first place.
That's why the US has "states" as intermediate political entities between "counties" and "nation", a feature not found in most other organic nations.
That is what it appears to me that the EU is trying to emulate. In the beginning, the US eschewed a "standing army" as well, and we were promised that would NEVER happen - state military forces ruled supreme in the military arena here, and were mostly composed of militias that were called up as needed, and then disbanded again (except for obligatory training exercises) in the times between "emergencies"... but after the Civil War (AKA "War between the States"), we found ourselves with a standing super-national army, and have had it ever since.
I'm not as familiar with the history of the Soviet Union, but I suspect it developed along those same lines.
Over time, since the Civil War, the US central government has become more rigid, inflexible, controlling, and demanding. That is understandable, I suppose, when we realize that the sole reason for the existence of political entities is to perpetuate themselves. A government ceases to exist when it stops governing, and so in order to remain relevant, the government passes more and more laws simply to justify it's own existence. When that government runs out of useful laws to pass, it starts passing ridiculous laws - it has to, in order to justify it's own existence and survive. It must be seen to be "governing".
But we all know what happens to things when they become too rigid and inflexible. They snap, or shatter like a pane of glass under pressure, and cease to exist any way.
I told my dad in 1976 (the "bicentennial" celebration of the founding of the US) that we had made it 200 years, but I doubted like hell that we would make it another hundred years. I stand by that assessment to this day, and the foregoing explanation is the reason why. I think the EU might want to wait a bit and see what happens here before they try to follow in our footsteps.
.
Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king.
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’