From - Wed Jul 24 22:28:06 1996 Message-ID: <31F69566.794B@ph.ed.ac.uk> Date: Wed, 24 Jul 1996 22:28:06 +0100 From: jon ivar skullerud X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.02 (X11; I; OSF1 V3.2 alpha) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: talk.politics.european-union Subject: Re: We must UNITE, or go to war! References: <31ED6F34.2C67@ph.ed.ac.uk> <4skcoc$mpr@duke.telepac.pt> <4sl2c6$ij8@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 7263 Status: RO Holger Skok wrote: > If one starts with two simple axioms, namely that > > a) the peaceful survival of our species and > b) the maximization of individual autonomy or self-government > > are worthy and important aims, then complete political union > follows automatically. Anybody NOT agreeing to that must be > a xenophobic hate-monger and... ;-) - well, not quite. There's > more to my point actually. > > First a bit of explanation: > While point a) above is probably clear and simple enough, It is clear enough, but it is less simple than it seems at first. I think Jorma and Gulliver are exaggerating the risk of war resulting from (the wrong kind of) European political union, but the points they are trying to make need to be taken seriously. I may come back to that later. > point > b) requires a few more words. Our societies are based on the > sovereignty of the people. England apparently has a tradition (doctrine) of sovereignty of the Parliament, not the people, which may help to explain some of the strange noises emanating from that direction when there's discussion about a written constitution, devolution, or European political integration. This doctrine can be arrived at through a literal reading of John Locke. > The citizens of a country elect > their representatives who act on the citizens' behalf and whose > justification rests on the consent of the governed. [snip] > Therefore, the repetitive talk of "national sovereignty" means > nothing to me - unless of course, it was based on that core of > individual sovereignty - something that I doubt in many cases. Again it's not quite that simple; I would argue that there are such things as real communities, and that to a certain exent they, not the individual, form the cornerstone of human life. So the sovereignty of those communities is also an issue. This is however academic in the present context, since nations (with a few exceptions) are not real communities. > Now, in our nation-states we have arrived at political systems > which allow the citizens to more or less control the general > direction of politics. We could argue over the pros and cons of > different concepts to make that participation possible (and we > should, but not in THIS thread, if you please). Why not? ;-) It's pretty difficult to keep these issues apart. But, OK then, I'll promise not to bring up the question of direct versus representative democracy, at least... > But I think we > should be d'accord on the basic premise - that citizens should > have a preferrably large say about their own fates and > consequently also about political decisions affecting that fate. Indeed. > What we can observe, however, is a removal of important areas > of decision making from the political arena or at least from > parliamentary control. The investment decisions of multinational > corporations affect our lives, sometimes our chances for survival, > too. [snip] > Still, the final decision should be left to the citizens and > I am not willing to have MY sovereignty eroded in that way > without at least speaking up against it. I agree entirely with this. > Secondly, and probably more importantly, we are facing a few > really big problems which affect everyone on this planet. Things > like ozone depletion or global warming, the mass extinction of > species going on all around the globe and the generally exploitative > attitude towards our planet's resources are endangering our > survival. And if it's not survival that is threatened, then at least > it is comfortable survival. (Do I really want to have to wear > factor 35 sunblocker when walking out in the sun?) And since > these problems cannot be attacked efficiently on a local basis > exclusively, we need some decision making institutions to > attack these problems on the global or European scale respectively. True. Although I am convinced that some of these problems, even global ones, can actually be handled better by bringing decision-making down to the local level. In particular, more local economies would do much to reduce global warming, and giving power to local communities could help a lot against species extinction and exploitative attitudes. > If we just allow the executive branch of our respective governments > to handle these things - like they are being handled now, on > international conferences, with international treaties - we weaken > the other two branches of government in these areas and are handing > our own control, small as it might be, over to the caring and efficient > people in the executive branch. Do we really want that? Well, no, but if we're talking about international treaties, they still need to be ratified by the national legislatures, so unless you have a political system where the executive can basically bully the legislature into accepting anything, it is not quite as gloomy as you stay. > It makes sense to me at least to make decisions under parliamentarian > and judicial control at the proper level. Local problems at the local > level, town council, Landsgemeinde, Bürgerrat, whatever. National > problems at the national level and international problems on an > international level. I think everyone except "fundamentalist" nationalists, and to some extent libertarians, would agree with that. But unless there is some agreement on what is local, national, and international problems respectively, it doesn't mean very much. > Why someone would be against the application of > the time tested principle of division of power between legislature, > executive and judiciary on the international level is beyond me. There is a fairly strong case for a proper international legislature. But that still allows for discussion about how that legislature should be composed, how it should be elected, and how its internal workings should be. I am not convinced that a directly elected assembly is necessarily more accountable than a body based on national or regional government representatives. > International business needs a counterweight. A certain measure > of correspondingly international government could provide that. Again I agree. But I would argue that the main role of this international government should be breaking down the international business so that it can be handled by local and regional governments. > Now feel free to tear this reasoning apart! ;-) No thanks :-) I think your argument is very sound. If I were challenged to come up with an argument for political union, I would come with something very similar. I'd probably add some more philosophical noises about how individual autonomy cannot be seen as a given, but is enhanced when the individual participates in common decisions in a community -- and that reason applies to the autonomy of communities as well. -- ______ ______________________________________ / | | | jon | jon ivar skullerud | \______ | | \ | jonivar@ph.ed.ac.uk | ivar | | http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/~jonivar/ | _______/ |______________________________________| From daemon Sun Mar 9 19:41:44 1997 Received: from grunt.dejanews.com by adelphi.physics.adelaide.edu.au (5.65/AndrewR-930902) id AA14868; Sun, 9 Mar 1997 19:41:42 +0930 Received: (from dopost@localhost) by grunt.dejanews.com (8.7.6/8.7.3) id DAA10932; Sun, 9 Mar 1997 03:11:04 -0600 Path: grunt.dejanews.com!not-for-mail Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 03:11:03 -0600 From: jon ivar skullerud Subject: Re: Stopping the European integration (Re: People on the Euro notes) Newsgroups: talk.politics.european-union Message-Id: <857897755.10730@dejanews.com> Organization: Confused To: jskuller@physics.adelaide.edu.au References: <856331089.4192@dejanews.com> <9702192338488186@election.demon.co.uk> <856625590.20389@dejanews.com> <01bc215e$66f1db20$2492f482@pcn> <856748410.9651@dejanews.com> <3312ae9b.2698745@news.ping.be> <857044208.14478@dejanews.com> <3316dc8b.14393804@news.ping.be> X-Article-Creation-Date: Sun Mar 09 08:55:56 1997 GMT X-Originating-Ip-Addr: 129.127.36.48 (wilson.physics.adelaide.edu.au) X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/3.0 (X11; I; OSF1 V3.2 alpha) X-Authenticated-Sender: jon ivar skullerud X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 9121 Status: RO [This is a courtesy copy of an article posted to Usenet via Deja News] In article <3316dc8b.14393804@news.ping.be>, pin00033@ping.be wrote: > > On Thu, 27 Feb 1997 06:01:38 -0600, jon ivar skullerud > wrote: > >Involving the national parliaments does in no way preclude increasing > >the powers of the EP, if that is considered desirable. This is in fact > >the Danish position. But since the national parliaments have a much > >stronger mandate from their voters and are much more accountable than > >the EP will ever be, involving them will do much more for democracy > >in the EU than increasing the powers of the EP. > > But the EP is directly elected by the people, the second chamber would > be an indirectly elected house. > I don't think the EP is less accountable than the national > parliaments, it's juston higher level of government. I think the EP is less accountable than national parliaments partly *because* it is on a higher level. Also, the EP is largely elected on the basis of national politics and consists of representatives for national parties, since there is no Europe-wide civil society and associated political debate as yet. And the participation in EP elections is much lower than in national elections (Belgium is anomalous since it is the only country with compulsory voting; in fact, Belgium and Australia are the only liberal democracies in the world with compulsory voting). The last two things may change with further European integration, but the first point still stands, that the further away you get from the voters, the less accountable you are. > I have something else to had. The Council is composed of national > ministers, who have not always the time to fully work in the European > affairs. So they give some powers to the COREPER (the civil servants, > or well-known, the bureaucrats). > I truly belive we should get rid of the COREPER, and that their work > could be done directly elected Councillor who would work in the > Council, when the ministers are not in Brussels. I agree fully with this. > >France has an additional proposal to set up such a chamber > >which should exclusively deal with matters of subsidiarity. This may > >or may not be a good idea, but it is quite different to the Danish > >proposal. > Ok, it's different, but it's still useless. The only chamber who > should matter subsidiarity is ... the Comitee of the Regions. Well, subsidiarity is (or should be) an issue for both the nations and the regions. So I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. As I said, I don't know if I support the idea; there may be other ways of achieving the same thing. > Subsidiarity will be fully respected when it will involve, both EU and > the states (as today) but also the regions ! ... and the towns and neighbourhoods as well! > >In article <3312ae9b.2698745@news.ping.be>, > > pin00033@ping.be wrote: > >> Of course, the national-control Danish proposal is even better than > >> what a Europhile and federalist country could deliver, isn't it Mr Jon > >> Ivar ? > >> You are doing like Jon L ? To reinvent the meaning of words ? > >> You've just reinvent the meaning of 'constructive' and 'bonehead'. > > > >Please explain where I have. And note that I inserted the letters > >"IMHO" -- "in my humble opinion" in front of the word "bone-headed", > >to make it abundantly clear that this is just my personal feeling > >on the matter. Others are quite free to take a different view. > > the "IMHO" feature changes nothing, I have noted that YOU don't > welcome goodly proposals from federalist countries. I am willing to consider any proposal that is made in good faith and has some positive rationale behind it, whoever it comes from. I think some of your suggestions are quite good. > Have you came across the Hertenstein programme ? No. > Do you know that the > first proposals after the War was to federate Europe ? I know Churchill had some proposals along those lines. > It's only since the failure of the EDCommunity that federalism has > been get out of the European integration's agenda. > But don't kid yourself, people wanted a federal Union, BEFORE an > economic community. Who are "people"? Some people wanted a federal (western) Europe. Some wanted to protect the European coal and steel producers against the US giants, and founded the ECSC. Some wanted a common market as an aim in itself, to promote economic growth; others wanted it as a way of uniting the peoples of Europe. Some wanted to prevent Europe from starving again, and started the CAP. Some wanted the western European countries to be better prepared to stand together in war, and founded the WEU. But then NATO was founded, which served the same purpose, but with the backing of USA. Nothing is simple; there are several reasons for most things. > >Is the "European Constitution" an authoritative document? > No That's what I thought. So it cannot be taken as a statement of the EU's aims today. > >> And the EU has already a lot of institutions, it is not monolithic > >> (not more than a present nation-state). > > > >Gee, that's really comforting. Not. > >What I dislike so intensely about the present nation-state is precisely > >that it is so monolithic, and does not allow for alternative or > >overlapping power structures. I want to see that monopoly of power > >broken up, not submerged into a new bigger monolithic structure. > > If the sovereignty can be shared between the EU, the states, the > regions and maybe other 'unions'. Wouldn't be great ? Despite my instinctive recoiling from questions like "wouldn't that be great?", yes. Especially if none of them tries to lay claim on some kind of supremacy or exclusiveness. > >> I think that if we stop the European integration, the demons of > >> nationalism and fascism will rise again ! > > > >If I were you now I would say that this is just another europhile > >lie. But I realise that you actually believe this, therefore it > >is not, in fact, a lie. However, it is hardly more than a slogan, > > Europe wasn't a Union when Germany became nazi. Surely because there > were no superior institution who could have monitored the evolution of > the party nazi ! How could the EU have made a difference? What difference would such "monitoring" have made? The Germans were already angry at the terms of the Versailles peace treaty. Surely any further interference by a "superior institution" would only have made them more angry? > >based apparently on some magic idea that the EU is a miracle cure > >against nasty ideologies, or alternatively on an extremely > >pessimistic idea of human nature as irrevocably drawn towards > >fascism. > > > Absolutely not, but an advised man equals two ! > > >I have tried to present an argument for how a top-driven EU integration > >process *may* (not necessarily will) give rise to more fascism. > >Please answer that argument. Then, if you can present an argument > >for why lack of integration will lead to fascism, I will answer that. > > It must have a top institution (one which already exist: the EP) who > will monitor the evolution of a member-state's politcal party. > If such a state falls in the fascist camp, this European organization > could decide to intervent and bring back democracy in this State. > Without such an organization (like in1933) nobody will impeach a nazi > to take power in a European state, except if he invades its > neighboors. Let me try to understand what you are saying here. Let's say that the Front National becomes the largest party in the next French election. What will the EU do then? Will they go in and dissolve the French Parliament? Will they take Le Pen to court? What right do they have to do such things? And what effect would it have? Would it reduce the support for Front National's ideas? I don't think so. It would make them martyrs and give them even more ammunition in their xenophobic battle. Those who voted for them and see their votes overturned will become even more hostile to the foreign institution that is taking away their country. Let's now say that Le Pen is elected president and starts implementing racist policies in violation of human rights -- with support from the majority of the people. What will the EU do? They can suspend France from membership. That's it. And that probably wouldn't suit Le Pen too badly either. And the EU would be left with even less power. Actually, comparisons with 1933 and all that are not very valid. People today do care about human rights in other countries; they hardly knew anything and cared even less then. A country violating human rights can expect concerted international protests,consumer boycotts, diplomatic pressure, and possibly even sanctions. This has nothing to do with the EU, and all the more to do with groups like Amnesty International. jon ivar -- Paranoia is when you know all the facts (Shooglenifty, 1997) -------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====----------------------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet