Friday, November 18, 2011

Good Intentions, Eurocatastrophe

Here the articulate eurosceptic MEP Daniel Hannan argues that good intentions, not any desire to dominate Europe by other means, motivated Germany's role in promoting European integration and giving so generously to other countries.  As with other charitable efforts, however (see my review of Lupton's Toxic Charity below), the result was to impoverish and maintain in a resented state of dependency those who were supposed to benefit from integration and centralization.

The contrary view, that the EU is a German plot, offers a further example of how conspiracy theories and attributions of malign intent get in the way of serious analysis, discussion, and debate.

As Hannan explains on his blog,

The most unattractive strain of Euroscepticism is the kind that sees the EU as some sort of German plot. You hear it all over Europe: from Frenchmen, from Dutchmen, from Danes, Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Greeks – even, occasionally, from Britons.
Quite apart from being terrifically rude, it couldn't be more mistaken. Far from bidding for mastery of the Continent, Germans suffer from a lack of patriotism that borders on self-abnegation. One of this blog's constant themes is that it is in everyone's interest for German national pride to be normalised.
Teuto-sceptics are having a field day with the speech which the CDU's parliamentary leader gave to his party conference. Volker Kauder demanded that Britain pay a share of the cost of bailing out the euro – specifically by accepting the financial transactions tax, 80 per cent of whose revenues would be drawn from the City of London. 'Just looking for… Read More
Retrieved November 18, 2011 from http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/author/danielhannan/

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