European nationalism gaining over EU integration
We were curious about what has been going on in Europe since the G20 meeting, so we surfed over to EurActive to get the latest news. Back in February, EurActive reported that economic nationalism was emerging as a counter-trend to EU integration because rising unemployment rates were fueling resentment against foreign workers. Evidently the European worker wasn’t thinking globally enough and was more interested in having a job. HotNews reported that immigrants were working for one-third the minimum wage rate in Britain. Some were willing to work for less, just to have some income.
Britain’s Gordon Brown called for “British jobs for British workers.” We didn’t hear anything like that from the Obama administration, and why not, Obama is from the same Social Democratic roots as Brown and Lenin.
In Italy a series of rapes by Romanian immigrants has set Italian public opinion against immigrant workers. Italy has beefed up its penalties for sex offenders, and local citizens patrols have formed to monitor neighborhoods for safety. Prime Minister Berlusconi said that official statistics for rape showed a 10 percent decrease year over year, but this did not seem to satisfy Italian public opinion.
When are the Italians going to adopt statistical thinking and calm down?
The EU response to these nationalist sentiments was to enact legislation that punishes employers for hiring illegal workers. Italian Claudio Fava, who wrote the legislation, noted that “sometimes immigrants are even treated as slaves.” The European labor unions cautiously endorse the legislation. Why not, their members want jobs.
Germany already took steps to solve this problem by banning Eastern European workers until 2011.
No U.S. leader has mentioned that illegal immigrants sometimes work for less than minimum wage and are sometimes treated like slaves. Well, things must be worse in Europe than in the United States, right? Or maybe not. Maybe the conditions are about the same, and the crucial difference is the passivity of the U.S. population to the various threats posed by immigrant workers and the ability of U.S. Leftist leaders to ignore exploitation of immigrant workers.
On Monday, Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Balasz, said that some of the EU member states were trying to back out of the EU. Balasz cited tensions between Germany and France as one reason. Another reason is the equality of representation, which gives smaller states as much of a voice in EU policies as larger states. This “equality of the unequal” makes the bigger states wonder if they should go their own way and pursue their own interests. That always happens when “equality” is forced upon the unequal. If they were really equal, they would be exactly the same, and equality wouldn’t need to be forced upon them.
Balasz also referred to a border dispute between Slovakia and Hungary. A border dispute? How twentieth century! When is Slovakia going to grow up? Balasz commented, Slovakia “hasn’t reached that point of the identification process where they can settle the history wisely and look for the future.” This means, Slovakia is thinking of itself as a nation, not as an emasculated unit of the European Union.
Slovakia needs to work on its identification process, and so do those selfish workers who resent illegal immigrants having jobs as they lose theirs. Really this whole problem of European integration could be solved if people would just start thinking of themselves as Europeans or citizens of the world rather than as French or German or Hungarian, trust their globalist leaders, and stop acting in their own self-interest.
Tensions between nationalism and the takeover of European nations by EU socialism continue to simmer. Is the European Union going to split apart and retain national identities or undergo sensitivity training and get a brand new, all-EU identity?
Suddenly there appears advice from an unexpected source, feminism. Isabella Lenarduzzi, founder of something called JUMP Forum, has let it be known that women can rescue the EU economy (here) and men can benefit from diversity (here). Who knew?
OK, let’s turn this into a learning opportunity. Read Learduzzi’s first post, and analyze it for logical fallacies. If you can identify the fallacies in Lenarduzzi’s article, you have successfully inoculated yourself against Communist takeover. We’ll offer the answers in a future post. Consider this a pop quiz. Your reward for getting the right answers is not having to read anything more about feminism in the future.
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