May 8, 2005
ANGLO VS FRANCO:
Bored No More: History's End Scares Europe (RICHARD BERNSTEIN, 5/08/05, NY Times)
The Europeans watched collectively last month as the Airbus A380, the giant plane they see in competition with the United States, did something it hadn't done yet. It took off.Unfortunately, Europe as a whole these days sometimes seems perilously close to crashing. Or at least in a state of collective perplexity about its role in the world, its identity, its future.
The most striking sign of that: the possibility that the French, despite their historical role as the chief inspirers of the European dream, might vote against the proposed Constitution for the enlarged 25-member union in a referendum at the end of May. France's president, Jacques Chirac, has warned that a "non" would mean not that Europe crashes but that "it stops" - for lack of its Constitution, painstakingly negotiated for four years.
Why this continued, perhaps growing, resistance to the idea of a unified Europe? A recent scene sums up the situation. A few days ago, Mr. Chirac went on French TV to answer questions on the Constitution posed by a group of 18- to 30-year-olds.
There are two solutions, he said. One "would lead to a Europe swept along by an ultraliberal current, which would be an Anglo-Saxon and Atlanticist Europe," he said. "That's not what we would wish." What Europe needs instead, he said, is "to be organized and strong so as to impose its humanism, its values." In other words, to have clear rules to guide its further movement ahead.
The response of the young people was strong and persistent skepticism, and, perhaps more important, pessimism. "I have the impression," one of them said, "that a little something is being hidden in this text, and that is that the text follows a liberal logic." By "liberal" the young person did not mean American-style liberalism, à la Edward M. Kennedy. He meant liberal in the European sense of an unregulated free-market economy of cheap labor competition that will cause Europe to jettison its social protections. The implication was that "liberalism" is what the bureaucrats in Brussels, the European Union's capital, want, and what the citizens of the individual nations like France must protect themselves against.
So the French will reject the EU because insufficiently statist while the rest of Europe is rejecting it because too statist--why not just let France augur into the ground on its own? Posted by Orrin Judd at May 8, 2005 1:39 PM
oj, you missed the best part:
"It is obvious by now that the European Union has become the framework for the disappearance of centuries of belligerence, and that's a fact," Michael Naumann, publisher of the German weekly Die Zeit, said. "But it has become so totally accepted that we won't go at each other's throats any more that people get bored."
In other words, only cut-throat warfare can relieve Europeans of their ennui.
Posted by: pj at May 8, 2005 4:04 PMPJ - Someone once wrote that the primary cause of WWI was boredom. Similar could be said that it was just that that drove so many young Arab men to jihadism, to escape the ceaseless stagnation of their autocratic societies.
Arguably, one reason the latter might be on the wane is that the winds are blowing through Arabia, and it may be many things, but boring is not one of them.
Off that topic, the allusion to the Airbus A380 is interesting. Did anyone else get the feeling that that aircraft smacks of Soviet giganticism? ("Yes, we socialists have built the LARGEST... dam, canal, metalworks, rocket.... micro-computer" [heh]).
Giganticism was a disaster, of course, as basic economic reality was never a factor. I can't imagine that Airbus has ignored the market as much as the Soviets did, but it does remain to be seen if there really is a market for this behemoth, given current airport configurations, etc. And one tragic crash that kills 600 people could also kaibosh the whole thing, even if Airbus were not at fault.
Interesting similarity. Maybe that's just socialist "thinking big", if you will.
Posted by: at May 8, 2005 5:52 PMamerican "gigantism", in the form of the Hugemobile, also ocurred (documented in the National Lampoon).
Posted by: cjm at May 8, 2005 10:55 PMRemember the bicycle built for 20 (or whatever it was)?
Posted by: Dave W. at May 8, 2005 11:02 PM--"to be organized and strong so as to impose its humanism, its values." In other words, to have clear rules to guide its further movement ahead.--
Liar, Liar, fwench values. This damn Anglo/Gaul war has lasted 1000 year, anyone else bored?
The EU has been sold to Frenchmen and Germans as a means of getting others to subsidize their welfare states by compelling them to purchase their over-priced shoddy goods. To the extent it fails to do so, the French and Germans will reject it.
Gigantism is only a good thing at the dinner table. The French are that stupid to fail to understand that there is no market for the Airbus, any more than for the Spruce Goose.
Posted by: bart at May 9, 2005 2:34 PM