WHAT DECLINING PEOPLE...:

Pity the Poor Eurocrats (Anne Applebaum, June 17, 2008, Washington Post)

[D]uring doomed referendum campaigns, the political class, whether Irish or Danish or French, is always unable to sell some complicated institutional reform to the general public, and it is never able to explain to the voters why they should care. And perhaps this should no longer surprise anyone. Maybe someday there will be a country called Europe, whose citizens feel as deeply about the institutions of Europe as they feel about their own national institutions, but there isn't yet. As a result, national referendums on European issues are easily hijacked by rumor, hearsay and single-issue campaigners, however insane or inane. More to the point, they will continue to be, at least for some time to come. So perhaps it would be better all around if Europe's leaders came to terms with this and moved on. As it turned out, there was nothing wrong with a Europe in which some countries adopted a common currency and others did not. The same is doubtless true of "European" foreign policy, which is always at its most successful when several powerful nation-states -- some combination of Germany, France or Britain, and two or three others -- get together, make a decision and stick to it. By contrast "European" foreign policy is often at its weakest when it is carried out by functionaries who owe no allegiance to any particular electorate.

So pay no attention to the wailing in Brussels: If the most enthusiastic Europeans in Europe didn't care enough to read the treaty they've just rejected, then maybe it's just as well it didn't pass.

...has ever become less nationalist?

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Posted by Orrin Judd at June 17, 2008 8:23 AM