Quote:
Originally Posted by ToffeeGuy
Benefits:
1) Peace in Europe for the best part of 70 years.
2) Free movement of people which allows anyone in the EU to live/work in any other EU country.
3) Both of the above and free trade which, generally, have led to rise in living standards and a more prosperous Europe in the past 70 years and have meant that people are able to move to the Dordogne etc.
As for nullifying individualism and national identity. The UK is a good example of why this wouldn't happen. We are a United Kingdom but England, Wales, Scotland & N.Ireland (and regions there in) all have unique identities but have the same currency, no barriers to trade, free movement, parliamentary democracy, monarch, army etc, etc etc. Same with the USA.
Plus Westminster feels as distant as Brussels to me. For all the good a Westminster government has done for the North West and Lancashire we might as well be governed by Brussels.
The world has changed over the past 100 years. Due to immigration and emigration personal identity isn't about where you live but who you are.
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Peace in Europe? Well let's forget about the Cold War and what it cost European countries ... and that spat in the Balkans ... and what's happening in the streets of major European cities ... Peace broke out inevitably, aided by MAD and the Germans finally getting it throught their thick, square heads that maybe a big juicy war with lots of fancy uniforms wasn't the way to go. Peace was earned by an independent Britain sticking it out alone when the rest of the world, even the U.S. had just about given up on ever being able to beat the Nazis. The turning point of the war, I would argue, was the Battle of Britain ... not Stalingrad, not Midway, not Operation Bagration, not D-Day. Hitler, in order to win, had to beat the British in 1940. After the war, after Trinity, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, Europe just about had to be peaceful ... the peace of exhaustion after two world wars. A peace of two super powers, aided and abetted by some European minnow states.
And what is so good about the free movement of people running around Europe looking for work? Is this any better than a Britain with a strong manufacturing base, and well-paid jobs for British working men, in Britain? (Sorry about the political incorrectness ladies ... but, I'm old and old fashioned)
And free trade. Gimme a break
The only beneficiaries of this are the major transnational corporations. In the US ... and we have to admit that they are a major world economy
... protectionism has become the name of the game. And another booming (although slowing) economy is China's. Protectionism all the way. And the rise in living standards ... mere temporary illusion ... tell it to the Greeks. Tell it to the almost 50% of young unemployed Spaniards. Look at Britain. A few great boom years, and then into a recession that won't be going away any time soon.
In short
, I don't agree with you.