Saturday, December 10, 2011
Great Britain's Stand for Subsidiarity
I've noted before that many of the founders of the European Union were steeped in Catholic social thought (even borrowing the concept of subsidiarity from CST and making it into a constitutional norm in the EU), and the Vatican has long been an advocate of European integration. But the lack of an intelligible and enforceable principle of subsidiarity in the EU has resulted in ever-increasing bureaucratic centralization in Brussels and Strasbourg over the past several years, a trend that Britain has now called into question with Prime Minister David Cameron's veto of a proposed EU treaty. While Cameron probably hasn't discovered a newfound enthusiasm for Pius XI and was acting to protect British economic interests, Niall Ferguson argues here that Cameron made the right decision:
So it is not that British policy has dramatically changed. The real historical turn is the one now being taken by the 17 euro zone members and the six non-euro states that have chosen to follow them. For there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that what they have just agreed to do is to create a federal fiscal union. Moreover, it is a fundamentally flawed one. The only surprising thing is that so few other non-euro countries—Sweden, maybe the Czechs and Hungarians—have joined Britain in expressing reservations. I quite see why countries with the euro are prepared to give up their fiscal independence to avert a currency collapse. But what on earth is in this for the others?
....
“Eurozone Deal Leaves Britain Isolated” trumpets the Financial Times, for many years an ardent proponent of monetary union. But if David Cameron can succeed in isolating Britain from the disaster that is unfolding on the continent, he deserves only our praise. For once the old joke—“Fog in the Channel: Continent Cut Off”—seems applicable. There is now a Depression on the other side of the channel, and it is indeed the continent that is cutting itself off—from sane economic policies.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2011/12/great-britains-stand-for-subsidiarity.html
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Oh would that British politicians and propagandists were Christians, because they will believe anything.
Europe is in deep trouble, driven by rapidly falling populations and increasingly infiltrated by immigrants from the Arab world and from sub-Saharan Africa. The contortions of the political elite on the continent are condemning their people to serfdom to the bankers. There is hope however as long as they stick together.
There is no hope for a Britain cast adrift. The London bankers think their ties to New York will float them, but if they stopped to look around the country they would see that Britain is dying, even faster than most of the rest of Europe. There is a wonderful myth that captures brilliantly this story: the Cheshire Cat. The City of London has a wonderful row of gleaming teeth, which will continue to light their way into oblivion.
One thing rings the wakeup bell: if England leaves the EU, Scotland will not. Very possibly, Wales will not either. All that Scotland needs to do is to declare herself a republic, because the legal basis for the Union in U.K. is the Act of Union, according to which England and Scotland share a monarch. No monarch, no union.