Ramesh Ponnuru praises me for changing my mind about the EU since a review I wrote for the New Republic back in 1996. I’m not sure I’ve changed my mind that much, although watching an independent Britain support the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq certainly made me appreciate better how the U.K. can still effectively exercize its sovereignty. Back in 1996, I saw nothing in principle against a common currency, but in practice it’s clear to me now that it would be a mistake for Britain, given how the euro has evolved in the past few years. What I was trying to do in the review was to distinguish between those aspects of the EU that truly do violate sovereignty in profound ways and those aspects that are, properly speaking, liberal and unobjectionable, like free trade or an independent European court. Here’s the money graf:
Institutions which can directly regulate, legislate and tax citizens of member countries should be resisted. Powers to determine the ends of national policies should be blocked or opposed. There should be no strengthening of the European parliament, the European commission, or a weakening of any nation-state’s veto power over communal decisions.
For those reasons, I still find the proposed U.S.E. Constitution abhorrent. But I tried to posit a way in which Britain could improve the structure of the EU, without withdrawing from it:
At the same time, however, those measures that merely determine the means by which Europeans interact–rules of trade, the rights of the citizen against the state or, indeed, the currency in which individuals trade- -are a different matter. They create an atmosphere of cooperation. They determine the rules of play, but they do not determine who wins the game. They are the mechanisms of procedure, not results.
I still believe Britain should stay in the EU as it is, help reform it in more classically liberal directions and refuse to be coopted into a more ambitious anti-American project.
AN APOLOGY: I linked to a photograph yesterday of Palestinians retrieving body parts from a bombed car. I thought it was horrifying because I thought that the body parts were of murdered Jews. They weren’t. I should have read the caption that the AP ran with it (it wasn’t on the site I linked to) and double-checked the context. I deeply regret the posting, and apologize for the link. I deleted the item.
The Dish 