Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Forgetting It's Christian Roots Is Why the European Union Has Gone Off the Rails

I have discovered this English section of a Italian paper that I intend to add to the links. I saw this article that is quite interesting. From Schuman, Adenauer and De Gasperi to the Betrayal of its Christian Roots

It is quite interesting how this seems similar to related topics we are discussing in the USA.

I was never a big "European Union" fan and I could never understand why Republican and Democrat administrations alike seemed so gung ho on it. I found what happened sadly predictable. In other words the EU did not follow the intent for the "founding fathers"

He says in part

........The European Union has very little to do with the people; it is dominated by economists, planners, bureaucrats and technocrats. Created to bury authoritarian regimes, it is almost entirely lacking in democracy, and its policies are made between governments, regardless of the will of the people.

In other words, this is a Europe which not only forgets its historical foundations in writing its Constitutional Treaty, but often exalts and promotes behavior which is at odds with the European tradition. It is not enough to dictate the size of beans; the measure of condoms; the noise of a flushing toilet; the fourfold classification of peppers and eggplants, peas and asparagus; the arithmetic formula to differentiate tomatoes from tomatoes: it addresses issues that belong to freedom and privacy of the person, with amoral proposals from technocrats from the supposedly more "advanced" countries, which are not infrequently the most degraded.

Too often the actions of politicians, economists and technocrats are a continuous invasion into areas that, according to the principle of subsidiarity, should belong to the Member States, not the Council of Europe, in a delirium of omnipotence that takes little account of national traditions and the sovereignty of states. This is especially so when those decisions enter the personal and intimate sphere of the person and when they do not hesitate to reject European traditions associated with the law of nature. Also in this the legacy of the three founding fathers has been betrayed. Think of the resolutions in favor of homosexual marriages; for the liberal use of embryos; and promoting abortion, cloning and euthanasia..........
.

Well this seems like the United States. Europe is the canary in the coal mine. Not only are we rejecting our Christian tradition and natural law but we have an ever expanding Federal Govt.

I have always found it quite odd that the main Advocates of Catholic Social Justice seem to forget the principles of subsidiarity. The Federal Govt is spending like mad and for programs that many Catholic Social Justice Groups support. However what is not on their radar is the deficit and National debt. This becomes truly frightening when you realize that we have to deal with the pending Social Security funding crisis. All this borrowing is far beyond the relative small structural deficits of the Bush years. What does this have to do with Subsidiarity? Well at some point the United States has to pay off all these bonds we are selling to the Chinese and such. Bonds that are going to demand a higher rate of interest as we go forward.

This means more taxes on the Federal level. Who gets squeezed. Well the States and local Government. At some point people cannot be taxed anymore which means local and States Governments are going to have cut back on services. Subsidiarity in other words gets the shaft.

You heard grumblings of this at the recent Governors conference.

The Pope made some waves of course with recent misquoted comments on the need for more global governance. Now linked to that (and not reported on) is the whole subsidiarity angle.

The objection I think people have is that they are wary of such Government models until we get this whole subsidiarity thing down. That is there needs to be a political and social mindset of that before we have more EUs.

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