Adieu to the Evil EU

by Ilana Mercer
European voters have given pause to the collectivist EU superstate's illiberal American supporters, the most notorious of whom are concentrated in the Bush State Department and National Security Council.

The EU endeavors to herd Europeans by stealth into a supranational European State and… block off all the exits. This is what the rejectionists, including the cheese-eating surrender monkeys, have defeated… for now.

The sovereignty of European non-members is already constrained by the EU's burgeoning jurisdiction. But if ever its constitution goes into effect, the EU will assume unlimited powers – its laws usurping all laws enacted by national parliaments – and will concentrate these in a few unelected, grubby hands. (The Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Constitution, which will subsume the Charter, have been drafted without the consent of the people they will irrevocably bind.)

The "harmonization of judicial practices," warns Bill Jamieson, will see the introduction of an "EU-wide arrest warrant … which will allow extradition from one country to the other for offenses such as 'xenophobia.'" Habeas corpus is also on the new constitution's chopping block. The aim is to allow arrests without charges or due process (ring a bell?). All in all, new Charter-minted economic, social, and cultural "rights" will expand the superstate's policing and prosecutorial powers.

What unites the "No" camp, from socialists to right-wingers, is the recognition that the EU would hasten a loss of sovereignty and national identity. Their passions may well be shared by "Yes" voters: nations that ratified the EU were denied a referendum – their "representatives" in parliament sold them into statism without giving them a say.

All in all, Europeans seem to grasp what Americans refuse to. Liberty is associated with a dispersion of political power, never its concentration and centralization....