To talk of scepticism
about the European Union, that political and economic project, as being an
anti-European phenomenon is (often) a complete misunderstanding of that
position. Of course, there may be
a minority of Euro-sceptics
who genuinely loathe their European kin, but what really fires mainstream Euro-Scepticism
is opposition not only to loss of democracy, but more fundamentally opposition
to the standardisation of Europe.
That standardisation is the destruction of European culture in all its
various national manifestations.
T S Eliot, in a radio lecture
to a German audience in the Post-War years, stated:
“For the health of
the culture of Europe two conditions are required: that the culture of each country should be unique, and that
the different cultures should recognise their relationship, so that each should
be susceptible of influence from others.”
What is relevant here
in terms of the political project in Europe today is that it is based upon standardising
and making all Europeans the same.
If we believe in a European culture however, we must understand that it
is strengthened by the different local expressions of that heritage. If everything is forced from above by a
political and legal authority to be the same, there can no longer be the cross
fertilisation necessary to sustain European culture.
This blogger does
believe in European culture and that there is something unique and special that
Europe has to offer the world. It
is from the interaction between Christianity and the heritage of Greece and
Rome. These two societies, which
valued humanity, were fertile ground for this new Semitic faith from Galilee. Greek was the language of Scripture and
Rome the ecclesiastical centre of the new religion. Today we are all still shaped by that interaction between
these forces. All Europeans have
this in common, including Eastern Europe with its Christian Orthodox and
Byzantine heritage, which can trace its genesis to the same three roots.
However, that cultural
unity is achieved through the diversity of local sub-cultures, from the
Anglo-Saxon to the Italian. Our
strength lies in our difference and our culture is not the same as
politics. The trouble with the
European Union is that it is trying to replace European culture with European
politics.
The two forces are in
complete antithesis, because the predominant political ideology is
anti-cultural. The dominant
political outlook, to the exclusion of all others, is secularist, liberal and
materialist. To value Europe’s
cultural heritage is to destroy your career in the European Union. One only has to call to mind the
debacle of Rocco Buttiglione’s candidacy for the European Commission to
understand that the Commission is instinctively opposed to European
values. It was precisely because
Buttiglione as a Roman Catholic held to a moral and spiritual code that
sustained our culture since the Holy Roman Empire that his candidacy was
undermined.
So the European Union
is more about secularism and liberalism than sustaining European culture. It would rather see a Europe in which
the only value was the legitimacy of personal choice – a moral code described
by American Distributists as similar to that of “the psychopath”, in which one
choice is no more morally valid than another. This is in contrast with a European culture based upon real
values.
Furthermore by its
aggressive project of standardisation the strength of Europe’s different
cultures is being eroded. A key
example is weights and measures.
This may seem a mundane subject, but weights and measures are part of
everyday life, they become part of our unique colloquialisms and our
sayings. They reflect an outlook
on life and are therefore part of popular culture. Thus imperial measurements in England do not adhere to an
abstract theory of measurement, but rather commemorate specific events or
individuals – the foot for example, mythically being based upon the size of King
Edward’s foot. This uniqueness is
of course anathema to the anti-cultural European Union and so selling goods in
imperial measurements in England has become a criminal offence!
So the argument of
this blog is that the true European loves what makes Europeans different and what makes them the same. The English, with our common law, adversarial
politics and law, our foxhunting, pubs and yes selling our goods in pounds and
ounces, and of course with William Shakespeare and our poets. The French: with their painters, their strong
secular state, sustained rural way of life, their gentler form of capitalism, their
wine and cuisine. The Germans: with Goethe, with
their music, their philosophy, their consensual industrial relations and yes
their beer festivals. The
Italians: with Dante, their opera, strong family-values, their Catholicism. It is sad when these traditions
diminish and standardisation undermines tradition. Politics undermine culture.
In the same way, what
holds Europe together is inheriting the universal and cultural values of
Christendom, expressed differently throughout Europe, from the severe Calvinism
of some parts of the North to the sumptuous Catholicism of the South. Whatever the local manifestation, that
common culture holds us together and a political system so averse to that
inheritance also undermines what Europeans share.
The European political
class must realise that Europe’s spiritual and cultural survival does not
depend on political unification,
but local diversity. We saw in the
last century the danger of that impetus to unite politically when Germany
became a political unit and standardised, it went on to try and create a
standardised, political unit of the whole Continent and its archipelagos.
John Major, during his
more beleaguered years as Prime Minister, trying to gain acceptance of the
Maastricht Treaty emphasised the Catholic concept of subsidiarity - a principle
that was championed by that English Catholic and Distributist G K
Chesterton. The Roman Catholic
Church has learnt from history what a dangerous path it is to ignore local
conditions. It had to face the
Reformation as Northern Europe began to express its Christianity in its
simpler, more democratic way. The
European Union should learn from the Church and in that way Europe will become
stronger through its diversity of Protestantism, Catholicism, different
languages, customs and different national traits. The best way to achieve that European diversity is through
that tried and tested political institution – the nation state.
The nation state is
large enough to unite, without being too large to gain popular engagement and
acceptance. It is of the same size
as a nation of people by definition.
It is the nuclear family, with those special ties, as opposed to the
extended family of a whole Continent.
It holds together a people who have specific things the same in common:
language, race, history, religion.
Of course all European nations are part of something bigger, but they
are the local manifestation of that culture and because they are of the same
size as a people they command the political legitimacy a super state could
never command. Men will die for
their country and thereby save democracy from threat; they would not die for an
international bureaucracy. So Europe should not vest an international
bureaucracy with law-making powers and all the trappings of a nation state. No one will come to save it when it
falls under threat.
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