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The US did not magic itself into existence as a united state. It began in common purpose with a shared, very strong, external enemy. It then assigned itself a

The US did not magic itself into existence as a united state. It began in common purpose with a shared, very strong, external enemy. It then assigned itself a shared dream of settling the content. And, crucially, it already had a shared cultural identity, shared language, and shared religion when it began. The EU does not have a common enemy to force it together. It does not have a shared language, or culture, or identity. Its dream, while noble, does not speak to ordinary people. And it is pretty damned incompetent at what duties it has assigned itself. The prospect of a United States of Europe was extremely remote even before today. It's dead, now.

antirez 10y ago
I don't agree with that, the EU has a very strong cultural union that was created by the enunciation of the French Revolution principles. It's not by accident that, for example, there is no state in EU with death penalty. This makes states within the EU very similar at certain levels, otherwise a claim could be made that the cultural delta is the same between two different EU states and between an EU state and US, but this is not true, if you check a bit the fundamental values you'll see that EU nations have a lot in common.
- dharma1 10y ago
  Language, national identity. The US and EU are not the same
  - hacksonx 10y ago
    I could be wrong but even the French are still a monarchy. In fact the only case of a dissolved monarchy I've read of lately is the Spanish monarchy.
    - DonaldFisk 10y ago
      Ahem. France is a republic, and Spain is a constitutional monarchy.
    - vinceguidry 10y ago
      When Napoleon took the reins of government, he decided to call himself an emperor rather than a king. Emperor is a temporal title, it's not intended to be passed down to heirs the same way a throne is. French emperors rule at the will of the people, and it's up to them to decide whether they want a monarch or not. Napoleon III, the last French monarch, was captured during the Franco-Prussian war, and after his death, the French decided they'd had enough of monarchs and the third French republic lasted until WWII. It was replaced by the Germans with Vichy, and then after the war, the fourth and fifth republics. It's highly unlikely that the French will ever accept another monarch. There are Bonapartist and a Orléanist (Bourbon) pretenders to the throne, but none hold any public office. If the government falls apart again like it did in 1958, it should be replaced with another republic as it was then. Nobody can really rule out a third French empire, but the trend of democracy worldwide has been towards devolution of power rather than centralization, France is more likely to break apart than it is to re-imperialize.
- sievebrain 10y ago
  There are of course lots of principles that European citizens all share. But there are also some principles that they don't. France, for example, is significantly more socialist than the UK. Unfortunately the EU sees differences as a disease which must be wiped out with always the same prescription: more EU. Literally so. They talk of voting as a "contagion".
  - teh 10y ago
    I'd like to see some evidence for your statement. Subsidiarity is a general principle taken into account for all EU decisions. It's the opposite of "seeing difference as a disease" IMO.
    - sievebrain 10y ago
      Just look at how they talk. Voting is a contagion that might "spread" to other countries, as if it was the bubonic plague. The EU has constantly increased its power. The goal of the people who actually run it is federalism. They hate the idea of countries picking and choosing integration from a menu, they are literally dead-set against the idea. And why would you insist on a deal being all or nothing, bad with the good? Because you know that's the only way to get the bad ideas through. Same reason Congress attaches riders to bills they know will be strongly supported, when those same riders got rejected earlier.
      - teh 10y ago
        As an immigrant living in London the "bad" ideas are in the eye of the beholder surely? Can you enumerate a few ideas that are bad? Also, to me an institution keeping the peace also trying to contain the "contagion" of instability makes perfect sense. It's what I want and I contacted all my representatives to that end.
        sievebrain 10y ago
        Of course they are in the eye of the beholder. A few that I personally think are bad: - Recent VAT reforms - Cookie law - Treating low taxes as "state aid" (EU Commission will be setting tax rates across the EU soon, just wait) - Having a Parliament that can't make its own laws But if you asked others you might get an answer like "the euro". The EU has no relevance to peace or war. The USA is a much more strongly federalised union than the EU and had a brutal civil war. Most wars today are civil wars. There is absolutely nothing that'd stop the EU having a civil war even if it was incredibly federalised and had become practically a single country, like the USA. What has kept the peace in Europe was avoiding a repeat of the Treaty of Versaille, nuclear weapons, NATO, and the fact that European countries are now all mature democracies (the latter is imo the most important).
- reitanqild 10y ago
  Careful with the French Revolution. I'm sure you know but I was an adult before I understood how insanely brutal that thing was, not only towards former monarchy and nobility but also, or possibly even especially, towards common people.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - return0 10y ago
    The revolution set the stage for the modern world though, a world separated in sovereign states (instead of kingdoms) the three branches government etc. etc. For countries that are hanging on the edges of europe, which weren't strongly ethnically homogeneous, like my country, Greece, that style of government was vital for the definition of the nation. That said, let's not derail the conversation with irrelevant historical anecdotes that are out of time anyway.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - ern 10y ago
      The revolution set the stage for the modern world though, a world separated in sovereign states (instead of kingdoms) the three branches government etc I'm fairly certain that the US was already independent and had adopted the current Constitution by the time the French Revolution happened.
      - id 10y ago
        The US is not the world though.
        gcatalfamo 10y ago
        Thank you. US people just don't get it.
        10y ago
- redthrowaway 10y ago
  What culture do Germans, Greeks, Latvians, Bulgarians, Fins, and Spaniards share? It takes more than vastly differing attachments to a vague sense of liberalism and a desire to not blow the continent to high hell again.
  - dalore 10y ago
    Latin
    - esquivalience 10y ago
      Greek =/= Latin!
      - seabass 10y ago
        !==
        noobermin 10y ago
        /= (well, js is popular on HN, but Haskell nerds have been making rounds...)
    - seesomesense 10y ago
      Finnish is one of the few European languages with no connection to Latin
      - Spearchucker 10y ago
        One of two, I believe. The other being Hungarian.
        fulafel 10y ago
        Celtic languages, Estonian is another Fenno-Ugric one, Sami, there are lots.
- Shivetya 10y ago
  I would think two World Wars fought over the continent would be more incentive to make it work. Considering how long ago the French Revolution took place it does seem no one there learned much until so many were killed it appalled all involved. One major advantage the US has is a single main language. That is something that will in time possibly occur within the EU but language is a barrier that cannot be over estimated
- jules 10y ago
  The UK does not have that shared French Revolution tradition at all, and neither do a large number of European countries that are still monarchies. Instead of a violent French Revolution, the UK had a nonviolent change of power from royalty to the people. Instead of a civil war over slavery, the UK had a peaceful transition where the state bought the slaves from the slave owners. This referendum fits in a great tradition of nonviolent change.
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    Just to expand on this, because it isn't often mentioned in contrast to how awful colonial England was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833 The UK abolished slavery, and even fought commonwealth territories that resisted. Maybe if parts of the US had still been in the commonwealth, slavery would have ended sooner there too.
    - hartpuff 10y ago
      It's even less mentioned that the French abolished slavery about 40 years before that.
  - douche 10y ago
    Not that England/Britain didn't have their own bloody, violent civil wars along the way to get there. The English were ahead of the curve by just over a hundred years, as far as executing their king and instituting a military dictatorship goes.
  - stangeek 10y ago
    Let's be honest, it is actually the brutality of the French revolution which forced the British royalty to hand over power to the people. And before doing these "peaceful" transitions, all neighbouring countries tried to smother the French with war in order to preserve the priviledges of the remaining monarchies.
    - golergka 10y ago
- wtbob 10y ago
  > I don't agree with that, the EU has a very strong cultural union that was created by the enunciation of the French Revolution principles. It's not by accident that, for example, there is no state in EU with death penalty. The conjunction of those two sentences is a bit hilarious, considering the wanton abuse of the death penalty during the Reign of Terror. And I think that the lack of capital punishment is an indicator of one of the EU's problems: it's stunningly undemocratic. Polls (until recently?) have shown for decades strong popular support for capital punishment, and yet countries have been forced by the EU to ban it.
  - yardie 10y ago
    I am unaware of anyone in any of the EU countries who support the death penalty nor capital punishment. It is overwhelmingly frowned upon. Now I admit I haven't asked everyone in every EU country. And I'm sure there are those in Central/Eastern Europe who still support it (I know life was especially brutal under the communist regimes). Polls (until recently?) Which polls? I'm honestly curious.
    - hartpuff 10y ago
      > I am unaware of anyone in any of the EU countries who support the death penalty nor capital punishment. It is overwhelmingly frowned upon. No it isn't. (And I post as someone who is against it, BTW.) In every right-wing party in the EU (and the world) there are almost certain to be elected representatives who support the death penalty. > Polls (until recently?) Which polls? I'm honestly curious. Obviously not curious enough to make a simple Google search. Here's a BBC item from last year showing support for the death penalty in the UK dropping below 50% for the first time: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-32061822 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-32061822 > And I'm sure there are those in Central/Eastern Europe who still support it (I know life was especially brutal under the communist regimes). I fail to see what regimes that disappeared a quarter of a century ago have to do with anything.
    - ptaipale 10y ago
      Well, I'm in an EU country, and I support the death penalty for the most severe crimes; as execution method I only propose that the condemned shall be kept in prison until he or she dies. A lethal injection or bullet in the neck is too easy. (However, this is forbidden by EU.)
- ThomPete 10y ago
  It's not enough to have things in common. The point the previous post make is that it requires a common enemy to forge unification as strong as the US and even here there are talks about some states wanting to go independent from time to time. Without this external factor it's hard to find something to really feel the same about.
  - geon 10y ago
    Is that why the US seems so hell-bent at creating new enemies for themselves? Would one of the states exiting the US be thinkable, were it not for the unity in waging wars against external (and some internal) enemies?
    - p_eter_p 10y ago
      Yes. I believe Texas Republicans call for independence with some frequency.
      - emp_zealoth 10y ago
        Let them go and watch the hellfire of their economic explosion i say.
    - ThomPete 10y ago
      http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-usa-secession-idUSKCN0ZA3F4 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-usa-secession-i... And yes. Leo Strauss was of that opinion and you will find a whole suite of argument that talk about how the middle east became the new enemy out of need rather than actual threat. This was part of the PNAC (Project for New American Century) which identified the need for a new enemy after the fall of the wall. Now whether they were actually successful is another discussion but it was part of the Bush administrations fundamental belief as several of it's key members where students under Strauss. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Strauss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Strauss
- unsigner 10y ago
  Adjacent EU nations do have a lot in common, but the differences add up across the continent.
  - cLeEOGPw 10y ago
    It's all relative. I live in Eastern Europe part of EU and I can tell that either it's London, or Stockholm or Vilnius, they all look and feel very alike. Biggest difference is amount of non-white people in western cities.
- eternalban 10y ago
  French Revolution or Emperor Napoleon & the Napoleonic Code? Italy was hugely influenced by the latter, as I am sure you know.
- irrational 10y ago
  Wait, hold on. Are saying that the EU doesn't like the death penalty because of French Revolution principles?! This is the same French Revolution that famously involved the guillotine, no?
  - mioelnir 10y ago
    No, we all agree that, both historically and presently, our political leaders are incompetent and not to be trusted with such a sharp blade. They get children's scissors and should be happy about it.
- 392c91e8165b 10y ago
  I'm skeptical that Europe will ever be as united by culture as the US is as long as Europe is divided into different language communities. (Although there are millions of Americans who do not speak English, only the tiniest fraction of those have any influence on American culture.)
- ptaipale 10y ago
  > EU has a very strong cultural union that was created by the enunciation of the French Revolution principles. It's not by accident that, for example, there is no state in EU with death penalty. This is a somewhat funny thing to say, considering how many people were given the death penalty in the French revolution and its aftermath. Executions for "crimes against liberty" and whatever are estimated to have been between 16,000 and 40,000. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine
pavlov 10y ago
The U.S. Congress is also pretty damned incompetent at its duties. In many ways the EU institutions are functioning better than their American counterparts. Sometimes it's better to have 20 different opinions to reconcile, rather than two polarised factions that can't concede on anything.
- sievebrain 10y ago
  Yes, but too many of the EU leaders and elites want to create a United States of Europe, with the Commission/Parliament hybrid as an even more dysfunctional equivalent of Congress (imagine how productive Congress would be if everyone had to speak through an interpreter). It's actually worse than that though. The EU Parliament doesn't really deserve the name. It can't actually initiate legisliation, so it's meaningless for EUP parties to have any actual policies, so they don't, so there's no formal opposition either, so nobody cares about them and ... therefore ... (phew) turnout in European elections is extremely low. Most people can't even name their MEP, and why should they be able to? That MEP has no power to speak of.
  - ricksplat 10y ago
    The elites are one thing, and actual European people are another. Of course the elites have a disproportionate amount of control but that's true of any institution but it doesn't invalidate the institution. European people by and large enjoy a better quality of life because of free trade, movement and most importantly peace. That there's one set of scoundrels at the top vs another isn't as important as is made out. At the end of the day all that will happen in the UK now is a new set of elites take control (the old rule Britannia brigade that were previously on the wane) and there won't be the buffer of a larger enveloping organisation to help smooth over the bumps. Britain has been declining recently because that's what happens to spent colonial powers, not because they were in the EU.
    - sievebrain 10y ago
      Of course people benefit. And if the EU had never existed, many of those same benefits would have been created via a patchwork of treaties and deals anyway. The EU is not a choice between integration and chaos, despite what Brussels wants people to believe. European economies were integrating before the EU anyway.
digi_owl 10y ago
And even then USA had a civil war...
agumonkey 10y ago
I'd extend the question. Can peace subsist long without a war ...
- rodgerd 10y ago
  The EU has done a pretty good job. You'd have a hard time finding a 70 year period before the EU where none of the founder members were at war with one another.
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    It did work for a very long time but even then after a while things go south.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      As a person who currently resides in Europe and expects to continue living on this planet for another 60 or so years, I ask, I plead - could people please consider trying to make things not go south? Petty political and economical differences are not worth another war.
      - agumonkey 10y ago
        Just in case people thought I was rooting for mess over peace. I'm just trying to find why things aren't stable so we can try to keep them stable longer. Why do most societies resolve internal stress by communautarism, law of ancestry, blind and stupid racism. Why not by gathering and looking at what's wrong then fix it with wisdom.
        TeMPOraL 10y ago
        I wasn't thinking you're rooting for war - but I had that on my chest and had to say it. I see people sometimes saying things like "oh well, every civilization has to end at some point", or noting that Europe is long overdue for another war. It's as if people didn't realize the war isn't some abstract shifting of borders, it's mostly innocent people dying terrible deaths from bullets, hunger and disease. While it is a true historical fact, it's something we should focus on figuring out and, as you said, "fixing it with wisdom". Maybe I'm too sensitive on this topic, but ever since the Crimea debacle I've become much more worried about instabilities in Europe. I have only ~300km to the Ukrainian border. There are nights when I hear some weird aerial noises and I wonder if that's a missile, and if this is the day when my city turns into a CoD: MW map.
mfourcade 10y ago
Was the US an european colony? With people speaking French, English, Spanish and Portuguese? I guess it was a mix and match of many human being that decided to be free : no more, no less. Freedom was the driver, not the enemy. Also maybe you should consider the actual state of US : What's the percentage of english/spanish people speaking? What about Catholics/Jews/Muslim? Should we expect an USbreak ? Saying that, I do not believe that we need a common enemy to be united. There is better values and challenges for all of us : environment, peace, love. Europe will stand strong, refine its vision to the current context. After a few years, UK we be back and we will all make love peacefully in a better environment. Long live to Europe.
- tankenmate 10y ago
  Actually German came very close to being an official language of the USA at one point.
  - DonaldFisk 10y ago
    http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/german.asp http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/german.asp
_ph_ 10y ago
One thing which excited me about the EU was, that the peoples of Europe unified without a war or an enemy at hand. That would be an incredibly good sign for humanity and give hope to some future, where the globe isn't split into entirely separate nations.
- kaybe 10y ago
  The experiences of the second world war definitely played a role as something that should be avoided at all costs and put up infrastructure and friendship against, so it wasn't really without a war.
- JakeColtman 10y ago
  I agree that would be a good sign but it's hard to support the claim there was no enemy at hand with a heavily militarized USSR almost next door
  - ommunist 10y ago
    This is exactly why Germany secretly supplies Russia with top notch military tech today. If there is no enemy, you should create one.
    - cmarschner 10y ago
      Source?
      - ommunist 10y ago
        http://jbpress.ismedia.jp/articles/-/44305 http://jbpress.ismedia.jp/articles/-/44305. Despite official sanctions Germany and the US (!) continue to supply Russia. Just like the US sold to both Russia and Germany before WW2. Here about 30% of export increase from Germany to Russia at Deutche Welle - http://www.dw.com/ru/экспорт-из-германии-в-россию-вырос-на-30-процентов/a-2790002 http://www.dw.com/ru/экспорт-из-германии-в-россию-вырос-на-3.... I bet they did not exported beer. Its Siemens, Rheinmetall and alike. Also look in Gardner Research. The World Machine-Tool Output & Consumption Survey
return0 10y ago
You make it sound as if we are living the dawn of Nation-states. We live in a globalized world. Nations are now trading areas. EU is well positioned as one, (if it ever manages to become productive). No nation is an island in this world (including britain). UK will now have to re-pick its allies, and pick them carefully. I can see the pieces of commonwealth that are left in europe denouncing their british past (Gibraltar is a start).
- ricksplat 10y ago
  Gibraltar, Scotland, Northern Ireland (what will become of the peace process?). Effectively the UK is left with Wales. Is it even a 'K' any more? Would that take the 'G' out of GB?
  - return0 10y ago
    More like Cyprus and Malta. I figure the UK is not ready to split yet, no?
    - ricksplat 10y ago
      Just a couple of years ago Scotland were all set. Then some EPP crony said something about not being in the EU any more and swung the vote. As for NI - for the sake of peace that would be a more drawn out process.
    - etatoby 10y ago
      I expect Scotland to split and join the EU shortly. Just look at the map in the linked article.
      - sievebrain 10y ago
        Perhaps. If they did, so be it. But the arguments at the time of the referendum didn't get stronger. The EU would require Scotland to join the Euro, join Schengen (means a border wall), and the primary argument for an independent Scotland was "we'll take all the oil money for ourselves". But now oil is cheap thanks to US fracking and the North Sea oil industry is going bust. I think the future probably has more devolution in it. Which is fine.
tatoalo 10y ago
Unfortunately this will also be reflected on other countries, give it a few months and we'll be dealing with the same kind of shit in Italy, France etc... The saddest part is that older people(fact) practically decided for the future of the younger ones.
- visarga 10y ago
  Everyone gets a vote. But old people have more experience and more are more invested. Maybe they remember something we don't know.
  - saiya-jin 10y ago
    i used to think the same when younger... not anymore. old have experience, true. Most of it is coming from different era, different world than current one. Apart from basic moral principles, for which you don't need age to conform to, their experiences didn't transfer well. Most of old are more or less completely lost in current fast-pacing world. they cling desperately to anything/anybody that still speaks to them and makes sense to them, no matter the content. I can see it clearly all around, including my family. my parents, and I love them with all my heart, have simplistic views on politics (although both have university degree). easily to be persuaded, missing bigger picture and view beyond couple of months/years. my grandparents, they are completely lost in this world. they mostly look only what would affect their pension payouts and medical care fees. it doesn't matter if a proper gangster would be handling small financial favors to them, they would go that way. older people are more invested? nope - we young will live much more of our lives in system that is coming compared to them. We have much more motivation to live in system that is stable and working well in long run (>20 years). it's fair to have same voting rights, but how much do we expect from usual > 70 years old in terms of clever voting decisions? Zero, and politicians know this, hence campaigns are quite emotional to work with them.
    - sievebrain 10y ago
      I can guarantee that a lot of "old" people think young voters are idiots who have no clue and are easily manipulated through their emotions.
dcposch 10y ago
The point stands though. US of E would be a beautiful thing. > Its dream, while noble, does not speak to ordinary people. Maybe not ordinary old guya. Many young people have a cosmopolitan attitude. They see themselves as Europeans first, and they like the freedom to live and work anywhere, not just within some postage stamp sized area like Slovenia. I disagree that the dream is "dead"---in fact, Brexit might make it easier to integrate, since the biggest integration opponent is now gone
- majewsky 10y ago
  There is always a new biggest integration opponent. I don't know who it would be right now, but I could easily imagine France if Marine Le Pen becomes their next president.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Evaporative cooling. As long as the new biggest integration opponent is less opposing to integration than UK was, it will still be beneficial to integration efforts.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    I propose NL under Geert Wilders. It will be a total disaster but it could actually happen.
    - sievebrain 10y ago
      Germany has benefited from being able to be a swing voter in the council votes due to QMV. With the UK gone it will now have to nail its colours to the mast if it wishes to resist significantly more redistributive and socialist policies supported by the southern countries, instead of acting as a decider knowing what the UK will do. This could change the politics in Germany in unpredictable ways.
      - emp_zealoth 10y ago
        Money transfers are necessary for eurozone to stop blowing up in people's faces, sadly
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cabalamat 10y ago
> The EU does not have a common enemy to force it together. Yes it does, Russia.
- smarinov 10y ago
  Russia is not an enemy of the EU, although the NATO countries in Europe and Asia (Turkey) often treat it as such. EDIT: Maybe some minority circles in the Russian Federation want to make it an enemy of the EU or the rest of Europe, but most people, rich and poor, don't want to. The former because of trade opportunities and the latter because of shared cultural heritage.
  - kofejnik 10y ago
    Russia is a schoolyard bully and should be treated as such
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      A less sophisticated schoolyard bully than the US, but otherwise pretty much the same. It would actually make sense for Europe to make friends with Russia; they're, after all, kind of closer (geographically and culturally), and on the same slab of land.
      - jacquesm 10y ago
        No, that would not make sense at all. Russia is run by an entirely different play-book than the rest of the EU.
      - kofejnik 10y ago
        not the same at all, US hasn't annexed territories from its neighbours for 150 years now
        TeMPOraL 10y ago
        No, but they bombed the shit out of several countries in the last 15 years. Also, both US and Russia do more bullying on the economic level anyway.
elif 10y ago
Actually, the US did kind of magic itself into existence due to a domestic labor and civil rights dispute. The states were primarily independent after the declaration of independence. It was not until Shay's Rebellion 10 years later that spooked the aristocrats into drawing our current constitution. And to bypass your essentialized romantic patriotic history for a moment while utilizing your "common enemy" rhetoric, the EU has many common enemies and innumerable common and unique struggles. Consider immigration, the struggle for democracy, ecological responsibility, social justice, annexation by Russia. All issues individually more compelling than the rich coalescing their power to maintain control of the poor in a relatively isolated country with the population of Houston. The EU has so many good reasons to exist.
- fattire 10y ago
  Yeah the original post above is pretty starry-eyed and ignorant of American history. Forget the Shay Rebellion, we also had a civil war to sort out the "shared vision" thing. Lots wrong with such a silly analysis, so dunno why it spawned so much discussion.
HackinOut 10y ago
I can't believe Nigel Farage and a lot of pro Brexit campaigners have been calling it UK's "Independence day". Apart from being a very bad (purposeful?) analogy, it's seems to me pretty disrespectful to their own and to US history. I'm not from USA (or UK) but would love to hear how US and UK people feel about it?
- dmeagor 10y ago
  Many countries have am independence day, not just America. Granted most are celebrating independence from us brits through.
- GantzGraf 10y ago
  "Independence day" is not exclusive to the US.
  - deadowl 10y ago
    The film with the aliens and Jeff Goldblum made that particularly clear.
- Clubber 10y ago
  >I'm not from USA (or UK) but would love to hear how US and UK people feel about it? I think it sounds like populist grandstanding. We've been hearing that sort of thing for a year now. We (the US) seem to have a lot of people buying into it though. We get to see first hand how stepping back from globalization looks like before we vote for it ourselves come November.
lgieron 10y ago
> And, crucially, it already had a shared cultural identity, shared language Isn't the US a conglomerate of former English, French and Spanish colonies?
- rhino369 10y ago
  The US took over former land claimed by France and Spain. Very few Spanish and French actually lived there. It was mostly territory claimed by Spain and France, but almost totally unsettled. The land was populated with Indians, but they had already seen their populations ravaged by European disease. Somewhere like Illinois is littered with places named in French or Algonquin, but there is zero culture leftover. Parts of Lousinana are all that's left from France.
dnautics 10y ago
You forgot the part where the US tried one form of government and then ditched it for a different one 10 years later.
galfarragem 10y ago
>> The EU does not have a common enemy to force it together. It does not have a shared language, or culture, or identity. Its dream, while noble, does not speak to ordinary people. And it is pretty damned incompetent at what duties it has assigned itself. I believe mentalities are changing slowly. My generation (generation "Erasmus") is the first that identifies itself more as an European citizen than a national citizen [1] but our parent's generation doesn't feel the same yet. By the other hand I think the main reason for Brexit is economics and not identity: UK thinks that they are not having a positive ROI by staying in the EU. Puting it roughly: Germany "exchanges" money for leadership. Peripheral countries "exchange" leadership for money. And UK? The "exchange rate" doesn't seem favourable.. [1] http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/young-voters-wanted-brexit-least-8271517 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/young-voters-wanted-bre...
uncletaco 10y ago
Huh, I'd argue that the united states as we know it today is wholly a product of the civil war. Before that Virginians felt loyal to Virginia, New Yorkers felt loyal to New Yorkers, and frankly the United States right before the civil war was not all that different from the EU today. They spoke Spanish in California, the western territories, and Florida; French along the Mississippi river, etc. I think this view of the US having a shared cultural identity at any point before the 20th century is very far-fetched.
- kls 10y ago
  Agreed we tend to reason from the perspective that we are in and see all things thru that lens, but antebellum America was a very different place from where we are at today. At the onset of the war and even before with the nullification crisis even antebellum America was very different than early post revolution America. Federalization, centralization and bureaucracy are the natural order of empires and America has been on a slow roll towards them since at least the early 1800's and the barons. Honestly probably since it's inception, Hamilton was a devout federalist and Modern America would be a realization of his dream. I think Jefferson and Franklin would be horrified to say the least. With all that said, it always seemed to me that the EU wanted to be America 2.0 and modeled the empire and not the early confederation that got us here. America used to look like a coalition of distinct states where basic rights (albeit for only some at times), where guaranteed so that a citizen has a host of options to find a representative government. More and more the states look like cookie cutter copies of each other and more and more legislation gets pushed to the federal level because there is little distinction between them. This makes for an efficient business environment but it comes at the cost of a representative government for the people. From the outside it seemed to me that the EU tried to fast track this homogenization in the interest of being a competitive business environment. In my view the EU took it one step further and fully embraced unrepresentative bureaucracies and set up, for the better part, a technocracy. The people of Britain felt that they had no reach into these un-elected representatives and therefore made the choice to exit as it was the only ripcord they had.
- JPKab 10y ago
  "They spoke Spanish in California, the western territories, and Florida; French along the Mississippi river, etc." This is a completely inaccurate and hamfisted statement. By the time of the Civil War, California was already predominantly Anglo. The only Spanish speaking parts at that point were the southern part of the state, which was sparsely populated compared to the Bay Area. Florida was already filled with Anglo settlers as well. Spain had a number of horrifically protectionist policies that doomed their outlying North American colonies to poverty and depopulation, making them extremely vulnerable to infiltration by settlers from the US, who ironically, were illegal immigrants.
mcv 10y ago
> The prospect of a United States of Europe was extremely remote even before today. It's dead, now. Not necessarily. There's no reason why the UK would have to be a vital part of that union. Quite the contrary, in fact: the UK has always been the biggest opponent of such a closer union. Without the UK, it's possible that the EU might actually be able to move ahead in that direction again.
- PopsiclePete 10y ago
  The EU, to me, is basically the Fourth Reich. Germany failed to rule the continent militarily, so they did it instead economically. The Euro is backed mostly by the strength of the Deutschmark, the ECB is in Frankfurt. They are dominant on the continent politically and economically. If the other 20-something nations are ok with being basically ruled by Germany, that's fine. But no way in hell would Britain want to play second fiddle to Germany. Ever. They have always seen themselves as slightly more separate, more different, more "special" to the rest of the "the Continent". But there's no way the UK was not a vital part of the union. 5th largest economy, a very strong military, still large sphere of influence outside of Europe. Losing Greece is one thing, but the UK...I don't know. The entire world is moving in a direction I don't like. Populist policies, protectionism, "us-vs-them"....that usually leads to war.
  - jpetso 10y ago
    There's a theory that after war, the people want to make it never happen again. Then they get older and die, and the fourth or so generation lacks all of that experience or motivation, and so someone is bound to start a war because people don't learn from the past. The EU itself is likely still very far from starting that war. China and its superiority complex seems much more likely if they can find someone willing to stand up to them. Or maybe Russia is going to overstep its boundaries for real sometime. Either way we're probably close to our 80 or so years of "Western" (relative) peace, certainly fear and populism are not helping to avoid that path.
    - Retra 10y ago
      Or they want to make it never happen again so they institute hundreds of bureaucratic processes that only a select class of insiders have the ability to navigate, thus forming the political power bottlenecks which will lead to the corruption and waste that sparks the next war.
narrator 10y ago
About 85 years after the U.S started, the south wanted to leave and that led to the most deadly war in U.S history.
a3n 10y ago
> The EU does not have a common enemy to force it together. Considering two world wars and a history of war before that, EU's common enemy is itself, divided.
madengr 10y ago
U.K. And EU will be under Sharia law soon enough anyway, so it's a lost cause.
kordless 10y ago
> The US does not have a common enemy to force it together. It does not have a shared language, or culture, or identity. Its dream, while noble, does not speak to ordinary people. And it is pretty damned incompetent at what duties it has assigned itself. The prospect of a United States was extremely remote even before today. It's dead, now. FTFY. In all seriousness, this whole UK thing sounds like a good excuse for California and The Bay Area to attempt to secede from the union. I'm about sick of our broken consensus mechanisms here.
- chronic80 10y ago
  If it's anyone in the US, it will be Texas. They've done it before, California has not.
gwbas1c 10y ago
"It does not have a shared language, or culture, or identity. Its dream, while noble, does not speak to ordinary people." I think you speak of real challenges that the EU has; but to put it in context, other countries have similar challenges. Spend some time in the US, and you will see cultural and language differences among the states. You can also find the same differences in India and China. Assuming you are American, like me, it's very easy to see the differences in European culture because each state is still a sovereign nation. Chinese and Indian states don't bring their separate flags to the Olympics, so we just assume it's one culture. We go out for "Indian" or "Chinese" food in restaurants that gloss over their internal differences.
known 10y ago
2012 state petitions for secession https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_state_petitions_for_secession https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_state_petitions_for_sec...
Steeeve 10y ago
A whole lot of people missed your point and for some reason are trying to play semantics with history.
adamsea 10y ago
Europe's shared enemy, if you accept the concept, was the double-whammy of being ground zero for two world wars.
randomsearch 10y ago
> The EU does not have a common enemy to force it together. Yes it did, that enemy was "world war".
Al-Khwarizmi 10y ago
Actually I think this makes the eventual prospect of United States of Europe more probable, not less. The UK is the country who has most strongly opposed political integration in the EU. It has a history of watering down, or outright vetoing, proposals that would delegate more sovereignty to the EU or make it more tightly knit. Unfortunately, with euroskepticism strong also in countries like France, it seems improbable that we are going towards an U.S.E. any time soon. But if Britain were not in the EU in the first place, maybe we would have achieved it already...
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  You say that like it's a good thing, but you should take a good look at what the EU is about. You may think that it's all about open borders and greater cultural and economic exchange, but at its core it's a vehicle for big business to control politics in the region. You may think this is some form of conspiracy theory, but there's very strong evidence for it. I would recommend starting here... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xMuUEd6w54E https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xMuUEd6w54E
  - aws_ls 10y ago
    I saw it till about 23 minutes. The ERT did not seem like a secret organization to me. They left the building, which the NGOs had 'occupied' to go for lunch. Leaving all their documents for them to copy. Are there any ground breaking revelations after that (i.e. after 23 minutes)? Also, in general, whats wrong with multinationals having a strong influence in the present world? They are the modern day 'kings' replacing their medieval counterparts. Of course I am not arguing for blanket powers for them at all. We of course have checks and balances like regulators/auditors/politicians. Even take the example of #Brexit, it happened didn't it? If corporations had absolute power it would not have. The point is what's good for society in the long term? Who knows best? No easy answers. But I am willing to err on the side of doers (with checks and balances of course) rather than pure career politicians.
mcguire 10y ago
"The US did not magic itself into existence as a united state. It began in common purpose with a shared, very strong, external enemy. It then assigned itself a shared dream of settling the content. And, crucially, it already had a shared cultural identity, shared language, and shared religion when it began." People keep making this comparison, but they also keep forgetting two elements: 1. After the revolution, parts I and II, as part of the shared dream, they identified an even better external enemy, one which was not only weaker but could easily be vilified. 2. Then there was that whole civil war thing, which killed something like 2-2.5% of the population. (I know, that's low by European standards. For comparison, WWI cost France something like 3.5%. Anyway, still...)
- Houshalter 10y ago
  >I know, that's low by European standards. For comparison, WWI cost France something like 3.5% That's only a matter of timing. If the civil war was delayed 50 years and was fought with WWI tech, it probably would have killed way more people. Trench warfare, machine guns, etc, just ate up lives.
tigershark 10y ago
I can understand the US shared dream, but are you really serious about the other points? In what is today called United States of America in the beginning there were indeed people with different languages, religions and radically opposite culture. Manhattan, hearth of New York and global economy, was Dutch. California (or at least part of it) was Mexican. The vast majority of the land was inhabited by Native Americans. And you are telling me that a United Europe is more difficult than unify that unbelievable potpourri that was US at the beginning? Before the Brexit that was an ongoing process that slowly was moving toward a common goal. Now I'm not sure if Europe still exists. As always democracy proves itself very dangerous. If I'm ill I go to the doctor, I don't start asking around common people opinions. A very sad European living in uk.
- chronic80 10y ago
  This is the problem with democracy. We ask average Joe about what surgery we need (analogous to asking their opinions about policies they know nothing about)
joostdevries 10y ago
As a Dutch citizen I very much feel kinship with people who happen to be from the other founding countries D, F, B, L, I. I speak their languages, I know their typical strengths and foibles, I've visited their cities, I know their history. We've been together for 70 stable years. The ministers of those countries are convening right now. And I very much agree with the words of the German minister Steinmeier "that those countries won't let anybody take that union away from them".
thaumasiotes 10y ago
> And, crucially, it already had a shared cultural identity, shared language, and shared religion when it began. I don't think this is true. German, for example, had a very strong presence.

antirez 10y ago

I don't agree with that, the EU has a very strong cultural union that was created by the enunciation of the French Revolution principles. It's not by accident that, for example, there is no state in EU with death penalty. This makes states within the EU very similar at certain levels, otherwise a claim could be made that the cultural delta is the same between two different EU states and between an EU state and US, but this is not true, if you check a bit the fundamental values you'll see that EU nations have a lot in common.

dharma1 10y ago
Language, national identity. The US and EU are not the same
- hacksonx 10y ago
  I could be wrong but even the French are still a monarchy. In fact the only case of a dissolved monarchy I've read of lately is the Spanish monarchy.
  - DonaldFisk 10y ago
    Ahem. France is a republic, and Spain is a constitutional monarchy.
  - vinceguidry 10y ago
    When Napoleon took the reins of government, he decided to call himself an emperor rather than a king. Emperor is a temporal title, it's not intended to be passed down to heirs the same way a throne is. French emperors rule at the will of the people, and it's up to them to decide whether they want a monarch or not. Napoleon III, the last French monarch, was captured during the Franco-Prussian war, and after his death, the French decided they'd had enough of monarchs and the third French republic lasted until WWII. It was replaced by the Germans with Vichy, and then after the war, the fourth and fifth republics. It's highly unlikely that the French will ever accept another monarch. There are Bonapartist and a Orléanist (Bourbon) pretenders to the throne, but none hold any public office. If the government falls apart again like it did in 1958, it should be replaced with another republic as it was then. Nobody can really rule out a third French empire, but the trend of democracy worldwide has been towards devolution of power rather than centralization, France is more likely to break apart than it is to re-imperialize.
sievebrain 10y ago
There are of course lots of principles that European citizens all share. But there are also some principles that they don't. France, for example, is significantly more socialist than the UK. Unfortunately the EU sees differences as a disease which must be wiped out with always the same prescription: more EU. Literally so. They talk of voting as a "contagion".
- teh 10y ago
  I'd like to see some evidence for your statement. Subsidiarity is a general principle taken into account for all EU decisions. It's the opposite of "seeing difference as a disease" IMO.
  - sievebrain 10y ago
    Just look at how they talk. Voting is a contagion that might "spread" to other countries, as if it was the bubonic plague. The EU has constantly increased its power. The goal of the people who actually run it is federalism. They hate the idea of countries picking and choosing integration from a menu, they are literally dead-set against the idea. And why would you insist on a deal being all or nothing, bad with the good? Because you know that's the only way to get the bad ideas through. Same reason Congress attaches riders to bills they know will be strongly supported, when those same riders got rejected earlier.
    - teh 10y ago
      As an immigrant living in London the "bad" ideas are in the eye of the beholder surely? Can you enumerate a few ideas that are bad? Also, to me an institution keeping the peace also trying to contain the "contagion" of instability makes perfect sense. It's what I want and I contacted all my representatives to that end.
      - sievebrain 10y ago
        Of course they are in the eye of the beholder. A few that I personally think are bad: - Recent VAT reforms - Cookie law - Treating low taxes as "state aid" (EU Commission will be setting tax rates across the EU soon, just wait) - Having a Parliament that can't make its own laws But if you asked others you might get an answer like "the euro". The EU has no relevance to peace or war. The USA is a much more strongly federalised union than the EU and had a brutal civil war. Most wars today are civil wars. There is absolutely nothing that'd stop the EU having a civil war even if it was incredibly federalised and had become practically a single country, like the USA. What has kept the peace in Europe was avoiding a repeat of the Treaty of Versaille, nuclear weapons, NATO, and the fact that European countries are now all mature democracies (the latter is imo the most important).
reitanqild 10y ago
Careful with the French Revolution. I'm sure you know but I was an adult before I understood how insanely brutal that thing was, not only towards former monarchy and nobility but also, or possibly even especially, towards common people.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- return0 10y ago
  The revolution set the stage for the modern world though, a world separated in sovereign states (instead of kingdoms) the three branches government etc. etc. For countries that are hanging on the edges of europe, which weren't strongly ethnically homogeneous, like my country, Greece, that style of government was vital for the definition of the nation. That said, let's not derail the conversation with irrelevant historical anecdotes that are out of time anyway.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - ern 10y ago
    The revolution set the stage for the modern world though, a world separated in sovereign states (instead of kingdoms) the three branches government etc I'm fairly certain that the US was already independent and had adopted the current Constitution by the time the French Revolution happened.
    - id 10y ago
      The US is not the world though.
      - gcatalfamo 10y ago
        Thank you. US people just don't get it.
      - 10y ago
redthrowaway 10y ago
What culture do Germans, Greeks, Latvians, Bulgarians, Fins, and Spaniards share? It takes more than vastly differing attachments to a vague sense of liberalism and a desire to not blow the continent to high hell again.
- dalore 10y ago
  Latin
  - esquivalience 10y ago
    Greek =/= Latin!
    - seabass 10y ago
      !==
      - noobermin 10y ago
        /= (well, js is popular on HN, but Haskell nerds have been making rounds...)
  - seesomesense 10y ago
    Finnish is one of the few European languages with no connection to Latin
    - Spearchucker 10y ago
      One of two, I believe. The other being Hungarian.
      - fulafel 10y ago
        Celtic languages, Estonian is another Fenno-Ugric one, Sami, there are lots.
Shivetya 10y ago
I would think two World Wars fought over the continent would be more incentive to make it work. Considering how long ago the French Revolution took place it does seem no one there learned much until so many were killed it appalled all involved. One major advantage the US has is a single main language. That is something that will in time possibly occur within the EU but language is a barrier that cannot be over estimated
jules 10y ago
The UK does not have that shared French Revolution tradition at all, and neither do a large number of European countries that are still monarchies. Instead of a violent French Revolution, the UK had a nonviolent change of power from royalty to the people. Instead of a civil war over slavery, the UK had a peaceful transition where the state bought the slaves from the slave owners. This referendum fits in a great tradition of nonviolent change.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  Just to expand on this, because it isn't often mentioned in contrast to how awful colonial England was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833 The UK abolished slavery, and even fought commonwealth territories that resisted. Maybe if parts of the US had still been in the commonwealth, slavery would have ended sooner there too.
  - hartpuff 10y ago
    It's even less mentioned that the French abolished slavery about 40 years before that.
- douche 10y ago
  Not that England/Britain didn't have their own bloody, violent civil wars along the way to get there. The English were ahead of the curve by just over a hundred years, as far as executing their king and instituting a military dictatorship goes.
- stangeek 10y ago
  Let's be honest, it is actually the brutality of the French revolution which forced the British royalty to hand over power to the people. And before doing these "peaceful" transitions, all neighbouring countries tried to smother the French with war in order to preserve the priviledges of the remaining monarchies.
  - golergka 10y ago
wtbob 10y ago
> I don't agree with that, the EU has a very strong cultural union that was created by the enunciation of the French Revolution principles. It's not by accident that, for example, there is no state in EU with death penalty. The conjunction of those two sentences is a bit hilarious, considering the wanton abuse of the death penalty during the Reign of Terror. And I think that the lack of capital punishment is an indicator of one of the EU's problems: it's stunningly undemocratic. Polls (until recently?) have shown for decades strong popular support for capital punishment, and yet countries have been forced by the EU to ban it.
- yardie 10y ago
  I am unaware of anyone in any of the EU countries who support the death penalty nor capital punishment. It is overwhelmingly frowned upon. Now I admit I haven't asked everyone in every EU country. And I'm sure there are those in Central/Eastern Europe who still support it (I know life was especially brutal under the communist regimes). Polls (until recently?) Which polls? I'm honestly curious.
  - hartpuff 10y ago
    > I am unaware of anyone in any of the EU countries who support the death penalty nor capital punishment. It is overwhelmingly frowned upon. No it isn't. (And I post as someone who is against it, BTW.) In every right-wing party in the EU (and the world) there are almost certain to be elected representatives who support the death penalty. > Polls (until recently?) Which polls? I'm honestly curious. Obviously not curious enough to make a simple Google search. Here's a BBC item from last year showing support for the death penalty in the UK dropping below 50% for the first time: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-32061822 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-32061822 > And I'm sure there are those in Central/Eastern Europe who still support it (I know life was especially brutal under the communist regimes). I fail to see what regimes that disappeared a quarter of a century ago have to do with anything.
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    Well, I'm in an EU country, and I support the death penalty for the most severe crimes; as execution method I only propose that the condemned shall be kept in prison until he or she dies. A lethal injection or bullet in the neck is too easy. (However, this is forbidden by EU.)
ThomPete 10y ago
It's not enough to have things in common. The point the previous post make is that it requires a common enemy to forge unification as strong as the US and even here there are talks about some states wanting to go independent from time to time. Without this external factor it's hard to find something to really feel the same about.
- geon 10y ago
  Is that why the US seems so hell-bent at creating new enemies for themselves? Would one of the states exiting the US be thinkable, were it not for the unity in waging wars against external (and some internal) enemies?
  - p_eter_p 10y ago
    Yes. I believe Texas Republicans call for independence with some frequency.
    - emp_zealoth 10y ago
      Let them go and watch the hellfire of their economic explosion i say.
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-usa-secession-idUSKCN0ZA3F4 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-usa-secession-i... And yes. Leo Strauss was of that opinion and you will find a whole suite of argument that talk about how the middle east became the new enemy out of need rather than actual threat. This was part of the PNAC (Project for New American Century) which identified the need for a new enemy after the fall of the wall. Now whether they were actually successful is another discussion but it was part of the Bush administrations fundamental belief as several of it's key members where students under Strauss. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Strauss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Strauss
unsigner 10y ago
Adjacent EU nations do have a lot in common, but the differences add up across the continent.
- cLeEOGPw 10y ago
  It's all relative. I live in Eastern Europe part of EU and I can tell that either it's London, or Stockholm or Vilnius, they all look and feel very alike. Biggest difference is amount of non-white people in western cities.
eternalban 10y ago
French Revolution or Emperor Napoleon & the Napoleonic Code? Italy was hugely influenced by the latter, as I am sure you know.
irrational 10y ago
Wait, hold on. Are saying that the EU doesn't like the death penalty because of French Revolution principles?! This is the same French Revolution that famously involved the guillotine, no?
- mioelnir 10y ago
  No, we all agree that, both historically and presently, our political leaders are incompetent and not to be trusted with such a sharp blade. They get children's scissors and should be happy about it.
392c91e8165b 10y ago
I'm skeptical that Europe will ever be as united by culture as the US is as long as Europe is divided into different language communities. (Although there are millions of Americans who do not speak English, only the tiniest fraction of those have any influence on American culture.)
ptaipale 10y ago
> EU has a very strong cultural union that was created by the enunciation of the French Revolution principles. It's not by accident that, for example, there is no state in EU with death penalty. This is a somewhat funny thing to say, considering how many people were given the death penalty in the French revolution and its aftermath. Executions for "crimes against liberty" and whatever are estimated to have been between 16,000 and 40,000. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine

pavlov 10y ago

The U.S. Congress is also pretty damned incompetent at its duties. In many ways the EU institutions are functioning better than their American counterparts. Sometimes it's better to have 20 different opinions to reconcile, rather than two polarised factions that can't concede on anything.

sievebrain 10y ago
Yes, but too many of the EU leaders and elites want to create a United States of Europe, with the Commission/Parliament hybrid as an even more dysfunctional equivalent of Congress (imagine how productive Congress would be if everyone had to speak through an interpreter). It's actually worse than that though. The EU Parliament doesn't really deserve the name. It can't actually initiate legisliation, so it's meaningless for EUP parties to have any actual policies, so they don't, so there's no formal opposition either, so nobody cares about them and ... therefore ... (phew) turnout in European elections is extremely low. Most people can't even name their MEP, and why should they be able to? That MEP has no power to speak of.
- ricksplat 10y ago
  The elites are one thing, and actual European people are another. Of course the elites have a disproportionate amount of control but that's true of any institution but it doesn't invalidate the institution. European people by and large enjoy a better quality of life because of free trade, movement and most importantly peace. That there's one set of scoundrels at the top vs another isn't as important as is made out. At the end of the day all that will happen in the UK now is a new set of elites take control (the old rule Britannia brigade that were previously on the wane) and there won't be the buffer of a larger enveloping organisation to help smooth over the bumps. Britain has been declining recently because that's what happens to spent colonial powers, not because they were in the EU.
  - sievebrain 10y ago
    Of course people benefit. And if the EU had never existed, many of those same benefits would have been created via a patchwork of treaties and deals anyway. The EU is not a choice between integration and chaos, despite what Brussels wants people to believe. European economies were integrating before the EU anyway.

digi_owl 10y ago

And even then USA had a civil war...

agumonkey 10y ago

I'd extend the question. Can peace subsist long without a war ...

rodgerd 10y ago
The EU has done a pretty good job. You'd have a hard time finding a 70 year period before the EU where none of the founder members were at war with one another.
- agumonkey 10y ago
  It did work for a very long time but even then after a while things go south.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    As a person who currently resides in Europe and expects to continue living on this planet for another 60 or so years, I ask, I plead - could people please consider trying to make things not go south? Petty political and economical differences are not worth another war.
    - agumonkey 10y ago
      Just in case people thought I was rooting for mess over peace. I'm just trying to find why things aren't stable so we can try to keep them stable longer. Why do most societies resolve internal stress by communautarism, law of ancestry, blind and stupid racism. Why not by gathering and looking at what's wrong then fix it with wisdom.
      - TeMPOraL 10y ago
        I wasn't thinking you're rooting for war - but I had that on my chest and had to say it. I see people sometimes saying things like "oh well, every civilization has to end at some point", or noting that Europe is long overdue for another war. It's as if people didn't realize the war isn't some abstract shifting of borders, it's mostly innocent people dying terrible deaths from bullets, hunger and disease. While it is a true historical fact, it's something we should focus on figuring out and, as you said, "fixing it with wisdom". Maybe I'm too sensitive on this topic, but ever since the Crimea debacle I've become much more worried about instabilities in Europe. I have only ~300km to the Ukrainian border. There are nights when I hear some weird aerial noises and I wonder if that's a missile, and if this is the day when my city turns into a CoD: MW map.

mfourcade 10y ago

Was the US an european colony? With people speaking French, English, Spanish and Portuguese? I guess it was a mix and match of many human being that decided to be free : no more, no less. Freedom was the driver, not the enemy. Also maybe you should consider the actual state of US : What's the percentage of english/spanish people speaking? What about Catholics/Jews/Muslim? Should we expect an USbreak ? Saying that, I do not believe that we need a common enemy to be united. There is better values and challenges for all of us : environment, peace, love. Europe will stand strong, refine its vision to the current context. After a few years, UK we be back and we will all make love peacefully in a better environment. Long live to Europe.

tankenmate 10y ago
Actually German came very close to being an official language of the USA at one point.
- DonaldFisk 10y ago
  http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/german.asp http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/german.asp

_ph_ 10y ago

One thing which excited me about the EU was, that the peoples of Europe unified without a war or an enemy at hand. That would be an incredibly good sign for humanity and give hope to some future, where the globe isn't split into entirely separate nations.

kaybe 10y ago
The experiences of the second world war definitely played a role as something that should be avoided at all costs and put up infrastructure and friendship against, so it wasn't really without a war.
JakeColtman 10y ago
I agree that would be a good sign but it's hard to support the claim there was no enemy at hand with a heavily militarized USSR almost next door
- ommunist 10y ago
  This is exactly why Germany secretly supplies Russia with top notch military tech today. If there is no enemy, you should create one.
  - cmarschner 10y ago
    Source?
    - ommunist 10y ago
      http://jbpress.ismedia.jp/articles/-/44305 http://jbpress.ismedia.jp/articles/-/44305. Despite official sanctions Germany and the US (!) continue to supply Russia. Just like the US sold to both Russia and Germany before WW2. Here about 30% of export increase from Germany to Russia at Deutche Welle - http://www.dw.com/ru/экспорт-из-германии-в-россию-вырос-на-30-процентов/a-2790002 http://www.dw.com/ru/экспорт-из-германии-в-россию-вырос-на-3.... I bet they did not exported beer. Its Siemens, Rheinmetall and alike. Also look in Gardner Research. The World Machine-Tool Output & Consumption Survey

return0 10y ago

You make it sound as if we are living the dawn of Nation-states. We live in a globalized world. Nations are now trading areas. EU is well positioned as one, (if it ever manages to become productive). No nation is an island in this world (including britain). UK will now have to re-pick its allies, and pick them carefully. I can see the pieces of commonwealth that are left in europe denouncing their british past (Gibraltar is a start).

ricksplat 10y ago
Gibraltar, Scotland, Northern Ireland (what will become of the peace process?). Effectively the UK is left with Wales. Is it even a 'K' any more? Would that take the 'G' out of GB?
- return0 10y ago
  More like Cyprus and Malta. I figure the UK is not ready to split yet, no?
  - ricksplat 10y ago
    Just a couple of years ago Scotland were all set. Then some EPP crony said something about not being in the EU any more and swung the vote. As for NI - for the sake of peace that would be a more drawn out process.
  - etatoby 10y ago
    I expect Scotland to split and join the EU shortly. Just look at the map in the linked article.
    - sievebrain 10y ago
      Perhaps. If they did, so be it. But the arguments at the time of the referendum didn't get stronger. The EU would require Scotland to join the Euro, join Schengen (means a border wall), and the primary argument for an independent Scotland was "we'll take all the oil money for ourselves". But now oil is cheap thanks to US fracking and the North Sea oil industry is going bust. I think the future probably has more devolution in it. Which is fine.

tatoalo 10y ago

Unfortunately this will also be reflected on other countries, give it a few months and we'll be dealing with the same kind of shit in Italy, France etc... The saddest part is that older people(fact) practically decided for the future of the younger ones.

visarga 10y ago
Everyone gets a vote. But old people have more experience and more are more invested. Maybe they remember something we don't know.
- saiya-jin 10y ago
  i used to think the same when younger... not anymore. old have experience, true. Most of it is coming from different era, different world than current one. Apart from basic moral principles, for which you don't need age to conform to, their experiences didn't transfer well. Most of old are more or less completely lost in current fast-pacing world. they cling desperately to anything/anybody that still speaks to them and makes sense to them, no matter the content. I can see it clearly all around, including my family. my parents, and I love them with all my heart, have simplistic views on politics (although both have university degree). easily to be persuaded, missing bigger picture and view beyond couple of months/years. my grandparents, they are completely lost in this world. they mostly look only what would affect their pension payouts and medical care fees. it doesn't matter if a proper gangster would be handling small financial favors to them, they would go that way. older people are more invested? nope - we young will live much more of our lives in system that is coming compared to them. We have much more motivation to live in system that is stable and working well in long run (>20 years). it's fair to have same voting rights, but how much do we expect from usual > 70 years old in terms of clever voting decisions? Zero, and politicians know this, hence campaigns are quite emotional to work with them.
  - sievebrain 10y ago
    I can guarantee that a lot of "old" people think young voters are idiots who have no clue and are easily manipulated through their emotions.

dcposch 10y ago

The point stands though. US of E would be a beautiful thing. > Its dream, while noble, does not speak to ordinary people. Maybe not ordinary old guya. Many young people have a cosmopolitan attitude. They see themselves as Europeans first, and they like the freedom to live and work anywhere, not just within some postage stamp sized area like Slovenia. I disagree that the dream is "dead"---in fact, Brexit might make it easier to integrate, since the biggest integration opponent is now gone

majewsky 10y ago
There is always a new biggest integration opponent. I don't know who it would be right now, but I could easily imagine France if Marine Le Pen becomes their next president.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Evaporative cooling. As long as the new biggest integration opponent is less opposing to integration than UK was, it will still be beneficial to integration efforts.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  I propose NL under Geert Wilders. It will be a total disaster but it could actually happen.
  - sievebrain 10y ago
    Germany has benefited from being able to be a swing voter in the council votes due to QMV. With the UK gone it will now have to nail its colours to the mast if it wishes to resist significantly more redistributive and socialist policies supported by the southern countries, instead of acting as a decider knowing what the UK will do. This could change the politics in Germany in unpredictable ways.
    - emp_zealoth 10y ago
      Money transfers are necessary for eurozone to stop blowing up in people's faces, sadly

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cabalamat 10y ago

> The EU does not have a common enemy to force it together. Yes it does, Russia.

smarinov 10y ago
Russia is not an enemy of the EU, although the NATO countries in Europe and Asia (Turkey) often treat it as such. EDIT: Maybe some minority circles in the Russian Federation want to make it an enemy of the EU or the rest of Europe, but most people, rich and poor, don't want to. The former because of trade opportunities and the latter because of shared cultural heritage.
- kofejnik 10y ago
  Russia is a schoolyard bully and should be treated as such
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    A less sophisticated schoolyard bully than the US, but otherwise pretty much the same. It would actually make sense for Europe to make friends with Russia; they're, after all, kind of closer (geographically and culturally), and on the same slab of land.
    - jacquesm 10y ago
      No, that would not make sense at all. Russia is run by an entirely different play-book than the rest of the EU.
    - kofejnik 10y ago
      not the same at all, US hasn't annexed territories from its neighbours for 150 years now
      - TeMPOraL 10y ago
        No, but they bombed the shit out of several countries in the last 15 years. Also, both US and Russia do more bullying on the economic level anyway.

elif 10y ago

Actually, the US did kind of magic itself into existence due to a domestic labor and civil rights dispute. The states were primarily independent after the declaration of independence. It was not until Shay's Rebellion 10 years later that spooked the aristocrats into drawing our current constitution. And to bypass your essentialized romantic patriotic history for a moment while utilizing your "common enemy" rhetoric, the EU has many common enemies and innumerable common and unique struggles. Consider immigration, the struggle for democracy, ecological responsibility, social justice, annexation by Russia. All issues individually more compelling than the rich coalescing their power to maintain control of the poor in a relatively isolated country with the population of Houston. The EU has so many good reasons to exist.

fattire 10y ago
Yeah the original post above is pretty starry-eyed and ignorant of American history. Forget the Shay Rebellion, we also had a civil war to sort out the "shared vision" thing. Lots wrong with such a silly analysis, so dunno why it spawned so much discussion.

HackinOut 10y ago

I can't believe Nigel Farage and a lot of pro Brexit campaigners have been calling it UK's "Independence day". Apart from being a very bad (purposeful?) analogy, it's seems to me pretty disrespectful to their own and to US history. I'm not from USA (or UK) but would love to hear how US and UK people feel about it?

dmeagor 10y ago
Many countries have am independence day, not just America. Granted most are celebrating independence from us brits through.
GantzGraf 10y ago
"Independence day" is not exclusive to the US.
- deadowl 10y ago
  The film with the aliens and Jeff Goldblum made that particularly clear.
Clubber 10y ago
>I'm not from USA (or UK) but would love to hear how US and UK people feel about it? I think it sounds like populist grandstanding. We've been hearing that sort of thing for a year now. We (the US) seem to have a lot of people buying into it though. We get to see first hand how stepping back from globalization looks like before we vote for it ourselves come November.

lgieron 10y ago

> And, crucially, it already had a shared cultural identity, shared language Isn't the US a conglomerate of former English, French and Spanish colonies?

rhino369 10y ago
The US took over former land claimed by France and Spain. Very few Spanish and French actually lived there. It was mostly territory claimed by Spain and France, but almost totally unsettled. The land was populated with Indians, but they had already seen their populations ravaged by European disease. Somewhere like Illinois is littered with places named in French or Algonquin, but there is zero culture leftover. Parts of Lousinana are all that's left from France.

dnautics 10y ago

You forgot the part where the US tried one form of government and then ditched it for a different one 10 years later.

galfarragem 10y ago

>> The EU does not have a common enemy to force it together. It does not have a shared language, or culture, or identity. Its dream, while noble, does not speak to ordinary people. And it is pretty damned incompetent at what duties it has assigned itself. I believe mentalities are changing slowly. My generation (generation "Erasmus") is the first that identifies itself more as an European citizen than a national citizen [1] but our parent's generation doesn't feel the same yet. By the other hand I think the main reason for Brexit is economics and not identity: UK thinks that they are not having a positive ROI by staying in the EU. Puting it roughly: Germany "exchanges" money for leadership. Peripheral countries "exchange" leadership for money. And UK? The "exchange rate" doesn't seem favourable.. [1] http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/young-voters-wanted-brexit-least-8271517 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/young-voters-wanted-bre...

uncletaco 10y ago

Huh, I'd argue that the united states as we know it today is wholly a product of the civil war. Before that Virginians felt loyal to Virginia, New Yorkers felt loyal to New Yorkers, and frankly the United States right before the civil war was not all that different from the EU today. They spoke Spanish in California, the western territories, and Florida; French along the Mississippi river, etc. I think this view of the US having a shared cultural identity at any point before the 20th century is very far-fetched.

kls 10y ago
Agreed we tend to reason from the perspective that we are in and see all things thru that lens, but antebellum America was a very different place from where we are at today. At the onset of the war and even before with the nullification crisis even antebellum America was very different than early post revolution America. Federalization, centralization and bureaucracy are the natural order of empires and America has been on a slow roll towards them since at least the early 1800's and the barons. Honestly probably since it's inception, Hamilton was a devout federalist and Modern America would be a realization of his dream. I think Jefferson and Franklin would be horrified to say the least. With all that said, it always seemed to me that the EU wanted to be America 2.0 and modeled the empire and not the early confederation that got us here. America used to look like a coalition of distinct states where basic rights (albeit for only some at times), where guaranteed so that a citizen has a host of options to find a representative government. More and more the states look like cookie cutter copies of each other and more and more legislation gets pushed to the federal level because there is little distinction between them. This makes for an efficient business environment but it comes at the cost of a representative government for the people. From the outside it seemed to me that the EU tried to fast track this homogenization in the interest of being a competitive business environment. In my view the EU took it one step further and fully embraced unrepresentative bureaucracies and set up, for the better part, a technocracy. The people of Britain felt that they had no reach into these un-elected representatives and therefore made the choice to exit as it was the only ripcord they had.
JPKab 10y ago
"They spoke Spanish in California, the western territories, and Florida; French along the Mississippi river, etc." This is a completely inaccurate and hamfisted statement. By the time of the Civil War, California was already predominantly Anglo. The only Spanish speaking parts at that point were the southern part of the state, which was sparsely populated compared to the Bay Area. Florida was already filled with Anglo settlers as well. Spain had a number of horrifically protectionist policies that doomed their outlying North American colonies to poverty and depopulation, making them extremely vulnerable to infiltration by settlers from the US, who ironically, were illegal immigrants.

mcv 10y ago

> The prospect of a United States of Europe was extremely remote even before today. It's dead, now. Not necessarily. There's no reason why the UK would have to be a vital part of that union. Quite the contrary, in fact: the UK has always been the biggest opponent of such a closer union. Without the UK, it's possible that the EU might actually be able to move ahead in that direction again.

PopsiclePete 10y ago
The EU, to me, is basically the Fourth Reich. Germany failed to rule the continent militarily, so they did it instead economically. The Euro is backed mostly by the strength of the Deutschmark, the ECB is in Frankfurt. They are dominant on the continent politically and economically. If the other 20-something nations are ok with being basically ruled by Germany, that's fine. But no way in hell would Britain want to play second fiddle to Germany. Ever. They have always seen themselves as slightly more separate, more different, more "special" to the rest of the "the Continent". But there's no way the UK was not a vital part of the union. 5th largest economy, a very strong military, still large sphere of influence outside of Europe. Losing Greece is one thing, but the UK...I don't know. The entire world is moving in a direction I don't like. Populist policies, protectionism, "us-vs-them"....that usually leads to war.
- jpetso 10y ago
  There's a theory that after war, the people want to make it never happen again. Then they get older and die, and the fourth or so generation lacks all of that experience or motivation, and so someone is bound to start a war because people don't learn from the past. The EU itself is likely still very far from starting that war. China and its superiority complex seems much more likely if they can find someone willing to stand up to them. Or maybe Russia is going to overstep its boundaries for real sometime. Either way we're probably close to our 80 or so years of "Western" (relative) peace, certainly fear and populism are not helping to avoid that path.
  - Retra 10y ago
    Or they want to make it never happen again so they institute hundreds of bureaucratic processes that only a select class of insiders have the ability to navigate, thus forming the political power bottlenecks which will lead to the corruption and waste that sparks the next war.

narrator 10y ago

About 85 years after the U.S started, the south wanted to leave and that led to the most deadly war in U.S history.

a3n 10y ago

> The EU does not have a common enemy to force it together. Considering two world wars and a history of war before that, EU's common enemy is itself, divided.

madengr 10y ago

U.K. And EU will be under Sharia law soon enough anyway, so it's a lost cause.

kordless 10y ago

> The US does not have a common enemy to force it together. It does not have a shared language, or culture, or identity. Its dream, while noble, does not speak to ordinary people. And it is pretty damned incompetent at what duties it has assigned itself. The prospect of a United States was extremely remote even before today. It's dead, now. FTFY. In all seriousness, this whole UK thing sounds like a good excuse for California and The Bay Area to attempt to secede from the union. I'm about sick of our broken consensus mechanisms here.

chronic80 10y ago
If it's anyone in the US, it will be Texas. They've done it before, California has not.

gwbas1c 10y ago

"It does not have a shared language, or culture, or identity. Its dream, while noble, does not speak to ordinary people." I think you speak of real challenges that the EU has; but to put it in context, other countries have similar challenges. Spend some time in the US, and you will see cultural and language differences among the states. You can also find the same differences in India and China. Assuming you are American, like me, it's very easy to see the differences in European culture because each state is still a sovereign nation. Chinese and Indian states don't bring their separate flags to the Olympics, so we just assume it's one culture. We go out for "Indian" or "Chinese" food in restaurants that gloss over their internal differences.

known 10y ago

2012 state petitions for secession https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_state_petitions_for_secession https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_state_petitions_for_sec...

Steeeve 10y ago

A whole lot of people missed your point and for some reason are trying to play semantics with history.

adamsea 10y ago

Europe's shared enemy, if you accept the concept, was the double-whammy of being ground zero for two world wars.

randomsearch 10y ago

> The EU does not have a common enemy to force it together. Yes it did, that enemy was "world war".

Al-Khwarizmi 10y ago

Actually I think this makes the eventual prospect of United States of Europe more probable, not less. The UK is the country who has most strongly opposed political integration in the EU. It has a history of watering down, or outright vetoing, proposals that would delegate more sovereignty to the EU or make it more tightly knit. Unfortunately, with euroskepticism strong also in countries like France, it seems improbable that we are going towards an U.S.E. any time soon. But if Britain were not in the EU in the first place, maybe we would have achieved it already...

ZenoArrow 10y ago
You say that like it's a good thing, but you should take a good look at what the EU is about. You may think that it's all about open borders and greater cultural and economic exchange, but at its core it's a vehicle for big business to control politics in the region. You may think this is some form of conspiracy theory, but there's very strong evidence for it. I would recommend starting here... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xMuUEd6w54E https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xMuUEd6w54E
- aws_ls 10y ago
  I saw it till about 23 minutes. The ERT did not seem like a secret organization to me. They left the building, which the NGOs had 'occupied' to go for lunch. Leaving all their documents for them to copy. Are there any ground breaking revelations after that (i.e. after 23 minutes)? Also, in general, whats wrong with multinationals having a strong influence in the present world? They are the modern day 'kings' replacing their medieval counterparts. Of course I am not arguing for blanket powers for them at all. We of course have checks and balances like regulators/auditors/politicians. Even take the example of #Brexit, it happened didn't it? If corporations had absolute power it would not have. The point is what's good for society in the long term? Who knows best? No easy answers. But I am willing to err on the side of doers (with checks and balances of course) rather than pure career politicians.

mcguire 10y ago

"The US did not magic itself into existence as a united state. It began in common purpose with a shared, very strong, external enemy. It then assigned itself a shared dream of settling the content. And, crucially, it already had a shared cultural identity, shared language, and shared religion when it began." People keep making this comparison, but they also keep forgetting two elements: 1. After the revolution, parts I and II, as part of the shared dream, they identified an even better external enemy, one which was not only weaker but could easily be vilified. 2. Then there was that whole civil war thing, which killed something like 2-2.5% of the population. (I know, that's low by European standards. For comparison, WWI cost France something like 3.5%. Anyway, still...)

Houshalter 10y ago
>I know, that's low by European standards. For comparison, WWI cost France something like 3.5% That's only a matter of timing. If the civil war was delayed 50 years and was fought with WWI tech, it probably would have killed way more people. Trench warfare, machine guns, etc, just ate up lives.

tigershark 10y ago

I can understand the US shared dream, but are you really serious about the other points? In what is today called United States of America in the beginning there were indeed people with different languages, religions and radically opposite culture. Manhattan, hearth of New York and global economy, was Dutch. California (or at least part of it) was Mexican. The vast majority of the land was inhabited by Native Americans. And you are telling me that a United Europe is more difficult than unify that unbelievable potpourri that was US at the beginning? Before the Brexit that was an ongoing process that slowly was moving toward a common goal. Now I'm not sure if Europe still exists. As always democracy proves itself very dangerous. If I'm ill I go to the doctor, I don't start asking around common people opinions. A very sad European living in uk.

chronic80 10y ago
This is the problem with democracy. We ask average Joe about what surgery we need (analogous to asking their opinions about policies they know nothing about)

joostdevries 10y ago

As a Dutch citizen I very much feel kinship with people who happen to be from the other founding countries D, F, B, L, I. I speak their languages, I know their typical strengths and foibles, I've visited their cities, I know their history. We've been together for 70 stable years. The ministers of those countries are convening right now. And I very much agree with the words of the German minister Steinmeier "that those countries won't let anybody take that union away from them".

thaumasiotes 10y ago

> And, crucially, it already had a shared cultural identity, shared language, and shared religion when it began. I don't think this is true. German, for example, had a very strong presence.