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> It is really unfortunate that Europeans don’t have a sense of Manifest Destiny and Potential for the whole of Europe but instead fall back to nationalism, wh
by Ntrails 8y ago
> It is really unfortunate that Europeans don’t have a sense of Manifest Destiny and Potential for the whole of Europe but instead fall back to nationalism, whenever a challenge like the financial crisis or refugee crisis emerges.
It's not that people fall back to nationalism - it's where we all started. It's just that for a perceived mutual good politicians say "let's go for it". The reality is that Europe can only really work long term with much closer political/fiscal integration. Every politician knows that, but most have made a career of not mentioning the things that people don't want to hear.
As for the European dream - that's hard. The shared cultural capital isn't there, and it cannot be imposed from above.
- orbifold 8y agoThere is a lot of shared cultural capital, you just have to visit the various art museums, you are just as likely to find French, Dutch and Spanish painters in Vienna as you are in Paris. The old European elites all shared a common culture, references to Roman and Greek mythology, Christian faith, a common style of literature etc. For a long time they even had a common language, Latin, later on everyone learned at least French and sometimes German and English. It also has clearly identifiable cultural centres, for the most part the capitals of the historically dominant military and political powers Vienna, Paris, Berlin etc. Nationalism is only a very brief phase compared to the long rule in Europe of a few dynasties (Habsburg in most of Central Europe, Spain, Italy and Low Countries). Personally I don't think one necessarily needs deeper fiscal and political integration (although the Euro architecture is clearly broken, but might be fixed in other ways), just better messaging and a shared European identity.