The End of Europe?

Usually I don't write about politics or world events in this blog but I wanna talk about a Time Magazine article I read this morning. Rana Foorohar's The End of Europe. 

In the article, Ms. Foroohar is basically saying that the age of prosperity is over for Europe and the western world and the symptoms of this are the current economic meltdown. This kind of writing pisses me off for lots of reasons, but mostly because she's supposed to be smarter than me and she's ignoring a few basic realities of the European Union and the western world in general.

First and foremost, when immigrants stop flooding into North America and Western Europe by the hundreds of thousands and start going in the other direction (ie. INTO places like Iran, China, Pakistan, India etc.), you can seriously start talking about the decline of the entire western way of life. For the time being, people from around the globe are packing themselves and their children into boat hulls, truck trailers and freight trains just to get out of the crappy place they come from and live in the supposedly declining west. This is an important point that journalists seem to like to ignore, because it unravels every argument about what a failure the western way of life is.

Second, the European Union (and subsequently the euro currency) is an extraordinarily bad idea and has been from the very beginning. The reason the European Union is, was, and will be a doomed entity is simple. No one runs it and no one votes for it.

To my understanding, the EU has a central bank that has some control over the supply of the Euro. But the EU has no democratically elected governance. The EU is essentially run by Germany and France by default. Those are the only 2 countries that can sustain the currency and the union in any meaningful way. On this,  Ms. Foorohar and I seem to agree.

The reason why that's a bad idea is because Spaniards and Italians didn't have a vote on the subject. And for that matter, neither did the Germans or the French. Somewhere in Spain and Italy and Greece, there are responsible, hardworking people who are NOT interested in handouts from Germany and France and who ARE interested in being in control of their own economy and holding their own government responsible for its relative success or failure. This, by the way, is one of the nice benefits of living in the western world - you can hold your elected officials responsible for the crap they pull.

But the way the EU works now, there's no one to blame. How does an Italian voice his displeasure to German leaders for considering a bailout of Italy? How does a French voter make it clear to the government of Greece that they need to get their financial house in order? The answer of course is that he/she isn't able to do anything like that. And that creates a bizarre, unfair and undemocratic situation where German politicians are going to decide the fate and future of the Spanish people (for instance). History has shown us time and time again that this kind of disconnect between power and responsibility is always a very very bad idea. It leads to disharmony on all sides.

Third, I don't like the implication that the demise of the EU would somehow rob Europeans of "the dream of multiculturalism". This is a bullshit viewpoint. Multiculturalism doesn't occur when a government decides it's time to make it so. It occurs when people from various racial, ethnic and geographic backgrounds come together in one place and build a prosperous society. It's not something you can force into being by symbolically throwing a big hug around everybody in Europe. The only thing governments need to do to foster a pluralistic society is a) avoid creating laws or practices that sort people by their religion or skin colour and b) get out of people's way when they want to make money. Despite the best efforts of bleeding hearts here in Canada and in Europe, this is exactly what's going on everywhere in the western world. We have multiculturalism. It is not a dream. It's real and we built it.

What needs to happen in Europe is they need to rip off the euro band aid as quickly as possible and get back to the clumsy but superior pluralism of Europe as a continent, not a union. Each country's government must be first and foremost responsible and accountable to its own people within its own borders. And too bad if international corporations have to spend a few extra bucks converting currency. Would you rather have to change your money when you cross the border, or would you rather have no money to change at all?