Written a lot about Europe in the past, I think I’ve found and tagged most of the old posts but have probably missed hundreds. One of the subjectst that comes up time and again is that, while I don’t like the EU as it currently stands, I like it more than the current alternatives, and truly believe it can be reformed and improved. I share this view with James Clive Matthews, who has written an excellent post on the need to take the long view and broken down his philosophy on Europe and Britain’s involvement:
10) Most individual nations are simply too damned small to have much chance of surviving on their own in the long term. Throughout history, the general trend has been for states to grow larger and larger, until some kind of limit (either geographical or geopolitical) is reached, because the larger the area you cover, the more versatile your production and the more self-sufficient you can be. - This is my primary reason for being pro-EU: I simply cannot see how a country as small as the UK (or, indeed, any European country) can survive on its own in the longer-term. Just as I see national identity being formed largely from negatives, so too is my pro-EU stance.
This is, largely, my primary reason for support as well, Britain gave up the Empire before my father was born, and joined Europe before I was born.
January 8th, 2007
Posted by
MatGB |
europe, Demos |
12 comments
This is what I get for not clicking on the profiles of everyone that posts comments here. Random chance, was looking at one of my older posts and saw some comments from ‘Chris’, so I click his profile. Torquay it says. That’s where I live. There’s another political blogger in this little backwater. I look at his front page, he’s coherent and argues his cases with research and examples. I think I disagree with him on virtually everything except books (I prefer Pattern Recognition to Neuromancer if we’re talking Gibson), but he has but up a nice riposte to my and Paul’s posts on Demos a few posts down. I’ll try to write up a decent reply to him, and finish of my response to Martin’s article (Martin, never meant that to be the only post on your list, just the first). Oh, and reply to some of Ken’s comments; incidentally, have now, finally, added Ken to the blogroll, apologies for not doing so sooner Ken, especially given the contributions you’ve made here, thought out comments that I disagree with fundamentally are always welcome. I’ll be reorganisng the blogroll when I’ve got time, it’s got a bit big and clunky; I need a ‘friends and allies’ and a ‘favoured enemies’ section at the top.
In the meantime, I have another post to write on the story of the day, then I need to sleep, my downstairs neighbour had a party last night, and I got about 3 hours sleep, eyes not staying open. Chris? Where’s your local, might as well meet for a drink…
December 7th, 2005
Posted by
MatGB |
europe, EU, Demos, Torquay |
one comment
Some good feedback so far on our Europe post, and some good, constructive comments. In one of them, Martin ask us to critique his list of objections as well. Martin’s first problem:
1) No demos
There does not exist a single group of people in respect of whom the EU could be a democracy.
It was this that prompted me to ask Paul to write up some of the theory behind a Demos Well, I’m going to add to it, this time with some practical examples.
December 4th, 2005
Posted by
MatGB |
europe, Demos |
13 comments
Talking about Demos is never going to be an easy topic. The idea of the European Demos is one which has been floating around for a good number of years, although by and large nobody seems to really understand it, myself included.
The idea of Demos is usually tied up with the German terms Gemeinschaft and Gessellschaft, which relate to differing ideas of community and community association. Gemeinschaft is the very tight, communitarian style of social understanding based around family and personal relationships, Gessellschaft the wider, shared understandings idea, somewhat like a company model where individuals are very different but pull together for the common good. Obviously the parallels here can be drawn between communitarianism and cosmopolitanism, although the terms are not perfect corrolaries. Neither Gemeinschaft or Gessellschaft really speak about political involvement, more simply a state of mind amongst certain people.
December 3rd, 2005
Posted by
PaulJ |
europe, Demos |
no comments
