Who does Dave want to add to Europe?

David Cameron, British PM, has made a speech about expanding the boundaries of the European Union:

Talking to Kazakh students in the capital Astana he said: “Britain has always supported the widening of the EU. “Our vision of the EU is that it should be a large trading and co-operating organisation that effectively stretches, as it were, from the Atlantic to the Urals. “We have a wide vision of Europe and have always encouraged countries that want to join.”

He wants Kazakhstan to join? Kazakhstan is a country in central Asia (it shares a border with China). The Kazakhs themselves are a Muslim Turkic group (though there is a sizeable minority of Russians living in Kazakhstan).



A Kazakh wedding

It's true that 10% of Kazakhstan lies west of the Ural mountains - presumably Cameron is using this to justify the idea of Kazakhstan joining the EU.

Cameron's speech is a reminder of the weakness of the liberal approach to nationalism. Liberals have ditched the traditional idea of nationalism, in which people were connected together by a shared ethnicity - a common language, culture, race, religion and history - and instead opted for a civic nationalism, in which people were to be united by a common commitment to liberal political institutions and values.

But this liberal civic nationalism is unstable. If all that is needed to belong to a "nation" is a shared commitment to liberalism, then potentially anyone can join. If Kazakhstan proves to meet certain political criteria, then it can join a "European" union even if its population is majority Turkic and Muslim and even if its landmass is 90% in Central Asia. In other words, there are no limits to the boundaries of a civic nation and if there are no limits it becomes meaningless to talk of a particular national identity. You might as well just sign up to the UN and be done with it.

The Kazakhstan speech also shows yet again just how much David Cameron is committed to a liberal view of things rather than a traditionalist conservative one. We shouldn't be surprised by this. After all, Cameron has made his own commitment to liberalism very clear:

today we have a Conservative Party … which wants Britain to be a positive participant in the EU, as a champion of liberal values.

The European Union chose to display this poster

A reader has alerted me to the following poster. It seems to have been produced by the European Social Forum, a movement made up of various left-wing organisations. But what's significant is that it is displayed in the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union.

Europe4ALL poster

As you can see the poster says "We can all share the same star. Europe 4 All." The star is made up of the symbols of a wide variety of religions, including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Shintoism and Buddhism.

There are two things I'd say about the poster. The first is that the hammer and sickle, the symbol of Marxist communism, is included amongst the religious symbols. That suggests, as many of us have long supposed, that Marxism has the role for its adherents of a secular religion. It's interesting too that the EU feels so comfortable with Marxism that it would publicly display the hammer and sickle. Marxism imposed itself by revolutionary means and ruled through the use of show trials, labour camps and secret police. Does the EU really want to associate itself with such a discredited ideology?

The second thing to note is that the poster is not just calling for tolerance amongst religions. It is announcing that Europe is "for all". With a stroke of a pen, the idea of Europe being at least primarily for Europeans and European culture has been erased.

That means that we have Africa for Africans, Asia for Asians but Europe for everybody. That doesn't exactly strike me as a balanced and fair global outcome.

If you compare the poster being displayed by the European Union to the poster currently being promoted by the African Union the difference is striking:

The Africans are calmly asserting their identity, in contrast to the Europeans whose focus is more negatively on the deconstruction of their own unique identity and tradition.

Guardian: EU a sinking boat

I really do want the European Union project to fail. It's an attempt by the elites to gradually erase the sovereignty of the traditional European nations and peoples. So I thought it interesting that the left-liberal Guardian newspaper in England is feeling glum about the current prospects of the EU. An editorial about the sniping between the French and UK governments was subtitled:

So long as we are all in the same sinking boat, we would be wise to focus on rowing in the same direction.

And in the text of the editorial there's this:

Comrades, we are in the same boat. A sinking one.

Guardian readers, it seems, feel comfortable referring to each other as "comrades" - something which conjures up images of communist commissars from the USSR.

Will the EU go the same way as the USSR and collapse? It's certainly possible, but we shouldn't be too hopeful. The European elite believe in the EU as a moral cause and won't let go of it unless they really have to.

What else do prominent Swedish politicians want abolished?

No, it's not Swedish month here at Oz Conservative. I just couldn't help but include one more post about Sweden. This time it has nothing to do with the attempt to abolish sex distinctions in that liberal country. It's about the attempt to abolish Sweden itself.

Let me start with a photo of Tanja Bergkvist, the conservative Swedish blogger. Why is she making a point of holding up a Swedish flag? Because it was recently Swedish National Day. Tanya pointed out at her blog that some political Swedes have been unwilling to celebrate their national culture. One newspaper recently tried to reassure them that it was OK to do so:

Tomorrow is National Day. A day causing more anxiety among the public in Sweden is hard to find...

... Long established common frame of reference that creates belonging and security. Herring, Midsummer, Lucia, meatballs and the right of public access. That some of these things are also available elsewhere is less important. For many, they are equal to the place on earth they call home. It is Sweden.

The Swedish culture is just as rich, exciting and worth protecting as Somali dance, or Persian New Year. Especially on a day like June 6. Being proud of their country's history is not the same as to violate others'. So let us celebrate Sweden tomorrow. Without anxiety. She is the host, Mother Svea.

Well, at least one newpaper is encouraging Swedes to celebrate their own culture. That's a big improvement on an article printed on Swedish National Day back in 2001. Birgitta Ohlsson, the current Swedish EU Minister, used the day to promote the abolition of Sweden:

Swedish Minister for World State

Abolish Sweden!

Blue and yellow banners, royalist significant fjäskeri and patriotic whirl of happiness. Today in the Swedish National Day, we are supposed to be good citizens to pay attention to our nation. The most enthusiastic become pilgrims to the homesteads, sing the national anthem and celebrate as if it were a close relative who completed the 50th. But what is celebrated, anyway? Democracy and openness that characterizes this part of the world? By no means. Rather, we see an automatpatriotism and conservative passion of the nation state. Despite that chance determines where a person is born, a nation-state is rarely the ideal decision-making level and the world becomes more globalized keeps mankind desperately stuck in the nation. This phenomenon has downsides. "Nationalism is a children's disease, the measles of mankind", said Albert Einstein . Einstein was a convinced world federalist, an idea from ancient times to explain that people are members of a universal community.

It is time for us who call ourselves citizens of the world to dust off world federalism as a vision for a more just world by pursuing a global union of federal government. Every country must give up parts of their national sovereignty. Through a global legal order can people conflict be resolved peacefully. A global law be passed by a democratically elected world parliament, and upheld by the World Police. The idea of peace is central in world federalism as well as the belief in international law and our common responsibility to ensure that human rights are respected everywhere.

Albert Einstein's analogy between nationalism and childhood diseases is apt. They are both difficult to cure. We may disagree about what means to use in battle. But we know that in both cases await any healthier in the end. The World Federation is not a utopia - but a goal of practical politics. Maybe I'm a naive reformer.

Birgitta Ohlsson,
Federal Chairman of the Liberal Youth (LUF)

You might think that writing such stuff would disqualify you from representing your country. Not so in Sweden. Birgitta rose through the ranks of the Liberal People's Party to become a minister in the current coalition government.

The Liberal People's Party is strongly in favour of the European Union. But note that in Birgitta Ohlsson's case this is not because of a love of Europe but because of a belief that society should move from nations to a world government. She sees herself as a citizen of the world rather than as a patriotic Swede.

Anyway, Sweden needs more of the Tanya and less of the Birgitta. Let's hope it moves in the right direction in the years ahead.

The Greek crisis

The Melbourne Age has run as its main opinion piece today a column on the Greek crisis. Unusually for The Age the piece, by Simon Jenkins, has a hint of traditionalism about it. Jenkins's argument is that closer European union is a mistake because it is an attempt to force uniformity on significantly different cultures:

Closer European union, so called, was a bad idea for precisely the reason now seen on the streets of Athens. It was an attempt by a supranational economic authority to supersede national democracy. Bluntly, it assumed the commercial culture of ''greater Germany'' could be imposed on a wide variety of cultures by virtue of geographical propinquity. Countries with a high propensity to work and save would discipline those with a lower one. Banks would finance it all. It was fantasy born of utopia, the perfect precondition for a sovereign credit bubble

He writes too:

The lesson is clear. Sovereign states with distinct political cultures should never surrender control over internal affairs to foreign agencies

Federation can make sense when people share a common tradition, as was the case when the Australian states federated. But that's not so much the case in Europe. The English have a long history together distinct from the Russians who are again distinct from the Spanish. The European project ought to have been one of co-operation between sovereign nations rather than an imposed, top down, bureaucratic move toward federation.

Is the UK a country or a company?

David Cameron has shown his hand early. The British "Conservative" PM has declared that he wants to be at the forefront of international efforts to get Turkey into the European Union.

That's a radical policy. There are 72 million Turks, nearly all Muslim, who will end up with the right to move to the UK if Turkey is allowed to join. Turkey is not historically a part of the West, so it will mean establishing a precedent of Western countries dissolving themselves in a federation with non-Western ones.

Why would Cameron want to do this? Liberals like Cameron see society as being made up of millions of autonomous wills. But how can a society of competing wills be harmoniously regulated? The answer of right-liberals is that the hidden hand of the free market can regulate our self-directed purposes for the overall good of society.

So there is a focus on Economic Man and his activities in the free market - as this is what is thought to successfully harmonise individual "freedom" (i.e. autonomy).

What becomes authoritative, as a principle of social administration, are market outcomes. Countries are governed as if they were companies.

So back to the right-liberal Cameron. His first reason for wanting Turkey to join the EU? He thinks it will be good for the economy:

I ask myself this: which European country grew at 11% at the start of this year? Which European country will be the second fastest growing economy in the world by 2017? Which country in Europe has more young people than any of the 27 countries of the European Union? Which country in Europe is our number one manufacturer of televisions and second only to China in the world in construction and in contracting?...

That is the first reason I am here today and it is why I have chosen to come to TOBB, right in the heart of the Turkish business community.

And who does Cameron think opposes Turkish membership? Again, he sees things along economic lines. He imagines that the opposition comes from "protectionists" who fear free trade:

Every generation has to make the argument for free trade all over again and this generation will be no different. As we build our economic relationship there are some who fear the growth of a country like Turkey, who want to retreat and cut themselves off from the rest of the world. They just don’t get it...

So let me tell you what we are going to do to beat the protectionists. We are going to work harder than ever before to break down those barriers to trade that still exist, to cut the global red tape, like by streamlining customs bureaucracy and to work towards completing the trade round that could add $170 billion to the world economy...

We are welcoming new business to Britain. And we are delighted that so many Turkish people are visiting, studying, and doing business so successfully in the United Kingdom.

Today the value of our trade is over $9 billion a year. I want us to double this over the next five years. We cannot let the protectionists win the argument.

He is blind to the idea that the UK might exist for purposes other than trade. Questions of culture, of religion, of tradition, of distinct nations of people - all these are reduced to possible impediments to free trade that must not be allowed to interfere with running society along "rational" market lines.

And so we get to see the passionate side of Cameron, the Cameron who is angered by the idea that pesky issues of culture and civilisation might get in the way of economic objectives:

it makes me angry that your progress towards EU membership can be frustrated in the way that it has been...

I will remain your strongest possible advocate for EU membership and for greater influence at the top table of European diplomacy. This is something I feel very strongly and very passionately about. Together I want us to pave the road from Ankara to Brussels.

At least Cameron has shown decisively, early in his Prime Ministership, that he is a radical right-liberal rather than a genuine conservative. This must surely make it clear to the base of the Conservative Party that they must either rebel against the party leadership or else leave and build up another party or another political movement.

I don't want to always be presenting the views of those who betray. So I'll finish by linking to someone I don't know much about, except that he is a Conservative Party MEP who has written a good reply to Cameron: If Turkey joins the EU, we should leave. Roger Helmer is proof that it's possible to have a background in business and still put national sovereignty first.

A history of crossed lines

I had dinner with friends last week and caught up with an academic couple I've known for years. They are both solidly left-liberal in their politics, though traditional in their family life.

The conversation turned to the issue of the European Union. The left-liberal couple didn't express opposition to the EU, but they did take the view that some parts of Europe had a closer affinity than others and were therefore more suited to be joined together.

I wanted to see if I could push their Euroscepticism a bit further, so I pointed out that there was support for extending the borders of the European Union much further, to Turkey and even to northern African countries. The lack of natural affinity would then be even more marked.

Their response? They laughed dismissively and claimed that it would never happen. The same thing happened when I followed up by mentioning plans to form a Pacific Union, modelled on the EU, in our own region. They knew far less of these plans than I did and wouldn't entertain the idea that such a plan would ever go ahead.

It was as if they had drawn a line in the sand within which liberalism would be contained.

The problem is that this line in the sand is imaginary. There is nothing within liberal politics to keep it within certain limits. Over time, liberalism will be taken to its logical end point.

The left-liberal couple somehow wanted to reconcile contradictory things. They wanted to continue to comfortably identify with left-liberalism, perhaps as this serves a particular function for them, as a marker of both class status and membership of a progressive moral elite. They also wanted, though, to set limits on what would be lost to a liberal politics - they didn't want natural, traditional, historic boundaries to be entirely overthrown.

This just won't work. What is really needed are people who are so committed to a realistic view of where things are headed, that they don't dodge a recognition of what is going to be lost. Such people will at least avoid contradictions; they will either stick with liberalism knowing what the long-term costs will be, or they will choose to give up the comforts of a liberal identity in order to help conserve significant aspects of their own tradition.

The Bahai vision of unity

I was walking through a local arcade recently when I came across a pamphlet from the Bahai church.

I'd heard of the Bahais before but didn't know much about them. I was surprised to discover just how intensely liberal the Bahai faith is.

The Bahai church originated in Persia in the mid-nineteenth century. It operates now in many countries, including America and Australia, and claims a membership of around 6 million.

The central tenet of the Bahai faith is the unity of mankind. The idea seems to be that as God made us out of a single substance we are to aim at a kind of single identity.

Thus one of the Bahai prophets is recorded as saying:

Since we have created you all from one same substance it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land, that from your inmost being, by your deeds and actions, the signs of oneness and the essence of detachment may be made manifest.

The result of this belief is that Bahais must attempt to transcend particular forms of identity in favour of a single universal one. As the Bahais themselves put it:

Bahais see unity as the law of life ..."

Guided and inspired by such principles, the Bahai community has accumulated more than a century of experience in creating models of unity that transcend race, culture, nationality, class, and the differences of sex and religion, providing empirical evidence that humanity ... can live as a unified global society.

What's interesting is that the Bahais have arrived, through their religious beliefs, at a similar political outlook as Western liberals. Western liberals also want the individual to transcend particular forms of identity, as these are believed to impede our self-creation through individual will and reason.

In fact, Bahai writings sound remarkably like liberal ones, promising that the abolition of particular distinctions will bring about peace, liberation, equality and progress.

The thing is, though, do we really want to abolish particular forms of identity? Would we really want to live in a world in which, according to the Bahais, there would only be "one common fatherland," "one universal langauge," and the abolition of anything, including "cultural expression" which would make one portion of humanity "intrinsically distinct from another portion."

Think about what this would mean. We would no longer be able to enjoy a special sense of connection to our own particular national tradition, nor appreciate contact with other distinctive national cultures.

We would no longer be able to enjoy the more positive aspects of gender difference, nor identify in a positive way with our own sex (one Bahai pamphlet specifically outlaws the practice of men identifying as being a "masculine soul in a male body").

We would no longer be able to uphold the positive aspects of class cultures within our own countries. These class cultures traditionally provided standards of behaviour and distinctive forms of culture within a national community.

What we would have, instead, is a further descent into a society built on atomised, rootless, denatured individuals. Such societies seem to be easily dominated by a globalised commercial culture of little depth. They are not characterised, as the Bahais would have as believe, by a profound spiritual life.

In short, what the Bahai church offers is a religious pathway into liberal political activism. Even though the origins of Bahai lie outside Western liberalism, by asserting an absolute and abstract unity between people, the Bahai faith requires, just as Western liberalism does, the abolition of particular distinctions - an abolition of the very things which enrich our lives spiritually and which a church concerned for the spiritual life of its adherents should seek to support.

(This is one from the archive. It was first published at Conservative Central on 24/09/2003. It's the busiest few days of the year for me professionally, so I hope readers don't mind me cross-posting.)

Reality vs Orthodoxy

Minette Marrin has written a very interesting column on the issue of human rights.

She begins by suggesting that "the great post-war left-liberal ascendancy may be beginning to question its own certainties".

Her chief exhibit is David Goodhardt, a self-confessed "sensitive member of the liberal elite." Goodhardt recently abandoned left-wing orthodoxy by writing about human rights that:

People are not born with rights ... Rights are a social construct, a product of history, ideas and of institutions. You and I have rights not as human beings, but mainly because we belong to the political and national community called the United Kingdom, with its infrastructure of laws and institutions.

It's remarkable for someone from the left to declare such a thing. Usually the left trumpets the idea of abstract, universal rights. Minette Marin herself offers a good criticism of this left-wing tendency to base politics on claims of abstract rights when she writes,

This approach is incoherent ... it offers no explanation of what mysterious entity has conferred such rights or how they are to be enforced or who is to decide between conflicting rights.

There's one more worthwhile part of Minette Marin's column. She criticises the proposal that immigrants to EU countries should swear an oath of allegiance to EU laws, rather than to their nation of residence. She complains,

You almost have to pinch yourself at the folly of it. All across Europe, governments and bureaucrats and so-called community leaders have been forced, most painfully, to try to think more deeply and more critically about identity and the fragility of the ties that bind us in a shared sense of belonging and how best to strengthen them; their lazy, unexamined platitudes about immigration and celebrating diversity have been blasted, quite literally, away.

And what does Brussels come up with? A proposal that is quite astounding in its lack of the slightest understanding of feeling, sentiment, social solidarity, place, custom, ritual, symbolism or national tradition ...

This is not quite traditionalist conservatism, as it doesn't recognise ties of kinship as being one important aspect of national identity. It does, though, realistically accept the fact that questions of identity and belonging are important to individuals, can't be taken for granted and require a respect for the traditional life of a community.

Geert fights back

This man has backbone. Geert Wilders is a Dutch MP who has been under police protection after receiving death threats from Muslims. He has now launched a political manifesto and plans to establish a new political party.

The manifesto doesn't really challenge the theoretical underpinnings of liberalism - not surprising for a politician who has recently left the Dutch Liberal Party.

Nonetheless, Geert Wilders' manifesto really does represent a shakeup of the complacent liberal consensus in The Netherlands. Consider the following extracts:

"I don't want an elite of cowardly and scared people to keep this country hijacked any longer.

"Our history forces us to a struggle that is not without engagement, but which is most necessary. That struggle is about the continuation of The Netherlands as a recognizable nation, a country that is on the point of saying goodbye to its old roots and wants to trade them for multiculturalism, cultural relativism and a European super state and all that under the leadership of a political elite that long ago lost its way. Of that elite I declare myself independent. [Me: Is this not one of the best quotes from any Western politician of recent times? It deserves to be properly applauded. If we are to have any future it will be through our political representatives having such strong, clear but measured thoughts as these.]

"The clearance sale of Dutch interests and our own Dutch identity becomes very clear when one looks at how the politicians give away our sovereignty to a cast of bureaucrats in Brussels.

"The European Union should not expand any further. Turkey in, The Netherlands out.

"A special status for The Netherlands in the EU ... We have to keep our autonomy in immigration affairs. Never may we allow a civil servant in Brussels or a French politician decide how many immigrants we need to accept.

"Considering the danger and influx of drugs (criminality), and considering the widespread corruption and administrative incompetence of the Antilles, the government should strongly promote the Antilles no longer being a part of the Dutch kingdom.

"The seizure of The Netherlands' population by an alienated elite shows also in the nonchanlant way politicians handle a problem that most people find very important: crime and safety.

"We have to get rid of the idea that civil servants in The Hague should make the curriculum for all the schools. Let the parents and teachers determine the content of the education and let the subsequent educational institutes freely select their students.

"Islamic schools may not be founded. Different situations don't need to be treated equally.

"We have to deny the use of our civil rights to those (Islamic) radicals who want to eliminate our constitutional state and civil rights.

"...no more asylum seekers should be allowed to enter; all political refugees should be helped in the region. [Me: I've been arguing this for a long time. We best help both refugees and host communities by resettling refugees safely in the most compatible areas. Settling refugees in entirely foreign cultures takes away an important part of their identity, which is especially cruel for the second generation who have no say in the matter.]

"Not only should radical imams leave the country, we should also undertake much firmer action to close radical mosques ... Financing by radicals - such as salafist groups out of Morocco or Wahhabist groups out of Saudi Arabia - should be prohibited.

"The Netherlands is full ... That is why we have to limit immigration and we have to close the borders for non-western immigrants ... for at least five years. Marriage immigration based on marriages between nephews and cousins will be prohibited.

"Getting Dutch nationality will be less easy."

(A full translation of the manifesto can be found here.)

A real danger

Helmut Schmidt was a leader of the left-liberal SPD and Chancellor of Germany from 1974 to 1982. He recently gave an interview to a Hamburg newspaper in which he spoke freely about his attitudes to Turkey joining the EU.

He told the newspaper that though he supported favourable trade deals for Turkey, he opposed Turkish membership of the EU. Why? His answer was as follows:

I'm against it because it means giving free movement to Europe for 70 million Turks. If Verheugen were to say yes to the entry of Turkey, but without emigration, then it would be a different situation. But I haven't heard that either from him or from the members of the European Parliament. Secretly though they're hoping for a change in the situation, so that the free movement doesn't need to be adhered to. They're just not saying it openly.

Helmut Schmidt was then asked why he was so much against the provision for free movement. He replied:

The living standard in Turkey is fundamentally lower not only in relation to Western Europe but also even to the new entrant countries. The European diplomats have been deceived because they only know Istanbul, Ismir or Ankara. But they don't know Turkey. And this enormous difference in living standard will lead to emigration. We know this from history.

Helmut Schmidt is being clear-sighted in making these observations. If Turkey joins the EU then there will be a mass immigration of Turks into European countries, especially into northern Europe. This will lead to a radical change in the demographic makeup of Europe. It's possible that countries like Holland will be propelled even more quickly toward an Islamic majority.

For evidence of this consider the following. The Melbourne Herald Sun reported this morning that, "A recent poll in Turkey revealed almost half of all Turks want to move to another EU country."

This poll result is made all the more credible when you consider what has happened to the small country town of Kulu, which is situated only 100km south of the Turkish capital of Ankara. Kulu has a population today of 34,800. Yet, 35,000 of its residents have already packed up and moved to Europe, many of them to Stockholm in Sweden, with Holland being another favoured destination.

In other words, even with some immigration restrictions in place more than half of the town's population has shifted to Europe. So if Turkey's population is already at 70 million (and growing rapidly) it's more than likely that many millions, perhaps tens of millions, of Turks will move to Europe when Turkey is finally admitted to the EU.

It will be very difficult for the smaller EU countries, like Sweden, Holland and Denmark to absorb such an immigration stream without very radical changes to their population makeup.

Meanwhile, another small northern European country, Norway, has been targeted for staying out of the EU. A propaganda campaign for the EU, aimed at children, features a "Captain Euro" who battles for a "Europe without borders" against the residents of a country closely resembling Norway, who are depicted as "evil dirty terrorists".

Finally, there is the question of why so many European leaders are said to privately oppose the free entry of Turks into Europe, but are unwilling to act on these private opinions. I think part of the explanation is that these politicians have committed themselves to a civic nationalism, rather than an ethnic one, and therefore find it difficult to intellectually justify their personal feelings on the issue.

An EU rollback?

At last some good news from Europe, and from Holland of all places. It seems that the campaign against the European Union might be having an effect, with the Dutch Government arguing for a return of powers from the EU to to its member countries.

It was reported in Saturday's Age newspaper that,

The Dutch Government has called for a significant return of powers from Brussels to European Union member countries, saying that European integration has gone too far and lacks popular consent ...

"There is a widespread sense of unease about Europe, about loss of national identity, and about an EU that increasingly intrudes into their everyday lives ...

"Is Europe really the best level at which to regulate landscape gardening?"