Europe

[Furunculus]

Sorry, Furunculus, but sometimes I feel like you and I live in alternative realities.

What you do is, you take a history that is completely off to begin with, drastically simplify it, and then from this simplification deduce an entire world system. It has no bearing on reality.

Your Britain - militaristic, autarkic, autistic, impervious, closed and blind to diverging opinions - this UK you perceive to exist and wish to preserve, does not exist. And, even worse, if it would exist, it would resemble North Korea. Not the UK. Not even a sovereign UK, or a previous UK, or an idealised UK.

i was responding to adrian, specifically:

I don't know what watered-down version of sovereignty you adhere to, but it doesn't mean much to the rest of the world.

and speculating as to why the sovereignty to which i admire has so little-resonance in his world-view.

and quite the opposite, i perceive very readily that britain has historically been very open to the world, and has benefited from this immensely. i support the right of free movement within the EU, my girlfriend is polish, i am all for letting turkey into the EU. 'my' britain is not closed. by the same token the accusation of autarkism is ridiculous, i am the first person to shout for free trade, something which i rarely hear from your location. i simply have no wish to be governed by those who have no demos-cratos link to myself.

as to militaristic, yes i believe the first duty of the nation state is the provision of internal and external security, and thus a subject of budgetary prominence, however my choice would to be rebuild the navy, not create endless napoleonic regiments to conquer the 'heathens'. and oddly enough i get the impression that people here look to the EU from of fear of outsiders and the future, in which case it is their countries they should be badgering about defence spending.

but most importantly, what does this have to do with the question of whether britain needs to be a part of a federal europe.