Quote Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat View Post
Here's a nice dilemma for you, Maniac: do you prefer social rights for dispossed Germans, or do you prefer an end to Lisbon?
Basically, that is Klaus' offer. He will only agree to Lisbon, if the EU is willing to give up social rights for the three million expelled Germans from the Czech Republic.

As to my own answer: No! The EU is here to put a final end to nationalist animosity. The Germans have social rights, like all other peoples. Incorporating Germany into a democratic Europe, and currently incorporating East Europe into a democratic Europe is the very business of the EU.
No to the Polish, Czech, Lithuanian (and their newfound friends, the UK Conservatives) demands to do WWII all over again.

Then again: well, we've given in to Poland and the UK too - Polish and British subjects will remain unprotected by European human rights provisions. We've given in to the Irish too - no abortion for raped teenage girls, American corporations retain their favourable tax rates, and Ireland does not have to pick up its share of the tab for defense.
So we might as well give in to the Czech anti-EU demands too - no social rights for the three million expelled Germans.

Though frankly, I would've prefered the anti-EU / anti-Lisbon crowd to have more 'enlightened' demands than all of these. (Like more human rights and democracy, instead of less)
a wonderful example of national interest at work, pah to the internationalists.
and another example of a problem britain doesn't have, i.e. dangerous overlaps of cultural and national boundaries created by previous conflict, and a potential cause for future conflict.

WW2 again? bombing Dresden, marching through france, what a ridiculous notion that anyone should wish to do that again. might be an even bigger example of hyperbole than me branding the EU the EUSSR.

All fantastic examples of objectives and expectations shaped by the shared religious cultural and social history of the separate sovereign nations, and you wonder that these objectives and expectations are so disparate between nations?

The UK has human rights, it had them before the EU started getting its knickers in a twist over the issue, and as for democracy; my view is well known that representative democracy is best effected between a Demos and a Kratos that share the same social and cultural history, where the Demos is trusted by the Kratos not to introduce demagogues, and where the Kratos is always answerable to the Demos as a ward against tyranny.