At the Library of Law and Liberty, Dalrymple takes on the arguments for European federalism advanced by Luc Ferry in his book “Destructive Innovation”. Ferry says, for example, that an extensive European war fueled by nationalism is a realistic possibility and that union, imposed (needless to say) by European bureaucrats, is the solution. Dalrymple says this is absurd and that there is no prospect of Germany attacking France in the modern era (the unspoken premise of most federalists). According to Dalrymple, Ferry’s other arguments are made “with the characteristic looseness of European federalists”.
Feeble and sketchy as Ferry’s arguments are, no European federalist ever provides any better. They are trotted out with monotonous regularity, like the stories of someone with Alzheimer’s, and anyone who raises objections, however obvious and unanswerable, is immediately compared to a rabid nationalist, as if to be attached to a national identity were itself a symptom of hating everyone else. There are such rabid nationalists, to be sure. Forced federation is the best way of ensuring their increase in numbers and influence.
According to Ferry “It is no good complaining of a deterioration in the manners and levels of social civility of children when we distract them with elaborate electronics that replace conversation as the main means of human communication.”
Blaming the we-puppeteers of technology… just blame it on the Industrial Revolution. Don’t whatever you do blame it on the failure of millions of people to put moral chains on their appetites. I mean ‘chains’ for heavens sakes, that’s gotta be worse than ‘austerity’.