One Nation, Under God (WAS: OT lurk)

[kevin at limits.org]

On Fri, 4 May 2001, pynchon-l-digest wrote:
> ------------------------------
> From: "Jane O' Sweet" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
> 
> John Peacock wrote:
> > A while ago Ms Sweet implied that the EU was a Nation. You could get
> shouted at quite badly claiming that sort of thing around here. It's a
> hotly contested issue. Probably best to think of it, even at this late
> stage, as a trading bloc.
> 
> You could get your bra strap snapped over here for making
> such claims too. Of course we still have men carrying guns
> in Texas believing they are a Nation State like any in the
> EU, but these  United States of America, those United States
> of Mexico and those United Provinces of Canada are United by
> free trade and w/o it, we will have not only two Canada's,
> but 85 Nation States raising flags and marching over the
> fields of the poor. 

Terrance--
I don't know a plum durn thing about our continental neighbors, but the
United States of America are united by the Constitution.  To say that free
trade is what unites them is like saying that they are united by God or a
common heritage or the brave deeds of the men buried at Gettysburg or a
love of "Gilligan's Island" reruns -- it may be true, but it's also
meaningless from a political/governmental standpoint.

The European Union, on the other hand, is the recent ancestor of the
free-trade pacts that formed on that continent after WWII, starting with
the Be-Ne-Lux pact.  The EU and the USA were formed under different
circumstances, for different reasons, and their forms of government are
different.

As a side-note to a side-note, I'd like to point out that one of the main
blocks to increased unification in the EC/EU has been the UK's
unwillingness to surrender its sovreignity, which has led many on the
continent to claim that the UK is being manipulated by the USA to prevent
continental hegemony.  As The Dude would say, "There's a lot of issues
here, lots of ins and outs."

--Kevin Troy