The view from Britain: comparing two constitutions, and our coming choice

**Posted by Phineas

While writing about the frightening proposal by former German Chancellor (1) Gerhard Schroeder for a fully-formed “United States of Europe,” the Telegraph’s James Delingpole made an astute observation about the differences between the United States Constitution and the European Union’s governing document:

In the US, they have a Constitution (one which the current administration would prefer to ignore, but still) which explicitly guarantees the constituent states in the Union the right to forge their own destiny. They can set their own local tax rates, their own speed limits, their position on social issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and marijuana consumption, and so on. This Constitution is what has made America great and Americans so free: and the two things are very much connected. When, for example, one state falls prey to rampant big government (eg California), there will always be other states offering a different sociopolitical model (eg Texas) – thus enabling free citizens of the Republic to vote with their feet. They will gravitate towards the model which best serves their needs – thus endorsing it – while fleeing the model they find less attractive, thus discrediting it. In this way bad political ideas cannot so easily take root in the US. Not at least so long as the Constitution is respected.

In the European Union, however, the Constitution serves exactly the opposite purpose. It is designed to give the constituent states as little freedom as possible to decide their own destinies; all decisions are deferred upwards to the controlling central authority; and when member states make the β€œwrong” decision, the EU superpower simply goes ahead and does what it wants regardless.

To give an example of this top-down control, the Library of the House of Commons in the UK estimates that fullyΒ half of Britain’s laws come, not from the democratically elected Parliament in London, but as directives handed down by the unelected bureaucracy in Brussels. Schroeder’s proposal, rather than creating a “more perfect union,” would instead cement into place a dictatorship of the nomenklatura.

One can’t help but notice also, and as Delingpole obliquely does above, that the Obama administration would very much like to institute that same Continental Model here — witness the actions of the EPA, the NLRB, and the FCC, just to name a few.

Keep that in mind come November, 2012. We won’t just be choosing a president, but the character of our union.

Footnote:
(1) And also a Putin crony. That should tell us all we need to know.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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