Nationalism is not a dirty word. Love of country, of culture and of shared values are what hold people together. Nationalism doesn’t imply a hatred or even a dislike of other nations so why is this idea that nationalism is somehow ‘wrong’ being touted by the president of France – perhaps it has something to do with maintaining the European Union as a desirable entity.
The Common Market was a desirable goal and European nations including Britain happily joined. The European Union is a different creature – the mutant child of the Common Market - and it comes with so many strings attached that Britain decides to leave. Those ‘strings’ are become a net from which it’s difficult to extricate oneself and that situation is deliberately contrived.
Why would any nation give up the right to create its own laws and then cede them to some outside entity … it wouldn’t yet it’s happened. Divorce is difficult but that doesn’t mean that it’s therefore not worth pursuing, not when the marriage is a sham.
A Common Market is a scaled up version of any local market, something to which one is free to come and go as one sees fit and which is as it should be. The European Union doesn’t have the same benefits although a case can be made that it does.
When I was in North Wales I saw a rather wonderful reconstruction of some Bronze age dwellings – an enterprise which I was told was funded by the European Union. ‘Excellent’ thought I but those funds were sent by Britain to the European Union in the first place so why can’t Britain fund that enterprise without the need for an outside bureaucracy – a bloated, unelected entity which doles out funds as it sees fit.
Open borders are an idea without merit. Get a passport if travel is the aim. Business manages well enough without open borders and if the suggestion is that business will leave Britain … blackmail is an odious tool with which to threaten.
And then there is the idea now mooted that there’s a need for a European army. To guard against what? Russia? Who benefits by these ideas apart from the weapons industry?
Do any of us want more unending war? I don’t.
In my lifetime I’ve opened my house to a few people in need. In each case I’ve ended up having to ask them to leave. A situation which caused much conflict. I don’t see the aristocracy or the wealthy of Europe opening their houses to those in need. Quite the opposite so why should open borders, in that wider sense, be touted as desirable.
A dust storm clouds and colours the sky here today. Nothing I can do about it and it will pass. It used to be that there was nothing one could do about the weather but weather modification is real and the chemtrails which often cover the skies of many nations bear witness to this. It’s another topic but it is related even if it’s only by virtue of people not seeing what’s in front of their eyes.
Britain is not the only country having second thoughts about the European Union and, difficult though it is to leave, a Common Market – to my mind - remains a better concept to pursue.