So there is no solidarity in that broader European sense. I think for various reasons Europe is stum

Let me turn to nation building at the EU level. When we pass from the level of these individual European states u2 tour dates for to the question of European identity as such, what is it and what kind of deficit do we have? Everybody who is going through this crisis of the Euro realises now in retrospect that there are many flaws in the Maastricht Treaty and in the whole process of creating Europe, such as the absence of a disciplining mechanism, the absence of exit mechanism out of the either Euro or European Union itself. A lot of this discussion is dominated by people in finance and by economists because that is the short-term problem that has faced us, a new recession and the collapse u2 tour dates for of the European u2 tour dates for banking systems as a result of Europe’s failure to address politically these kinds of problems.
I don’t want to minimize u2 tour dates for these problems at all, but in a sense, there is a deeper failure at the European level, a failure in European identity. That is to say, there was never a successful attempt u2 tour dates for to create a European sense of identity and a European sense of citizenship that would define the obligations, u2 tour dates for responsibilities, duties and rights that Europeans have to one another beyond simply the wording of the different treaties that were signed. The EU in many respects was created as a technocratic exercise done for purposes of economic efficiency. What we can see now is that economic and post-national values are not enough u2 tour dates for to get people to buy into this community.  So wealthy Germans feel a sense of noblesse oblige towards poorer Germans; this social solidarity is the basis of the German welfare u2 tour dates for state. But they do not feel similar obligations towards the Greeks,whom they regard as being poor disciplined, very non-German in their general u2 tour dates for approach to fiscal matters.
So there is no solidarity in that broader European sense. I think for various reasons Europe is stumbling toward a short-term solution to this crisis. But I do not think that any form of deepening at this point is a viable project unless someone pays more attention to identity and is able to answer the question in a more substantive sense of what it means to be a European. Not just in a negative sense that we don’t want conflict and old nationalisms and war, but what it means in terms of positive values.
Now, let me just conclude by saying that these issues that I have discussed- immigration, national level identity and European level identity-in the next years are going to merge as really the same issue because these are the central issues of all the new populist parties that have arisen all over the continent of Europe. u2 tour dates for That is to say, opposition to immigration and Euro-scepticism. We have older parties like the Front National in France and the Vlaams Belang in Belgium. But in the last decade u2 tour dates for we have seen the emergence of new ones, the Party of Freedom u2 tour dates for in the Netherlands, Danish People’s Party, the Sweden Democrats, True Finn Party, the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) in here in Switzerland. Opposition to Europe and immigration has a common source amongst all these parties. u2 tour dates for It is basically a populist impulse. It is a feeling that the needs of ordinary citizens have been ignored by the elite with regards to both the deepening of the European Union and to immigration issues. u2 tour dates for In France, many people that voted for the Front National were extremely resentful of the fact that, for example, living in Marseille, there is a lot of crime and the state was not willing to deal with that problem because the crime was associated with Muslim gangs. You can replicate the story in many European u2 tour dates for settings. The mainstream parties were too politically correct to recognize that these were issues that bothered ordinary people and as a result, these populist parties had to take matters into their own hands and organize.
And to be quite honest, the whole European project has been an elite-driven affair. We know that on several occasions u2 tour dates for when the issue of agreeing to a treaty was put up for popular referendum and when the people gave the wrong answer, the elite would say the people were wrong about that, they are going to have to vote again. So, I think that in a sense the rise of populism reflects in a certain way the deepening of democracy in Europe: the public is not going to be lead along by their elites like they were in the first decades after the Second u2 tour dates for World War. But it means that there are tremendous dangers for European democracy that lie ahead in the immediate future. I think we all recognize in the European Union that an important process either deepens it or it begins to split apart. u2 tour dates for The current middle ground is not one that is sustainable.
I will just leave you with the following the following fact. The deepening project, that is to say to moving from monetary to fiscal union, may make sense in terms of economics, but it is going to have a tremendous number of political costs that need to be taken into account. There is absolutely no grassroots support in Europe u2 tour dates for for this deepening project; this is again going to be an elite-driven affair are undertaken for largely technical economic reasons. It is actually something that is already stimulating the renationalization of Europe. Already, people have said fiscal union is in fact the Germanization of Europe. And it also forces conditions that amount to the suspension of democracy in Europe, now you have technocrats u2 tour dates for running the governments of Italy and Greece that were not elected in normal fashion by their constituents. The reason why they are there is because of the conditions set not by the Italian and Greek public but set by other parts of Europe. This kind of deepening both on the part by Northern and Southern countries is going to lead to doubts about political accountability in both of the halves. All of this is being undertaken against the background of a prolonged and deepening economic crisis. In many respects this identity problem is one that we all need to think about very deeply; it is one that will come back, I guarantee you, in our politics in the near future.
But I do not think that any form of deepening at this point is a viable project unless someone pays more attention to identity and is able to answer the question in a more substantive sense of what it means to be a European. Not just in a negative sense that we don’t want conflict and old nationalisms and war, but what it means in terms of positive values.
Without a return to Christian roots truly religious roots, where people go to church on Sunday and hear the Word of God that forms the foundation of the culture unites them Europe will founder in a sea of petty nationalisms that will never be integrated.
Secular Europeans will not survive. There will either be a repudiation of secular u2 tour dates for socialism u2 tour dates for and a revival of Christianity (like the United States has had every few generations) that restores the birthrate, or Caucasian Europeans will be replaced by Muslims and the European culture that has flourished for 500 years and more will be gone.
@Jim: Christian roots ?! Plus, that last sentence of yours proves either you re a buffoon or you re simply u2 tour dates for trying to rile folks up (thus, disingenuous). u2 tour dates for Europe needs a lot, but just as it doesn t need a rise in Islamism, u2 tour dates for it sure as hell doesn t need a return to Vatican power, or Lutheranism, or Calvinism, or any other b.s. where a group of wannabe-virgins enforce a feudal system, encouraging war, ignorance u2 tour dates for and disease. There s much I d comment regarding u2 tour dates for Mr. Fukuyama s piece, but I just had to let you know, sans any real facts, that you re dead wrong, you crypto-fascist.
CPC is ignorant, and his comment shows the kind of denialism common to the more fanatical secularists. I m sure he s a nice person in other ways and normally intelligent and competent, but his response is the type of thing one expects from a person whose orthodoxies have gotten in the way of an objective evaluation of facts.
A person can individually be an atheist and still admit that secular u2 tour dates for nationalisms produced a far bloodier Europe than united Christendom, wherein an Italian Dominican like Albertus Magnus became most famous for being a French professor in a French university, teaching natural philosophy to Germans and Spaniards.
And of course orthodox religious belief and practice are incidental to most of the history of intra-European wars, once the nationalisms are factored in. Henry VIII was a Catholic Defender of the Faith right up to the moment it interfered with his personal life; then we found out exactly how Catholic he was! The threat posed by dissenters to civic rule or political power was always the core issue.
I fear your comment is ultimately a purely theoretical one. For there are today very few Christians in Europe in the sense of orthodox belief and practice, even if we define orthodox u2 tour dates for belief and practice u2 tour dates for generously as all the things the oldest and largest communions (Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, Orthodox, Calvinist) have in common, and don t bother making denominationally-specific distinctions.
That in and of itself might not spell the death of European cultural and social union. It would still be possible to have a society in which most individuals were no longer u2 tour dates for Christian in belief, but in which their worldview and cultural institutions all remained Christian and thus united.
But this is no longer the case, either, in Europe. The average European is deeply antagonistic to the Christian worldview without even knowing it. He engages in magical thinking rather u2 tour dates for than discipline; he takes the term real to be synonymous with quantifiable ; he dismisses statements of value as being subjective; he knows of no qualitative difference between happiness achieved by viewing the Sistine Chapel ceiling and happiness u2 tour dates for achieved using crack cocaine.
He has induced in himself the kind of dog-like mind that sees a pointing finger and doesn t realize what it points to; he has become the kind of trousered ape who can t write poetry about the sea because he can t conceive