The European Union’s summit last week has produced a rough agreement on a firmer “fiscal union,” capable of imposing credible budget controls on Greece, Italy, and other debtor-countries. The details have yet to be worked out, and the markets are unlikely to repose any great confidence in the deal. The deeper problem, however, is that no version of a fiscal union can save Europe or the euro. The principal authority for this proposition is Alexander Hamilton.
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Hamilton’s name is much in vogue these days in European capitals. Behold the bold visionary who talked a dysfunctional Confederacy into a closer union, assumed the states’ debts, and founded a powerful central bank: Europe needs his example and prescriptions. Alas, Hamilton’s admirers misunderstand him. He argued for a closer union of a particular kind — and against the kind of union they are contemplating.
You may want a league or alliance among independent states, Alexander Hamilton explained to his fellow citizens in Federalist 15. That would not be good for you, but at least “there is nothing absurd or impracticable in the idea.” Or you may want, as I do, a constitution and, under it, a government that governs you directly, as individuals, citizens, and taxpayers. What the sentient among you cannot want is the “political monster” of a “government over governments” rather than individuals; an “imperium in imperio.” Why is that so bad? Two reasons: democracy and the rule of law.
If you care about republican government and democratic accountability, you cannot have twelve states make rules for the citizens of a thirteenth. Unanimity is the only possible rule. That is the rule of the Articles of Confederation. However, it has rendered the central authority ineffectual and “imbecilic.”
If you care about the rule of law, a government over governments presents a nasty enforcement problem. “It is essential to the idea of a law that it be attended with a sanction,” and there are only two ways of inflicting it: “the magistracy,” meaning courts and their marshals, or the armed forces. The magistracy works splendidly vis-à-vis individuals. That is why individuals are “the only proper objects of government.” Governments aren’t. You cannot jail them, and the option of fining them also looks unpromising. (The States didn’t even pay the requisitions to which they agreed.) That leaves armed force — which a government over governments will probably lack, and which you wouldn’t want in any event.
By its very design, the EU presumes that all this is wrong. The EU is quintessentially a government over governments, and it relies, in a once-proud, now-suspect postmodern spirit, on mechanisms that fall outside Hamilton’s stark courts-or-guns analysis. Moral suasion, for example, informed by the urgency of a preventing a relapse into ancient, bloody rivalries. Intergovernmental processes, sustained by elite consensus. Cross-subsidies from German taxpayers to countries and constituencies that might otherwise fail to see the good sense of the system.
The European Union has been doomed to fail from the beginning because it is an unnatural union that goes against human nature and history. There cannot be a successful union of dozens of nations who have different nationalities, different languages, different cultures, different national interests, different governments, etc… It is simply impossible and no amount of delusions and not amount of regulations and policies by the socialist bureaucrats and politicians in Europe is going to change this basic fact.
You beat me to it. I knew I shouldn't have made lunch in the middle of typing. I will disagree with the impossible part. There is only a small simmer against the EU and EC and never a mention of the Courts. They give in, and will continue to. Their way of life has been a different course than ours. I do wonder how large a role that both World Wars, on their doorsteps, played. Then the current generations grew up within socialism.
There will be some union, and it will always try to grow. And it will always be an anathema to us.
Europe misses more than Hamilton. They are a top-down, as opposed to our bottom-up, work in progress. They only have positive liberties, and even that's being kind. It's becoming a tribunal technocracy, and I hesitate to use technocrat as it confers some sort of intelligence coupled with skillsets.
So the Hamilton rationale is simplistic and not a practical one. Neither is using the Confederation precursor to the Republic. While we are individuals, Europeans capitulate to the state. They attempted to comingle and subjugate nation-states with entire cultures, industries, financials, transportations, and centuries of history. We attempted a mutually beneficial compact for completely opposing reasons as the Europeans. You may substitute any 'founding father' and you would be correct.
There's already EU puppets in Greece and Italy now, but I don't believe the Germanic hype. I believe it's bogeyman and deflection, and now it has moved to the UK. Easier to be against something than for something. In the end, Europeans will continue to accept everything. It will be a never ending project as long as the majorities question nothing. Coming soon, Bill of Attainders and Ex Post Facto Laws.
I'm still flummoxed by the push for non-hydrocarbon electricity sources. Was their purpose the uniting under enviro such as the past 60 years? Was it to drown the states under debt? Or was it just the usual push for global governance thru carbon? Did they believe wind would work, seriously?
At the start of the new Republic, following the success of the War of Independence, was it not Alexander Hamilton who made an interesting statement along the lines of "as much capital as possible should be in the hands of the few rather than spread among the many" .
Hamilton had proposed that the new Republic reimburse the securities it owed to those who fought in the Revolutionary War at full price. Speculators heard of this, bought the securities from the Revolution’s fighters at a fraction of their cost, making large profits.
Much opposition arose in the newly established Congress, many wanting a fairer reimbursement for those whose families had actuallly fought. Some wheeling/dealing was carried out on this and other matters which were to have long term consequences for the new Republic.
Two of the most important were slave holding and the siting of the capital of the Republic in a swamp on the banks of the Potomac, rather than in Philadelphia,
So many people/families who fought and died for the Revolution were short changed for the benefit of few.
Other examples exist right up to the present. The most egregious being the 1980’s S&L, the 1990s LTCM and the Wall Street Tsunami leading to the GFC, that Global Financial Chicken coming home to roost with a large and noisome pile of economic, financial and fiscal ordure.
"the prospect of installing trusted federal bureaucrats or governments of unity in Sacramento or Springfield is not among them"..... Hah!
Just wait until one of the states goes bankrupt and the Feds need to impose discipline from outside - assuming that the Feds have learned any discipline of their own by then.
