Beware the steamroller
From Mr Richard Stead Sir: Mark Steyn (The war between America and Europe', 29 December) raises a valid point about the determination of the European elite to steamroller us all into a united and socialist union of their design. Nearly all the current wars on this planet stem from the collapse of just such political unions.
It is therefore of great importance that any move towards closer union with Europe is conditional on an overwhelming vote in favour. This is the area which the Conservative party should address: not to be anti-Europe, but pro-democracy.
To push irreversible change through on a narrow majority, when a week later the vote could go another way, is, I submit, inviting trouble in the longer term. From such unions were the troubles of Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Punjab and so on born.
Richard Stead
Acharacle, Argyll, Scotland
From Dr Marko Attila Hoare Sir: Mark Steyn is usually enjoyable to read, but his latest diatribe exceeds the bounds of the credible, even by the standards of the fashionable right-wing rant. So if the EIJ disallows capital punishment, then that is a restriction on national sovereignty, but if Israel illegally occupies the West Bank and Gaza for 34 years and denies their inhabitants all democratic rights, then that is all right? Or if EU countries ban the personal possession of firearms, then that is an intolerable restriction on personal freedom, but if Israel denies the Palestinians freedom of movement in their own country, bulldozes their homes and steals their water supply, then that is also all right? Perhaps Steyn can explain why he considers it wrong for EU countries to pay welfare to their own ethnic Arab citizens, but right for the US to subsidise Israel to the tune of $3 billion a year, not to mention Egypt. which, says Steyn, `pisses' its US subsidy away? Financing — through taxpayers' dollars — Israel's programme of colonial settlements on occupied Palestinian land, or Mubarak's corrupt dictatorship, is hardly in keeping with the US's self-image as the bastion of democracy and free-market capitalism.
If right-wingers wish to wage a heroic struggle for British national liberation against the EU's fishing quotas and metric measurements, couldn't they at least be consistent? If, as Steyn suggests, the Palestinians wish to run their country as a 'sewer', then that is ultimately their business, just as it is up to us if we wish to use the pound instead of the euro, murder foxes for pleasure, allow our star footballers to beat up Asian teenagers without having to go to prison, or preserve traditional British values in any other way.
Marko Attila Hoare
Robinson College. Cambridge
Previous page
