One aspect of the continued European financial crisis that will take another turn on Sunday, with the expected victory of Francois Hollande in France – a victory that could overturn EU fiscal policy – is the emerging challenge to the EU itself.
What was originally a crisis of the euro currency is increasingly becoming a crisis of the European Union. The once taboo issue of the breakup of the European Union has become a legitimate campaign issue. Those seeking a return to the nation-state framework have gained further traction.
A recent poll shows the United Kingdom Independence party, that calls for Britain to exit the European Union, scoring better than the Liberal Democrats in the coalition. Across the channel, Marine Le Pen made opposition to the European Union a key theme in her successful campaign to secure a third-place finish on the first ballot in the presidential election.
The anti-EU position will shortly be enunciated in the Dutch elections by the Party for Freedom that brought down the government because it opposed yielding to the economic dictates of Brussels.
The party’s leader, Geert Wilders, was in the United States this week to promote his latest book “Marked for Death”. Speaking to popular, conservative talkshow host Glenn Beck, Wilders predicted the imminent collapse of the European Union and claimed “Europe is the worst thing that ever happened to us.”
In an address in New York, Wilders combined the two major themes that he will present in the campaign: the fight against the creeping Islamization of Europe and a return to the nation-state framework.
To effectively debate the issue of Islam, Wilders wants European governments to legislate First Amendment free speech protection as practiced in the United States. He would reassert the superiority of Western values. He would restrict Moslem immigration and eject those who failed to respect the laws of the state.
In Wilders’ fourth point, the two issues come together in a call for a reassertion of national identities “The nation-state enables self-government and self-determination. This insight led the Zionists to establish Israel as the homeland of the Jews.”
“Our nations are the homes in which freedom and democracy prospers. This is true for the Netherlands. This is true for America. This is true for Israel.”
Although he believed that the outgoing Dutch government had accomplished many things and deserved his backing up to now, it still had not done away with the legacy of previous Dutch governments who had “signed away a significant part of our own sovereignty to the EU… A supranational institution run by unelected and undemocratic bureaucrats. The EU controls our borders and decides over most immigration rules.”
While the following quotation from Wilders’ speech is extraneous to the argument, it is too good to ignore and included as a treat to our readers.
But is Israel guilty of the plight of the Palestinian refugees? My answer is “No.” The Arab leaders are to be blamed – and Islam is to be blamed. We must speak the truth. The truth that Jordan is Palestine, the truth that Samaria and Judea are part of Israel, the truth that Jerusalem may not fall, the truth that Israel is the only democracy in a dark and tyrannical region, the truth that Israel is the linchpin of the West.
