Why "Non" Doesn't Really Mean "No" and A New Photoblog!

By: UnrepentantNewDealer

Bonjour! Parleyvu Francaise? Thought not. Nah, me neither. Not very fluently, anyway.

Anyway, I recently returned from 22 days in Europe. I was in Paris when I started this post, I tinkered with it Brussels, and I'm finishing it up here almost a month after starting it because, unfortunately, the abundance and inexpensiveness of internet cafes in Europe really doesn't live up to the hype. Plus, the home computer has broken since I got back on June 8 and my computer is still in the shop. I had thought to set up a "travelblog" for daily entries while in Europe, but again, the internet cafes are pretty expensive and hard to find. Anyway, I have started posting the pictures I took in Europe on a Photoblog!

"2005: A European Odyssey In Pictures" will chronicle my exploits in Europe in May/June 2005. On it you will find professional-quality photographs, mixed in with my own trademark irreverent commentary. It's like being in Europe... with a particularly quirky tour guide. It's still a work in progress, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. Go check it out; I update it frequently. Don't be a stranger now, y'hear?

I guess a brief recap would be in order. So, without further ado,

Recap

I left RDU on Tuesday, May 17 and flew to London Heathrow via JFK in New York. I stayed in London until Saturday, May 21. I then took the chunnel (or Channel Tunnel, to those not in the know) to Paris. In Paris, I stayed with my cousin Ryan who teaches at the American School in Paris. She lives in the Abbesses (pronounced "Abess") neighborhood of Paris. It's about halfway up Paris' largest hill. At the top is the famous Sacre Coure church and the Montmartre district where Picasso and Dali and a bunch of other starving artists lived back in the late nineteenth century (About a block down the road from Ryan's apartment is the apartment where Vincent Van Gogh lived with his brother Theo!). Her apartment building dates back to the 18th century, so I like to imagine Voltaire or Balzac calling it home. Oh, yeah... at the bottom of the hill....um.... Moulon Rouge and the red light district of Paris. (Not that I had any reason to go down there, of course!)

Aside from touring Paris, I took side trips out: 1 day at Versailles, a 4-day trip to Normandy in Caen and Bayeux, and 5 days touring the Benelux countries in Brussels and Amsterdam. On May 30, Memorial Day back in the States, I went on a guided tour of the D-day beaches. Omaha Beach was disappointing. I could have been standing on Wrightsville Beach or Nags Head, as there was no indication that the battle for the fate of Europe had been fought here. All in all, it is an ordinary looking, if overly-touristy, beach. Pointe-du-Hoc and Longues sur Mer were cool, though. So was Bayeux with its magnificent cathedral and tapestry. I have more to say about all of these things, on my Photoblog!

A Lackluster Defense

By now, I'm sure everyone is aware that the French electorate rejected the proposed EU Constitution in a referendum on Sunday, May 29 while I was in Bayeux in Normandy in France. Encouraged, the Dutch did the same in their referendum. Now all the Euro-skeptics and scoffers are chortling with glee: "See, look, told you the European Union was a pipe dream. Once again, a triumph for clear-eyed realism over whoolly-headed, naive idealism." Reminds me of the people who dismiss global warming as a myth every time it snows. In the long run, their foolish shortsightness leads them astray.

First, why did the French vote against the E.U. Constitution? There's more than enough blame to go around. Perhaps the bulk of the blame should go to the "Oui" campaign led by the French government. First of all, the matter shouldn't have even been put to the people in the first place. Referendums, especially on the national level, are pointless anyway. In a representative democracy, the people can't vote on every issue, so they elect leaders to do the deciding for them. A politician can either do the right thing or whatever the politically-popular thing to to do at that moment might be, but either way, the leader makes the decision. He or she then has to face the consequences of that decision at the polling place. That is how the people have input into the process in a representative democracy like France or the U.S.

It seems to me that referendums are a cowardly tactic that politicians use to avoid making the difficult decisions that come with leadership. So, French Prime Minister Jacque Chirac can say, "Well, I would have signed the E.U. Constitution, but my people didn't want me to." This is self-serving nonsense, compounded by the fact that Chirac and the "Oui" supporters gave a very lackluster defense of the treaty. If you want the people to vote a certain way, you try to convince them that it is in their best interest to do so. At this, Chirac and his allies failed miserably, precisely from lack of trying. I arrived in Paris 8 days before the referendum. "Non" signs and posters were everywhere abundant. Not until the Tuesday before the referendum did I see a single "Oui" sign. The "Oui" camp made a last-minute effort, with "Non" and "Oui" signs almost reaching parity by Referendum Sunday. But it was too little, too late.

Now, after 10 years with him at the reins of power, most French seem want Chirac to step down; indeed, many French voted against the referendum as a vote of no confidence in Chirac. But, it appears the French people are out of luck. Looks like they'll have to settle for a new prime minister in de Villepin, a man who has never held elected office, a mere reshuffling of the deck chairs as the ship of state goes under.

Chirac apparently has no principles that cannot be jettisonned if they prove unpopular. He has taken a new tone since the referendum, dismissing the E.U. Constitution he so recently advocated as being "Anglo-Saxon free market capitalism" and "destructive of France's social system" (neither of which I would find to be a particularly bad thing, but I'm getting ahead of myself.)

Of course, Chirac was not the sole reason the referendum failed. Overwhelmingly, businessmen supported the E.U. Constitution as being good for business. Yet, in the face of loud and vociferous opposition from the working classes, the business leaders of France lost their resolve. In the end, business support was timid.

So not only were the loudest voices in opposition to the Constitution, there were few prominent champions of a "Oui" vote, none of them articulate. What struck me the most was that there was a complete lack of articulate spokespersons for the "Oui" camp. I couldn't help but compare the referendum for the E.U. Constitution with the state referendums for the U.S. Constitution. People are conservative. By that, I mean not in a political sense, but merely that people get comfortable with the status quo and dislike change, no matter how necessary. It seems doubtful that the U.S. Constitution would have passed if it had not been for the Herculean efforts of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and others who swung public opinion around in favor of the constitution by the power of their arguments. There were no Hamiltons or Madisons in France last month, only scared, tired old men who saw the coming defeat in the pre-referendum polls and resigned themselves to their fate.

How "Non" Pulled it off

By contrast, the "Non" campaign did many things right. They didn't have articulate spokesmen, but they did have one advantage the "Oui" camp did not: they were adept at sowing fear. I was struck by the similarity between the Bush '04 and Non '05 camps. Both won through fear-mongering. But who are these "Non" voters anyway? The success of the "Non" camp is how they were able to bring together both the far right and the far left in an unholy coalition.

The smaller of the two factions was certainly the right wing contingent: The people who voted for the xenophobic Le Pen in 2002, the right wingers were nationalists and nativists. A principled nationalist case could certainly be made that the E.U. Constitution was the first step down the road to a superstate that trampled on French sovereignty (the E.U. Constitution would have created an E.U. Foriegn Minister, meaning that the E.U. nations would have had to coordinate their foriegn policy, for example).

However, I never heard that argument being made. The right-wing argument was always that the E.U. was expanding too fast. Turkey is set to begin acession negotiations for joining the E.U. in October. They are expected to take at least 10 years to meet all of the free market and human rights reforms necessary to join. (If you ask me, the more respect for reasonably free markets and human rights spread in that part of the world, the better.)

But.... here's what really offends the European right-wingers.... the Turks are Muslims! The fact that Turkey is a secular parliamentary democracy is irrelevant in this view, as is the fact that the E.U. Constitution doens't mention Turkey and has nothing to do with Turkey's acession talks. Europe is Christian (and you better believe the right-wingers are pissed that the E.U. Constitution doesn't make Christianity the official religion of the E.U.). Turkey is Muslim. Turkey has a higher birthrate than western Europe, so if you let Turkey into the E.U., Turkey will soon become the master of the E.U. and all of Europe will be presumably be absorbed into a reconstituted Ottoman Empire, as the evil heathens undo Charles' Martel's victory at Tours in 732. Of course, the Turks will have help, as more than 10% of French are Muslim. About the only thing missing from this paranoid conspiracy theory is either a call for a new crusade or setting up concentration camps. One gets the feeling we've been here before. I feel sorry for the poor Turks: they simply want the economic benefits that come with E.U. membership.

So, now that we've taken care of the right-wing xenophobic freaks, let's examine the left-wing entitlement addicts, the largest faction of the "Non" camp. I was really puzzled when I saw that most of the "Non" signs were being distributed by the French Communist Party and when I found out that most Socialists planned to vote "Non" despite the fact their party was officially in support of the constitution. Why would leftists be against the E.U. Constitution?

Turns out that the leftists aren't worried about the "Turkish Menace" as much as they are concerned about the "Polish Plumber". The symbol of the "Polish Plumber" became the centerpiece of the leftist Non campaign. Poland and a number of other Eastern European nations have joined the E.U. in the last several years. They have committed themselves to reforming their old Soviet-era state-managed economies for free market economies along the American and British model. The French and Germans, viewing themselves as the natural leaders of Europe, had assumed that the new E.U. countries would model their economies after the highly regulated socialist economies of France and Germany.

The real question is, would you? The Franco-German system appears to be a sweet deal for the worker: mandatory 35 hour work week, 1 month of vacation a year, very generous workers and pension benefits. Due to France's low birthrate, young couples are actually paid to have kids! Sounds too good to be true, you say? Of course it is. There is a happy medium of regulation, and economies that exist with less or more regulation are vulnerable. The French unemployment rate has hovered around 10% for the last 10 years since Chirac came into power. The German unemployment rate is even worse. Why is unemployment so bad? At least in part because businesses are not confined to staying in France. If the newer nations of Eastern Europe have fewer restraints on business so that it is cheaper to do business there, businesses will move there. It is a fundamental law of economics. So, France has two choices: it can either figure out a way to stay competitive, or it can remain in denial and watch the unemployment rate continue to rise ever higher. The French have chosen the latter.

The French voters, in voting "Non" to the E.U. referendum,were, in reality, not saying no the referendum but saying no the economic system that allows their jobs to be shipped to other countries and refuses to tolerate any country that overburdens its economy with red-tape. The French love their social benefits. When Chirac tried to make the 35 hour work week voluntary for some fields earlier this year, workers shut down Paris with strikes. The French seem not to realize that these entitlement programs are not a right, but a luxery they can no longer afford if they want to keep businesses in France and attract investment to remain competitive in the global economy. In the long run, these programs are unsustainable, because if businesses leave France, workers won't have jobs, so they won't be able to pay the high taxes that make the French social welfare system possible.

So, it seems that the voters of France voted against the E.U. constitution out of fear of losing their social benefits and government programs in a race to the bottom to stay competitive with less regulated economies. The E.U. Constitution, indeed the E.U. itself, became scapegoats for the larger issue of globalization. That is why the French speak with such venom about the "Anglo-Saxon free-market system." They see in it a fundamental threat to their way of life.

So, what comes next? The E.U. constitution, which was ratified by 10 nations, including by Latvia after the French and Dutch "Non" votes, is obviously dead. The E.U. will, of course, continue to function. None of the reforms of the E.U. Constitution were urgently needed. Only now, France has abdicated the leadership of Europe. With Britain set to take over the rotating E.U. presidency next month, with Chirac humiliated and forced to invite his popular free-market rival and likely sucessor Nicolas Sarkozy into his government, and with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder headed for near certain defeat in elections in September against the free-market Angela Merkel, and with the Eastern European nations still firmly committed to free-market reforms, it appears that within a year or two, Europe will be more or less unified around a free-market system and good relations with America. France may still hold to its rejection of free-market philosophy and may remain committed to making Europe a counterweight to America, but if it does so, it will do so alone.

Why Should We Care?

Perhaps you're wondering why I supported the E.U. Constitution. The Constitution was not perfect, not by a long shot. Our constitution is simple and short, taking only a good half hour to read. The E.U. Constitution was an ungodly 15 gajillion pages long, more or less. It was an unwieldy mess of articles designed to please every nation and special interest group. Unlike the U.S. Constitution, the E.U. Constitution required every E.U. nation to ratify it before it came into effect. Otherwise, France's rejection could have been shrugged off. Yet, things rarely work out the first time they're tryed. Remember the Articles of Confederation? The League of Nations? You try things one way, you make mistakes and learn from them to make a better version. The E.U. Constitution was Version 1.0. It had a lot of bugs, and didn't run properly. Version 2.0 would then be a little better. Version 3.0 better still, and so on. Eventually, they would have gotten it right.

I support, not any given constitution or treaty, but the greater process of European integration. It seems to me that the era of nation-states is almost over. Nation-states will give way to larger region-states, like the E.U. Always it starts with economic integration. The E.U. Constitution was the first attempt at political integration. Eventually, it will succeed in creating a loose federal body of nations each of which will have essentially the same power as each American state does. We are seeing economic integration taking place in the Western Hemisphere, as well as in Souteast Asia. Eventually, though it may take 100 years or more, the world will be composed of region-states. Just as economic opportunity will lead to political integration among nations, it will among region-states, until we have a single, almost certainly benevolent, world government.

Yet the benefits of greater economic interdependence don't have to wait until then. The process of economic integration has already led to a marked decrease in wars in Western Europe. The first half of the 20th century saw two. The second half saw none. It is now inconceivable that France and Germany or Germany and the U.K. or Spain and Portugal or Italy and Austria will go to war again. That is the reason Winston Churchill supported European economic integration: to prevent future wars among Europeans.

Thomas Friedman has what he calls the "McDonalds Theory of Globalization." It states that any two nations that have a McDonalds will not go to war with each other, the thinking being that any two nations that have enough economic ties to both have McDonalds will not risk their economic prosperity by attacking each other. It seems that greater economic and political interdependence leads to a world where wars are almost unthinkable, at least within the globalization system. It's not a utopia. But it's reason enough to support regional integration, as represented by the E.U.