{"id":35297,"date":"2016-07-23T01:00:20","date_gmt":"2016-07-23T05:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=35297"},"modified":"2019-05-20T09:30:10","modified_gmt":"2019-05-20T13:30:10","slug":"qotd-separatism-and-the-eu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/07\/23\/qotd-separatism-and-the-eu\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Separatism and the EU"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>All the current nationalist parties of small nations in Europe \u2014 the Scots, the Welsh, the Basque, the Catalans, the Flemish \u2014 strongly support membership in the European Union, which is dedicated to, and even predicated upon, the extinction of national sovereignty. One would have thought that these parties wanted, at a minimum, national sovereignty. The contradiction is so glaring that it requires an explanation.<\/p>\n<p>The human mind is not a perfect calculating machine, and no doubt all of us sometimes contradict ourselves. Perfect consistency tends to be disconcerting \u2014 but so does glaring inconsistency. It\u2019s possible that the nationalist parties\u2019 leaders don\u2019t perceive the contradiction, being so blinded by ideology that they are simply unaware of it. But another possible explanation exists: by leading their nominally independent countries, they forever will be able to feed at the great trough of Brussels and distribute its largesse in true clientelistic fashion. The nationalist leaders certainly lead their people, but by the nose.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Oddly enough, I have not seen the contradiction between current nationalism and support for remaining in the European Union referred to in the press, though I don\u2019t read every paper in every language. This is surely one of the first times in history, however, that the expression, \u201cOut of the frying pan into the fire,\u201d has become not a warning, but the desired destination of substantial proportions of whole populations.<\/p>\n<p>Theodore Dalrymple, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.city-journal.org\/html\/nationalist-contradictions-europe-14592.html\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Nationalist Contradictions in Europe: Why do breakaway political parties want to remain in the European Union?&#8221;, <em>City Journal<\/em><\/a>, 2016-06-27.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All the current nationalist parties of small nations in Europe \u2014 the Scots, the Welsh, the Basque, the Catalans, the Flemish \u2014 strongly support membership in the European Union, which is dedicated to, and even predicated upon, the extinction of national sovereignty. One would have thought that these parties wanted, at a minimum, national sovereignty. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,41],"tags":[523,337,338,114,335,1289,737],"class_list":["post-35297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-quotations","tag-belgium","tag-eu","tag-scotland","tag-separatism","tag-spain","tag-theodoredalrymple","tag-wales"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9bj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35298,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35297\/revisions\/35298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}