For years, European Union advocates denied allegations that they were trying to erase national borders and create a single country with a shared military. Then recently proposals for a single military emerged — just before Britain left the EU. One of the most effective criticisms made against the EU before Brexit was to challenge voters to actually name the people in charge of the EU and policies affecting their lives. Now, the head of the EU has gone out of his way to confirm the worst suspicions of critics. The much-maligned EU chief Jean-Claude Juncker has publicly denounced the very concept of national borders as the “worst invention ever.”
We recently discussed Juncker drunken appearances in public. Now he is proclaiming the very globalism and world government that is fueling demands to break up the EU. Speaking at the Alpbach Media Academy Juncker said: “Borders are the worst invention ever made by politicians.”
Juncker’s contempt for the notion of national identity is a touchstone of the new globalism that has taken hold in Europe — and encouraged voters in Britain to leave the EU. Many people have a pride in their national identity and want to control the laws that govern their nation and their lives. The image of a drunken, dismissive uber-bureaucrat in Brussels will hardly improve the situation for the EU. It also shows precisely how little accountability or restraint EU leadership feel in Brussels. The arrogance and erratic behavior of Juncker would not be tolerated in a politician who was subject to local or national elections. However, his audience often seems a circle of EU bureaucrats in an echo-chamber for globalism. The feel for civil libertarians is that such remoteness couple with rising power can be a threat to not just national identity but liberty.
What do you think?
The dumbest thing he Europeans have done since WWII is to think of themselves as Europeans and not as French or German or Dutch etc. Doctors without borders is an organization of people who can tell you what the muddle east is like and how safe it is. The muddle east is coming to a theatre near you. Mister Gorbachev: Build Up That Wall!
Keep drinking you dumb frogs. France is already a thing of the past. It ended on May the 10th 1940 when the Germans ran over the lame duck French military.
The arrogance and erratic behavior of Juncker would not be tolerated in a politician who was subject to local or national elections. However, his audience often seems a circle of EU bureaucrats in an echo-chamber for globalism
Can’t disagree with your observations regarding Juncker, but would point out that contemporary political comparisons (one system vs. another) often turn out to be ironic at best. Trump looks drunk and HIllary IS crooked and both are intolerable but both are nevertheless the only choices we have and so are forced upon us. A lot of good “national elections” do us to weed them out. Let’s see now, will I vote for Lucky Luciano or Al Capone? Hmm..
As to National Borders, it would be great to have one big country, the world, at peace with itself and working for the greater good of it’s citizens (and not their financial enslavement). But what Junker is pining for has little to do with that. He simply wants freedom for big capital from any sort of national laws, regulations or restrictions such as bans on tobacco or asbestos or drilling wells in dangerous places or what ever might be used to extract more profit no matter how insanely harmful it is to society. He also wants to be able to exploit labor by pitting one geographical sector against another without national restrictions or protections. National boarders is simply code for restrictions on global corporate power. The EU and austerity for citizens but bailouts for private corporations and banks at taxpayer expense has been a petri dish for border-less exploitation, particularly in the financial sector, and as Brexit attests, it is collapsing under it’s own weight.
We have the Juncker/Soros cabal wanting to have no borders. They are not unlike the Soviet Union philosophy who destroyed borders in Eastern Europe. Those borders reemerged when the Soviet Union collapsed. Putin, w/ a feckless Obama allowing it, has begun destroying borders once again. Then you have the Islamists, who also want no borders, just a world caliphate.
Brexit was a shot to the kneecap of the EU. It did not kill it. What will kill the EU is what JT has posted about here. Arrogance. The European people gave power to people like this because of the lies they were told, that being they would never lose their national identity. Nigel Farage was in Mississippi supporting Trump yesterday. There is a resistance movement forming. It will not be pretty but borders will survive this onslaught.
Borders have been around for millennia. The idea that “politicians” created them illustrates Mr. Junckers lack of appreciation of history. By the way, I hope the Scots are listening to this nut case! They are very passionate about their boarders and national identity.
> By the way, if there were a single world government, why would there be an army? To protect us against us?
> I think global government could work if the power were localized and distributed down to the sovereign people.
Do you know what you call a globe where power is localized and distributed down to the sovereign people?
Reblogged this on Matthews' Blog.
It seems to me that borders are another way of setting appropriate limits. Unless, you are willing to open your own personal house and bank account to all those around you–which essentially is what a borderless world asks of those who would be its citizens–it seems rather hollow to decry borders. Look, take for example a given public school–now I realize there are many problems with this analogy including a poor distribution of resources among schools, particularly in the inner city but let’s focus on one part of the analogy. Now back to this analogy, a given school has certain resources in which to take care of students based on the demographics. If there were no boundaries designating who could come to a school there would then be at least in many cases inadequate resources to meet students needs. And I shudder to think how a one world, one government would incorporate well the varieties of countries and social structures that exist into a one size fits all government. Different countries emphasize different needs, but while the world is getting smaller and smaller there seems a lot to do in every country before peaceful deconstruction of borders is either possible or desirable.
By the way, if there were a single world government, why would there be an army? To protect us against us?
I think global government could work if the power were localized and distributed down to the sovereign people.
Would that endanger pasta and paprika? Possibly, but no more than Arkansas endangers Chicago pizza with its dessert pizzas.
If any nation could understand the virtues of multiculturalism it is the USA. Sure we are still fighting to overcome racism and other bigotry, but we have actually proven that many diverse people can make a nation and govern itself (albeit with a few problems).
Right here in Chucago we have dozens of thriving ethnic communities that even share the same neighborhoods and still maintain language and custom. In fact the Arab, Jewish, and Hindu populations all share the same community.
Imagine that, people who cannot stand each other across borders do just fine when the borders are removed.
Hmmm. Well, I would be careful when you travel to the ethnic communities known as Chiraq. I don’t think they got the Peace and Love Memo. Or maybe they did, and just can’t read it??? Maybe you could go and check on that!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
The EU combined all the countries in the EU to prove that the EU (not a country) won the most medals. Actually, they only beat the USA because Britain had a strong showing this year. When Britain leaves, even if they become a country, they are limited in the number of athletes they can enter in the Olympics.
I think three or four other countries are thinking EXITING the EU,
What this EU non-human is advocating has now pissed off Minister Angelia Merkel of Germany who has announced that she is spearheading his replacement in the next year. So, I guess that even the Bank Of the EU (Germany) even the gas (flatulence) outed by EU junker is now beyond any acceptability, even from a country that has admitted 1 million immigrants in the past 18 mo. or so.
The historical period in which many contemporary borders and state originated was unlike today.
All of the land was owned by the regional nobility and the only ones deciding the laws of a region were a few white men.
In that sense the borders we have today, which largely descended from those feudal borders, are a complete anachronism. So I disagree with you and am open to Juncker’s perspective.
Borders on the other hand are a funny thing. We often permit goods to cross borders but not the workers who made them. Such restrictions create economic imbalances. Don’t forget that the greatest form of voting is voting with your feet.
The Mexican laborer knows his time is worth much more north of the border. However we only want the products of his labor, not the man himself. That of course only makes the wealthy classes richer. It is solidly anti libertarian to have a closed border.
And crony capitalism loves a tight border. That way they can make sweetheart deals for their goods, cherry picking the best minds and keeping everyone else out.
If there were open borders, wages, prices and services would come to even out the in the world. People would depart from unjust and unfair regions and flock to the better ones. If you needed workers in those now deserted regions you’d have to step up and pay a fair wage, providing good working conditions.
Somehow we all have to come to terms with the fact that we inhabit this world together, and together we have to make it a good place to live. Or we can just keep on maintaining our artificial divisions.
>Many people have a pride in their national identity and want to control the laws that govern their nation and their lives
And by national identity that can mean local languages, clothing styles, and food. Italian Pasta, not EU Pasta, German Beer, not One World Beer, Spanish Tapas, not Hungarian Tapas or One World Tapas.
A flattened out, no cultural, no local differences world is a much more boring one.
How does he propose to govern this no borders world? With local laws but no fences and no gates? Or with one global world government? Well that sounds peachy.
Hmmmmm…a new world order where individual countries lose their borders and their right to self governance, a single global army, all run by dismissive unaccountable bureaucrats no one can even name… What could go wrong?
” Borders are a fabrication of greedy people to control power. In a world of love and harmony that will eventually come, there will be no borders.”
Dissolving sovereign borders does not mean there will be no “greedy people to control power”. There is always someone in control.
I think what Mr. Romanus is telling us is that our kleptocrats (e.g. Hunter Biden) need to be pitching more swag to his cousins.
This man seems to me to be a politician pursuing a vain attempt to secure his comfortable and powerful position that otherwise could become irrelevant.
He also foolishly seems to have forgotten that the notion of territory encircled by borders is innate to human social attributes spanning countless millennia. The animal kingdom serves also as a ubiquitous proof of this concept.
Mr. Junker is–at least in what he proffers publicly–not considering that individuals and groups have a fundamental right to associate as they see fitting. It is obvious and self-evident his idealistic fantasy of eliminating international borders will result in some form of grand unification of humanity, fostering a mono-cultural utopia, is as equally laughable as he is an embarrassment to the Europeans.
I bet you a dollar that Monsewer Juncker lives in a gated, white European community.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I would NOT take that bet, lol.
In Brussels, so the security guards are there to keep the chaps from Molenbeek at bay.
re: “Borders are the worst invention ever made by politicians.” umm let’s roll back the Westphalian notion of creating nation states. The whole EU thing has been a total nightmare. It has enriched only the 1%, and we see how the refugees are totally taxing states in Western Europe nations.
I have individual identity. NOT a national identify.
Bob, if you go abroad, the people in that country will identify you as an American whether you do yourself or not.
Please announce when peace and love arrive.
Besides being a person who likes his alcohol a bit too much, he is the worst kind of 1 world-er. You know, the kind that says that borders are the worst human invention. Well, IMO, he is the worst human invention. Also, a border-less world would create more problems between the have’s and have-not’s. That is a fact and a reality from the beginning of time.
The world does not need borders. The world is one. Borders are a fabrication of greedy people to control power. In a world of love and harmony that will eventually come, there will be no borders.
Your first name might have a different cultural meaning here in the United States, to wit: “Ngo be sing” = “Non governmental organization Bee Essing.” Which is sort of interesting, in a way.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Interesting.
Globalism is a fabrication of greedy people to control power by diluting democracy.
Globalism should not be opposed to democracy. Democracy in a global context is better for the world than isolated democracy, where some are democratic and others are not.
“Democracy in a global context is better for the world than isolated democracy, where Third World kleptocrats can only extract rents from their own impecunious subjects”
FIFY
Too hard for me to understand. Maybe you could say it in other words. Haha! Thanks for sharing!