The Nobel Peace Prize this year went to the European Union, an act that is interestingly timed given the EU’s current state of crisis (perhaps this is a “hang in there, we appreciate all you’ve done” Nobel Peace Prize). Ezra Klein gives us five reasons why the case for the EU getting the prize is stronger than the snark would have you believe.
Other links of interest:
Ryan Britt makes the case that Most Citizens of the Star Wars Galaxy are Probably Totally Illiterate (hat tip to Noah Millman).
Scott Lemieux on Why Norms Have Exceptions.
Read Britt’s piece a couple weeks back, and found it utterly hilarious.
Arafat, Al Gore, Obama and now EU. Pretty consistent stupidity.
I think I’m with David Frum on the Nobel Peace Prize for the EU (http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/10/13/david-frum-giving-the-eu-its-nobel-due/):
“So boo to the Nobel committee?
“Well … no. Not so fast.
“The Norwegians are sending a reminder flare to their continental neighbours: In the throes of today’s crisis, please remember, the Euro may have been a mistake, but the European Union must be preserved. The EU must be preserved not only as the obviously beneficial trading area that it is, but also (yes) as an ideal.
“It’s an inspiring thing to visit the German-Polish border and see — not barriers, not legacies of old hatreds — but goods-laden trucks whizzing past as casually as if they were crossing the North Carolina-South Carolina state line. It’s an inspiring thing to visit Alsace and see this territory that was contested in three terrible wars arrive at peace via the simple proposition: If you want a house in Alsace, buy one. Who cares which sovereign delivers the mail?”
Lynn:
There are obvious and easy retorts To Frum.
1. Does EU make people from different European countries like each other more or less? Do all the issues with euro make European conflict more or less likely?
2. It’s good when people can move around and buy houses as they please. Do they really need huge EU buerucracy, hundreds of thousands of pages of EU regulations and the so-called EU pseudo-constituion?
In short, Frum’s article in your quotations is very weak intellectually. In fact, it does not offer a single argument in support of EU. Any EU skeptik paying attention would laugh out loud.
It offers a good argument in favor of the free trade zone aspect of the EU. It offers no argument in favor of the euro aspect, since Frum considers that a mistake. I think that Europe would be better off now in the hypothetical alternate history where the EU still got formed, but the euro skeptics won the day.
There may be other aspects of the EU that could have been better designed, but the euro is the biggest flaw at this point, and if I had to pick one step that the EU shouldn’t have taken, that’s the obvious candidate.
“It offers a good argument in favor of the free trade zone aspect of the EU.”
A free trade agreement can fit 10 pages. EU is hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations. It’s a mistake to look at a relatively minor aspect of EU (free trade and immigration).