Daniel Hannan talking in America about Europe

[nino_savatte]

Here's today's blog

Americans! Please stop calling us Europeans!

The Cousins have finally clocked the EU for what it is: a corporatist, protectionist, anti-American racket. Heaven knows it took them long enough. For decades, they did everything they could to encourage political integration, pouring money into the European Movement, ending every summit with a demand for deeper union.
Not any more. Most Americans are now watching in dismay as their country becomes 'more European' – by which they mean more timid, more centralized, more regulated and more indebted. At CPAC over the weekend, speaker after speaker was applauded for tearing into the Brussels model. The Chairman of the RNC delivered a withering indictment of the Obama administration, which reached a climax with: 'If we go on like this, we'll soon be applying to join the European Union!'
The change in attitude has happened over the past decade. As late as the first Bush presidency, most American opinion-formers, including most conservatives, vaguely favoured the idea of a united Europe. Federalism had worked on their side of the Atlantic, they would tell you, and Americans were fed up with being dragged into European wars. Nowadays, if you hear this sort of rot, you're almost certainly talking to a State Department official.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100137476/americans-please-stop-calling-us-europeans/

For someone who went to Marlborough College and Oxford, his grasp of geography is rather poor. Like it or not, this country is European. Get over it.

 

[gosub]

I was going to post defending that statement, as it makes sense if he'd written it as EUropean, which wouldn't have got past a subeditor. I've certainly got angry with US efforts to push towards further EUropean Intergration, as James Rubin would testify, though I'm sure US will ditch their ideas of having to one person to call, when Kissinger dies or divide and rule suits them better. You missed the bit of that article that makes it indefensible :
"This is all tremendously encouraging, obviously; but, like most British sceptics, I have one niggling complaint. My dear American friends, will you please stop referring to us as 'Europeans'? Even the soundest US conservatives will often say things like, 'So what are you guys going to do about the Greek crisis?' Which, if you think about it, would be rather like me saying, 'So when are you chaps finally going to vote against Hugo Chávez?'
US -Venezuelan relations are, when I think about it, nothing like EU internal affairs.

 

[nino_savatte]

I don't have a problem with being called a "European". I wish people like Hannan would get it through his thick skull that these islands are 1. closer to the European continent than they are to the Americas and 2. the word "European" is not a pejorative (only in his mind perhaps). It might also be useful to remind His Silliness that Britain exists as a result of wave after wave of continental invaders and immigrants. Europhobes like to tell us that we have "nothing" in common with the continentals but we have plenty in common with those on the continent. The English language, for example, is a product of a multitude of continental tongues.

 

[gosub]

Which is why I tend to use EUrope and Europe.

 

[nino_savatte]

Which is why I tend to use EUrope and Europe.

Je comprend.

 

[ViolentPanda]

No, scum covers it.

Like a slick of odorous slimey goo.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I refer to him as Dissembling Dan Hannan. If you ever have the misfortune to read his blogs on the Torygraph, you'll see that he's not very good at being truthful.

My boot and his face make an excellent match.

Dissemblin' Dan, the lyin' man!

 

[nino_savatte]

Dissemblin' Dan, the lyin' man!

He's the Lyin' King!