A Real Conspiracy

For its first six seasons, I was a dedicated X-Files junkie. When the movie came out, it sucked so bad, I never watched the series again. Lately, I've watched some old episodes, and the riveting conspiracies featuring the Smoking Man, Deep Throat, Marita Covarrubias, and Alex Krychek now just seem kind of gay. The great alien cover-ups that once seemed so suspenseful and plausible now come off like the hackneyed, ridiculous fantasies of the schizo-paranoid left. Yawn.

Especially when one considers one of the greatest, actual, real conspiracies of the 20th century. Imagine you are an American, of whatever (reasonable) political affiliation. Now imagine that back in the 60s and 70s, a group of senior US officials felt very strongly that the best way to solve America's social and economic problems was to cede a large chunk of US sovereignty to the UN. This transfer of power would be on the UN's terms, would not be subject to elections or referenda, would not be reversible, and would require the future transfer of other powers not yet defined.

If it was talked about publicly at all, it was couched as a benign free trade agreement, that would bring economic benefits like more jobs and economic growth. Imagine that, say, President Nixon had the whole deal negotiated, signed, and completed, with zero public input. That he directed a staff member to record the negotiations, a document which ran to 475 pages -- but which would remain secret for 30 years. It would be an astounding conspiracy reducing Watergate, Area 51, and the assassination of JFK to mere footnotes.

Sounds fantastic. But this is exactly what Prime Minister Heath did in the early 1970s, in gaining Britain's accession to the EU. The possibility was barely even mentioned during the campaign, so

it might therefore have come as a something of a surprise to most voters to learn that, within two weeks of the election, two of Heath's senior ministers would be in Brussels to begin Britain's negotiations for entry; and that, within three years, without any electoral mandate, Britain would have become a full member of the European Community.

Britain had twice applied for membership in the 1960s, but was blocked both times by French President Charles de Gaulle. But by 1973, Britain's accession date, the power of the EU had evolved significantly, with no British input.

It was true that, as in 1961, Britain had little choice but to accept the acquis communautaire [powers acquired by the EC, never to be returned], but the situation was now 'fundamentally altered.' In 1961, the acquis has consisted of little more than the treaties themselves. Since then, 'an almost inconceivable flood' of of new laws had been enacted, amounting to some 13,000 pages, for many of which the official translations would not be completed until after the treaty of accession had been signed.

It is difficult to overstate the implications. No one in their right mind would sign an employment contract that

(a) gave the employer at-will authority to alter its terms, in perpetuity;
(b) forbade the employee this right, or to quit;
(c) required the employee to pay, rather than be paid; and
(d) would not be translated into the employee's language until after it was signed.

Yet Britain signed exactly this contract with EU, and carefully didn't say much about it to their current employer at the time, the British people -- who are only now discovering what it all means.

I haven't been in the habit of doing book reviews, but this is the must-read story told in "The Great Deception" by Christopher Booker and Richard North. Any student of EU law is already aware that the major accomplishment of the "European project" has been the massive accretion of power to a distant, unelected elite. On some level, elected officials were aware that plans to turn over their country's treasury and independence to an appointed technocracy would be a tad controversial. So another prominent feature of The European Project has been the Orwellian euphemisms that fill officials' statements, to obscure the magnitude of their betrayal.

In the name of progress, Europe's parliamentary democracies are now subject to the ever-tighter grip of a capricious, secretive aristocracy. Why supranationalism should be the panacaea for plain old European nationalism has never been clear: in the end, it still results in tyranny. The Eurocrats won't be the masters for long, however, not at the rate Islamists are colonizing Europe -- a takeover encouraged, facilitated, and applauded by the elites themselves. Not since the decay of the Roman Empire has there been a ruling class so hungry for power, yet so careless with it.

Some Europeans tell me that Europeans and Americans shouldn't fight, because we share the same fundamental values. I appreciate the conciliatory gesture, but really, we don't. Beyond democracy and free speech -- which in Europe are increasingly being converted from tangible rights into theoretical ideals -- Americans demand transparency and accountability, and would have rebelled long before such a "project" got so far. The Kyoto Protocol, as well as Bush's "guest worker" program, are just such anti-democratic bilge, and in America, that dog don't hunt.

Ultimately, it's not about beliefs, but about disposition. In most countries, ordinary Europeans did not consent to the Brussels dictatorship, but they are not disposed to fight it either. It's true that a majority of French and Dutch voters rejected the EU Constitution last year. But for most of them, it wasn't because it would have extended and consolidated the EU's powers, but because it didn't go far enough. In this key sense, Europeans and Americans have very little in common. Millions of Europeans who sold the clothes off their backs to get to Ellis Island understood this; only the form, rather than the substance, has changed.

This doesn't mean that Americans should shrug and let Europeans lie in the bed they made. As in WWII, American heritage, and American security, depends on extricating Britain from this mess. One author of the abovementioned book, Dr. North, has a blog: go ye and read.