Daniel Hannan: "Multinational states don't work - in Iraq or Europe"

[compromise]

 

[Icymudpuppy]

I think the US needs to break up too. Too big for it's britches. At it's founding, the USA was fairly culturally homogenous, and each national representative had only about 30,000 people in his district.

Today, a national representative has over 800,000 people in his district. Over 20 times the people. How can you represent people you cannot possibly meet?

Even at my state level, we have not enough reps. The state of Washington has about 125,000 people per state representative. We need to get back to the ratios where real representation can occur. Obviously, that is impossible in a nation of over 350,000,000 and still be able to have civil national discourse. With almost 12,000 representatives, it would difficult, if not impossible to even have an intelligent discussion where all members have input, much less actually have the opportunity to work for their constituents.

Indeed, No nation should have a population over 3 million if you want to have meaningful discourse. I support succession down to the 3million level. Although a mutual defense treaty and free immigration is also okay. Keeping in mind that if a nation exceeds 5 million, it should be split into two new nations.

Thoughts?

 

[Occam's Banana]

Excellent analysis by Hannan - as usual. Too bad he's talking to a brick wall ...

 

[Demigod]

Total garbage I would take an arbitrary state ( where you know what you give and what you lose ) over the national states that formed in Europe in the 19 century every day.All the nation states ever did was create carnage on a scale never seen before.All in the name of the state.Since you are born you owe to the state in money and in blood with no end in sight,you always owe the state something and the state is far greater than the people in it so you can sacrifice as many of the poor stupid young man as you want.

Christians,Jews and descendants from the ancient kingdoms had lived in the middle east and north Africa for centuries before the west tried to create the nation states.The whole world can not function the same.

 

[luctor-et-emergo]

Excellent analysis by Hannan - as usual. Too bad he's talking to a brick wall ...

He is reaching more and more people in Europe, many people outside of the district he represents follow his speeches and support his advocacy.
In a way he is doing the same thing as Ron Paul did in the USA, he is spreading a message based on philosophic grounds waking up people in the process.

He may not have much grounding in the parliament, but he is one of the few MEP's who actually has a following and is fairly well known across the EU. I don't know about the election of MEP's in most nation states but in the Netherlands, where I get to vote, we vote on a party and have no direct influence over which person is on top of the list. This may be arranged differently throughout the EU, however interest in MEP's and the parliament is at least 10 times lower than the general interest of Americans in the congress.

The main problem with multinational states is socialism, before the EURO currency there was already an agreement on open borders called 'Schengen' (since 1985) which allowed for the free movement of people (and goods) over the borders of states that signed. In effect this meant that anyone could drive over the border without any kind of passport check of visa requirement. This in itself has been good for the economy, which nobody in Europe will try to deny for as far as I'm aware. The main problems that present themselves in western Europe are the (extremely) high taxes in cooperation with a well established welfare state which discourages citizens from taking the so called 'minimum wage' jobs. The effect is that immigrants will do those jobs, and the welfare state has to cope with higher unemployment. Higher unemployment means more benefits putting more stress on the taxpayer and thus increasing the deficit.

People will find out they were wrong all that time, sooner or later. A more interesting question is, how bad does it have to get before people will finally agree ? Right now it's really bad in some places, but only very locally. Generally around where I live jobs are pretty scarce, but nobody is living on the streets, people still drive new cars and go out for dinner. I would expect that things in Europe gradually decline, I can see how my taxes and expenses are generally going up by more than the stated inflation but nothing massive just yet.

 

[Occam's Banana]

He may not have much grounding in the parliament, but he is one of the few MEP's who actually has a following and is fairly well known across the EU.

That's pretty much what I figured (vis-a-vis parliament). I'm very pleased to hear that he's got support and a following outside of southeast England. Now, who does that remind me of ... ?

 

[compromise]

He is reaching more and more people in Europe, many people outside of the district he represents follow his speeches and support his advocacy.
In a way he is doing the same thing as Ron Paul did in the USA, he is spreading a message based on philosophic grounds waking up people in the process.

He may not have much grounding in the parliament, but he is one of the few MEP's who actually has a following and is fairly well known across the EU. I don't know about the election of MEP's in most nation states but in the Netherlands, where I get to vote, we vote on a party and have no direct influence over which person is on top of the list. This may be arranged differently throughout the EU

All EU states have party-list proportional representation for European Parliament elections, so when people vote for Hannan, they vote for the Conservative Party list, not for the candidate. Hannan's party also holds closed primaries for registered party members - the candidates with the most votes get placed higher up on the list. There are 12 European Parliament constituencies in the United Kingdom and a total delegation of 72 MEPs (10 of which are from Hannan's constituency).