AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

Fair enough, and we aren't too far apart in our point of view after all it seems. The primary difference, however, is in the degree that Tancredo wants the law enforced within the principles of our U.S. Constitution, while I think the neo-Nazis would like to overturn yours.

But again we are comparing apples to apples here. If we agree that the policies of the EU countries allow the folks being able to move around with minimal restrictions, then that is also the way it is between the 50 U.S. states. The main difference between your system and ours in that regard seems to be that your membes states can withdraw from the union perhaps quite a bit more easily than our states would be able to do so. We do have a stronger central government that can dictate certain requirements to the states while your member states probably have a chance to agree or not agree to everything.

But again we are comparing apples to apples here.

Foxfyre wrote:

But again we are comparing apples to apples here.

No, not really. As Walter points out, all EU member nations are sovereign countries. They are part of a very integrated Union, but it's a very different construct than what the relationship between states within the US is. The EU countries have signed a number of treaties and created several institutions, but at the moment there isn't even such a thing as a European Constitution.

You could maybe think of the EU more as of some kind of mini-UN, or of something like multiple treaties like NAFTA and CAFTA. In fact, trade agreements like that is what the European Economic Community, as it was known then, started out as, and it's still one of the three pillars of the European Union.

History offers lessons for the present. For nearly 150 years, the U.S. was truly a country of immigrants, letting in almost everyone who wanted to find their future in the land of opportunity. But in the 1920s, the U.S. passed several laws restricting the number of new arrivals, and for decades afterward, an explicit goal was to make sure that immigrants didn’t change the culture of the country. "The history of America is always around trying to control groups that are deemed unfit," says John Carson, a history professor at the University of Michigan.

It never worked. Whether they were Irish or Italian, Russian or Chinese, the newcomers always ended up changing the country, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. The same is true today, as immigrants arrive from Mexico, India, and elsewhere. Yet the fundamental character of the U.S. has remained amazingly resilient. The country has grown more diverse in language, food, and customs, but the core principles of freedom, opportunity, and individual rights are unchanged.

The policies within the EU regarding how people move around within the various EU countries are not that different from policies of how Americans or visitors move around within the various US states.

Otherwise , I wasn't even attempting to describe what the EU is about or how it works and you have no way of knowing from my remarks here what I do or don't know about that. But thank you for your teaching on that no matter how non sequitur it might be.

Otherwise I acknowledged that though our various states can establish many of their own laws, regulations, policies to which other states are not bound, the Federal central government does have certain authority over the US states and that the EU has nothing comparable to that.

I acknowledged that EU countries can withdraw from the EU at will and US states cannot withdraw from the USA at will.

The last two statements were to acknowledge that those things that don't compare apples to apples.

Now then. So far as I know, that is all that we have been discussing.

What did I miss?

I acknowledged that EU countries can withdraw from the EU at will and US states cannot withdraw from the USA at will.

The last two statements were to acknowledge that those things that don't compare apples to apples.

Now then. So far as I know, that is all that we have been discussing.

What did I miss?

Re: JamesMorrison (Post 3603883)
JamesMorrison wrote:

Quote:

It seems that there are an increasing number of Americans who feel that the change they are now getting is not what they voted for. Perhaps they should have demanded such details at an earlier date.

JM

I'm not capable of feeling this way. Perhaps I would, had I voted for him. What I think I'm beginning to see is a President who works on a very personal level.

MARCH 20, 2009
Neither a Hedgehog Nor a Fox
The unbearable lightness of Obama's administration.
By PEGGY NOONAN

He is willowy when people yearn for solid, reed-like where they hope for substantial, a bright older brother when they want Papa, cool where they probably prefer warmth. All of which may or may not hurt Barack Obama in time. Lincoln was rawboned, prone to the blues and freakishly tall, with a new-grown beard that refused to become an assertion and remained, for four years, a mere and constant follicular attempt. And he did OK.

Such impressions"coolness, slightness"can come to matter only if they capture or express some larger or more meaningful truth. At the moment they connect, for me, to something insubstantial and weightless in the administration's economic pronouncements and policies. The president seems everywhere and nowhere, not fully focused on the matters at hand. He's trying to keep up with the news cycle with less and less to say. "I am angry" about AIG's bonuses. The administration seems buffeted, ad hoc. Policy seems makeshift, provisional. James K. Galbraith captures some of this in The Washington Monthly: "The president has an economic program. But there is, so far, no clear statement of the thinking behind the program."


Associated PressThis in part is why the teleprompter trope is taking off. Mr. Obama uses it more than previous presidents. No one would care about this or much notice it as long as he showed competence, and the promise of success. Reagan, if memory serves, once took his cards out of his suit and began to read them at a welcoming ceremony, only to realize a minute or so in that they were last week's cards from last week's ceremony. He caught himself and made a joke of it. One was reminded of this the other day when Mr. Obama's speech got mixed up with the Irish prime minister's. Things happen. But the teleprompter trope has taken off: Why does he always have to depend on that thing?

There is a new Web site where the teleprompter shares its thoughts in a breathless White House diary. It's bummed that it has to work a news conference next week instead of watching "American Idol," it resents being dragged to L.A. in Air Force One's cargo hold "with the more common electronic equipment." It also Twitters: "We are in California! One of the interns gave my panels a quick scrub and I'm ready to prompt for the day." And: "Waiting for my boss's jokes to get loaded for Leno!"

The fact is that Mr. Obama only has two jobs, but they're huge. The first is to pull us out of an economic death spiral"to save the banks, get them lending, fix the mortgage mess, address unemployment, forestall inflation. TARP, TALF, financial oversight and regulation of Wall Street"all of this is enormously complex, involving questions of scale, emphasis and direction. All else"windmills, green technology, remaking health care"is secondary. The economy is the domestic issue now, and for the next three years at least.

So one wonders why, say, the president does not step in and insist on staffing the top level of his Treasury Department, where besieged Secretary Tim Geithner struggles without deputies through his 15-hour days. Might AIG and the bonus scandals have been stopped or discovered sooner if Treasury had someone to answer the phones? Leadership is needed here. Not talkership, leadership.

Mr. Obama's second job is America's safety at home and in the world. Dick Cheney this week warned again of future terrorism and said Mr. Obama's actions have left us "less safe." White House press secretary Robert Gibbs reacted with disdain. Mr. Cheney is part of a "Republican cabal." "I guess Rush Limbaugh was busy." This was cheap.

A journalist, watching, said, "They are like two people fighting over a torn bag of flour." It may be hard cleaning it up.

Mr. Cheney's remarks, presented in a cable interview, looked political and were received as partisan. The fact is he was wrong and right, wrong in that a subject so grave demands a well documented and thoughtful address. It's hard to see how it helps to present crucial arguments in a cable interview and in a way that can be discounted as partisan. Nor does it help to appear to be laying the groundwork for a deadly argument: Bush kept us safe, Obama won't. It is fair" and necessary"to say what the new administration is doing wrong, and to attempt to correct it, through data and argument. The Bush administration made a great point of saying, when they were explaining what U.S. intelligence is up against, that the challenges are constant and we only have to be wrong once, fail once, for the consequences to be deeply painful. What the Bush administration was doing, in part, was admitting that they might be in charge when something happened. The key was to remain focused and vigilant. This is still true.

But Mr. Cheney was, is, right in the most important, and dreadful, way. We live in the age of weapons of mass destruction, and each day more people and groups come closer to getting and deploying them. "Man has never developed a weapon he didn't eventually use," said Reagan, without cards, worrying aloud in the Oval Office.

What can be used will be used. We are a target. Something bad is going to happen"don't we all know this? Are we having another failure of imagination?

A month ago FBI Director Robert Mueller, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, warned of Mumbai-type terrorist activity, saying a similar attack could happen in a U.S. city. He spoke of the threat of homegrown terrorists who are "radicalized," "indoctrinated" and recruited for jihad. Mumbai should "reinvigorate" U.S. intelligence efforts. The threat is not only from al Qaeda but "less well known groups." This had the hard sound of truth.

Contrast it with the new secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, who, in her first speech and testimony to Congress, the same week as Mr. Mueller's remarks, did not mention the word terrorism once. This week in an interview with Der Spiegel, she was pressed: "Does Islamist terrorism suddenly no longer pose a threat to your country?" Her reply: "I presume there is always a threat from terrorism." It's true she didn't use the word terrorism in her speech, but she did refer to "man-caused" disasters. "This is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear."

Ah. Well this is only a nuance, but her use of language is a man-caused disaster.

Our enemies are criminals, and criminals calculate. It is possible they are calculating thusly: America is in deep economic crisis and has a new, untested president. Why not move now?

Mr. Obama likes to say presidents can do more than one thing at a time, but in fact modern presidents are lucky to do one thing at a time, never mind two. Great forces are arrayed against them.

These are the two great issues, the economic crisis and our safety. In the face of them, what strikes one is the weightlessness of the Obama administration, the jumping from issue to issue and venue to venue from day to day. Isaiah Berlin famously suggested a leader is a fox or a hedgehog. The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing. In political leadership the hedgehog has certain significant advantages, focus and clarity of vision among them. Most presidents are one or the other. So far Mr. Obama seems neither.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123750000839989123.html#printMode

Foxfyre wrote:

The policies within the EU regarding how people move around within the various EU countries are not that different from policies of how Americans or visitors move around within the various US states.

Maybe I'm misreading what you're saying here, but what I was talking about was how people have the right to move around between all of the sovereign EU countries.

I think your point is that the US states are essentially comparable to the EU member nations, and that it's not that big of a deal when people can move around between states, settle down wherever they want and get a job or enjoy the benefits of government services provided by that specific state.

I see the point you're making, but I think the constructs of the Union of American states and the European Union are really too different, at this point, to make this a valid comparison. I think you'd be much closer to reality if you would compare the EU with a combined NAFTA-CAFTA (with all of those countries included), and with additional treaties stating that any citizen of any of those member countries also has the right to freely move to, live and work in and enjoy the services of any other of those member nations.

Foxfyre wrote:

Otherwise I acknowledged that though our various states can establish many of their own laws, regulations, policies to which other states are not bound, the Federal central government does have certain authority over the US states and that the EU has nothing comparable to that.

I acknowledged that EU countries can withdraw from the EU at will and US states cannot withdraw from the USA at will.

The last two statements were to acknowledge that those things that don't compare apples to apples.

Now then. So far as I know, that is all that we have been discussing.

What did I miss?

You certainly missed that all EU-members are fully independent countries, with their nationalities, own foreign relations, own citizinships, ... ... ...

All are members of the UN, most NATO-members and in dozens of other different international organisations ...

But CAFTA and NAFTA are not the same thing--they are simply treaties affecting how business and commerce will be conducted between the various nations--no different than a trade agreement between say Germany and OPEC which would not affect your citizens right to move around in any way.

Foxfyre wrote:

But CAFTA and NAFTA are not the same thing--they are simply treaties affecting how business and commerce will be conducted between the various nations--no different than a trade agreement between say Germany and OPEC which would not affect your citizens right to move around in any way.

Oh, absolutely. NAFTA and CAFTA don't give citizens of member nations the right to freely move to and live in any of the other member nations. But neither does the European Economic Community.

That's why I said it's more realistic to compare the current EU to several treaties like NAFTA and CAFTA (with all the member nations of those treaties included), with additional treaties allowing all citizens of all member nations to move to, live and work in and enjoy most government services of all the other member nations.

Or, alternatively, to the Union of the American States a decade or two after 1783.

So what DOES give citizens of the EU the right to move around in, work in, live in other EU countries if it is not the provisions contained in the agreements by which all members of the EU have agreed? Or does each nation change its own laws so that everybody is the same and then join the EU which does not address that? Can a member EU nation close its borders to other EU nations and remain in the EU?

The European Parliament, the Commission and the Council of Ministers are empowered by the Treaties to legislate on all matters within the EU's competence. Examples of this secondary legislation are regulations, directives, decisions, recommendations and opinions. Secondary legislation also includes inter-institutional agreements, which are agreements made between European Union institutions clarifying their respective powers, especially in budgetary matters. The Parliament, Commission and Council are capable of entering into such agreements.

The classification of legislative acts varies among the First, Second and Third Pillars. In the case of the first pillar: Secondary legislation is classified based on to whom it is directed, and how it is to be implemented. Regulations and directives bind everyone, while decisions only affect the parties to whom they are addressed (which can be individuals, corporations, or member states). Regulations have direct effect, i.e. they are binding in and of themselves as part of national law, while directives require implementation by national legislation to be effective. However, states that fail or refuse to implement directives as part of national law can be fined by the European Court of Justice.

Directives and regulations can comprise of a mixture of maximum harmonisation and minimum harmonisation clauses, and can be enforced on either a home state or a host state basis. All EU legislation must be based on a specific Treaty article, which is referred to as the "legal basis" of the legislation. The European Constitution would have codified EU law and reduced secondary legislation to six clear types: EU laws, EU framework laws, decisions, regulations, recommendations and opinions.

If that is the case, then yes that would be different from our US system as our states do not have the right to close their borders to citizens of the other states.

Obama will call for increased oversight of 'executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies' as part of sweeping plan to 'overhaul financial regulation', NY TIMES reporting Sunday, newsroom sources tell DRUDGE... Developing...