Against a false internationalism
Over at Dead Men Left, Meaders is taking a stand against the sort of false internationalism that urges leftists to vote for the new European constitution to supposedly create a counterweight against the US:
Good Europeans vs. bad Americans is a model all internationalists should noisily reject. To dismiss – at a minimum – the 48% who voted against Bush in November 2004; to dismiss the many historic achievements of the US left; to write off any possibility of change in America that does not depend on external confrontation is to evince a profound, pessimistic conservatism.
[…]
It is not cynical to observe that the continent responsible for slavery, colonialism and genocide the world over contains no innate moral superiority by which such a new power might be justified. Absent the last fifty years, and we are left with a four-hundred year record of European colonial conquest and brutality sufficient to inspire a certain diziness – all conducted by the most enlightened of conquistadors and conquerors.
Where genuine progress in Europe has occurred, it has not been because of our vainglorious ruling classes; it has been in spite of them. Democracy, fundamental rights, welfare states were all forcibly extracted, continent-wide. The growth of mass labour movements and their ability to apply overwhelming political pressure are responsible for such progress as has occurred.