Anti-European Union Flag
The National Front’s shocking success at the polls has rocked the socialist boat in France. In Italy and Britain, rebellious factions are gaining momentum and change is in the air. Anti-immigration is the theme of the National Front in France. And an anti-European Union theme is running strong not only in France, but in Britain as well. Here Pat Buchanan lays out what is building as a crisis condition throughout old Europe.
Why is the EU under rising centrifugal pressure? Why do so many nations of Europe seem on the verge of breaking up?
There is no single or simple explanation.
Venice and Northern Italy feel exploited. Why, they ask, should we subsidize a less industrious and lazier south that consumes tax revenues we raise here. Many northern Italians believe they have more in common with Swiss than Romans, Neapolitans or Sicilians.
Flanders feels the same about the Walloons in Belgium.
Scots and Catalans believe they are a people with a culture, history and identity separate from the nations to which they belong.
Across Europe, there is a fear that the ethnic character of their countries and continent are being altered forever against the will of the people.
Western Europeans are recoiling at the Bulgarians, Rumanians and gypsies arriving from Eastern Europe. Asylum seekers, economic refugees and migrants in the scores of thousands arrive annually on the Italian island of Lampedusa and in the Spanish Canaries.
Early this month, the New York Times reported a surge of 80,000 African migrants headed for the tiny Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the Moroccan coast.
The goal these desperate people seek: the mother countries of the Old Continent and the wealthy welfare states of Northern Europe.
What the children of Europe are rebelling against is what their fathers, paralyzed by political correctness, refused to prevent.
It was predictable, it was predicted, and it has come to pass.
