The governmental leaders of Europe will gather this weekend, along with aides, mistresses and varied leeches upon the tax payers (assuming that those classes are mutually exclusive), to attempt agreement upon the new European Union Constitution. I am not sure which to pray for: a failure to agree and subsequent collapse of the idea, or an agreement so that we can then get on with voting the thing down in referenda across the continent. For the basic document itself is hopeless, a mish mash of every semi-thought that evanesced across the synapses of its octogenarian progenitor, Giscard d'Estaing, and his merry committee of statist political pygmies.The US Constitution is about 15 pages long, including all the Amendments that have been added over 200+ years. Despite many disagreements on the meaning of many items that have been adjudicated, it is a fairly concise document laying out the general structure and operation of the government of the United States and the rights of its citizens. By contrast, the EU Constitution comes out to more than 200 pages and contains lines like "The Union shall work for the sustainable development of Europe" and "It shall contribute to peace, security, the sustainable development of the earth."
Meanwhile, James Glassman and The American Thinker discuss the societies and failing economies of Europe. The one hope that Europe has, if it continues on its present course, is that the new countries of the EU (Poland, Slovenia, etc) will be able to drag the "Old Europe" away from its decaying, statist ways. This won't happen, however, if France and Germany continue to bully these new members into molding their economies to be more like theirs.
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