Europa

Europe is not just an idea, it's an identity. It's not just a place but a promise, a promise of the cosmopolitan and the international in all its essence, its concentrated form. It's the promise of 740 million to co-existed merrily, fraternally, peacefully in spite of millennia of battle. 28 countries live in the hope of a common life and sweet citizenship. It is not a petty project. It carries the hope of mankind. If man can thrive here, it raises the bar, sets the world ablaze with political ambition. And indeed union is the rage. African Union, North American Union, Eurasian Union, union is the means where we show our human selves, where what hurts someone over there affects us over here. Where the interest is in all people and not one nation above another, one away from any other. Where we look at each other as brothers in the sweet web of existence, naked to the vast universe, and not exercising power by incendiary action and retarding, backward thinking. Content of character, not color of skin. If my African brother is sad, I'm sad too. If a poor begging girl in Mumbai taps my hand for bread, pathos is my brother. If the wretched die young, they die on your witness.

That is why Europe matters. It is the promise to the world of what it should live like. Of all humanity it is its expectation; Its right to live like. There is no reason why the world can't live like Europe. And no reason why it shouldn't. Except that reason doesn't rule in the majority of the world. Given what we know, we cry bootless prayers to the moon when we see ignorance and stupidity reign high. We say, 'if only they knew'. And our souls flutter. If only they could see... And yet still there's no reason against all living like the European.

And so the European project is not just for the Europeans but for all man, all society. It is the model. And so when the cynics bite like sharks, they must examine their conscience to see if they are the opposite to argument, or just the passionate from ignorance. Or against humanity. Or really against themselves. 

Europe never was one country, so why should one country bring it down? 

It won't. It can't. It never has. With trepidation we say it never will. And so the life of the human keeps its dignity. Sweet old Europe, preserver's of dignity. Thus those who supported Brexit have won a pyrrhic victory. They have won a victory for the sclerotic, the stupid, the ignorant. They call it sovereignty. But what brother shuts the gate to his own? Turn your back on the world, and, as Chesterton says, it turns its back on you. How stupid is all this madness? Beyond the stupid. And what does the student of it conclude? That Europe will survive and that it doesn't depend on any one European country for it to survive.

Let that old harmony play. Let that union be. Let it be recorded that humans fight for justice, fraternity and the common life. Let not the selfish and the stupid be the megaphones of the human spirit. Let rivers of love rush on. Embrace your fellow. To those that oppose such a tendency, yours is the tragic victory. There, you win the prize of the joy of self-obsession and the hurt of self-flagellation. Enjoy your wounds. Enjoy your scars. Enjoy your distance. Enjoy your distance from the beauty of embrace. 'Good riddance Britain', they will say. 'Good riddance Europe', will be your reply? But Britain will lose more. Because Britain must lose more. Britain will suffer. But Europe must be open. And should the sulking baby of Britain, stupid in its people, want to play the prodigal, Europe will let that old scene play and sacrifice the fatted calf. Happy in the welcome of a wayward son. And welcomed back Britain would be. But ye gads of decency, preserve, why let such insults manifest? And why should Europe ever forget?

And so the isolationists sell a double lie. That they can deliver better and that they can defend sovereignty. They are charlatans who don't know history. They are trinket men who sell stollen goods. They can never understand the dignity of man. They are one idea's men. They are fascists because they cannot think otherwise. They cannot think beyond their own heartless primitive gratification. They are the reflex of the presumptive. Sovereignty rests in the deepest caves of men, not one place or the other.

Trinkets are shiny. Beer is cheap. A good time is a few pieces of money away. Is this to be the standard? Well no. Not by a good long way. Because old Europe has come to compact. And whether Britain accepts terms or no, is of supreme indifference. And what old Europe teaches with touching pathos is that if you fight for it, you get it; If you fight for it, you get it. You get it by long fashion. And no power will molest. Because no power of one state can tell the other 27 what to do, or hold them to ransom. The populists will lose in the long run. They will pass. And so Britain will lose. A too proud union rejecting the most successful union, is not our world full of irony?  

Thus I, for one, want it to be known that I reject British policy. I defy it. I am European and no one May tell me otherwise. So I defy the stupid who have 'risen' up? Go back to your caves and melt into the rocks. Descend back to the vegetation where you belong. Huffing and puffing is your basic practice, don't disturb the intelligent with your nonsense. Huts are your houses. Go dwell there. The dialectic is beyond you, the debate is a side-show to you. Leave off and return to your straw dwellings. I defy the authority that strips me of the right. And I defy the history, the bone-hardened legacy that says only some in Britain are entitled to good education. No, in sweet old Britain, in dear old Britain they would never have voted the rod for their own backs if they all had good education. 

And there lies the rub. In England the culture proclaims nothing about education being a way to escape poverty, when the truth is education is the only way to escape it, to tunnel out from low to high. And so poverty is chief in a country that should know better. And yet England has education enough to know better. Education for a few means nothing, it is in the long deleterious. Education is a right, not privilege extended. If all can't be well educated, then the state is not very smart. And I will clash swords with any who thinks otherwise.

We are hopeful, and we are fearless knowing that the dear face of Europa is pleasant enough to welcome back a recalcitrant fool.