You can argue against a man’s opinions, judgments, logic, conclusions and you can even question his facts. But it’s no point arguing against his secular faith – this is something that’s held on the other side of reason.
Case in point: yesterday I had lunch with a truly formidable Frenchman. Formerly one of France’s top diplomats, he was an important figure in leading the country towards being a province in the EU. Now in his late 80s, yet still an intellectual force to be reckoned with, he publishes a book a year, along with numerous articles in some of France’s weightier journals. And he still uses first person singular when talking about the EU government.
Since this wasn’t the first time we’d locked horns on the EU, I had decided to stay off the subject, concentrating instead on our host’s excellent claret. But the old man wouldn’t let me remain neutral – he demanded to know how I’d vote in the unlikely event we got a referendum. Upon hearing my predictable reply, he attacked me with a vigour belying his age.
I couldn’t match his energy with my own, and every word I tried to get in edgewise was bounced back into my rapidly masticating face. When I did manage to take issue with a point, the heir to Talleyrand would simply backtrack and repeat exactly what he had said before. In the end, the combination of the wine and my natural bloody-mindedness led me to using words like ‘nonsense’, which I now regret – no matter how severely provoked, one ought not to be rude to one’s elders.
Some of our point-counterpoints are worth citing, if only because my venerable interlocutor’s arguments are exactly the same as those I’ve heard from every French advocate of European federalism, and from some of their British co-religionists. I wonder if there’s some finishing school where they are all trained in the art of verbal jousting with recalcitrant infidels.
“You’d suffer outside the EU.” In what way?
“If you leave the EU, I won’t trade with you.” How would you go about it?
“I’ll introduce protectionist measures.” Protectionism begets protectionism. The EU has a positive trade balance with us, and therefore more to lose in a trade war.
“You’ll be in the same trading position in Europe as China and the USA.” They seem to be doing reasonably well.
“You won’t. I won’t let you remain a true trading nation.” England had been a trading nation even before the EU. For about a millennium.
“Not for much longer. You’ll need a visa to come here.” Even if so, this is a small price to pay for maintaining our national sovereignty.
“You’ve already surrendered your national sovereignty. To NATO.” NATO isn’t a federal state. It’s a military alliance. These have existed since the beginning of time.
“You’ve surrendered your sovereignty because you’ve accepted foreign command over your forces.” First, this only applies when our forces operate under the NATO flag. Second, someone has to lead, and it’s only natural that the supreme command should rest with the biggest contingent.
“You should be thankful to the EU for having kept peace in Europe since 1945.” The EU has existed only since 1993. It had been the EEC until then. An important distinction.
“I know this better than you do; I was there.” Fine. Then you must also know that what kept peace in Europe wasn’t the EU but NATO, in particular the American nuclear umbrella.
“The EU has kept Europe prosperous all these years.” And look how well it’s doing now.
A few more exchanges in the same vein, and the word ‘nonsense’ crossed my lips, after which the old ambassador stopped talking to me, and quite right too. I had committed two faux pas: first, I had forgotten my manners; second, I had tried to argue rationally against an irrational faith.
Monsieur l’Ambassadeur is an intelligent and accomplished man. The astounding thing, however, is that I’ve heard exactly the same ‘arguments’ from Frenchmen who are neither. One begins to think that the justification for the EU resides in the infra range way below intellect, or else in the ultra range above it. It’s as if the French have assigned transcendence to the EU, thereby filling the vacuum formed by their disastrous laïcité, the state-enforced secularisation of society.
Even devout Catholics, such as my interlocutor, seem to accept that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob needs help from a parallel deity, the EU demiurge. Alas, they are in for a letdown: people won’t pray to this God, they won’t worship it and they won’t die for it. However, they may – much as I hate to be a prophet of doom – die because of it.
The EU is a highly seismic area, made so by the blind, irrational and usually wicked superstitions of its denizens. And when pressure breaks through the fault lines, it’s not balm or myrrh that splashes out. If you don’t believe me, just look at Pompeii.