Brexit? Let’s boot Poland out of the EU!

@shavixmir said
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53538205

Basically, Poland doesn’t want woman’s rights to be taught in school and their gouvernment is all into family values and not interfering when gays are abused or women are abused in the home.

Kicking them out of the EU is too good for them.
Sell their sorry, rabidly nasty, anti-abortion, anti-equal rights arse to the Russ ...[text shortened]... promise of reinstating the goulag for their disruption to evolution.

God damn, they piss me off!

So, 'Poxit' next then, it does have a certain ring.

@earl-of-trumps said
@Soothfast

Interesting perspective. I personally think that some people (Shav) get all
worked up over not much. Of course, America has such a thing as state's
rights so this thinking is normal for me.

Poland should have the right to teach what it wants - or not, in their schools.

They do. Outside of Europe.

@earl-of-trumps said
@Soothfast

Interesting perspective. I personally think that some people (Shav) get all
worked up over not much. Of course, America has such a thing as state's
rights so this thinking is normal for me.

Poland should have the right to teach what it wants - or not, in their schools.

When they joined the European Union they signed a treaty. They were not compelled to sign the treaty. So if their school curriculums have to contain certain courses that is what they signed up to when they joined.

It's a little odd to me that they be required to have "women's rights" taught in schools, feminism is a political position and so in a politics class, treated as an academic subject, it's clearly going to have a role. If politics is optional then I can't see a logical argument for having propaganda lessons, what they really shouldn't be doing is teaching that women belong at home or some such such. So requiring that a school advocate a political position, which seems, from what has been written in this thread, to be what is being required of them seems incorrect. I suspect there's some flaky reporting (here) of what the issue actually is.

-Removed-

I'm not really interested in the trade issue; that will, as you say, be sorted out one way or another. I'm primarily interested in avoiding a situation where neighbouring European countries get dragged on separate sides into a war between America and China.

I also think that what appears to be the inevitable result of Brexit, Britain aligning itself more closely with a US apparently on the verge of civil war and characterised by a degree of political corruption unparalleled in the developed world, is as illogical in 2020 as it would been for a country to align with Brezhnev's Soviet Union in 1980.

-Removed-

I don't think Teinosuke's thinking about trade as such, but political vulnerability. His argument seems to be that one must be a client state of one or another superpower or face trade isolation as the various superpowers use their hold over other, nominally independent, states to impose what amounts to economic blockade. Even if this is a moderately faithful representation of Foreign relations I don't think it follows that it is therefore necessary to be in the EU.

The European project is essentially an attempt to set up a United States of Europe, which involves a surrender of identity, at least to some extent. Being outside of it surrenders influence, at least within the EU. So it seems to hang on what one thinks is the greater sacrifice.

@teinosuke said
I think you're missing the bigger picture. Any country in the EU at least has a say in its decision making. Outside the EU, countries like Hungary would have to choose (as Britain is now having to choose) whether to become a client state of Russia, or China, or America. I can't think of anything more disastrous for the future of the continent than its being divided into a B ...[text shortened]... to find out, it's the difference between being one of history's agents and being one of its objects.

This was a very interesting post to me.

I had decided I needed to sit on it a few days before responding, and I did...

I guess I would say that I did not imagine European states as requiring to stand up to the US, or to compete with it. Rather, I thought in terms of NATO, which is honestly a bad idea, because you are right: the classical powers of Europe should not treat themselves as a mere extension of American interests in Europe. '

Where I would disagree is that they need to band together as the EU to counter it... but then I thought about this more: it makes sense because it will undermine the attempts of individual members to compete for individual deals with the US that are preferential, but actually lose their value as the profit margins become less and less in their competition to land these deals, and how this sort of negotiating could lead to undermining the European market and capital as a whole.

This led to a lot more complex thoughts about economics and sovereignty -- a real spiderweb of things going on. But I still cannot bring myself to signing off on the EU... but now I understand it more.

I'd really need to chew on this geopolitical nut a lot longer to get anywhere on this specific topic... and I have not even begun to consider it from the unique perspectives of Poland / Hungary / Romania and other nations that are more interested in an alternative to secular humanist liberal democracy & cosmopolitan monoculture.

Hopefully my thoughts on this will evolve over the years... but I have to asy, they may not simply because I am more of a philosophy guy and there are too many wires going back to realpolitik to make it appealing to me.

@philokalia said
This was a very interesting post to me.

I had decided I needed to sit on it a few days before responding, and I did...

I guess I would say that I did not imagine European states as requiring to stand up to the US, or to compete with it. Rather, I thought in terms of NATO, which is honestly a bad idea, because you are right: the classical powers of Europe sho ...[text shortened]... osophy guy and there are too many wires going back to realpolitik to make it appealing to me.

“ cosmopolitan monoculture.”
Isn’t this a contradiction, I mean it’s either cosmopolitan or it’s a monoculture surely?
And a monoculture is exactly what the current Polish government is trying to establish or preserve.

@kevcvs57 said
“ cosmopolitan monoculture.”
Isn’t this a contradiction, I mean it’s either cosmopolitan or it’s a monoculture surely?
And a monoculture is exactly what the current Polish government is trying to establish or preserve.

Aw, but you see, there is the idea of a global monoculture. I forget the name of the man who said it, but some people even refer to this as post-culture.

It radically differs from modern & premodern ideas of culture and identity, and it becomes a situation where everywhere becomes essentially th esame.

You kind of see it now throughout the world -- the language differs, but the same Starbucks, same McDonald's, same nondescript Italian restaurants; same Pride parade; some lower income migrant class; same bourgeois kids playing FIFA or CS: GO.

There is a certain sameness that overwhelms and infects everything.