The Harm of Anti-Nationalism
26th February 2023
The first rule of politics is to never give government powers that you would not trust in the hands of your worst political enemy.
If there is one government institution that has proven this correct, it is the European Union. Born out of the Cold War, forged in the uncertainty of its ending, and built during the peaceful, prosperous 1990s, the EU was originally meant to be an enabler of freedom, commerce, and human ingenuity. In 1995, as an EU-skeptical candidate for its parliament (while still living in my native Sweden), even I could appreciate the virtues of facilitating the mobility of resources across national borders within the union.
Since then, the EU has been completely transformed. Today, it is an increasingly totalitarian entity, trying to force moral values upon its member states—values that are at odds with core conservative principles. To take a well-known example, the tensions between Brussels on the one hand and Warsaw and Budapest on the other would not have existed if the EU had stayed true to the purpose that gave birth to the union in Maastricht in 1992.