Daniel Hannan - Germany no longer needs Europe

live debate intelligence let's now move on with the last voice for the motion Daniel heaven who is writer and journalist conservative MEP for South East England since 1999 Thank You mr. chairman join me my friends in a little thought experiment imagine that you were a visitor from another solar system circling this planet 500 years ago gazing out of the porthole of your flying saucer at the fragile blue globe out of the window it seems to me that your your gaze would alight on the great monarchies of Asia the mingun mogul and ottoman empires they would seem to be the future you would marvel at the extraordinary advances they'd made in gunpowder in printing in canals and shipbuilding in paper-money cartography mathematics and then your eye would move over to these broken squabbling tribes at the westernmost tip of the Eurasian landmass you would not put any money let me suggest on Europe being the dominant civilization of the next 500 years you would assume that the Chinese would be the ones who would sail around Africa to discover Portugal rather than the other way around now why didn't that happen what was the unique ingredient that brought European civilization to this position of global hegemony well in an audience as distinguished and intelligent as this one I'm not going to try and pass this off as an original theory of mine I'm borrowing heavily from the Australian historian al Jones although his thesis was taken to a much wider audience by Paul Kennedy in his rise and fall of the great powers the genius of Europe lay in its diversity in its pluralism in its variety in the fact that it never became centralized as a single Empire that while the Ming's and the moguls and the Ottomans became taxed and regulated and uniform Europe remained a diverse plurality of competing states trialing new ideas piloting new schemes copying what worked best in their neighbors now I'm sure you can guess where I'm going with this island the tragedy of our generation is that at the moment when the great nations of Asia have learnt the virtues of decentralization of competition of enterprise of the diffusion of power we in the European Union are going in the opposite direction you don't find many mandarins in Brussels in what you do find many mandarins in Brussels rather you don't find them there in Peking these days here's a scary statistic or at least I found it's scary the share of world GDP occupied by Western Europe which I'll define for these purposes of the 15 members of the EU prior to the 2004 enlargement in 1974 those Western European countries accounted for 36% of world GDP today it's 26 percent in 2020 it will be 15 percent over a period when the US share of world wealth has remained roughly steady at around about 25 26 percent now here is the tragic part we made that happen and when I say we I mean you this being a basically British and German audience where the mugs who have paid for the whole thing for this weakening this debilitation of our international position until the late 1990s there were only two countries which were net contributors to the EU budget the United Kingdom in second place and always overwhelmingly the biggest donor West Germany and then and then the United Germany now why does that happen well the question of why Britain became such a mug depends requires a longer debate than this one there's a whole issue of how public opinion isn't reflected on European policy the real pathos is in the is in Germany's willingness to sign the cheques because it was done from the highest most selfless most unsorted of motives what Michael Shermer referred to is not allowing the demons to arise again and so on I don't for a moment disparage the purity or the sincerity of that motivation I appreciate of course the extraordinary achievement that Adenauer in his generation carried off taking a country that was bankrupted its infrastructure did foreign troops occupied on its soil and partitioned and putting it on a path to become the most prosperous country and a trusted country in a welcomed partner in Europe I don't for a moment suggest that that argument is ignoble or selfish it is simply out of date it doesn't mean anything anymore for a long time there was this unspoken appeal you have to sign the cheques because of historical obligation we had it referred to elliptically by a couple of speakers now we don't want to return to nasty history my friends it has to remain unspoken because the moment you vocalize it it's utter absurdity becomes apparent when you spell it out we have to give money to the Greek government because otherwise we might find ourselves at war with Poland you realize what a miserable proposition that is and fortunately the people of Germany have seen through the racket they understand though when we talk about helping Greece helping Portugal we're doing nothing of the kind you do not help an indebted friend by pressing more loans on him these bailouts are ruinous for the recipient countries as they are for the donor countries condemning southern Europe two generations of poverty and emigration rather than admit our mistake and I don't lay the blame at Germany I'll aim it late I lay the blame at the door of the European elites in general I think the German people like the British people have come to their senses even Oliver cam now thinks that it's making a mistake carrying on joy shall be in heaven moreover one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance but we have reached that point and we as British people should be delighted by the normalization of German patriotism by the regularization of Germany's relations as an international partner as a liberal democracy so I'm going to do something in closing that perhaps know beyond pants or euro integrationist does but that I think needs to be done I'm going to salute the return to German patriotism patriotism doesn't mean you look down on other countries on the contrary it's what makes us behave unselfishly it's what makes us recognize an obligation to our immediate neighbors I salute what the German flag stands for that flag that was first flown by the National liberals of the 1848 revolution who understood those high-minded progressive men that the future of Europe would be best served if democracies collaborated one with another living together as friendly neighbors rather than bickering as quarreling tenants they understood that democracy is not simply a periodic right to mark a cross on a ballot paper the democracy depends also on an affinity between government and government a sense of common identity of allegiance of nationhood you need a demos a unit with which we identify when we use the word we we have that sense as Britons as Germans as Portuguese we do not have it as Europeans and when you take the demos out of democracy you're left only with the cratis with the power of a system that must compel by force of law what it dare not ask in the name of civic patryk ISM let me close with the words of a true German Liberal and Democrat the great liberal economist Bill Hemmer aapke one of the first of his countrymen to see through the Nazi barbarism and one of the first of his countrymen one of the first Europeans in the late 1940s to see the flaw in the European project he said in antiquity Strabo spoke of the many shapes of Europe Montesquieu was to describe Europe as an acción de Nacional decentralization is of the essence of the spirit of Europe to try and weld the countries of Europe into one block and govern it centrally is nothing less than a betrayal of Europe and Europe's patrimony and a betrayal all the worse for being carried out in Europe's name

Channel: Intelligence Squared

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Keywords: Intelligence Squared, Debate, great oratory, Intelligence Squared debate, speech, top debates, best debates, most interesting debates, educational debates, intelligence2, intelligencesquared, is debate, iq2, iq2 debate, iq squared, Daniel Hannan, Germany, Europe, EU, Economic Crisis, Brussels, Finance, germany no longer needs europe, germany, euro crisis, eurocrisis, merkel, mep, dan hannan, etabedeporue

Id: o2j4oCDBbts

Length: 9min 4sec (544 seconds)

Published: Sun May 22 2011