From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu Feb 20 2003 - 19:04:36 MST
Serafino writes
> > How can Chirac get away with this *within* France? Are
> > there French readers of this list who can describe what's
> > happening there? Or does anyone have an account?
>
> It's the revival of the Carolingian Empire! Paris & Berlin ;-)
> http://www.ku.edu/kansas/medieval/108/lectures/carolingian_empire.html
Well, I know a powerful German executive who has recently
spoken of the Fourth Reich!
Actually, he was a hippie in in 1960's so it's not *that*
kind of Reich. But he's quite serious in that the 84 million
Germans have not yet reached their economic or political
apogee in Europe.
The way that power politics *always* works out is that
Europe feels a need (here I may be taken as speaking
either of its leaders and most influential people, or
about "abstract" Europe) to assert itself internationally.
(Too long was Europe split, and overshadowed by the
U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. With a precedent going back
even much further than Charlemagne, the dissolution
of the bi-polar world urges Europe towards unity and
concomitant domination.)
Still, "Europe" has to deal with the individual agendas
of its member nations, like "France", "Italy", or,
maybe later certain unnamed Eastern European countries.
That's always been the case: were the American colonies
(including the Canadian ones) going to unite against
England or not? You can never tell just how successful
(or desirable) coalitions are.
But it would still be nice to hear about how it's going
in France itself.
Lee
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Feb 20 2003 - 19:00:33 MST