A statist illusion

An unpopular truth

[Reprinted from Issues & Views August 13, 2001]

The European Union is largely the idea of certain politicians in Europe who want to centralize power and make all the citizens of Europe live as they deem proper. There is little mystery about the benefits of the EU for those who like to lord it over the rest of Europe from the Union’s headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. Send out orders about how meat is supposed to be processed, what names may be used for wines, what building codes must be adhered to, what pollution controls must be deployed everywhere, how trucks must be built and packed, etc., and so forth. In other words, quite the opposite of the elimination of the heavy hand of the state has been on the minds of many of the champions of the EU.

Of course, the ideals of a free society are radical and so they need getting used to, primarily psychologically. So many in Europe and elsewhere in the world still look to the state, with its pretensions of superior wisdom, virtue and conduct. The idea that it is with the individual that the solutions to problems lie, and not with those bureaucrats above us all, is too radical for them to accept. Until the statist illusion is dispelled for good, there will remain many problems in Europe and elsewhere which simply get swept under the rug by bureaucrats who wield power rather than handle difficulties faced by people everywhere.

-- From "Europe's Slacking Embrace of Liberty," by Tibor Machan in The Laissez Faire City Times; Mr. Machan teaches at Chapman University in Orange, California and is author of Initiative: Human Agency and Society, published by Hoover Institution Press.

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