Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-09-11-Speech-2-222-000"
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"en.20120911.32.2-222-000"2
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"Mr President, just before the vote, my friend and colleague, Chris Davies, said that I had to read Niall Ferguson’s book ‘Civilisations’. It is actually a book I had already read, and the thesis in it is not especially new. The idea that Europe flourished because it was a diverse, competing plurality of states rather than a single empire on the oriental model has been well-rehearsed by historians, by Alan Macfarlane, by Paul Kennedy, by Eric Jones, indeed by Adam Smith. It is a pretty old theory. Or, if you think I am being too Anglocentric about this, also by Montesquieu and Tocqueville, both of whom understood that the stasis inherent in uniformity, as it existed in the great ancient monarchies, is bad for growth and bad ultimately, therefore, for living standards.
Now I am sure you can tell where I am going with this argument. In trying to get on top of wars, the founders of the European Union also smothered the competition, the diversity, that had been the basis of the greatness of European civilisation. Our generation is living through a tragic reversal whereby just as China and India learned the virtues of the dispersal of power, Europe is going down this Ming, Mogul, and Ottoman road towards uniformity, taxation and decline. Our mistake and our tragedy."@en1
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