One of the funny things about history is how a group of states will get together and try to create a federation of equals.

The first stage is equality with disunity

When a crisis erupts, a central bureacracy is imposed to maintain order

The central bureaucracy begins depriving its members of power.

Examples:

1. The American Colonies. After they acheived independence, the 13 colonies signed articles of federation. American history books now teach that the original scheme was idealistic and unworkable. Washington used the Whiskey Rebellion as a reason to re-write the articles. The committee came up with the U.S. constitution, a document for which it had no authority to create. Later, especially during the civil war, the sovereignty of states was gutted, and states were no longer allowed to leave the union if they wished.

2. The confederate states of America. Originally, the confederate constitution enshrined the right to secede, until several states in the west considered seceding from the Confederacy and suing for peace (AR and TX?). Davis actually threatened to crush the insurrection . . .

3. The League of nations, which was idealistic and but powerless, and so was replaced with the United Nations, which now has the authority to field an army (Following the USA model.)

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So, will the EU follow this same pattern?
Will the EU annex states by coercion and force?
Will they set up a "Strong Central Government" to enforce their dictates?
How about the WTO? Or OPEC?

The Hansa started the same way in the Germanies. . .

I wish I could remember half of what I learned in AP US History 8 years ago , but...

I've always found that if you hear the word "unity" your going to find some false sense of Utopia...It's like the Kafka short story where the man suddenly turns into a cockroach and shrugs it off as tho it were a normal day - his family shuns him b/c, hey...he's a friggin cock-a-roach - and suddenly he realizes - hey...I'm a friggin cock-a-roach

Maybe I'm completely off topic, but I like Kofka and I also hat seeing "0 replies" in threads I post...so I thought I would speak up - What you want is rarely ever what you get...

Please Note that the -a-roach should say C O C K as in a C O C K...roach - I hope I don't get warned again

I had no clue they censored words - I've seen a few words out there strung together, like blow and job that were not censored

At any rate, sorry for the off topic reply - that caught me off guard and I thought I should explain what was left out.

Originally posted by dr_strangecraft
So, will the EU follow this same pattern?
Will the EU annex states by coercion and force?
Will they set up a "Strong Central Government" to enforce their dictates?
How about the WTO? Or OPEC?

Too many countries and contradictions among them and now they are talking that Turkey must join the union. For me it seems that union is slowly marching to its collapse. It’s simply impossible to rule so huge area.

As regarding OPEC and WTO, they are not countries, neither unions, they are more like organizations.

Sorry for my poor English, nonetheless I guess you could catch the meaning.

Your English was fine...and your point was even better

Thanks, anyway, I don't remember where I heard this, but there was a saying, that history only repeats itself because people don't learn from it.