No, of course not. It’s a bureaucracy.

You need details, huh? They really don’t teach you college kids much for all that money they charge you, do they?

Any word ending in -cracy refers to what governs. Democracy just means the people govern – there aren’t any true democracies. Autocracy means a single person has full governing power. Think ‘despot’ but that’s just the usual outcome. Benevolent autocracy is possible in theory. So far, it hasn’t happened.

So what’s a bureaucracy? It’s government by administrators. Imagine if managers ruled the world, that’s bureaucracy.

You’re used to bureaucracy’s other meaning, using administrations to further governance. In modern governments this form of bureaucracy is the norm. But the actual power lies elsewhere and so the majority of modern governments aren’t bureaucracies – they just have pet bureaucracies.

The European Union is a quasi-government. It wants to be a government when it grows up, but at present it lacks the full power of government. The US, oddly enough, is one of the limiting factors here. Since the US provides both nuclear over watch and a huge part of Europe’s defense there’s been little inclination of the European nation-states to get off their bums and get their defense in order.

And a whole lot less to surrender military autonomy to the EU.

Military autonomy is one of the must haves to be an actual government. Despite the squabbling in Congress over Ukraine aid, this isn’t likely to happen any time soon. The luster is off and more and more European nations are becoming skeptical of the EU.

Relax, they won’t do anything about it for years to come. They’re kinda busy at the moment with all the problems the EU has created and the whole Russia invading Europe thing.

The EU would like more sovereignty so it can fix the problems it caused. That alone should prove that it’s a bureaucracy! Only a bureaucracy would think more power would solve stupidity.

But, they talk about their ‘democratic values’!

It’s all talk. Some of the nation-states are democratic parliamentary systems but even most of those aren’t really democratic in any legit way. They vote for parties, not people. Democratic republics like the US have people voting directly for their representatives, party not withstanding and yes, this is not true of the President. Parliamentary systems have people voting for the party, not the person, that will represent them. They have little to no candidate choice.

Oh, stop. You do to have candidate choice – you just never show up at the party meetings to vet candidates let alone vote in primaries. The US system is messy but that mess gives us even more control, when we bother to use it.

Back to parliaments. They tend to be tyrannies of the minority because small parties that get enough seats become kingmakers as the majority party tries to form a government. It’s like football – simple enough when you know the rules but confusing as heck when you don’t and are trying to figure out why there was a turnover.

Sorting out college from professional rules is easier, trust me.

Long and the short is yes, most parliamentary systems in the modern era are ‘democratic’ in that people do vote for the party that will represent them but the power of the voter is deliberately diluted so that it is very hard to get governments to be responsive.

Yes, parliamentary governments collapse a lot more often but that’s almost always internal and not voters making themselves felt.

For all the criticism I just leveled at democratic parliamentary systems, they are head and shoulders above the EU’s very undemocratic bureaucracy. The system is deliberately over complicated with voters only electing ministers who are NOT decision makers nor do they have much impact on policy, unless you count the rubber stamp.

Oh but, Europe is just so much more liberal.

Are they really?

No, I don’t know either. I see considerable evidence that they are post-Christian and politically apathetic until they aren’t. East and West, North and South all have considerable political differences. social liberalism seems more a cultural norm than a belief system, especially in the East and South.

We have similar issues with over representation of the urban in the US. The media gives us the impression that ‘everyone’ believes in leftist dogma. Yeah, no.

Europe is complicated like all other large groups of humans. The non-democratic EU has become oppressive. It probably has gotten way ahead of itself. Hint: if you want to be an autocracy, first you have to actually have all the power.

Brexit is the most obvious example of Europeans turning on the EU but it’s not the only one. Okay, not counting whatever France is doing since that’s probably just Republic Number 6 on the way.

But then again, if Europeans are so lockstep in their liberal beliefs, why are you having demonstrations all over the place?

The indications point to a ideologically diverse and possibly divergent electorate. The fact that no European nation states seem all that eager to cede even more power to the EU’s governing bodies is a strong indicator that not all is well in EU land. You heard right – bodies. Not true branches like the US has but isolated bodies with different spheres of power.

Your guess is just as good as anyone else’s as to how they elect the EU President. No, really. Look it up for yourself, there is no clear regulation on how to select the president. We might not like the Electoral College but at least we know exactly how it works.

My guess is that Europe is undergoing something akin to a party system shift here in the US. It’s their first so it’s anyone’s guess as to how it plays out. Mine is that Russia just scared them out of fantasy land and the US kicked them back into reality. If Europe wants to be secure and peaceful they are going to have to take responsibility for not only their defense but their political systems.

European federation is a pipedream at the moment. The EU is barely an alliance, let alone a confederation. Oh don’t feel too bad for them. Governments are tough things to design. You’ll get them wrong the first few tries – Articles of Confederation ring any bells? The EU is just in that teenage growing pains stage.

I doubt the EU as it exists now survives. But Europe’s desire to chart its own course seems real enough. A phoenix will rise from the ashes, probably cough up a lung and start over. Governments aren’t easy to design when you don’t have multiple nation-states at the table. This will be a painful process but not a hopeless one.

A podunk colony on the wrong side of the ocean told off the world’s most powerful nation and went on to design the best governmental system in the world. If the little ol’ U. S. of A. can do that, Europe can figure out the whole governing fairly and freely thing.

Eventually. But for right now, the EU is a bureaucracy and not a particularly good one. Europeans are learning the hard lessons about how important freedom is and that it costs a lot more than just letting America fight all the wars.

We’ve had to pick ourselves up after finding out we were idiots a few times now. If we can do it, so can they.

If they just don’t kill each other first.