The European Union thinks it has the answer to war and peace and limitless welfare for all. That kind of grand delusion was brilliantly skewered two centuries ago by Alexis de Toqueville, one Frenchman who wasn't fooled.

Incredibly, the European Union has grown into a continental empire over the last thirty years without a single vote by the people. But the EU simply does not have anything like the New Media that have sprung up in the United States in the last two decades. Government propaganda organs like the BBC are run by the elites, riding roughshod over popular opinion. The BBC 'news' is just the ruling class talking to itself.

Europe's elites are so in love with their own brilliant ideas that they are deaf to dissent. People with common sense are muzzled or ignored. Based on EU decisions, Britain has quietly given up its traditional liberties, like free speech and the right of habeas corpus.   Soon it will surrender control over its borders and the powers of Parliament. There is no effective opposition.

All of a sudden, Europe's ruling class has gone into panic mode. New polls are finally showing that the people of France may not be fond of the contemptuous way they have been treated for the last thirty years. More than half of the French say they will cast their ballots against the EU Constitution. The grossly overstuffed Constitution, the size of a telephone book, is calculated to lock the EU rulers into permanent power, with none of the fuss and bother of elections. 

Now the Dutch government is thinking about canceling its referendum, to try to hold back a voter rebellion. Schroeder's Germany isn't bothering with an EU referendum at all, so German voters will not be allowed any say in their future. But Tony Blair has just called a snap election, apparently worried that the British are finally beginning to understand that they've been snookered. The biggest highway robbery in the world is suddenly in trouble, and the power class is fighting back.

'By the time their ancient love of freedom reawakened in the hearts of the French, they had come to regard the ideal society as one whose aristocracy consisted exclusively of government officials ... in which an all—powerful bureaucracy not only took charge of affairs of State but controlled men's private lives.'

wrote Alexis de  Toqueville two centuries ago (p. 167) 

That is the EU to perfection. It treats voters like peasants or children. Its endless lies are now a public joke.   For years, the media have played up fears of Armageddon if the EU does not rise to save the planet, peddled grandiose fantasies of a new European empire, promised endless subsidies for all, and whipped up xenophobic hatred for America and Israel ——— all to get the new elite locked into power. They are now on the verge of succeeding.

Yet European rulers have made one blunder after another, without having to face up to their own mistakes. Take Muslim immigration. Ordinary people from France to Sweden are under assault by a new underclass of angry, resentful, and often violent Muslim youths. In France they live in vast housing projects into which police are afraid to go. They are dead set against democracy and tolerance for others.  Instead, they want to turn France into an Islamic theocracy. With rising immigration and high Muslim birthrates, that will happen soon enough. Fear has therefore gripped the French middle class. When Jacques Chirac's government defended Saddam Hussein at the UN, it did so in good part because it was frightened of its own Muslim population. 

Normal people have understood the dangers of uncontrolled immigration for a long time, but the power class simply sneered at them. They forbade the collection of crime statistics for different ethnic groups, so that today North African youths roam the subways of Paris, mugging victims without fear. The police are useless.  Demographic trends now point to the extinction of ethnic French culture in only a few decades. France is becoming Muslim, yet Brigitte Bardot was prosecuted simply for telling the truth. 

Today the European Union is planning to raise Turkey to full membership, which would turn a steady stream of immigrants into an unstoppable flood. Border control will disappear. While most Muslims are probably fine people, a violent minority can always terrorize a passive majority. In US  history, when Italian immigrants started to come in large numbers, most were peaceful, hard—working, and became great contributors to our nation. But along with them came the Mafia, which has never been completely uprooted. So it is with violent fanatics in Islam.

In its blind arrogance the ruling class of Europe has brought its own peoples to the edge of extinction. Do the people really want this arrogant elite to be fixed in power forever? Do French voters still remember their  'ancient love of freedom,' in de Toqueville's words? Or has cynicism and despair sapped their intelligence? Do Britons and Hollanders still value their sturdy individuality? Do the Irish and Italians really believe that golden subsidies will flow their way forever? Do Germans want to go on supporting those who will not work?  Or has the ruling class bribed, browbeaten and demoralized all resistance? 

A popular vote against the Constitution may signal a new beginning. But even a decisive setback at the ballot box will not end the steady encroachment of the new power class. Too many careers, too many ravenous ambitions hang in the balance. Even if the Constitution is voted down, the upper class has a fallback strategy: It is the EU regulatory bureaucracy, already deeply dug into every major economy. Half of all domestic regulations in Britain now roll in an unstoppable wave from Brussels. If the Constitution is defeated, the EU will just rule by decree. It has already started to do so.

What is needed therefore is much more than a 'No!' vote; people power in Europe will require a democratic rebellion, using New Media like the web, satellite radio and even cellphones. The skeptics are pinning their hopes on the New Media. If they fail, look for a long, twilight struggle between the rulers and the people. 

As a former slave, Frederick Douglas had no illusions about ruling classes. His words of 1857 still apply today:

'Power concedes nothing without a demand... It never did... and it never will... Find out just what the people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."