> We're starting trade wars on multiple fronts, exiting or weakening multilateral alliances (and simultaneous giving an advantage to our global adversaries), and weakening the balance sheet of the federal government (during a business cycle peak). Of course this is going to end terribly.
I'll add the embrace of nationalism. Many of the leaders through WWI and WWII, including Churchill, put significant blame on nationalism for the wars, which is why they supported internationalism including the EU (or the beginnings of it at the time), UN, World Bank, IMF, etc.
If Europe were once united in the sharing of its common inheritance, there would be no limit to the happiness, to the prosperity and glory which its three or four hundred million people would enjoy. Yet it is from Europe that have sprung that series of frightful nationalistic quarrels, originated by the Teutonic nations, which we have seen even in this twentieth century and in our own lifetime, wreck the peace and mar the prospects of all mankind.
...
What is this sovereign remedy?
It is to re-create the European Family, or as much of it as we can, and provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety and in freedom.
We must build a kind of United States of Europe.
...
And why should there not be a European group which could give a sense of enlarged patriotism and common citizenship to the distracted peoples of this turbulent and mighty continent and why should it not take its rightful place with other great groupings in shaping the destinies of men?
I'll add the embrace of nationalism. Many of the leaders through WWI and WWII, including Churchill, put significant blame on nationalism for the wars, which is why they supported internationalism including the EU (or the beginnings of it at the time), UN, World Bank, IMF, etc.
Here's Churchill talking about it:
http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/astonish.html
If Europe were once united in the sharing of its common inheritance, there would be no limit to the happiness, to the prosperity and glory which its three or four hundred million people would enjoy. Yet it is from Europe that have sprung that series of frightful nationalistic quarrels, originated by the Teutonic nations, which we have seen even in this twentieth century and in our own lifetime, wreck the peace and mar the prospects of all mankind.
...
What is this sovereign remedy?
It is to re-create the European Family, or as much of it as we can, and provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety and in freedom.
We must build a kind of United States of Europe.
...
And why should there not be a European group which could give a sense of enlarged patriotism and common citizenship to the distracted peoples of this turbulent and mighty continent and why should it not take its rightful place with other great groupings in shaping the destinies of men?