New Totalitarian Temptation

What lies at the root of the eurozone crisis and the chaos in Greece? Why are long-established political parties in decline throughout Europe while protest parties covering the entire political spectrum are on the rise? Why is Great Britain planning a referendum on whether Britain should leave the European Union? Does all of this portend real change in Europe, or will the political elites succeed in further pursuing their agenda of creating a unified Europe without meaningful accountability to average voters?

The New Totalitarian Temptation: Global Governance and the Crisis of Democracy in Europe is a must-read for those who wish to understand the EU; it is the first book to pinpoint the essence of the EU in its utopian vision of a supranationally govcrned world, and from that perspective to shed light on its true meaning and purpose. The book’s thesis is that the EU’s commitment to the ideology of global governance, with its aim to achieve world peace by establishing a supranational global legal order, has pernicious implications for democracy, the protection of human rights and the world’s most important alliance – the transatlantic alliance between North America and Europe. Why? With the global governance ideology at its core, the EU has become inherently anti-democratic; its adherents will not be impeded by electorates who do not understand the vision. The EU and its vision also suffer from overweening ambition; the most dedicated EU elites aspire to transform not just the world order, but also the lives of individuals, by promoting a human rights policy that denies the importance of tradition, rootedness in local communities, and the basic constancy of human nature. And finally, the global governance vision makes the EU, perhaps unintentionally but unavoidably, anti-American; it seeks a global order in which the sovereign powers of nation-states, including the United States, are meticulously circumscribed and severely curtailed. But Americans should not be content to point a complacent finger at our European cousins — the same civilizational phenomenon is occurring in the United States. And there is hope. The EU can be reformed, and the time is ripe for a renewed commitment to democratic sovereignty on both sides of the Atlantic.