To EU, or not to EU

As usual, Mark Steyn has things sewn up. His latest article takes on, among other things, the fact that European leaders, watching the voters start backing off from the EU constitution, have a new campaign tactic: Vote for the Constitution, because it's the only thing standing between Europe and a new Holocaust. As Steyn says:

Golly. So the choice for voters on the Euro-ballot is apparently: yes to the European Constitution, or yes to a new Holocaust. If there's a neither-of-the-above box, the EU's rulers are keeping quiet about it. The notion that the Continent's peoples are basically a bunch of genocidal whackoes champing at the bit for a new bloodbath is one I'm not unsympathetic to. But it's a curious rationale to pitch to one's electorate: vote for us; we're the straitjacket on your own worst instincts.

This insulting and peculiar campaign rhetoric, leads Steyn to his next question:

Why does so much of the continental governing class carry on like the sinister Mitteleuropean shrink from a 1940s melodrama, insisting that you're far too unstable to be allowed to leave the sanatorium? Well, either they're the loopy ones or they're desperate, and they'd rather talk about a new Holocaust than any of the more pressing questions - Turkey, the unsustainable euro, unemployment, over-regulation, deathbed demographics. Or maybe they talk about the Second World War because that's the only genuine pan-European topic. Whatever the answer, the concentration-camps-around-the-corner argument is at least a useful glimpse into how the Eurocrats regard the citizenry. However the French and Dutch votes go, it seems unlikely that the EU's rulers will allow anything as footling as the will of the people to derail the project at this late stage. In Euro-referendums, there's only one correct answer; it's just that sometimes you have to have two votes before the people figure out which one it is. My sense is that the French will vote narrowly for the constitution and the Dutch will narrowly reject it, but either way the EU will figure out a way to inflict it on the Continent. A stitch-up in time saves, nein?

There's a lot more in this article, including a reminder -- as if Americans need it or the Europeans care -- that the real block to additional Holocausts since WWII has been NATO, which the Europeans would be happy to see sick into the Atlantic. Anyway, as always, Steyn has written a good read, so read on.