Are there any historical examples of independent, autonomous states voluntarily joining together by forming a new, independent civil authority above each and all of them (and also showing success)?
How about Quebec in Canada? Canada has survived with a seeming misfit in the mix.
The United States, of course, didn't make it. It required a civil war to homogenize the competing cultures.
How about modern India? As I understand it, the various states in India were never formally united and governed centrally until the British left.
And Indonesia? I suspect the Europeans hope to perform better than Indonesia, however.
Bismark pulled together the various federal states in Germany to form an "empire."
Is your objection 1. the mere act or event of unification (or subjection) of disparate states under a single civil authority; or 2. the ideology of that central authority, that is, comprehensive liberalism, which you see as self-defeating and destructive of crucial civil and social arrangements; or 3. unification of polities with distinctive national and ethnic realities and histories (such as the former Yugoslavia) regardless of any governing ideology?
Would the prognosis be better if the ideology of the federal authority were something different than comprehensive liberalism? I say it could be, and offer the Roman Empire as illustrative.
EU
Are there any historical examples of independent, autonomous states voluntarily joining together by forming a new, independent civil authority above each and all of them (and also showing success)?
How about Quebec in Canada? Canada has survived with a seeming misfit in the mix.
The United States, of course, didn't make it. It required a civil war to homogenize the competing cultures.
How about modern India? As I understand it, the various states in India were never formally united and governed centrally until the British left.
And Indonesia? I suspect the Europeans hope to perform better than Indonesia, however.
Bismark pulled together the various federal states in Germany to form an "empire."
Is your objection 1. the mere act or event of unification (or subjection) of disparate states under a single civil authority; or 2. the ideology of that central authority, that is, comprehensive liberalism, which you see as self-defeating and destructive of crucial civil and social arrangements; or 3. unification of polities with distinctive national and ethnic realities and histories (such as the former Yugoslavia) regardless of any governing ideology?
Would the prognosis be better if the ideology of the federal authority were something different than comprehensive liberalism? I say it could be, and offer the Roman Empire as illustrative.