January 15, 2002

Any Answers? It's good know

Any Answers? It's good know that Iain Murray is back in the saddle again (and feeling heroic, apparently.) Read his great piece on Eurocrats and the unpopularity of the death penalty ban:

The values of democracy and inalienable rights supposedly common to Europe and America actually mean different things to Europe’s rulers. A Europe that feels strong enough to have an independent common foreign and defense policy is not necessarily something that America should welcome. It may well promote values very different from ours, and the democratic Anglo-American interpretation of those values, so attractive to the average European, will be smothered by the new continental aristocracy.

I'm opposed to the death penalty myself, but "democratic" rulers with so little regard for the popular will, and "democratic" institutions which allow them to formalize this disregard into policy so easily, are deeply disturbing whatever the "issue." Yet despite the shared Anglo-American interpretation of democratic values in general (which is indisputable) is it not the case that British elites have, like their Euro-counterparts, imposed the death penalty ban on an an unwilling pubic?

Posted by Dr. Frank at January 15, 2002 10:03 AM | TrackBack