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The emerging European Soviet: the European Union--adding new members and completing a Constitution--threatens the freedom of Europe and foreshadows similar processes under way with the FTAA.

Article Excerpt
Cities throughout Eastern Europe erupted in joyous celebrations on May 1, as eight former components of the Soviet bloc and two Mediterranean island nations were welcomed into the European Union. Beethoven's "Ode to Joy"--the EU's official anthem--resounded throughout Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Cyprus, accompanied by fireworks displays, speeches, parties and concerts. The additions bring the EU's membership to 25 nations and its population to 450 million.

Perhaps it is just a coincidence that the largest expansion to date of the European Union fell on May Day, the one holiday on the Communist calendar solely devoted to the celebration of the "inevitable" triumph of socialism over capitalism. Then again, perhaps it is not a coincidence at all. Certainly, many of those who thronged to city squares in the newcomer states of the old Soviet bloc must have reflected on the stark contrast between this festive May 1 celebration and previous ones under their old Soviet masters, typified by stolid-faced commissars, hours-long parades of Red Army armaments and troops, and endless seas of red flags festooned with hammers and sickles.

Commentators and EU political leaders declared that this historic accession of the eight former captive nations marked the final triumph of Western "democracy" and the free market economic model over Communist totalitarianism. But others perceive an entirely different dynamic at work in the European Union, leading to a completely opposite outcome. Communist countries celebrate May Day, according to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, "by mobilizing the working people in the struggle to build socialism and communism." The program of the European Union, whose institutions are thoroughly dominated by international collectivists--socialists, "former" Communists, extreme environmentalists, feminists--aims at the same objective: "to build socialism and communism," albeit with a kinder, gentler face than the older Soviet model.

Former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev, for instance, has described the EU as "the new European Soviet." Gorbachev made that observation during a March 2000 visit to London. Was the former General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union merely joking? Absolutely not, says Christopher Story, who publishes the London-based Soviet Analyst. The EU political, economic and social program is "purely a Communist program," Mr. Story told THE NEW AMERICAN in a January 2002 interview. Gorbachev was sending a message to his fellow one world socialists, said Story, and he was absolutely "correct in describing the EU as 'the new European Soviet.' One does not need an...