Now, more than ever, it should be clear that further political integration in the EU would be an absolutely terrible idea. Look over the pond to see what a disaster it has been in the US. You can't effectively run a country of 325 million people with widely divergent viewpoints in a top-down fashion.
When people imagine a more politically integrated EU, I bet they don't imagine that government run by whoever they consider the kookiest people in the body politic. Imagine that EU integration proceeded apace, and Duda, or Orban, or Johnson became the popularly-elected President of the EU. (The current EU executive structure would never be adequate, of course, in a more politically integrated future.)
Remind me, how many times have Michigan and Illinois gone to war with each other since joining the union?
Federalism, in principle, is no bad thing - but it should keep to regulation and overarching legislation while letting states largely self govern (i.e. the EU model) rather than top-down tactical governance, which is where the US has ended up.
Ultimately, it’s a question of identity. Americans call themselves Americans. Europeans call themselves French, Dutch, Greek. That shared identity is the key to preventing war - everything else is just a means to that end.
> Federalism, in principle, is no bad thing - but it should keep to regulation and overarching legislation while letting states largely self govern (i.e. the EU model) rather than top-down tactical governance, which is where the US has ended up.
The US couldn’t maintain federalism, and the EU will ultimately end up in the same place. There is no additional structural protection in the EU, there just hasn’t been enough time to erode the sovereignty of the individual member states yet. In some respects, the EU is actually structurally worse. For example, the EU has no equivalent to our anti-Commandeering principle, so the central government can force the member states to execute EU legislation using the apparatus of the domestic governments.
When people imagine a more politically integrated EU, I bet they don't imagine that government run by whoever they consider the kookiest people in the body politic. Imagine that EU integration proceeded apace, and Duda, or Orban, or Johnson became the popularly-elected President of the EU. (The current EU executive structure would never be adequate, of course, in a more politically integrated future.)