Quote Originally Posted by Burney View Post
Your idea of liberalism seems to include membership of the EU - which is a profoundly illiberal organisation dedicated to protectionism, state regulation and technocratic and bureaucratic supremacy over the demos. My issue with you is that you appear to think the EU is something it is not and predicate your arguments about Brexit on that palpably false premise.

So for instance, today the EU Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality called for the EU to be allowed to regulate the press on the grounds that she (a woman who grew up in Communist Czechoslovakia) thinks the oldest free press on earth dares to say nasty things about EU Commissioners and leaders, which 'sows division' (rather the point of a pluralist society, I'd have thought) and ought to be stopped.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/20...u-commissioner

Which bit of 'liberal' would you say state regulation of a free press comes under?
Well, I guess in Eastern Europe things are going a bit too far. Poland, Hungary. First they initiated a bunch of measures to combat the influx of refugees, immigrants. No problem with that, I can see their point. But they push on further to try to dissolve elements of the government, such as independence of the courts, et cetera. It will always be a bit tricky with countries which were not democratic, had democracy imposed on them, and whose people now are having second thoughts about that imposition. Various decisions must be taken about whether these countries can simply pull down the whole democratic system that the EU had instituted. And whether, if they attempt to do so, they cannot be punished for such an attempt.

I thought -- and please tell me if I'm wrong -- that the EU was established to promote the freer flow of trade between the European member countries. Free trade and the material benefits of it is a liberal goal par excellence.