EU has become a vehicle by which the stronger countries promote their interests -- led, for the moment, by the tag team of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy: "So although all the member states have to be democracies -- this is one of the conditions for entry -- they're not required to act democratically once they're in. In this crisis the emergence of 'Merkozy' is a regression to the days of [Konrad] Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s, when the two of them would have tea in Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, and they would decide what the policy was, and it would be proposed, and it would be accepted. This is no way to run the European Union. I now feel that the thing that is being proved wrong is what some people call the 'gradualist fallacy' -- that you drive European integration forward by economic means. And it's just wrong." http://online.wsj.com/article... - Adriano

For even the mightiest sovereigns, eventual collapse is a safer bet than indefinite life. Human institutions, like humans themselves, do not live forever. "Serenity is the balance between good and bad, life and death, horrors and pleasures. Life is, as it were, defined by death. If there wasn't death of things, then there wouldn't be any life to celebrate." -ibid. - Adriano