The EU and Xenophobia

Once upon a time I was mildly pro-EU, not strongly but just with that vague idea that it was somehow a good thing. Rather like how it is always presented on the BBC. This changed when I started to look into what it actually was and for arguments to defend this view. Quite simply there aren't any that stand up.

As Dan Hannan and the Devil point out one of the common arguments, if you care to call it such, used by the Pro-EU is that anybody that has any problems with the EU must be xenophobic and by implication racist. The correct response to this should probably be to simply thank them for conceding the argument so ungracefully. However if one was to really want to it is quite easy to just throw it strait back at them.

The EU state is being built from a customs union, this is inherently a protectionist structure is there to defend 'fortress europe' from the outside world. It is there to try and insulate the countries in it from all those nasty anglo-saxons in northern america, from the Hispanics in south and mezzo America, from all those Asians and Chinese, and of course all of those people in Africa. If a Pro-EU argument ends up degenerating to the stage where the xenophobia card gets pulled a free trader could simply reply that he has absolutely no problem working with any European, but he also has no problem working with anybody else in the world and would just like the EU to get out of his way and let him. You could also slip in that this would mean you are happy to work with anybody of any race rather than trying to shut out anybody that isn't white, if you really want to descend to their level of name calling but that really isn't necessary.