The 1985 “Schengen” agreement was hailed as the gateway to an eternal utopia of open borders throughout a Europe of 29 countries and 450 million people. Noting the rising number of countries defying EU regulations and restoring national border controls, Lauren Smith in The European Conservative wonders whether the whole Schengen experiment is unravelling under the stresses of uncontrolled illegal migration, crime and social decay.
Blueprint for Alberta?
Writing in Jewish World Review, Frederic Fransen reminds Americans of a key lesson from Revolutionary War-era pamphleteer Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. “The colonies need to declare independence,” Fransen summarizes Paine, “because so long as their goal was seen as reconciliation, foreign governments would consider the Americans as rebels and the conflict an internal affair.” But a unilateral declaration of independence, Fransen notes, instantly converts mere complaints from an aggrieved group into a negotiation between sovereign states.
