French TFP

The joyous orchestration that surrounded the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty by its signatory countries from the beginning gave the impression it headed for massive approval by all Europe. As long as they moved quickly, the victory of the craftsmen of the European Union seemed assured.

Suddenly, a spoiler arose. It sufficed for Denmark, a prosperous and well-organized but small country "NO," and all of Europe was shaken to such an extent that President Mitterrand felt compelled to summon the French to a referendum.

Preventing suspicion from spreading to the public like an oil slick across the continent was now impossible. For many pro-Maastricht voters, one question crept in: Did the treaty really correspond to their wishes, and did they understand what they were about to approve?

The notoriously indigestible character of the text signed by the heads of state and government of the Twelve further complicated the debate. For the man in the street, the treaty is indeed difficult to understand because of the ambition and imprecision of its many objectives, the scope of the benefits and risks it entails, and the complexity of the mechanisms that it implements.

The confusion gets worse with the language used in the treatise. The more difficult a problem is, the more clearly it must be expounded. Sometimes this requires creating technical terms defined in a crystalline way that avoids ambiguities, deceit, or misleading circumlocutions. This clarity is precisely what is lacking in the Maastricht texts. The unfortunate reader experiences a kind of vertigo; he tries hard but understands nothing or almost nothing.

From this pan-European tower of Babel, a new "confusion of languages" emerges that is likely to disturb voters and deprive them of their desire to vote. A few days before the referendum, a large part of the electorate is still thinking about abstaining. Furthermore, pro-Maastricht voters often believe they have glimpsed in the shadows the silhouette of a dream Europe for which they are preparing to vote out of exhaustion or saturation, but without certainty.

Isn’t this enigmatic nature of the treaty an artifice of "Maastrichians" to cover up the substance of the debate, pushing those not very aware of the issue to abstain, and those more sensitive to irrational propaganda to vote "yes"?

Under these conditions, the French Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) considers it its duty to warn its compatriots, especially those who might be tempted to abstain, about the serious risks that a possible ratification of the Maastricht Treat would pose to the remnants of Christian civilization in France and across Europe. It calls on them to vote a lucid and resolute "NO" this coming September 20.

Keeping to essentials, this analysis will show how a "yes" to Maastricht would set France on an itinerary of which the ultimate goal is the greatest structural transformation in her history and even her eventual disappearance as an independent nation:

• by abandoning, at this stage of the process, large parcels of her sovereignty for the benefit of European Community institutions;

• by strengthening an undemocratic economic and political structure led by a nomenklatura of technocrats;

• by subsequently forming a supranational European power governing a human mass without identity on the way to the utopia of a world government.

Maastricht, being unveiled to public opinion more and more, is only a temporary but daring and practically irreversible stage in the gestation of the "United States of Europe" dreamed by President Mitterrand and other utopian federalists from the most diverse ideological sectors. 

Sovereignty in Tatters Is No Sovereignty but a Decoy

Sovereignty, a supreme and unconditional power, cannot be divided into parcels handed over to foreign powers or some international organization. If that happens, it falls at the mercy of the holders of the transferred parcels.

Moreover, this is the presupposition of those who celebrate the unifying and centralizing work of the kings of France. As long as these monarchs did not have full power over the whole territory without any exception, however small, France could not be the mistress of herself, nor her kings entirely sovereign.

In the case of federations such as the United States and Germany, the autonomy enjoyed by each federated state does not imply a transfer of sovereignty, because the autonomous power of each state remains under the supreme federal power. When federal Constitutions do not establish it explicitly, it is implied that the supreme federal power can recall to itself the parcels of autonomy scattered in the units of the federation if the whole is threatened with fragmentation. The federal power is naturally invested with the supreme right and obligation to safeguard this radical and essential unity of the national sovereignty. 

Sovereignty and Military Self-reliance

Natural indivisibility arises when one considers that a sovereign power cannot in any way give up its capacity to defend itself or to attack, by simple decision of its authorities, with the exclusive use of its own army and military potential, with bases of operation solely in strategic points of its territory; in other words, to decide for itself how to dispose of its resources and soil for the good of the country, while respecting morals and international treaties. In the opposite case, a State’s sovereignty is seriously maimed, and its sovereign power may be irremediably annihilated.

Sovereignty Requires the Cultural Integrity of the Country

This indivisibility remarkably makes itself felt also concerning the cultural integrity of a country. “There exists a fundamental sovereignty of society which is manifested in the culture of the Nation,” said John Paul II, in Paris addressing the UNESCO on June 2, 1980. He added, “With all the means at your disposal, watch over the fundamental sovereignty that every Nation possesses by virtue of its own culture. Cherish it like the apple of your eye for the future of the great human family. Protect it! Do not allow this fundamental sovereignty to become the prey of some political or economic interest” (Address to UNESCO, June 2, 1980, No. 15, in Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, Vol III-1, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1980, 1648).

The day any international power was to deprive the French of certain traditions of culinary art (cheese or the force-feeding of geese) in the name of arbitrary rules of hygiene or ecology or to prevent us from freely disposing of our masterpieces (e.g. the Arc of Triomph, Notre-Dame de Paris), the richness of our historical heritage (manuscripts of Bossuet) on the pretext of preserving the cultural heritage of Europe or humanity our country would rightly feel more mutilated than if it were to give up the Territory of Belfort (which, thanks to our patriotism and common sense, we made it a point of honor to defend by fighting a deadly war). That would be like for Egypt to cede to UNESCO its rights over the pyramids or the Sphynx of Giza.

How much blood our people have shed this century to defend our national identity, moral and cultural sovereignty, and historical borders! For the sake of their integrity, an entire generation of youths walked briskly to the slaughter on major battlefields, feeling that those values were worth more than their lives. 

National Sovereignty Goes to Pieces

What a difference between these brave men and the Maastricht negotiators who, just as happily, have allowed French sovereignty to fall prey to obscure political and economic interests!

In its current wording, the treaty invades the specific domain of national sovereignty in several crucial respects:

1) It introduces a single currency administered by a European central bank independent from governments, eliminating national currencies (Title II, Article 102a & ff.). This implies a transfer of monetary sovereignty. On this point, the treaty is binding and irrevocable. Once adopted, it cannot be modified by the contracting states and must be followed to the letter, within the established deadlines. For the single currency, the treaty grants the possibility of a transitional derogation. But as soon as the EC repeals this derogation, the imposition of the single currency becomes automatic and without appeal.

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“With all the means at your disposal, watch over the fundamental sovereignty that every Nation possesses by virtue of its own culture” (John Paul II in Paris).

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That is not all: “With the currency, the whole set of economic policy instruments (budget and revenues) could eventually escape the elected authorities. It is difficult to imagine a single currency without a common fiscal policy” (Le Monde, special issue on “L'Europe de Maastricht,”  August-September 1992, p. 5).

2) The Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) aims to enable the Community to speak with one voice in all areas of foreign policy and security (Title V, Article J. 4.1) . To this end, it introduces common mechanisms of foreign and defense policy, based on cooperation between governments, with a view to the subsequent abolition of independent external relations of each nation, and the merging of the different armies into one.

In some of its provisions, the treaty goes beyond the current model of cooperation between sovereign states, according to which all decisions must be taken unanimously. It provides that: a) when the European Council of Ministers has ruled that certain "joint actions" will no longer be conducted by unanimity but by a qualified majority, decisions will be binding on the Member States (i.e. with or against their consent); b) each Member State should support, within international organizations and at international conferences, the common positions (possibly opposed to its own, in the case envisaged above); c) each Member State shall avoid “as much as possible” to raise obstacles to unanimity when a qualified majority is in favor of a decision (sic!).

For their part, anticipating ratification, last May in La Rochelle, Mitterrand and Kohl agreed on the creation of a "European-oriented" army corps intended to "endow the European Union with its own military capability" under WEU, the Western European Union label, picked by Maastricht. The La Rochelle agreement allows the Bundeswehr to install “staff elements in France.” It will be "the first contingent of the Bundeswehr to be stationed durably in France” (Le Monde, 5/21, 5/ 24-25, 5 and 6/23/1992).

3) In the field of domestic policy (Title VI, and Title I, Common Provisions, Article B), Maastricht strengthens the process initiated by the Schengen Agreements on the abolition of internal borders between certain countries of the Community. The country thus loses important means of control over a possible migratory wave coming from the South or the East that would enter France through a neighboring country. From 1996, the common visa policy will reach a new phase: the list of countries whose nationals will have to obtain a visa to enter the Community’s territory will be modified by a simple majority. In this regard, the Constitutional Council has already issued the opinion that the visa policy is likely to carry “fundamental attacks on our sovereignty.”

4) In social matters, Maastricht has started a real conventional policy at the European level. Areas in which Directives may be adopted by a qualified majority vote have been significantly expanded. In addition to health and job security, they also concern working conditions, information, and consultation of employees, gender equality and integration of the unemployed.

“The effects of these decisions are not insignificant,” said Marie-France Garaud and Philippe Séguin. “France had to denounce the convention which bound it to the International Labor Organization, and by which it undertook to respect the principle of prohibiting women’s night work  on the ground that this principle is incompatible with Community directives on the absolute equality of the sexes...” (cf. De l'Europe en général et de la France en particulier, M.-F. Garaud et Ph. Seguin, Le Pré-aux-Clercs, 1992, p. 188).

5) In terms of the environment, Maastricht is even more ambitious. The Treaty is not content with a policy limited to the Community’s territory. It seeks to develop a common line of action against global environmental problems. Let us note in passing that it is based on the dangerous, so-called "precautionary"  principle preached by radical Greens, that we should not wait for the results of scientific research to act. Here too, Maastricht replaces the old rule of unanimity with the general rule of qualified majority voting, at least in the normative field.

6) The Treaty establishes a "European citizenship" that first entitles nationals of one EC country to vote and be elected in municipal elections in any other Member State and to the European Parliament (Title II, art 8 to 8A).

7) The treaty is so binding that it does not even ensure the right of member states to withdraw from it. Once in, you cannot get out. Indeed, no clause envisages this possibility, and a fortiori does not provide any method to do so.

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“For a long time, there have been transfers of sovereignty from France to Europe, that is to say, to the Community” (François Mitterrand).

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Under the law of peoples, nations can legitimately forge alliances - including economic alliances that create mechanisms like those of the EC – on the imprescriptible condition that they are reversible. A perpetual and irreversible alliance would be a trap in which the supreme powers of contracting States, characteristic of full and true national sovereignty, would forever disappear.

In short, Maastricht dramatically accentuates the economic-political process by which France is gradually transformed from an independent and sovereign country into a simple autonomous unit under the tutelage of European federal power. President François Mitterrand recognizes it blithely: “For a long time there have been transfers of sovereignty from France to Europe, that is to say, to the Community. It started with the signing of the Treaty of Rome, it is not new ... we have constantly delegated national competences. Well, we will continue”(Le Monde, 4/14/92). 

The Thorny Problem of Immigration Worsens

But the Maastricht Treaty is not content to absorb national sovereignties from above in favor of Community authorities. It also favors situations that undermine sovereignty from below, disturbing each country’s domestic life.

The opening of internal borders will lead to an increase in uncontrolled migratory flows to the continent. It will favor the establishment of large population groups that do not integrate into host nations but obey other customs, laws, and authorities.

We are not far from seeing the establishment of a real State within the State. In London, the Muslim Institute is already calling for “a non-territorial Islamic State endowed with a parliament that can enact its own laws and issue death sentences.” This institute invokes the existence of “400,000 British Muslim homes” that would be in some way “mini-Muslim states” served by a thousand mosques. One of the pretexts alleged is to fight against the "vices" of European society (Passages, November 1990). Meanwhile, author Salman Rushdie leads a life of defector in his own country, “sentenced” to death for insulting the Koran.

So, in an extreme situation (but to what extremes won’t the irresponsible opening of borders promoted by Maastricht lead us!), the increase in immigration may be such that some areas, for example, a suburb, may see the practical introduction of Sharia (Koranic law) because of a possible local Muslim majority.  As in some Islamic countries, the ban on converting to a religion other than the Qur'an will also come into force on pain of death, although secularism is a basic principle for most of the Twelve.

For an uninformed reader, these perspectives may seem exaggerated. Unfortunately, the current martyrdom of  Christians in some Muslim countries proves the opposite. 

A Fundamentally Antidemocratic Construction

According to republican ideology, the people are holders of sovereign power. That is no longer the case when a parcel of authority falls under the control of internal groups or clans. In current language, nomenklaturas.

If these political clans scream loud and clear that power still belongs to the people, that is not enough to authentically preserve their sovereignty. 

Superpowers in the Making, Evolving into an Unknown Quantity

In a democratic State, the constitution must list and describe the various public agencies and define their mutual rights and duties, including toward individuals. Finally, it must specify the rights and duties of individuals vis-a-vis the new power, and individuals between them.

However, this is not what the European construction looks like in the real world. In their present state, community institutions are presented as organs of a human body in the making. A provisional situation marks the specific form and function of each organ. All organs are in the making, and in the present case, evolve according to an unknown plan towards a still poorly defined shape.

Even the President of the EC’s highest executive body, Jacques Delors, has acknowledged this fact: “The construction of Europe did not begin with a clear statement of what the distribution of powers would be like at the end of the process. ... This results in imbalances in the exercise of powers, which have often been exacerbated ...”  (Speeches at the Symposium of the European Institute of Public Administration, Maastricht, March 21, 1991).

In front of this process of continual gestation, from time to time, one sees a sorcerer's apprentice able to guess, from the general aspect of the work, what it will become once completed. This deduction, which has the value of a more or less likely hypothesis, is corroborated by intuitive and discreetly "prophetic" aspirations that transpire from unconditional enthusiasts of Maastricht, and nothing else.

What is democratic about all this? From the institutional point of view, very little.

 “For too long, we have been making Europe stealthily, in secret,” acknowledged the Minister for European Affairs, Elisabeth Guigou. “We have misinformed about Europe,” said the centrist MP Nicole Fontaine during a meeting of the European Movement in Rennes (Le Monde, 6/19/92). The centrist MEP Simone Veil admitted, “People felt excluded from the process as if something was being plotted against them” (Le Monde, 6/14-15/92).

A Stack of Unresolved Problems

For reasons related to the history of its elaboration, says Le Monde, the European Union is made of disparate elements: some already are or will be “communitarized,” as they say. … on the contrary, other sectors of activity remain essentially interstate” (Le Monde, special issue, p.11). This stems from the different backgrounds of different architects as to the final nature of the European construction: should it be a federal Europe or a Europe of nations?

Judging by the intentional ambiguity of the Maastricht Treaty, as well as by the hybrid and unfinished character of the institutions that it reforms or establishes, stacking the substantive differences one on top of the other would be the best way to solve them. Because -- the authors of the treaty will claim - if we delve into it we will never reach a solution. The way to solve these issues would be to ignore them, waiting for the day when the peaceful amalgamation of so many dissonances would create new formulas and original solutions.

But is this method of solving problems by ignoring them, discouraging specialists from dealing with them (at least in public), and silencing about them in the media, not the same as looking for a rational solution to real problems in the swamps of ignorance? Is this what it means to treat the people as "sovereign"?

The  Conditions to Create a Truly Democratic European Union

For the establishment of the European Union to result from a truly democratic process, it would have been essential for the peoples concerned to be previously educated in a most precise and comprehensive way on the aims of this Community and on the ways to achieve it. In particular, it would have been necessary to clearly describe community government agencies in their final anatomy and physiology, how their incumbents would be chosen, and the length of their mandates.

Thus informed, public opinion in the various European nations could have publicly discussed the pros and cons of the final construction and each of its components. That would have created a debate on continental dimensions to be sealed by a referendum in each country. Then they could have said that the final appearance of the EC faithfully reflected the desire of public opinion.

Leaving out any of these conditions would disqualify the democratic authenticity of the results of the popular consultations. But it is enough to review the history of the European construction to verify this disdain of the will of the people. One could object that a European construction with such "transparency" would be too slow and expensive, which would make it unachievable. This objection is at least questionable. But if we were to agree, we would have to conclude that a truly democratic process could not establish the European Community.

Then they would have to say so frankly and to consult European opinion as to whether, to achieve the Community’s objective, it has decided to abandon the democratic ways it has prided itself on following in recent centuries. If so, it should be asked about the new paths it prefers. This question would have historical importance, especially because the only conceivable way out would be to establish a more or less notorious oligarchy or nomenklatura ultimately.

Is this really the wish of European peoples who rejoiced so much at the fall of the Iron Curtain?

The Commission’s Absolutist Powers

On the other hand, the undemocratic nature of the European construction is obvious from the modus operandi of Community institutions. The nature and scope of regulations, directives, decisions, and recommendations - perhaps better said ukases - that emanate from them would at the very least require the utmost vigilance of citizens.

Even Jean-Pierre Chevènement, a socialist and therefore accustomed to excessive state intervention is offended by the totalitarian nature of the EC: “Far from building an Europe of peoples, we are building Europe without the people. The super-high-ranking civil servants who form the Commission of European Communities enact texts without worrying about democratic consent. For example, without any democratic control except for some marathon-like Councils of Ministers, in 1987 the Commission issued 3,655 regulations, 23 directives, and 4,212 decisions. These regulations are regulations only the name: they enter the field of the law so much that we call them internal law of regulation. Directives are true injunctions on national sovereignty; legislations must voluntarily conform to it or wait until one day it applies automatically” (Le Monde, 11/7/91).

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“In 1987, without any democratic control except for some marathon-like Councils of Ministers, the Commission issued 3,655 regulations, 23 directives, and 4,212 decisions” (Jean-Pierre Chevènement).

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 “You are no longer in a democracy, but in a trap,” observed Michel Poniatowski. The Council of Ministers of the Community ambushes the nations, their law and legislation, and moves toward its objectives incognito, as discreetly as possible. ... The situation has been worsening for two years; the Brussels Commission employs all the weight and artifices of the Community construction to impose its views, tastes, and wishes on the Council and States” (Figaro-Magazine, 9/16/89).

Jacques Delors himself acknowledged the Commission's "over-regulation," which has already gone so far as to draft a European "directive" on the use of lawnmowers in afternoons and Sundays (speech at the symposium of the European Institute of Public Administration in Maastricht on March 21, 1991) or the fact it is studying measures against the ill-treatment of laying hens, the size of their cages, and lightning hours in the hen house (Le Quotidien de Paris, 3/27/92).

As can be seen, this mass of decisions coming from so high and capable of descending to such tiny details defeats the basic legal habits of the West. Indeed, Community institutions simply leave out the principle of equality before the law, which is true despite the terribly exaggerated applications that have been made of it in the past. In the development of the Treaty of Rome, the "decisions" of the Council of Ministers and the Commission – an instrument of the administrative execution of Community law - are sometimes applicable to all but in some cases only to certain categories: State, company, or individual (see Emile Noël, “The Institutions of the European Community,” Official Publications Service of the European Communities, Luxembourg 1988).

Let us take a quick look at the extreme consequence of this strange attribution of powers. In some cases, the legislation may concern a single individual, his living and working conditions. It can be concluded that on certain occasions this individual may be faced with one almighty power almost as a slave of old to his master. The Commission can order whatever it wants by means of a law that applies only to him - a "privata lex" - in other words, a privilege

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“Every nomenklatura gives rise  to disagreements and dissatisfaction that only a hypertrophied police and censorship can contain.”

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As if nothing had happened, that slipped into the legislation of the emerging European Superstate two hundred years after the suppression of all privileges was operated in France amid the anxieties and blood shed by the Revolution.

Authorities Elected without Popular Participation

In a democratic regime, the holders of the highest powers must be specially designated by popular choice. Yet, in the structure of Maastricht Europe, the members of technocratic institutions (Commission, European Court of Justice, and Court of Auditors) - with a power much greater than meets the eye (and still growing), are not elected by "European citizens" but appointed. They are statutorily independent of the Member States.

In the case of the Commission, the European Council will first appoint the President, and with him, in a second step, it will choose seventeen members of this decisive organ to be appointed for five years. Each country will have at least one member and two at the most. Lastly, five remaining posts will be filled by illustrious Europeans also indicated by the President of the Commission and the European Council.

When reading this construction one experiences vertigo, not of heights but complications. It will give rise to a multitude of talks, difficulties, and political intrigue. Because most of the time, these five "archi-advisers" will be the balance beam between this and that group of nations. The choice of these five will often make it possible to predict the orientation the Commission’s deliberations will have in one area or another during the five-year period.

This convoluted appointment process has little to do with popular suffrage. Commissioners will be appointed by the Council of Heads of State and Government, most of whom are only indirectly elected. Therefore, effective popular participation in the choice of the Commission will have a very tenuous authenticity at best.

The Brussels Eurocracy, a Flying Saucer without Contact with the Electoral Ground

Furthermore, nothing guarantees that the public will be given serious and complete information on all matters the supreme executive body deals with nor the possibility of expressing its opinion on them. Thus, the exercise of democracy is not only affected but hindered.

Indeed, all analysts complain about the "democratic deficit" of current political institutions in the West, whose structure can be compared to a multi-story building. On the ground floor is the municipal level; on the first floor, the regional level; on the second, the national level. Each floor seems to be occupied by political clans, friends or enemies, who are fighting for power, and that goes up to the supreme levels of the country’s presidency and Council of Ministers. Passages from one floor to another seem to be worked out by simple political “arrangements” between clans. The higher the floor, the more restricted is the clan. So much so that at the top of the building, one must have the feeling that the state is flying like a glider with its own wings and with little contact with the earth, that is, the reality of voters.

Whether political or technocratic, community institutions will only add a level to this edifice. Their members will inevitably have the impression of hovering at a height more suitable to a flying saucer than an airplane, requiring highly powerful listening and vision instruments to discern what the electoral vulgum pecus moving on the ground think, want, and ask for.

The Inevitable Maastrichian Nomenklatura

One thing would be to imagine the rigid and tangled political structure resulting from Maastricht as directed at all levels by men without economic, ideological, or political interests. Another thing would be to conceive it directed from top to bottom, not by abstract and inhuman beings but by men as they actually are, subjected to the pressure of large worker “unions,” with interests of all kinds, in these days of unbridled personal greed and boundless ideological confusion.

Will it be possible to prevent the formation at the summit of this European Union, a governing nomenklatura like the Soviet nomenklatura of the former USSR?

That nomenklatura could only have the dictatorial and police character that characterized it in red Russia. For “deep calleth on deep”  (Ps 42:8). Every nomenklatura gives rise to disagreements and dissatisfaction that only a hypertrophied police and censorship can contain.

Let every Frenchman try to list the differences between the Soviet State and the devouring regime which is the logical outcome of Maastricht – he will likely be surprised to see how few they are.

Massification Under a Police Super-government

Without any real contact with their top leaders, voters at large will understand nothing about the complicated functioning of the Community’s political machine, in which they should be living actors or living cells, as one would say in pre-Maastrichean Europe. Playing a growing insignificant role, the "sovereign people" will undergo a severe process of massification.

One can easily understand how this massification takes place, transforming the individual into a simple atom, in the light of the distinction made by Pius XII between “people” and “mass,”  which became classical:

“The state does not contain in itself and does not mechanically bring together in a given territory a shapeless mass of individuals.  It is, and should in practice be, the organic and organizing unity of a real people.

“The people and a shapeless multitude (or, as it is called, "the masses") are two distinct concepts.  The people live and move by their own life energy; the masses are inert of themselves and can only be moved from outside. The people live by the fullness of life in the men that compose it, each of whom -- at his proper place and in his own way -- is a person conscious of his own responsibility and his own views.  The masses, on the contrary, wait for the impulse from outside, an easy plaything in the hands of anyone who exploits their instincts and impressions; ready to follow in turn, today this flag, tomorrow another. From the exuberant life of a true people, an abundant, rich life is diffused in the state and all its organs, instilling into them with a vigor that is always renewing itself, the consciousness of their own responsibility, the true instinct for the common good. The elementary power of the masses, deftly managed and employed, the state also can utilize: in the ambitious hands of one or of several who have been artificially brought together for selfish aims, the state itself, with the support of the masses, reduced to the minimum status of a mere machine, can impose its whims on the better part of the real people: the common interest remains seriously, and for a long time, injured by this process, and the injury is very often hard to heal” (Pius XII, 1944 Christmas Message, in Discorsi e Radiomessagi, vol. XI, pp. 238-239).

So it is easy to understand that the more the traditions of a country weaken, the more the resistance of its people to the massification factors becomes difficult. The death of nations and the omnipresence of masses will be among the fruits of the abolition of borders and sovereignty.

Behind Maastricht, the utopia of a world government

A current of utopians committed to dissolving nations into entities with increasingly undefined contours goes so far as to dream of a Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals, not to mention from Lisbon to Vladivostok, as a political program to be implemented at any cost. They want to stack large supra-national units on top of each other, forming a political Babel of human magmas in the middle of which, man sinks into anonymity.

The end of this process will logically be a world super-government. To the degree that it devours everything that is alive, personal, regional and characteristic, it will require setting up huge bureaucratic “laboratories” of international technical planning at the service of "Big Brother,” which George Orwell described in his book, 1984 (only the date does not match). It would be the supreme level above the Brussels Eurocrats, reduced to a secondary role. From there they would issue guidelines to all cardinal points, New York, Paris or Singapore, Geneva or Brasilia, according to which all men must, all of a sudden, work or rest, pray or refuse the legitimacy of any religion, eat, play sports, or to mingle their races.

This trend became clear during the preparatory work for the "Earth Summit" held in Rio last June. By claiming to face "global" environmental threats, they openly proposed establishing a global green supergovernment.

This same trend appears in some projects of the United States of Europe. If one compares each European nation with the strengthened Maastricht community, the differences are in all respects similar to those one could imagine between the nascent European Union and an eventual Pan-Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok, or between the latter and the much-dreamed new universal Babel.

The casualness with which they are implementing this expedited planning is astonishing. Indeed, this case bears a certain analogy with the defunct USSR, whose catastrophic collapse should invite utopians to have a much greater caution. For, in the whole territory once ruled by the tsars, what were the Soviet citizens without rights, freedoms, property, modeled by seventy-three years of dictatorial centralization and iron-handed law enforcement, other than precursors of globally massified individuals?

Let us once again emphasize the police state without which such constructions cannot hold. Let us recall the prisons, concentration camps, prison-hospitals, etc., inseparable from that dictatorial framework. When no vestige of freedom is left, one does not know what each individual really thinks, let alone what he would say if he could express himself freely. As a result, the human mass becomes a perennial and disturbing unknown against which the "planetary" government will only believe itself safe if it feels strong and tyrannical.

A Utopianism That Does Not Disarm Even in the Face of Soviet Failure

One fine day in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. The whole world imagined that releasing forces repressed for so long would cause all kinds of explosions or convulsions. That was indeed the case, but surprisingly, in very small proportions. The immense Soviet magma of peoples, cultures, and unfathomable economic opportunities hardly moved. Its movement has been that of a beggar who, with a rickety hand, extends a pierced hat to his hitherto insulted and calumniated enemies begging them for the dollars, pounds, francs or marks he needs to forge the instruments of his recovery.

They received their coins, but the hands in which the coins fell no longer knew how to work. That melancholy begging did not serve much because those hands were numb. The people had become a mass, with distressing results: anemia, inertia, vagrancy, alcoholism.

This specter should naturally invite to reflection the incorrigible Utopians of the West, still ruminating many optimistic variants of the chimera that Russian revolutionaries forged in 1917.

Not so! With imperturbable serenity, they boldly continue to implement their plans. And when a nation rich in freedom and vitality uninhibitedly expressed itself against the dreams of Maastricht, many utopians reacted as if they had heard blasphemy. Others, fearing further defeats, did not think of rectifying their plans. They have contented themselves with preserving the latter, intangible as idols, albeit recommending a slower implementation so as not to frighten the people, who will sooner or later have to submit to them!

Fellow Frenchmen of 1992: Will we accept to be treated as merchandise rather than human beings, as a human mass rather than an authentic people keen to remain consistent with their past and conscious of their historical mission in the future?

If it remained indifferent and silent in the face of a question of such extreme gravity, the French Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property (TFP) would deny every one of the principles that make up its motto.

In the structure and moral climate of a Maastrichtian Europe, traditions would fade away, and the family and property would go into agony. From this agony, they would inevitably die in the totalitarian world that would engulf those of our contemporaries already reduced to the state of mass. They would be swept away like dust in the wind as soon as an individual or collegial tyrant (no matter) were to rule the world from atop the pyramid of technocracies and bureaucracies intertwined around our unfortunate planet.

The French TFP publishes this statement hoping to help avoid this misfortune, cordially submitting it to all our compatriots now preparing to cast a lucid and conscious vote this coming September 20.

An organization of Catholic inspiration established without any dependence on the ecclesiastical hierarchy except concerning the integrity of the faith and the purity of customs (cf. Code of Canon law, can 227), as it closes these considerations, the TFP notes that, without a profound action by divine grace on souls many spiritual and temporal values ​​threatened by the Maastrichtian adventure risk being defeated, even if by a slight majority.

Who could help us with that profound action on souls?

St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, a Frenchman from the end of the 1700s little known at his time but whom Pius XII raised to the honor of the altar, spread in Brittany and Vendée a devotion to the Blessed Virgin under the beautiful invocation of Our Lady, Queen of Hearts.

In this terrible turning point in the history of our country and the world, She is the one we implore to guide the hearts of the French when making their choice in the voting booth.

Led by our love for Christian Civilization, the French people, and all humanity, we also pray to St. Louis the King to obtain for us this much-desired grace.

Paris, August 25, 1992

Feast of St. Louis King of France

French Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property