The EU

George Will:

The EU has a flag no one salutes, an anthem no one sings, a president no one can name, a parliament (in Strasbourg) no one other than its members wants to have power (which must subtract from the powers of national legislatures), a capital (Brussels) of coagulated bureaucracy no one admires or controls, a currency that presupposes what neither does nor should nor soon will exist (a European central government), and rules of fiscal behavior that no member has been penalized for ignoring. The euro currency both presupposes and promotes a fiction -- that "Europe" has somehow become, against the wishes of most Europeans, a political rather than a merely geographic expression.

Shortly after the euro was introduced I asked a Dutch friend mine if he felt European first and Dutch second, or Dutch first and European second. His response, "Maybe not even second."