Sorry feel asleep and was working. We don’t have the same incitement nonsense as the U.K. We do have an incitement to hatred law but I’m honestly not sure how to break it (I’ve tried, it just doesn’t get charged. We have a few laws like that in Ireland cos if the guards (police) think a law could be unconstitutional they tend to ignore it.) I think the EU as a broad concept is a pretty good idea, or more specifically I think the EEC was a good idea. The centralisation of regulatory power in Brussels is bad however as it leaves us open to regulatory capture, similar to DC in the US. The currency union was and is a stupid idea - I called that out as a stupid idea as a teenager when it was introduced and my opposition to it has only grown stronger. There are almost too many reasons to list as to why it’s such a bad idea, but at the most fundamental level EU states are not a single, uniform economy and our inability to use monetary policy without German approval has led to significant declines in living standards everywhere outside Germany. I recognise Ireland can’t compete with the big boys like the US and China, and a European market helps us in that regard, but a common market with an alignment of regulatory standards achieves that without the necessity to centralise power. The British were right to leave. They have been largely sidelined ever since they stayed out of the currency union. They are Europe’s financial centre and along with the Swiss have Europe’s strongest currency. I don’t think their exit will reduce their levels of immigration though as that seems to be more of an empire hangover than a consequence of EU membership. We need to sort out the Northern Ireland situation with brexit too, but everything involving the north is complicated so it’s nothing too new. I think Ireland should remain predominantly Gaelic Irish. I don’t really see white european as a meaningful classification. Greeks, Germans, French etc. are all white European but I don’t think I have very much in common with them. Some of the imperial powers seem to think their old colonial subjects should be free to live in their countries. If that’s what they want to do then that’s fine, however I don’t want free movement into my country from any other European countries with that attitude, and I largely think we need to do something about free movement anyway. As above I don’t much care about other European nations. Obviously we’re related insofar as we were Christendom, but there are long standing divides between Catholic and Protestant nations that are now engrained even if people no longer care about religion. Ideally we don’t want European countries to go to war with each other again, but given our history over here it’s hard to see that lasting forever. The Brits already sent gun boats to France last week and they’re only out of the EU less than half a year. I think Americans see the EU as some tyrannical overarching power, probably because of the rhetoric around Brexit. But the fact is the EU has no army and don’t even have a police force. Countries play by EU rules only so long as it suits them. The moment it doesn’t countries just refuse to comply, and there is very little the EU can actually do about this. I believe the currency was introduced to give the EU more power over individual nations, but what’s happened is countries like Italy and Spain (and even smaller countries like Greece) can just threaten to revert to their own currency and bring the whole house of cards crashing down. The EU’s power is overstated in reality.