https://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/05/27/the-eu-steady-on-its-course-from-tragedy-to-farce/feed/PJ Media is a leading news site covering culture, politics, faith, homeland security, and more. Our reporters and columnists provide original, in-depth analysis from a variety of perspectives.en-usWed, 10 Jun 2026 06:14:47 -0400<![CDATA[It was several years ago now that my friend David Pryce-Jones told me about the European Union’s fruit police. Fruit was just the tip of the orchard, so to speak, but the fact that those preposterous bureaucrats in Europe had outlawed curvy bananas made a deep impression on me. It was V. Lenin who said that “Communism means keeping track of everything,” and here were the non-elected busybodies of the EU deciding what sorts of bananas were legal — legal.  And not just bananas, of course.  They were also deciding what you could and could not say, whom you could criticize, what sort of potatoes you could grow and . . .  it took them nearly 100,000 pages to spell out all the things their wards (i.e., the persons formerly know as citizens) could and couldn’t do, say, buy, accumulate, spend, hire, fire, worship, play, read, draw, look at, and commune with.  It was all part of what I have called elsewhere “The New Gleichschaltung.”]]>Sun, 27 May 2012 08:41:33 -0400<![CDATA[Roger Kimball]]>https://pjmedia.com/roger-kimball/2012/05/27/the-eu-steady-on-its-course-from-tragedy-to-farce-n116875