Engagement is not Appeasement: why we should hang in there with the EU

There’s a lot of fuss in various media about those who have dared to suggest the UK is a middling sized European power with little sway in the big, Real World, outside of it’s involvement in the EU and it’s [tenuous’ links to the US through the ‘special relationship’ are anti-patriotic defeatists.  And by saying we should be fully involved in shaping the EU rather than standing on the ever barren, icy side-lines in our Union Jack waistcoats clutching an Airfix model of a Spitfire, makes us appeasers.
I don't see any appeasing going on here at all however.  But I do see though- in a few isolated places of hope- a good dose of reality being swallowed.

The machinations of the EU may at times seen like the Mafia and it admittedly leans towards the autocratic rather than the democratic, but remember we have a press dominated by rabid anti-European hysteria [and that's putting it mildly] that permeates UK society so completely with it's unreasonableness- and often OUTRIGHT LIES- that it's difficult sometimes even for the most open-minded to develop informed judgements.

Whatever, hyperbole about the EU being ran like the Mafia doesn't help, nor is there the imminent threat of a new USSR on our doorstep etc etc etc.   Even if you take that concept on board, this government and Cameron's actions at the summit DID NOT amount to us standing up to the EU.  IT AMOUNTED TO US RUNNING AWAY.

There's lots of talk about Cameron using a veto last week to stop the EU in it's tracks.  It was nothing of the sort.  A veto stops things; he stopped nothing.

We have to be very careful not to get hysterical about the evils of the EU.  Just bear this in mind: after centuries of slaughtering each other in Europe, the EU has delivered over sixty years of peace, where talking has replaced warfare.  In an alternative universe, Cameron and the other leaders of Europe in all probability have left that summit last week, and returned to their capitals to ready their troops for warfare.  REAL warfare, with 21st century weapons.

I think to have the threat of that reality being reduced to the almost completely implausible is a huge endorsement of the success- and need- for the EU, don't you?  So lets be show our real bulldog spirit by getting stuck into the EU and working to shape it more in our image, rather than running away and daydreaming fantasies about returning to our [long lost] empire days.