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2010 was not a good year for the Belgium government. The governing coalition fell apart, sparking fears that Wallonia and Flanders really could not govern mutually in a federal government at the state level (something that no American state has attempted). In early 2011, the typically European integrationist Belgium government found itself at odds with a Franco-German proposal for greater fiscal coordination at the EU level for the states that had adopted the euro as their currency; the Belgium prime minister had to protect the Belgium social agreement because that was part of the deal that allowed him to step in as prime minister when forming a government was such a difficult problem. Belgium, it may be said, was suffering existentially. Should it split up, go to a looser confederation within the EU, or maintain the status quo in spite of the difficulties?

As I understand it, only 30% of the Flemish voted for the NVA in the election on June 13, 2010, so less than a majority in Flanders support splitting Belgium into two states in the EU.  I suspect there would be resistance in the European Council to Belgium becoming two states in the EU because that would mean more representation in the EU for what is now Belgium.  There was a similar resistance in the US when the southern region of Illinois wanted to seceed from Illinois and form a new state in that union.  In that case, there would be four US Senators where now there are two.

In terms of the Belgian election results of 2010, it has been typical that four parties have been needed to form a governing coalition. Therefore, the NVA won’t be able to unilaterally split Belgium up. The socialists, for example, support a united Belgium.  I don’t think the NVA’s idea of a confederation rather than a federal system in Belgium would work.  I can’t think of many cases of a federal system becoming a confederation. Power doesn’t seem to work that way.  In any case, that Belgium is itself a state in a federal system mitigates the difference that such a change would make.  Because Illinois (and California, for that matter) is so diverse politically by region, I have thought that it should have a federal system, perhaps even confederal; Illinois itself would be mainly representing the states in the US Senate and regulating relations between the states (e.g., funding highways).  Belgium would have a similar role were Flanders and Wallonia to become members of a Belgian confederation.  I think it is possible, though not probably. Kant says the same thing about the kingdom of ends, given the pathology of self-love. that is, possible but not probable. He thought world federation could bring peace. 

In reading about Belgian politics, it does seem to me that from a governance perspective splitting Belgium might not be a bad idea.  It has been rather rough governing as it is.  At some point, I would think people would ask themselves if it is worth all the trouble.  Flanderscould become a province of the Netherlands and Wallonia could easily join France. That both regions of Belgium would still be in the EU lessens the magnitude of the change. Similarly, by the way, were the Middle East to form a federation perhaps the fight over land in Isreal and Palestine would be to a certain extent cooled because it wouldn't matter as much.  An empire-level/scale federal system can make what seems to be intractable problems actually not so important, and thus the respective positions not so rigid.

Living in America, I have a very outside perspective on what is going on Europe, not to mention in Belgium. However, sometimes such a perspective can be useful to people otherwise focused in on the daily problems of governing on the ground. It is easy for any of us to take our poltical artifices too seriously.  Political entities are but dust, and to dust they will return.  We ought not get too attached to the sandcastles we build. They, like us, are mortal. Put another way, politics is naturally a sea of change, constantly churning.  So too are we. The political sand castles we build are thus apt to change or be changed with after one too many tides.  In the mixture of dynamic politics and static polities, it is wise to periodically adapt the latter to take account of the former; otherwise, a political titalwave might just inundate one’s weakened sandcastle.

In the U.S. Constitutional Convention, James Madison in particular stressed the nepharious quality of faction in relation to the public good. He argued that if a republic is extended in scope sufficently that there are more factions, none of them would be able to dominate and the public good would emerge. In a republic in which there are only a few major parties, the people's perspectives can become delimited by the parties' paradigms in an either-or dual macro-framework. That is to say, societal blind-spots can exist. To the extent that both BP and the relevant U.S. Government regulatory agency, MMS, were both culpable in the Deep Water Horizon rig explosion in 2010, both the Republican defense of business and the Democratic defense of government fall short. Even so, these respective defenses went on undaunted in the wake of the disaster and in the next year. To be sure, old paradigms die hard.

Albeit an oversimplification, it can be said that the Democratic party in the United States stresses the power of business as the problem, whereas the Republican party there views the problem as being government.  In campaigning for President in 1980, Ronald Reagan bluntly said that government was indeed the problem.  Deregulation ensued and industry self-regulation was like a fad. The idea was that the checks and balances in goverment that protect the liberties of the citizens could be applied at the industry level such firms would provide a check on eachother automatically. Lost in the buzz was the extent to which an industry would be willing to sacrifice its own long-term viability in order to protect even the bad among its own.

In 2010, the Republican paradigm whereas business is good and government is bad resulted in some Republican office holders defending a piriah (BP) and continuing to urge deregulation in order to excoreate against the US Government and frustrate the Obama Administration.  The ranking Republican on the US House Energy and Commerce committee apologized to BP’s CEO for the “shakedown” by Obama in extracting a $20 billion fund for the claims in the Gulf region. Meanwhile, Democrats were hard-pressed to admit that a goverment regulatory agency, namely MMS, could be so inept and corrupt.  It was not so much a matter of more regulations being needed; rather, the problem was government regulation itself.

Democrats could point to the encroaching nature of big business over the regulators, but absent a shakedown in the size of the biggest companies, the wherewithal of the regulators not to “partner up” with the regulatees may be an intractable problem in government regulation.  The traditional argument in capture theory that regulators depend on their respective industries for information doesn’t even break a sweat in what is needed to explain the extent of the power of big business over government regulatory agencies.  The imbalance of power is systemic: government officials being too feckless and corrupt. and big business being too powerful for the good of the republic.  In their letters, Jefferson and Adams agree on the need for a natural aristocracy of virtue and talent, rather than the artifical sort of wealth and birth.  Absent a natural aristocracy, systems whether business or government, cannot but be ineffective and corrupt.

In 2010, BP’s sordid safety record and its explosion in the Gulf of Mexico challenged the paradigms of both parties.  In actuality, business and goverment, as well as business and government, contain problems that exceed and transcend a particular paradigm. In treating the two party paradigms as a dichotomy, we miss the interaction effect that exists among the respective sectors’ problems.  It might be that the founders were correct in their suspicion of factionalism, as it does indeed detract from the common good.  Where a paradigm keeps one from acknowledging problems that are in the radar of an “opposing” paradigm, a person is not apt to serve the public interest.  In other words, both paradigms are limited.  The BP-MMS interaction and the subsequent explosion and responses exposed the delimited nature of the partisan paradigms.

Two things stood out for me in the wake of the World Cup of 2010: the sheer number of low-scoring games and the number of bad calls. The latter is the easier to fix. FIFA can relax its opposition to instant replay even though it is not feasible technologically or financially for every game in the world.  FIFA could simply state that every game in the World Cup is subject to instant replay. The problem of low-scoring games is seemingly more intractable, but actually quite easy to solve.  One possible solution would be to elongate the goal area so it is more difficult to defend.  If that doesn’t work, the area could be heightened—then it would be a matter of skill in kicking the ball in the added area above the defending players’ reach.  The problem lies in the status quo. Even though low-scoring games are more boring, some people would object that too much scoring would get to be boring as well.  There would be a solution for that too, as the goal area could be retracted a bit. In fact, a twenty-first century way of approaching the problem would be to have the goal parameters movable according to a computer program that enlarges the area if there is little or no scoring and retracts it if there has been too much.  Such changes would presumably only be made when the score is tied so not to disadvantage the losing side.  My main point is that we are woefully slow in thinking in terms of the twenty-first century.

 Of course, the stats-oriented fans would object to the problems terms of the consistency of records. To be sure, there is a downside to every improvement.  I contend that improving the enjoyment of the game is worth the interference with comparisons with prior years.  Particularly with regard to sports as a past-time, the primary concern should be the present time. Sadly, the forces of the status quo give today short thrift.  Moreover, change itself, even to improve something, often faces and up-hill battle.  Perhaps this is partly because most people in a position to make changes are old, and thus too used to the way things have been.  The road for change seems to be uphill, with the status quo enjoying hegemony.  My reaction to this is: life is too short. We ought to do what we can to enjoy it more.  With its constant action, soccer, or football, could become a very exciting game.

Related on the World Cup: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/38190556/ns/sports-world_cup/