POLAND, ROGUE NATIONS, AND THE EUROPEN UNION

We are much attuned to recognizing rogue states as those states with dictators that deny civil liberties and civil rights. However, there is another kind of rogue state and these are theocracies where the litmus test of government is religious dogma. Unfortunately, Poland is just such a rogue state. Poland was the only state under former Soviet rule where almost 100% of its people held fast to their Roman Catholic beliefs albeit many did not practice their beliefs in public but held them in pectus. However, with Poland's liberation and return to self-governance, Poles have made the dogma and doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church central to what it means to be a Pole and Poland.

With the Kaczynski twins - Lech, the president, and Jaroslaw, the prime minister - leading the charge, Poland thwarted the vote on the ratification of the European Union's constitution and also the proposed European Union anti-death penalty holiday. It is inconceivable that any modern, enlightened, European nation could be against a day of unity against the death penalty. However, Poland is neither a modern nor an enlightened European nation.

One could excuse Poland's "rough edges," its lack of modernism, and its lack of enlightenment, as a carryover from the fact that from the reign of King Stanisla in the 1790s, Poland, or at least parts of it, have been occupied by Russia, Prussia, Germany, the Nazis, and the Soviet Union. This means that for all of Poland's modern history, roughly for the entire history of the United States, Poland has been an occupied nation. One could excuse Poland's lack of modern sensibilities and enlightenment except for the fact that since Poland's liberation from the Soviet Union rather than working toward becoming a modern, enlightened nation it has chosen to become a client state of the Vatican. Most Poles will tell you this is to be expected because it was their dedication to their Roman Catholic faith that sustained them and in fact gave them an identity both as individuals and as a nation through the long centuries of occupation.

Faith, and one's dedication to it, is not a bad thing and in fact leading a faith filled life can be considered a moral value worth emulating. However, there is a distinct difference between an individual leading a faith filled life and a sovereign nation that puts itself, at least de facto puts itself, under the control of any religion or denomination thereof especially one as atavistic and controlling as the Roman Catholic Church.

Yet even doing so does not constitute a moral evil if doing so is the will of the majority of the people and the conscience of those who do not agree with the dogma and doctrine of the Church that informs the laws of the nation is respected. What happens within a nation and that nation's people who choose to govern themselves in a certain way must be held sacrosanct.

However, that is not Poland's agenda. Poland's agenda is to impose the dogma and doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church on the European Union and if that is not possible then to render the Union impotent. And, as we all know the litmus test for the Roman Catholic Church is what the Chilean feminist writer Rosario Guzman Bravo calls, "moral values below the waist;" namely, contraception, abortion and homosexuality.

The Roman Catholic Church is not only not modern or enlightened on these subjects, it is atavistically intractable. Poland, as the Vatican's client state, perpetrates a significant moral evil when it exercises its vote to thwart all of the good the European Union could do if it had a ratified constitution and could create an official anti-death penalty holiday that was binding on all member states.

While there are many reasons to want to have Poland continue to be a member of the European Union, it is not a given that it must be a member. The European Union has minimal criteria that all potential member nations must meet prior to acceptance including the protection of human and civil rights.

The protection of human and civil rights should be the paramount goal of every member nation of the European Union. Those states that restrict or deny contraception and abortion as well as deny full equality under the law to homosexuals is a rogue nation because these kinds of laws are an a priori denial of human dignity and the exercise of one's personal moral agency; namely, their informed conscience.

This puts both Poland and the European Union is a very precarious and difficult position. Just as decisions must be made to deny entry to those nations who do not meet the minimal standards to join the Union, for its own preservation the Union may also reach a point where it will have to make a decision to expel Poland. Poland is a de facto theocracy that does not afford women and homosexuals their full human and civil rights and seeks to impose its same religiously informed laws on all of the member states of the European Union.

Such a retreat into allowing the Roman Catholic Church to once again rule Europe and control the most private and personal aspects of people’s lives must not be allowed to happen. To do so would constitute an unconscionable moral evil perpetrated by the European Union on both its member states and the women and homosexuals of Europe.