Just look at how they talk. Voting is a contagion that might "spread" to other countries, as if it was the bubonic plague. The EU has constantly increased its power. The goal of the people who actually run it is federalism. They hate the idea of countries picking and choosing integration from a menu, they are literally dead-set against the idea.

And why would you insist on a deal being all or nothing, bad with the good? Because you know that's the only way to get the bad ideas through. Same reason Congress attaches riders to bills they know will be strongly supported, when those same riders got rejected earlier.

As an immigrant living in London the "bad" ideas are in the eye of the beholder surely? Can you enumerate a few ideas that are bad?

Also, to me an institution keeping the peace also trying to contain the "contagion" of instability makes perfect sense. It's what I want and I contacted all my representatives to that end.

Of course they are in the eye of the beholder.

A few that I personally think are bad:

- Recent VAT reforms

- Cookie law

- Treating low taxes as "state aid" (EU Commission will be setting tax rates across the EU soon, just wait)

- Having a Parliament that can't make its own laws

But if you asked others you might get an answer like "the euro".

The EU has no relevance to peace or war. The USA is a much more strongly federalised union than the EU and had a brutal civil war. Most wars today are civil wars. There is absolutely nothing that'd stop the EU having a civil war even if it was incredibly federalised and had become practically a single country, like the USA. What has kept the peace in Europe was avoiding a repeat of the Treaty of Versaille, nuclear weapons, NATO, and the fact that European countries are now all mature democracies (the latter is imo the most important).

The US was not nearly as federalized when the Civil War broke out as it is today.

Exactly that's what sickens me the most. Not many politicians actually champion democracy and the populace's ability to decide for themselves what they want. They only want more power for themselves.

Does it really "sicken" you?

This is the first objective of the Maastricht treaty:

"strengthen the democratic legitimacy of the institutions;"

That sounds like championing democracy to me?

I like the ideal. But in reality, it seems to be just empty words.

No, it's not empty words. It is just that you haven't been paying attention.