A Letter to America about the French Strikes

Dear America,
This post is to make you think - about what it means to be American, what it means to vote, what it means to be really trapped in a bureaucratic state that has over-riding powers and no checks and balances. That's where the European Union is today and we could become the same if we don't defend our liberties and our constitution from faceless bureaucrats.
Living in French-speaking Switzerland, very close to France, and having many friends who are Swiss, French, and English, I have perhaps a perspective that is concrete.
Great Britain does not want to be in the EU. It never has and was tugged along by overt threats from the British left that it would be "left behind" and become a third-world country. Successive Prime Ministers have talked about a referendum to decide about Britain joining the monetary union, but knowing the result would be negative, no one has taken on the referendum as a serious project.
The Trade Union Council, in the 1980s, took up the battle to break Mrs. Thatcher's promise to "privatize" Britain, and she finally broke the TUC. That is the last battle ever successfully waged by a European government that was more interested in privacy and economic freedom than in controlling everything.
In continental Europe, the populations were led by the fear of a bellicose and resurgent Germany to form a union for mutual protection and common economic advantage after World War II. No one could seriously defend the position that Adenaur or de Gaulle were planning to create the EU that we see today. They wanted peace in Europe and economic development after WWII. What Europeans finally got was a centralized bureaucracy to put Washington to shame, with no controls and no one really in charge, just faceless bureaucrats trying to regulate every bit of the ordinary EU citizen's life.
The monetary union followed creating the Euro as the official European currency, but if a vote were taken today in almost any EU country, the Euro would disappear overnight. It has inflated prices, caused poverty to deepen and led to a cynicism about the EU that is rampant and deeply felt.
Switzerland has been threatened, cast as a non-European country even though it is located in the very center of Europe, has a democratic history pre-dating any EU country and has no need of the EU. Why? To force it to join the EU and contribute the money that the EU bureaucrats can't find elsewhere for their unpopular and largely unnecessary projects.
So, where are we? I would say that Europe is being gripped by an invisible set of EU tentacles that will refuse to let it go until the great mass of ordinary European citizens rise up and say, "Stop. Enough is enough. Give us back our countries, our traditions and our separate cultures."
When French workers and union leaders barricade roads to protest against the new government pension scheme, they are venting an anger against all things governmental, a reaction learned over 50 years of an ever more rapidly encroaching faceless ruling elite that can do whatever it likes, without ever having to explain its actions to anyone.
And, even if the EU wanted to explain, who would do it? Nobody because there is no leader, "the Emperor has no clothes."         
So, dear America, guard your freedoms, don't let anyone for any reason tell you that it would be better to abandon them for the higher good - there is no higher good than being free and in control of your life as a citizen.