Even if you take the European Union alone and ignore all the other European countries, the EU only legislates over a subset of things for member countries.
Yes. The EU has no army, no legal sovereignty within each country, etc. It's an alliance of countries NOT a single federal government. The individual countries remain in charge of themselves and the alliance is supposed to be structured in a way that only paases things the countries actually want.
trumpdong then makes a comment that I interpret as saying the EU doesn't have a lot of power over member states, and saying that the worst which could happen to one of them is to be kicked out of the EU.
Slightly shocked by the idea that the EU should be doing something worse than expelling a member for not following the Union's rules, I use a _reductio ad absurdum_ and ask if they thought the EU should be harder and actually perform an armed invasion of a member state that didn't follow them.
AFAIK, not even that. This topic came up in relation to Hungary (before Orban was gone). What I understood from the discussion is that a country can only be punished by not giving them EU funds, etc.
Kicking out is possible, but not established and everyone happy that Orban is gone for now and no immediate need to find out how that process works in reality.
The EU has no sovereignty, countries (like Hungary and Germany) can openly disobey it and the worst they can do is kick them out of the EU
> the worst they can do is kick them out of the EU
As opposed to what? Armed invasion?
Yes. The EU has no army, no legal sovereignty within each country, etc. It's an alliance of countries NOT a single federal government. The individual countries remain in charge of themselves and the alliance is supposed to be structured in a way that only paases things the countries actually want.
So you think it would be better if the EU started a war with a member state that failed to uphold the union's laws?
Why would he or she think that? Your questions are close to strawman arguments in my perception.
Let's follow the timeline, shall we? It shouldn't be difficult as it's a pretty linear tree in the comments.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48423657
I mentioned that Europe is a lot more than the EU, and even within the EU member countries diverge.
2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48423908
trumpdong then makes a comment that I interpret as saying the EU doesn't have a lot of power over member states, and saying that the worst which could happen to one of them is to be kicked out of the EU.
3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48424244
Slightly shocked by the idea that the EU should be doing something worse than expelling a member for not following the Union's rules, I use a _reductio ad absurdum_ and ask if they thought the EU should be harder and actually perform an armed invasion of a member state that didn't follow them.
4. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48425100
To my shock, trumpdong literally says "yes".
5. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48425487
I, due to the shock described above, decide to question again in more words if that's actually what they mean.
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Hopefully that responds your question. I see no straw man, but if you still do, please present it.
kick them out of the EU
AFAIK, not even that. This topic came up in relation to Hungary (before Orban was gone). What I understood from the discussion is that a country can only be punished by not giving them EU funds, etc.
Kicking out is possible, but not established and everyone happy that Orban is gone for now and no immediate need to find out how that process works in reality.
Much less the UK.
I'm not sure how much less it is than, say, Bosnia, Serbia, Belarus, Kosovo...