Get your facts straight.

England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales are all countries.

Oh, and the French and British aircraft carriers are tiny.

They are not countries. It is a common misconception. The United Kingdom is a country, not England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as they each do not have their own independent political government.

Your point being? The guy said no-one else did. He was wrong.

I would hardly call an almost 700ft long ship tiny.

1) How would a liberal democracy even get a tyrannical Government? Afterall, the people have to elect the Government. In most European countries, there is a Parliamentary Government, and so the Government would need to also get the approval of Parliament.

Of course, if a tyrant was able to get through all that, he'd still have to try and change the constitution to give him more power, which is a very hard thing to do if you're ideas go against the grain. The UK doesn't have a codified constitution (to say it's "unwritten" is inaccurate), so it would be easier here - but, again, any bills would need royal assent to be put in place (although this hasn't been rejected in hundreds of years, the Monarch still has the power to do so).... and even if all this came into place, the Government has no way to enforce it - the Government doesn't have it's own police force - they're all local, and the armed forces belong to the Monarch.

2) Ever heard of Ghandi? The (fall of the) Kapp Putsch? In a real liberal democracy passive resistance can be just as effective as violent resistance. If the people aren't willing to cooperate, a Government has no power.

 Perhaps because the EU is becoming a global superpower that's greater than the US?

Oh, that's great. I proved, that what you were saying bullshit about the US being the world's biggest economy.

So your next point is to bring up the army thing. Okay, most of European countries are encircled by allied countries. Actually all of the big western nations are. So why do we need a large army? To cut social security, healthcare and education down and show some big balls?

Probably you are not used to it any more after 8 years of Bush-goverment, but as much as I disgust this populism, the speech of Klaus is a sign, that democracy and debates work fine over here. Sounds like freedom of speech to me. It's not like in the US, where suddenly people would call out to not travel to czech republic any more or buy products from there. The trade is unaffected by political debates and the basic reason for the EU, free trade between the members, works fine, as my number proved. So I don't see where the EU should be dysfunctional...

Where is your problem there at all? So the US is not the bigger economic power compared to the EU...

And yeah you have the biggest military power and are the super power. No one will question this at least for the next decade. Where is the problem that we rely on you guys??? it's not that we don't pay for some of it in hard cash...

i.e.: for the gulf war germany paid at least 8 billion US-dollars out of 61 billion total cost. And now troops from EU-Countries are in Afghanistan. In the ISAF they outnumber the US-troops.

Just get over it, the US is simply not the biggest thing in everything...

United Kingdom is a country but it's also a sovereign state, as it it governs the main 4 countries that make up the UK. Which are all countries in themselves.

Wales and Ulster have their own assemblies and Scotland has it's own parliament. England does not. UK has a parliament that can govern all 4 countries.

But why Tyrannical is seemingly using Aircraft carriers as an arguement is beyond me.

Great to have this kind of deep discussion here! The main question is what do we really want the EU to become? A new superpower or just a bigger trade arrangement. I tend to the superpower: why not try to build a new United States of Europe, with different nations united to form something bigger and better without stupid need for patriotism. The road to walk is long, but I reckon when we get there, it's all worth it. And if you call this socialist - count me in.

 The UK Parliament has sovereignty over all over political bodies in the UK. They have the ability to remove the Scottish Parliament, and the Welsh/NI Assemblies.

Not trying to argue for/against your points, just putting out some facts.

Hm, so I'm living in the country of Bavaria in Germany, because it happens to be a so called free state and to have its own parliament and its own constitution. You never stop learning.

Back to the UK problem: then call all of them countries, but basically if there wasn't the historical thing going on, they would be called regions or states.

 Well, US carriers are twice the size as France's Charles De Gaule carrier, and three or so times as big as Englands. I also think they are escort carriers that  primarily carry planes for self defence of the fleet.