President George W. Bush is trying to spread democracy in unlikely places around the world, but democracy is fast being taken away from our traditional friends in Europe. The EU was formed undemocratically by the elites of the several nations without the informed consent of the people, and its entire structure is institutionally undemocratic.

The EU is a top-down enforced togetherness of different nationalities, with different cultures and languages, many of whom don't like each other. That's a prescription for conflict, not peace.

If the new EU constitution is adopted, the EU paper-pushers in Brussels, with their own flag and anthem, will assume full powers over foreign relations, international agreements, the armed forces and arms industries of the member nations, and criminal and civil justice law and procedure.

It is a mystery why any Americans would support the concept of the EU. Many, perhaps most, Europeans see the EU's main purpose as to stand up to and overtake the United States as the world's superpower.

The European nations' loss of sovereignty to the EU should be a warning to Americans. The EU is a model for how global-governance advocates in the United States plan to morph trade agreements into one government for the Western Hemisphere.

NAFTA came first, under which a foreign tribunal was able to override U.S. laws and give Mexican trucks access to all U.S. highways. Congress will soon vote on the Central American Free Trade Agreement, the plan to integrate our prosperous economy with the poverty of Central America.

Then will come Free Trade Agreement of the Americas which, according to the Quebec Declaration signed by Bush in 2001, will bring about economic and political "hemispheric integration." Americans who want to retain American sovereignty should speak up now.