As Ireland gears up for the re-vote on the infamous Lisbon Treaty, I am struck by similarities between what’s going on there and in the US.
For those of you who don’t know, the Lisbon Treaty is an abomination that will effectively create the first incarnation of a United States of Europe. This will render the member nations the equivalent of States in the US in terms of sovereignty – something the EU was NEVER supposed to be able to do.
The only country to put their ratification vote to the people themselves was Ireland. Back in June, the Irish people sensibly voted “no.” Since the treaty requires unanimous ratification, this effectively meant that the treaty was dead in the water until Ireland’s concerns were “addressed” in the form of another piece of European Parliament legislation that supposedly guarantees extra protections. The treaty, however, remains completely unchanged (any changes would require unanimous reapproval, which would not happen) and the extra protections have yet to be unanimously approved (gee, what’s the likelihood that they won’t be, even if the Irish pass the Treaty?).
Basically, the Irish are being told, “you didn’t vote right…now we’re just going to sit here until you finish your vegeta-…I mean, come up with a ‘yes’ vote!” How insulting!
What’s more, the yes/no debate has taken on the general color of the US healthcare debate. I think it’s a common philosophy of statists and progressives. “Keep voting or recounting until you come up with the answer we like.” The shamelessly fraudulent Franken/Coleman election and blatant rule changing in Massachusetts put the demands for incessant recounts of the Bush/Gore 2000 election in the shade. For those of you who don’t know, it was independently verified three months later that Bush did actually win that election and had the Supreme Court not intervened, and Gore been allowed to keep playing with the cards, the only difference would be that Gore would have lost by a wider margin…not that that got much press…
But Europe is already farther down the road to serfdom than we are, and even nonWestern countries are falling victim to similar attempts by politicians to cast themselves as surrogate parents to their unwilling citizens, “for their own good.”
Anyway, the contempt shown by progressives and statists for the people they aspire to govern is fueled by a zealous, near-religious belief that They Are Right™ and there can be no serious opposition to their idiotic, tyrannical, dystopian vision.
Isn’t it time, after nearly a century of their failed programs, contempt and nonsense, that the US and Western Europe saw these tyrants for who they really are and sent them packing? When will the West’s failing experiment in progressivism finally be tossed where it belongs…on the trash heap of history’s mistakes along with fascism, totalitarianism, flower power, and slavery?
