Ireland Rejects Big Government
by Mark Rhoads
Issue 111 - July 9, 2008

No matter how many times a new European constitution gets defeated by the voters, the bureaucrats in Brussels just keep trying to revive it by skating around their own rules. In a welcome surprise, voters in Ireland have just rejected the latest scheme for more complex, more bureaucratic, and a less free European Union constitution called the Lisbon Treaty.

In the picture, a man in Dublin hands out flyers asking for a no vote on the treaty. (PA photos for Time Magazine). The drafters tried to sell the treaty, inked by governments last December, as an "updated and streamlined" version of the 500-page Rube Goldberg contraption that was previously rejected by voters in the Netherlands and France in 2005. By way of contrast, the U.S. Constitution normally runs about 15 pages as printed in the Illinois Blue Book. The 500-page EU draft of 2005 was only the tip of the iceberg because it incorporated by reference dozens of other treaties and previously passed EU laws and regulations running to many thousands of pages that no one person could read or understand.

Ireland voted no this time 53 percent to 47 percent. Eighteen of 27 EU members have ratified but of course not by voters, only by governments. The Irish vote is really a veto because all 27 members have to ratify. But that won't stop the EU brass in Brussels from looking for ways around Irish voters. After French and Dutch voters defeated the first draft in 2005, the bureaucrats in Brussels tried to make sure no one would get to vote to ratify this time around. But the wonderfully stubborn Irish had their own ratfication rules that could not be waived and now they might have saved Europe from itself. To belittle the stubborn Irish, the Brussels centrists have been pointing out that Ireland has only 4.9 million people or one percent of the 490 million in all the EU members. But at least the Irish know that legitimacy comes from the ballot box.

The reason voters keep rejecting the EU Constitution is because it wanders so far from the original 1980s vision of a "United States of Europe." If the EU leaders had actually written a document that, like the US Constitution, guarantees basic rights and freedoms for citizens and protects them from encroachments by government, maybe the charter would win more voter support. But every EU scheme turns that idea of freedom on its head and instead focuses on the rights of government to order citizens to do things and their obligations to government. Voters in Europe have become increasingly suspicious of the neo-socialists who dominate the EU bureacracy and legislature because personal freedom is dead last on their long-term agenda compared to their brave new world agenda where citizens exist for the state--an idea twice beaten back with the the defeats of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.

The EU Constitution was designed by the bureaucrats and for the bureaucrats to make sure the bureaucracy in Brussels would have a great deal of power with little or no accountability to anyone, least of all ordinary voters. Irish voters knew a bad deal when they saw it. Don't be surprised if the next time the bureaucrats try to revive the EU Constitution the backers will make sure no ordinary citizen gets to cast a vote to ratify or reject. Taking ordinary voters out of the game is the only way the bureaucrats of Brussels can win.

Mark Rhoads is a former Illinois state senator and commentator on state and national politics.