A Socialist Coup (Updated)

At least one rule of the EU is simple and unambiguous. A failure of any one member country to ratify an EU treaty (or in this case, the Constitution disingenuously renamed a treaty to get around the need for national referendums) means the Treaty does not come into force. But the EU is not going to let democracy or its own laws stand in the way. It has brushed aside the one democratic referendum held the other day in Ireland and plans to enforce the Treaty of Lisbon regardless. There is a true coup going on in Europe. The rule of law and democracy have been tossed out, and what is being created in their stead is something both both Marx and Orwell would recognize.
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If you believe in democracy and the rule of law, what you see today across the pond and in Europe should be horrifying. The Irish referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon, blogged below, by law should have ended this socialist coup. But it has not. The EU Referendum quotes a press release from Hans-Gert Pöttering, the president of the EU parliament:

It is of course a great disappointment for all those who wanted to achieve greater democracy, greater political effectiveness and greater clarity and transparency in decision-making in the European Union that the majority of the Irish could not be convinced of the need for these reforms of the European Union. We must not forget, however, that the European Union has experienced crises and times of difficulty several times before. Today, as in the past, we must keep a cool head.

The rejection of the Treaty text by one European Union country cannot mean that the ratifications which have already been carried out by 18 EU countries become invalid. The ratifications in the other EU Member States must be respected just as much as the Irish vote. For that reason, the ratification process must continue in those Member States which have not yet ratified. . . .

Read the entire post.

There is nothing democratic or transparent about the manner in which the EU operates. And indeed, the opacity and centralization of power without any institutionalized system of checks and balances will only increase significantly once the EU is operating under its Constitution. Pöttering's rejection of EU rules regarding complete ratification of the Treaty by all EU member nations as a prerequisite for the Treaty going into effect is unlawful - but it tells you precisely how undemocratic and how utterly determined the intelligentsia of Europe are to impose the EU upon its citizens, wholly irrespective of whatever the wishes of the citizens may be.

And this from the Times:

Britain is pressing on with the tortuous ratification of the European Union’s Lisbon treaty, despite Ireland rejecting it in a referendum.

Jim Murphy, the Europe minister, said today the Irish would be left isolated when the other 26 EU member nations passed the treaty into law later this year. The treaty would establish the offices of a European president and foreign minister, and would reduce the power of individual nations to veto reforms.

Gordon Brown, the prime minister, has rejected calls for a referendum on the treaty, but in Ireland, where constitutional law obliged a referendum, citizens rejected it overwhelmingly.

. . . Legally the treaty requires the ratification of all 27 member states to come into force - but Britain has joined France and Germany in signalling that it will look for a way around that technicality [emphasis added].

. . . The treaty was still good for Britain, he insisted, and the onus was now on Ireland to propose a means of resolving the crisis when EU leaders meet in Brussels next week.

The rest of the EU could proceed with the document in some form without the Irish, he signalled, and would finish ratifying it at the end of this year.

He said: “It is important to reflect then, is it 26 governments who have ratified and is it one that hasn’t? And then we discuss the way forward.”

. . . European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso said the treaty was not dead. France and Germany, too, have urged the EU to press ahead with the project despite admitting that the referendum result was a serious blow.

Read the entire article. And there is this, also in the Times, from socialist Labour MP, Dennis MacShane. He gives you some idea of the mindset of those determined to make the EU super-state a reality, democracy be damned:

It took hundreds of pages of the Federalist Papers, a few dozen men locked for weeks in a sealed room in Philadelphia and a bloody civil war for the US constitution to be accepted. So the little local difficulties in France, the Netherlands and now Ireland must be seen in a broader perspective.

Anti-Europeans are lacing their champagne with Guinness as they celebrate the “no” vote and proclaim with W.B. Yeats “all changed, changed utterly”. Yet the EU, its Commission, existing treaties and directives will still be in place tomorrow. Europe has been here before and will be again.

. . . Ireland and the rest of Europe will wake up on Monday with a headache but not much else. Not a single Eurocrat will lose his job. . .

The big losers are Turkey and Croatia. British Tory Eurosceptics hypocritically proclaim their support for Turkish accession, but know that demanding referendums on future treaties means an end to enlargement [emphasis added].

No EU treaty can come into force until all signatory nations ratify it. But Ireland represents 1 per cent of the EU's total population and some old-fashioned democrats may feel that 1 per cent does not outweigh the rest of Europe's nations which are saying “yes” to the treaty [emphasis added].

But the rules are clear. Had the Irish voted “yes” and the British Parliament voted “no”, it is unlikely that Open Europe and Stuart Wheeler would describe the Irish popular vote as superior to one by Britain's sovereign parliament.

But amid the clamour from anti-EU campaigners in Britain and other nations to ignore sovereign parliamentary decisions, some way forward will have to be found.

. . . “Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold,” Yeats wrote, and its complacent political establishment may feel that Ireland is falling apart. Yeats added that “anarchy is loosed upon the world”, and an anarchic bust-up is what many Eurosceptics hope for. But it won't happen. Europe will go on its summer holidays. Perhaps when it comes back, ways will be found to make the treaty work, or the parts of it that do not need any treaty change.

. . . As the hysteria dies down, ways will be found to make Europe work, with or without the treaty. For both pro- and anti-Europeans, things have not changed so utterly at all.

Read the entire article. Mr. MacShane seems to be a little off in his U.S. history. There was no civil war involved in the crafting of the U.S. Constitution. Nor was it a thing crafted in hiding. Indeed, the Federalist Papers he cites and the like are a testament to just how open and democratic the process was in crafting the Constitution. That stands in stark contrast to everything about the EU. Indeed, every effort has been made to muddle the water. The Treaty of Lisbon stood for months as hundreds of pages of incomprehensible amendments apart from the original documents being amended - thus making it impossible for the average person to make heads or tails to what the Treaty actually said or to compare it to the Consitution from 2005. Indeed, it is hard to think of a more grotesque and improper comparison than that which Mr. MacShane makes between the U.S. and the socialist coup that is occurring today in Europe.

And how Orwellian is it for MacShane to appeal to "democracy" to reject the "no" vote of Ireland? The reason only 1% of the citizens of Europe voted against this socialist nightmare is because only 1% of Europe's citizens have yet to be given a vote on it, at least under its current disingenous categorization as a "treaty" rather than a "constitution." When it was named the latter, both the people of France and the Netherlands voted it down in 2005. Which is precisely why the EU renamed it a treaty and sought to ram it down citizen's throats without their opportunity to vote on it.

And what does it tell you of the thought process of Mr. MacShane to attack the Tory party over a referendum on EU enlargement, claiming hypocrisy on the Tory's part because they, the Tories, know a referendum to enlarge the EU will fail. These people have nothing but utter disdain for democracy and a complete belief in their right to impose their will. They are dangerous.

Update: More from EU Referendum on the plans impose the Treaty of Lisbon irrespective of the Irish vote here.

The people of Britain and Europe have collectively shrugged their shoulders and allowed their democratic votes to be taken from them without, seemingly, any concern. I do not understand how this can occur without blood in the streets. I will never understand this mindset and apathy. What is going on in Europe is no less a coup with a bare patina of democracy than was Hitler's accretion of power in the 1930's. I expect the long term ramifications of this grand experiment in socialism to be no less disastrous.