It's down to us to halt curse that is the Lisbon Treaty
Ulick McEvaddy's opposition to the Lisbon Treaty has made the front pages, no doubt because his pockets are bulging with doubloons and ducats. No matter. Better debate of any kind than that we be steered by an arrogant and indoctrinated political class into an irreversibly terminal surrender of sovereignty. Though unlike Ulick, I have not read the Lisbon Treaty. I tried. The Lisbon phonebook is more fun.
Now, there is a broad spectrum of opinions as to our future. On the one extreme there is the view that to take control of our destinies, Ireland must not merely negotiate a departure from the EU but must also erect barriers between ourselves and the United Kingdom. On the other extreme, you have the committed Europeans, who endorse every Europhiliac scheme being dreamt up by Brussels, and who shriek that if this doesn't happen, then we'll have another Auschwitz on our hands.
Now, there's only one person that I know of who proposes the first crackpot, lunatic scheme, and that's me. Which is fine. I'm more than happy, standing alone, all alone, on the wave-washed strand. But the other extreme, the one that scolds us for being bad boys, and which warns we'll start chucking one another into gas chambers unless we obey the latest EU directive on bagpipe-noise, or the colour of our lawns, why, that encompasses almost our entire political class.
And I'm not exaggerating: Mary Hanafin actually said that unless the European project was fully realised, the alternative was another Auschwitz: an echo of the same idiocy that was uttered across the chancelleries of Europe after the French people voted down the proposed European constitution.
It was that defeat which decided the Eurocrats to abandon the referendum as a means of getting their Euro-project verified. The preferred alternative of Europe's political classes -- most of whom have been thoroughly indoctrinated in Euro-cant -- is to confine the decision-making to themselves, thereby excluding the awkward electorates -- except, of course, us. We alone can halt the Euro-lunacy in its tracks.
Now I don't see why Europhilia is accepted as reasonable whereas the other extreme -- mine own: a humble thing, a mere bauble, but 'tis mine -- should be regarded as so outlandish. For the duty of any society is to ensure social coherence and prosperity for the next generation. Far from this meaning no immigration, it means the reverse: societies which welcome immigrants tend to be more energetic, innovative, tolerant and prosperous. However, if you think that admitting one hundred thousand Somalis is going to create a more energetic, innovative, tolerant and prosperous society, you haven't been doing your homework.
The point is, we -- the Irish people -- should be able to decide who comes here, and from what countries and cultures. Only fools -- which the British have really and truly been -- would allow unhindered access to their home by unlimited numbers of foreigners. And it is because of British folly, and the millions of non-Britons who now live in Briton, that I would end the common travel area between these islands. I would also, for the same reason, start convincing the unionist people that it makes sense that they come to terms with the rest of an island which wants them, as opposed to their retaining an unreturned affection for a neighbouring island that clearly doesn't.
Which might seem to place me in a very strange position indeed: quasi-shinnerdom. No, not really. Merely because the Shinners were pockmarked savages with the blood of thousands of innocents on their hands in the past, doesn't mean they're always wrong today. And on the future of Ireland, they're right. Moreover, you can hardly celebrate the wicked obscenity of 1916 today, as Fianna Fail and Fine Gael apparently do, and in the same breath celebrate the loss of sovereignty implicit in the current Eurination, as they also do.
And what is the manual for this project? The constitution which has already been rejected by two EU electorates. This phonebook of a document has since had a couple of unimportant numbers removed, and is now being resubmitted as a 'treaty'. But it's the old constitution by another name, and as bad, an utterly vast one. And the Irish people alone can reject it.
India is the warning. Its constitution is nearly 120,000 words long, and in 60 years, has required 94 amendments. In its attempts to be all-embracing, it has achieved the opposite of what India's founding fathers sought.
It has actually created a legal apartheid. Thus the Indian supreme court has ruled that it is illegal for Muslim men to pay alimony to the wives they have divorced, whereas men of other religions must do so.
For complex or incomprehensible constitutions are like building your home on a plague-swamp: the poisonous miasma will infuse every part of your home.
At least India can survive a bad constitution because a sense of being Indian unites so many different peoples. No such emotion unites Europeans. We belong to our respective identities, and no edict from Brussels can change that.
To burden ourselves with the Lisbon Treaty is to hand our future over to euro-lawyers, and place a curse on our grandchildren for which they will never forgive us.
