'Yes' camp's empty Eurobabble should be met by a simple 'No'
Tuesday June 10 2008
Seldom have the proponents of any political cause done as much damage to their case as have those urging us to vote 'Yes' in the referendum for our future.
They have attempted to reassure us with their Eurobabble of majority qualified voting, harmonisation and of subsidiarity, and so on; but they have raised more questions than the ones they unsuccessfully tried to answer. And when the august judges of the Referendum Commission are unable to answer relatively simple legal questions without lapsing into a baffled Urdu, then we know that the waters ahead are as clear as mud.
Our Euro-indoctrinated political classes insist that our tax laws will remain solely at the discretion of our sovereign parliament, and that no measure introduced by the EU can change those laws. But these are just opinions, not binding legal undertakings. Who knows what some future European supreme court or European Parliament might not rule? We have not got the immutable right to levy taxes (or not, as we please) enshrined in some specific, legally clear and watertight codicil, immune to subversion or invalidation through some so far undetected sub-sub clause in the bottomless verbiage of Eurobabble.
Any future consideration of our tax laws might well be by a Euro court, presided over by Euro judges who are well-steeped in the ideological dogmas of the European project. What is to stop them prospecting for the legal gold nuggets that would enable Europe to impose tax uniformity on the entire EU? To look for a vindication of an autonomous Irish tax regime from them would be like looking for a directive on pig farming from the Iranian supreme court.
And I simply do not understand why a political party which is re-creating an annual jamboree over the murderfest of 1916 is simultaneously immersing us in the new empire of Europe. Once in, it will be incredibly difficult to get out. We shall be a tiny tile in the vast mosaic that is Europe. Merely (to mix our metaphors) because, politically, we punch above our weight should not blind us to this truth. Lisbon is the fork in the road (new metaphor) that could take us to a politically united Europe, and we need take no more decisions, or even be allowed to take any, for that to happen.
If we vote 'No', won't we be cutting our own throats? No, we won't. Norway and Switzerland have free trade with the EU. If the EU wants to make itself a superstate, good. But we don't have to be part of it.
But surely, isn't a united European superstate a good thing? Well, it might be, if composed of idealised versions of the respective countries and cultures involved. But what is the reality? Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway: between them, perhaps, a million men under arms, yet only a a couple of thousand deployed in NATO's main area of operations, Afghanistan. The small German contingent there won't even patrol at night, and their soldiers cannot watch 'Thomas the Tank Engine' on their i-Pods; and in a combat zone, what you don't hold with feet on the ground, you forfeit. And we know about Spanish resilience in the face of terrorist attack.
Tell me, do you really think that the Eurocracy in Brussels is capable of mobilising popular will about a serious, militarised foreign policy? Mainland Europe is a large outdoor playground, with lots of posturing children playing at soldiers; meanwhile, who minds the schoolgates, as always, but the USA?
This infantilised condition is nowhere so advanced as in Ireland, where we have done two things: (a) refused to protect ourselves effectively by arms or treaty during the most dangerous time and in the most lethal area in world history, Europe, 1939-1989; and, (b) condemned those who have protected us for their immoral expenditure on arms. So, I don't expect mature debate on this subject in Ireland, merely inane playground pieties, which is, of course, what we've been getting on the subject of defence, from both camps.
The reality is that, once again, the war against Islamo-fascism is being fought by the common-law Anglophone countries that defeated fascism in 1945, and communism in the half-century which followed. This is the great historical truth of the 20th century.
The penultimate argument for 'No' is that 'Yes' finally means this island shall never have any control over its frontiers or who crosses them. 'Yes' is the open sesame to Ireland becoming what other European countries already are: socially divided and angry, with autonomous little Islamistans emerging in every major city. And, of course, they never remain little for long. And when EU dogmatists finally achieve their ambition of fully including Turkey in the union, we -- or, more to the point, our children -- will fully understand the demographic consequences.
The final argument from the 'Yes' camp is that the 'No' side really doesn't understand Lisbon. And, for once, they're right. So why should I say 'Yes' to a legal document I don't understand? My lawyer would never urge me to buy a house under such conditions.
Why would we follow different rules when voting for the future of our country?
