Let the bullying begin

Irish politicians reacted angrily Wednesday after French President Nicolas Sarkozy suggested Ireland should hold a second referendum on the EU's new treaty, after rejecting it last month.

Irish voters dealt a blow to the European Union last month by rejecting the Lisbon Treaty in the only popular vote on the text anywhere in the 27-nation bloc.

According to deputies who attended a meeting with Sarkozy Tuesday, he said that the Irish would "have to re-vote", despite 53 percent opposition.

A key adviser to the French president said later on Wednesday that Sarkozy could ask Ireland to hold a second referendum on the document, but with some minor changes.

"One of the solutions would be indeed to eventually ask the Irish to re-vote, but probably not on a text that would be exactly the same," said Henri Guaino in an interview to French television.

"We'll see," he added.

Guaino stressed that Sarkozy's remarks, widely reported in the press, were "not an official statement from the president."

Sarkozy's comments were described as "deeply insulting" by Sinn Fein's Aengus O Snodaigh, who speaks for the party on international affairs. Sinn Fein was the only major political party in Ireland to oppose the Lisbon Treaty.

"In the month since the Irish people voted overwhelmingly to reject the Lisbon Treaty, we have listened to a succession of EU leaders lining up to try and bully and coerce us into doing what they want," O Snodaigh said.

"The fact is that the people have spoken and the Lisbon Treaty is dead."

Not if the Euro-Elite has anything to say about it.

This is how it was supposed to work. Each nation in the EU would have to ratify the new EU constitution and if any failed to do so then the document would be dead. The nations could make their decision any way they wanted to. Anything from a decree by an imperial legislature to a free vote of the people.

All the nations of Europe other than Ireland chose the imperial decree route. The reason is that the new EU government's structure has more in common with fascism than it does with any other political system that man has ever devised and most Europeans are still aware of what happened when Europe last tried to go fascist.

Now the Elites are going to do what leftists do every time a vote or court decision goes against them - demand a re-vote. Of course when the decision goes their way they consider the matter completely and eternally closed, but the topic of the left's hypocrisy is one of those "water is wet" things that most of us are tired of hearing about so we won't dwell on it.

Over the next few months we will hear European politicians attempt to shame the Irish into capitulation by reminding them of how much Ireland owes the Union. They will claim that development aid from the Union is the only reason that Ireland is enjoying it's current prosperity (Ireland has one of the most dynamic and healthy economies in Europe).

This is a lie. Ireland's prosperity is due to two factors. One is the collapse of the Soviet Union. This led to the chain reaction implosion of all of Europe's Soviet led/funded/inspired terrorist/revolutionaly movements like the Red Brigades and the IRA and all its offshoots.

The second factor in Ireland's renaissance is the decision by the Irish people, acting through their elected representatives, to turn Ireland into a low-tax haven for business. This has pulled large amounts of money into the Irish economy from other parts of Europe, as well as North America and Asia.

And thus we come to the real reason that the Euro-Elites want to take Ireland into their suffocating embrace. Ireland shows the rest of Europe what can be accomplished by a people who act to remove the dead hand of government from their economic lives. Totalitarian governments fear this knowledge as vampires fear crosses and wooden stakes. That is why they must bring Ireland into the European fold and snuff out its prosperity. Otherwise other European peoples might begin to wonder why they can't have the same freedom and prosperity.

The Irish people should be glad that the EU nations have cut back their military spending so drastically in the past decade. Otherwise they might find themselves facing what Hitler and Napoleon (the EU's precursors) could only dream of, a massive cross-channel invasion of the British Isles (at least a part of them).

So let's all begin the weekend by hoisting a glass of stout to our Irish brothers and sisters and say a prayer that their courage and resolve will hold in the face of all that the EU can do to bully them into signing away their sovereignty.

And today I'm wearing green.