European project at a fork in the road

[junketman]

Well like most people I don’t know every detail of the Lisbon Treaty because like most people I don’t have the time, the attention span or would just rather spend my spare hours doing something interesting.

However I think I have heard enough to decide that the Lisbon Treaty Referendum represents a fork in the road for the future direction of the European Project. On the one hand, let us say the Route of a Yes vote, we have closer European Integration with an agenda of even more integration. There will be a new President of sorts with tremendous power and influence over the future of Europe. He will be the President of Europe in effect and I’m sure with his own cabinet.

We will be increasingly subject to European laws and regulations and most of all we will be subject to a single European Agenda in terms of dealings with the outside world. And so if Ireland decides that it doesn’t agree with Europe on this or that and doesn’t for example want to allow in Brazilian beef, well it seems in the new Europe we wont be allowed do that.

The other road is the No vote, which in my view is a continuation of the loose alignment of disparate states with equally disparate agendas, coming together to work in harmony on issues where cooperation is good but each going their own way when it suits such as with their own bilateral trade agreements.

So then to me a Yes vote means Europe becomes a great big monolithic organisation where you and me the ordinary citizen becomes lost and has little or no control over how our country is run but yet are thrown the sop of the Fundamental Charter on Human Rights whatever that is which suggests to me that the European leaders view our Human Rights as a luxury which is their right to give to us rather than something inalienable and belonging to us. And if I want to get up in the morning and tell the English, Germans, French or the EU in general to ‘F off, I am not going to do what you want me to’, will I be less able to do that if Lisbon is passed.

And will it happen, and this is what we must all fear the most, both those on the Yes and No side, that after Lisbon, the most powerful politicians in Europe will not be national politicians but a clique at the head of the EU and will there be the potential for the corruption of this clique. Will News Corp or an organisation like that decide that it wants to support such and such a candidate for President of Europe and will support that candidate in return for favours. The most powerful politicians always attract the most powerful lobbyists and this is where the danger lies with the new Europe.

A No vote to me means Europe will still be a loose alliance of nations, yes inefficient, perhaps not very cohesive or coherent and a little slow to react to international security issues but at the same time will mean we are not part of a European Empire where we all think the same, have the same currency, laws, culture and that differences between nations are gradually eliminated year by year until we are like those masses who followed the Nazis, no longer able to see ourselves as unique or individual but merely as being a number or a cog in the great big machine serving our political masters in Europe who themselves disappear into the political undergrowth that is EU politics, uncontactable, aloof, living like European Royalty of old.

[LooseCannon]

so basically in your mind: inefficiency = good, efficiency = bad

[Podolski]

I'm with Robert Frost on this one:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

In other words, don't go with the flow - Vote No!

[brio910]

There was a stout baldy man in Italy who once made the trains run more efficiently.
His name was Mussolini and he was a fascist.

The EU is a host of disparate nations with different desires and needs.

To have efficiency is all things means unity must be enforced and minority nations shafted by QMV.

Again and again certain laws can be enforeced upon them against their will.

This is bad for democracy.

As we are the only country in Europe to hold a referendum on this Treaty, it shows how delicate democracy is in Europe.

And how harmful the Lisbon Treaty is to different peoples being able to democratically determine their own future.

[geraghd]

I'm with Robert Frost on this one:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

In other words, don't go with the flow - Vote No!

No, it means the opposite, vote yes! The road less travelled is always the road that the EU goes, as it has never been tried before. Progress is the road less travelled.

[Twin Towers]

No, it means the opposite, vote yes!

No, it means the opposite, vote NO!

Your road less travelled has already had 450 million people shoved up it without being asked where they wanted to go.

[thebarfly1]

Great piece, Junketman, very insightful

[NotDevsSon]

There will be a new President of sorts with tremendous power and influence over the future of Europe.

No he won't. He is a CHAIRMAN. Get it yet?

He will be the President of Europe in effect and I’m sure with his own cabinet.

No he won't. He doesn't have ANY executive powers. All he does is chair the council. The exact same job has been done since 1975 by one of the prime ministers. Talk about letting your imagination run away with you!

We will be increasingly subject to European laws and regulations and most of all we will be subject to a single European Agenda in terms of dealings with the outside world. And so if Ireland decides that it doesn’t agree with Europe on this or that and doesn’t for example want to allow in Brazilian beef, well it seems in the new Europe we wont be allowed do that.

Complete nonsense.

The other road is the No vote, which in my view is a continuation of the loose alignment of disparate states with equally disparate agendas, coming together to work in harmony on issues where cooperation is good but each going their own way when it suits such as with their own bilateral trade agreements.

So then to me a Yes vote means Europe becomes a great big monolithic organisation where you and me the ordinary citizen becomes lost and has little or no control over how our country is run but yet are thrown the sop of the Fundamental Charter on Human Rights whatever that is which suggests to me that the European leaders view our Human Rights as a luxury which is their right to give to us rather than something inalienable and belonging to us. And if I want to get up in the morning and tell the English, Germans, French or the EU in general to ‘F off, I am not going to do what you want me to’, will I be less able to do that if Lisbon is passed.

And will it happen, and this is what we must all fear the most, both those on the Yes and No side, that after Lisbon, the most powerful politicians in Europe will not be national politicians but a clique at the head of the EU and will there be the potential for the corruption of this clique. Will News Corp or an organisation like that decide that it wants to support such and such a candidate for President of Europe and will support that candidate in return for favours. The most powerful politicians always attract the most powerful lobbyists and this is where the danger lies with the new Europe.

A No vote to me means Europe will still be a loose alliance of nations, yes inefficient, perhaps not very cohesive or coherent and a little slow to react to international security issues but at the same time will mean we are not part of a European Empire where we all think the same, have the same currency, laws, culture and that differences between nations are gradually eliminated year by year until we are like those masses who followed the Nazis, no longer able to see ourselves as unique or individual but merely as being a number or a cog in the great big machine serving our political masters in Europe who themselves disappear into the political undergrowth that is EU politics, uncontactable, aloof, living like European Royalty of old.

You live in fantasy land.

[coc]

Well like most people I don’t know every detail of the Lisbon Treaty because like most people I don’t have the time, the attention span or would just rather spend my spare hours doing something interesting.

However I think I have heard enough to decide that the Lisbon Treaty Referendum represents a fork in the road for the future direction of the European Project. On the one hand, let us say the Route of a Yes vote, we have closer European Integration with an agenda of even more integration. There will be a new President of sorts with tremendous power and influence over the future of Europe. He will be the President of Europe in effect and I’m sure with his own cabinet.

We will be increasingly subject to European laws and regulations and most of all we will be subject to a single European Agenda in terms of dealings with the outside world. And so if Ireland decides that it doesn’t agree with Europe on this or that and doesn’t for example want to allow in Brazilian beef, well it seems in the new Europe we wont be allowed do that.

The other road is the No vote, which in my view is a continuation of the loose alignment of disparate states with equally disparate agendas, coming together to work in harmony on issues where cooperation is good but each going their own way when it suits such as with their own bilateral trade agreements.

So then to me a Yes vote means Europe becomes a great big monolithic organisation where you and me the ordinary citizen becomes lost and has little or no control over how our country is run but yet are thrown the sop of the Fundamental Charter on Human Rights whatever that is which suggests to me that the European leaders view our Human Rights as a luxury which is their right to give to us rather than something inalienable and belonging to us. And if I want to get up in the morning and tell the English, Germans, French or the EU in general to ‘F off, I am not going to do what you want me to’, will I be less able to do that if Lisbon is passed.

You'll never be asked again.

And will it happen, and this is what we must all fear the most, both those on the Yes and No side, that after Lisbon, the most powerful politicians in Europe will not be national politicians but a clique at the head of the EU and will there be the potential for the corruption of this clique. Will News Corp or an organisation like that decide that it wants to support such and such a candidate for President of Europe and will support that candidate in return for favours. The most powerful politicians always attract the most powerful lobbyists and this is where the danger lies with the new Europe.

A No vote to me means Europe will still be a loose alliance of nations, yes inefficient, perhaps not very cohesive or coherent and a little slow to react to international security issues but at the same time will mean we are not part of a European Empire where we all think the same, have the same currency, laws, culture and that differences between nations are gradually eliminated year by year until we are like those masses who followed the Nazis, no longer able to see ourselves as unique or individual but merely as being a number or a cog in the great big machine serving our political masters in Europe who themselves disappear into the political undergrowth that is EU politics, uncontactable, aloof, living like European Royalty of old.

I know some people like to get Godwin out of the way ASAP, but in the OP?

[geraghd]

No, it means the opposite, vote yes!

No, it means the opposite, vote NO!

Your road less travelled has already had 450 million people shoved up it without being asked where they wanted to go.

Sorry but I studied that poem. I think I'd know what he was talking about. He was clearly referencing the Lisbon Treaty.