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About LinkBacksQuit trolling eurotroll. That is complete BS and you know it is complete BS.Originally Posted by europeasone
Yes
No
Quit trolling eurotroll. That is complete BS and you know it is complete BS.
All views expressed are my own.
Yes I agree.
That is why the postcard from government saying falsely that "the EU has confirmed..." should be kept as a souvenir containing, as it does, the first official written lie of the government campaign.
Why do so many No voters equate ignorance and stupidity, when the two are by no means the same thing?
Tell me HOW this is bs Tommy? You can't simply claim something is bs and then not be prepared to back it up with facts!
The public eye's are wide shut....
You are correct Ibis.
The public eye's are wide shut....
Most intelligent rebuttal I have seen so far. But here is where you are wrong: The Irish public voted No on the first referendum mainly because they did not "understand" what they where voting for! (Ignorance is the state in which one lacks knowledge, is unaware of something or chooses to subjectively ignore information) - in this case, the Irish public lacked the knowledge required to make an educated vote - Ignorance. Now, if we agree that the above is correct, then voting No and stalling the progress of Federal Europe based on ignorance must be considered disruptive behaviour. I am against scaremongering as a means of persuasion but I do feel the need to disclose the full meaning of this treaty along with the negative economic impact a second ignorant No vote will have to Ireland.
The public eye's are wide shut....
It is my experience that you have to be pretty knowledgeable about the EU to be an EU-skeptic. Most EU supporters ahave a fluffy feeling about 'co-operation' being a good thing, without realizing that intergovernmentalism is voluntary co-operation while supranationalism a la EU is about coercing outvoted nations to do things that they do not want to do. Lisbon expands supranationalism at the expense of intergovernmentalism in a whole raft of new policy areas, and reduces blocking thresholds in existing areas as well. The result would be that it would be more likely that nations will be forced to go along with EU measures that they disagree with. Therefore Lisbon will weaken the democratic legitimacy of the EU even further. Those who care about the survival of the EU should want Lisbon to fail.
Those who care about the survival of the EU should want Lisbon to fail.
Many do.
Some who say they care, don't show much insight into the core problem.
How can an EU of the peoples of the member States be built by disregarding the people's views?
That is the way to build an EU of the executives.
Not a recipe for happiness.
Very true. This is the problem of all collective projects of self-realization. They end up having to suppress liberal democracy in the name of the higher interest of their preferred collective (nation for the facists, proletariat for the communist, Europe for the federalists). For the communist republics of Eastern Europe the suppression of democracy to a 'dictatorship of the proletariat' was only meant to be a transitional phase. But since the politicians are only using the so-called higher interest as means to advance their own self-interest in power they never get around to restoring democracy.
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"In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view -- one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction." Umberto Eco ('14 ways of looking at a blackshirt')
What is it they say – knowledge is power. It’s also the case that knowledge can and has been used the political and professional classes as a form of elitism and as means to control and exclude…. medicine and law being two obvious case examples.
I take your viewpoint on “knowledge” and “ignorance”. Part of the rhetoric used by both the “yes” and “no” campaign however was to set forward a set of arguments thats sole purpose was to advance their own cause. Nevertheless, the electorate of Ireland nevertheless had a social responsibility to inform themselves of the facts…. did they, no. The electorate was told that the Treaty was a complex legal document – they wouldn’t understand it - did many attempt to read it – not even many of our sole called politicians as it seems. While political complacency played its obvious role in the “No” outcome – if the outcome was down to ignorance – logic also then follows that had the outcome of the referendum actually been a resounding “Yes” vote - that equally would have been seen as a decision based on "ignorance" given peoples lack of knowledge. In such an instance would the democracy of the electoral system have been upheld by our political classes – or would there have been another re-run? In the world of politics the most long-term check on authoritarian tendencies is electoral democracy – or so as it may seem.... scaremongering on the negative impacts of a second No vote, being seen as outcasts and the fiscal doom which nevertheless still has happened and even in countries that have ratified the Treaty - has Ireland not learned that this serves no place in any rationale debate to persuade or otherwise.
Turning to the apparent “disruption” that was caused by the “No” vote – which institutions have been disrupted? The Treaty may not have been ratified in Ireland – it hasn’t yet been ratified in all EU member states either - and yet all the institutions of the EU be it the Commission, Parliament, Council, ECJ, Court of Auditors or Ombudsman have still managed to function over the last year.
