If you were offered €5 million provided you assented to a legally binding, 500-page document you hadn't read, and couldn't understand even if you had, would you just go ahead and sign? You would? Kevin Myers writes.
So what about Article 233, sub-clause B, paragraph vii, sub-section (a), which you can't make head or tail of, but a court in Strasbourg might tomorrow conclude that it constitutes your agreement to be a party to a heart-transplant, namely the donor, at oh, say three o'clock this afternoon?
No one signs legal documents that they don't understand - well, not without a solicitor present. I know perhaps three men who could probably understand the European constitution. Lawyers, of course: yes, I am liberal enough to admit the nobler of the species into my circle of friendship. But you're not allowed to bring counsel into the polling booth with you, which is one reason why I'm voting No.
The French voters had their reasons for voting no, and the Dutch today will have theirs for saying the same, though probably different reasons; but at bottom, the reason is the same as mine: they don't know what they're saying yes to. They don't want to wake up in a decade's time to find Christian Barnard II grinning at their bedside with a hacksaw in his hand and a pale and ventrically-challenged eurocrat in the very next bed to theirs.
So why do few people in Ireland seem troubled by the way the European project is being pushed forward, regardless? Our entire political establishment insist on being unconditionally "good" Europeans, and the only elected opposition to the unconditional Euro-project has come from the various shades of lunatic green: the knee-cappers and the tree-huggers (who in this country have added a uniquely Hibernian twist by backing the terrorist campaign against democracy in Iraq). Fine company to be in.
Now, Eurocrats speak a strange lingo called Eurine, and Jean-Claude Juncker, who holds the presidency of the EU at the moment, responded to the massive "No" with a classic outburst of the language. He said the constitution was not dead, but that it would be "in bad taste" to ask the French to vote again within the next few months.
Bad taste? Bad taste? The French No vote was nearly 55 per cent. That is almost 20 points above the popular vote Tony Blair won in the recent British general election. I don't recall anyone mumbling that it would be in bad taste to call another UK election within a few months just because a certifiable psychopath had been elected to government for the third time. The people of France said No. No it is. You can't keep going back to the electorate until you finally get the result you want, no matter how fleeting the mood that brought it about - for that way lies political and social anarchy.
Moreover, those who speak Eurine use words in a different manner from the rest of us. The Taoiseach declared that the constitution must be sorted out because of the emerging economic strength of China and India. Sorry: there is a connection there? The EU overall is an economic disaster zone, with growth reaching as high as 3 per cent just once in 14 years, and unemployment at around 11 per cent. In that time, by going our distinctly anglophone low-taxation route, Ireland's growth has reached double figures many times, and our unemployment is so non-existent that it helps to speak Polish, Ukrainian or Ibo when you go shopping.
The last thing we want is to find ourselves under the cretinous tax ambitions of the harmonising imbeciles of Brussels. Europe is the failing continent, and China and India are the two emerging ones. Many commentators have declared the 21st century as the century of the Chinese, but I wouldn't be surprised if India emerges as a major economic force in the coming decades.
You see, the Indians take themselves very seriously. The Indian Air Force recently had manoeuvres with the United States Air Force, and the latter thought they merely had to show up with their F-15Cs, and there'd been a lot of (theoretically) dead Indians. Actually, it didn't end up quite like that; instead, the Indians walloped the best the USAF had.
You can only beat the mightiest air force in the world by having vision and immense seriousness of purpose, which modern India has: hence the information technology miracle of Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of tomorrow. Moreover, which country in the world has the most speakers of English, now the lingua franca of trade? India, again. Deregulation, aided by colossal local intellect, has enabled the Indian economy to explode, as it has the Chinese. Meanwhile Europe, under the wretched Eurine-speaking mandarins of Brussels, looks for more regulation, more rules, more central interference, more taxes and most of all, more polls whenever the "stupid" peoples of the continent do not give their assent to the latest wheeze emanating from Brussels.
The peoples of Europe are not naturally one. No edict issued in incomprehensible Eurine can make a Swedish foreign policy suitable for Ireland, or a Polish one for Portugal. Free trade, by all means; common human rights, of course; but at bottom, our interests, our languages, our lands, our cultures are all radically different.
However, all Europeans do have a couple of skills in common. Firstly, we can count, and in any language - save Eurine - 55 per cent is a clear majority; secondly, we know when we're being insulted. The project that is the European Union has reached the buffers: let it rest there. The journey is done.