Opinion: The people should reject the Nice Treaty and protect their hard-won independence, argues Liam Ó Lonargáin.
Never in the history of the world have so few people so undemocratically sought to impose so much on so many.
There is good reason therefore for everyone not just in Ireland but throughout the EU to question and challenge what is involved in the Nice Treaty, how fundamentally it will change for ever the everyday life of each citizen, perhaps 2,000 years of Christian civilisation in Europe and beyond.
If this is EU democracy before the Nice Treaty, what will it be afterwards?
Democracy, however fragrant, is a delicate flower, easily crushed and lost. How delicate can be plainly traced through the life of just one man to whom too many gave support while too few cared about his rise to power.
That one man, a pint-sized non-entity named Schicklgruber, emigrated from Austria into Germany and through government ineptitude and a combination of popular support and apathy became Adolf Hitler and wreaked more havoc on Europe and the world than any other person in history.
As a result, on the night I was born, there were 200 German fighters over England while the British bombarded Berlin, as reported in The Irish Times, August 31st, 1940. I thankfully was born a free man, Irish and European in the tradition of St Columbanus, Johannes Scottus Eriugena and Father Luke Wadding OFM.
The major question to be asked is not how the Irish people will vote in the coming second referendum but why over 99 per cent of the citizens of the EU are not voting. Why is such a fundamental change in the ethos of European living to be effected by just 15 people (even if they are heads of state or government), their cohorts and, they intend, the browbeaten two-thirds of the population of this island outpost of Europe?
These members of the exclusive, though part-time, OneFive club might well remember their history and ours and recall that not for the first time is this island outpost to be called on to play more than its part in the salvation and renewal of Europe.
Have our august leaders so lost touch with reality that they have forgotten that Man - and Woman - does not live by bread alone? Instead, they tell us that they have come up with a treaty that is so vital to the welfare of every citizen of the EU and of estimable millions beyond that it cannot be altered and that, unless the ungrateful Irish (whose referendum as a sovereign state within the Community they reject) toe their line, they will visit Armageddon on us.
What arrant nonsense. Never in the history of the world has such a treaty been drawn up, nor ever will.
If Signor Prodi believes otherwise, he should resign forthwith, for he would be neither fit nor qualified for the office he holds.
Indeed, if his knowledge of international treaties is so lacking, before he leaves for Italy one of his many minions in Brussels should in charity tell him about Kyoto and the even more recent case of the US and the International Criminal Court on war crimes.
And before he utters another word of advice to the Irish people perhaps Mr Rasmussen should find and read that excellent social tract, written many years ago by his well-known countryman, which in a few pages contains more knowledge, wisdom and common sense on rulers and people than are contained in the whole of the Nice Treaty and the millions, if not billions, of words on it being spewed out of Brussels and other such sophisticated seats of power.
I cannot recall the title in the original Danish, but I know it is by Hans Christian Andersen, and in my copy it is entitled The Emperor's New Clothes. I understand that Hollywood issued a very good musical version with vocals by Danny Kaye, himself a renowned linguist and a United Nations Ambassador of Goodwill.
It should be required listening for the Big OneFive and provide both enlightenment and enjoyment for all 375.3 million of us in the EU today.
Indeed, perhaps a copy might be sent along with our voting card to each of the less than 1 per cent who are entitled to vote, with the cost shared equally between Fianna Fáil, the Progressive Democrats (what a misnomer in this case) and the EU Commission.
As for An Taoiseach, he should hang his head in shame. On the premise that he who sins at home sins most, he stands indicted. In his dealings with his fellow members of the Big OneFive club over the past 15 months or so he has shown that he neither understands the meaning of the great title his people have bestowed on him, nor honours Bunreacht na hÉireann, from which he derives his authority of office.
Can he possibly be so removed from his people, who have borne the pain of 800 years of treaties so often broken before the ink with which they were written was dry? Perhaps his own Minister of State, the redoubtable Willie O'Dea, should take him to Limerick and show him one of the most famous stones on this island.
Indeed, An Taoiseach might well invite the other members of the Big OneFive to join him. It would be a salutary lesson for all of them and far more beneficial to the citizens of the EU, whom they claim to serve, than the twice-yearly family photograph with which they so religiously indulge themselves.
And on their next visit to Dublin he should show them the statue which he passes on his way to work each day of Edmund Burke, the man who wrote that for evil to triumph all that is required is that good men do nothing.
Not to miss the wood for the trees, let us look at the essentials of the Nice Treaty.
Could you, Signor Prodi, or any of your cohort of Commissioners, even in extremis; could you, Mr Rasmussen, or any of your band of Big OneFive (including that best friend of the US, Mr Tony Blair); could you, Mr Ahern, or any of your group of ministers (especially those staunch Europhiles who, depending on the prevailing winds, believe the capital of the EU to be in New York, Boston, Washington, San Jose, or somewhere in between) ever envisage Mr George W. Bush, the president of the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world, the nation which has bailed Europe out of trouble in the past and continues to bail the world out of so many trouble spots, announcing that:
he is opening the US to 170 million new citizens;
he reserves the right to open the US to any such other millions as he so wishes at any future date per omnia saecula saeculorum;
he will not permit 99 per cent of American citizens to vote on these matters;
he will subject the 1 per cent permitted to vote to all the pressure and forces he can muster and will continue to do so even when they vote contrary to his decision.
Truly have the Big OneFive attempted to lord it over us as was done to the Gentiles of old. Truly have they attempted to walk all of us into Babel.
Truly are they false prophets laying on us a false philosophy for a false future. Truly have they opened Pandora's Box and now must deal properly with the consequences. Or resign.
By the uniqueness of our Constitution, and for no other reason (for the Big OneFive, which includes our own Taoiseach, would deny us if they could), we have an inalienable right, and are the only ones among the 375.3 million citizens of the EU with such a right, to decide this issue.
And for this right our utterly democratic partners in the EU would and do condemn us. Something is surely rotten in more than the state of Denmark.
Yes, Ireland will vote again and Ireland will vote true, for the good of Europe, of the EU and of democracy. Then all of the EU can engage in full and proper debate on enlargement.
Liam Ó Lonargáin is a freelance journalist and public relations and business consultant living in Dublin