Why there will always be a European Union…
I’m sure you’re all sick unto death of reading about this controversy, but never let it be said we didn’t add our tuppence to the headlines in all the major MSM outlets. Those endless news cycles devoted to this latest incident of democratic totalitarianism as they wait for the Next Great Outrage. For the moment this horror will have to do, eh?
That brief editorial below, from — gasp! — The Conservative News Service, speaks volumes about the totalitarian EU. It knows surely that since the content of this petition is utterly beyond the pale of political correctness that the process is immaterial for all right-thinking citizens.
STOMP!
In other words the moral midgets behind the screen are safe. They have successfully manipulated the masses into a state of fervent belief regarding the righteous triumph of women’s “rights” over anything else.. oh, except perhaps anthropogenic global warming. Can you imagine the cranial eruptions if it ever turned out that women’s “rights” caused global warming change umm… cooling …oh, right: sunspots??
Whatever — it’s difficult to keep up with the latest spin theory regarding absolutes. But entertain yourself by imagining the mental dissonance resulting from a conflicted intersection of the two Biggies: women and climate. Who would decide which should win? The very idea would make heads ’splode. Ever so slightly used brain matter would decorate the walls before being scraped back into place.
Just days after euroskeptic parties won large gains in European elections, the E.U.’s executive commission on Wednesday vetoed a citizens’ initiative – dubbed “the largest petition in European history” – which sought an end to E.U. funding for any practice that terminates human life before birth, including abortion and research that destroys human embryos.
The decision came on the final day of the outgoing commission, headed by President Jose Manuel Barroso, who has been in office since 2004.
Its ruling said, in effect, that the current rules should remain since the European Parliament (E.P.) had recently agreed upon them, and they were therefore “appropriate.” As a result, the commission would not “submit a legislative proposal” on the matter.
Critics slammed the move both because the decision retains the current situation, but also because in their view it made a mockery of a process purportedly designed to improve participatory democracy in the 28-member union by giving ordinary citizens a say in lawmaking.
The tool known as the European citizens’ initiative (ECI), introduced in 2012, was touted as a major reform innovation. It set rigorous requirements: Organizers had a limited amount of time to garner at least one million signatures, including a proscribed minimum number from each of at least seven member-states.
The pro-life ECI, called “One of Us,” met the requisite national targets and in the end obtained more than 1.8 million signatures within the time allowed. It counted Pope Francis among its supporters.
Under ECI rules, the commission has that meets the requirements and decide on whether to submit a legislative proposal on the relevant issue to Euro-lawmakers.
The committee which organized the “One of Us” campaign slammed Wednesday’s announcement, describing the commission as “deaf” and saying it had made “a travesty” of what was intended to be “a real instrument of participative democracy.”
“Such veto power is illegitimate and anti-democratic since politically, it is the European legislature that may give a verdict on the content of the initiative, and not the commission, otherwise, the ECI mechanism would be meaningless,” it said in a statement.
Well, what do you know… someone is complaining about the illegitimate and anti-democratic commission. The “ECI mechanism is meaningless”. Seriously?
Hey, there’s a whole heap of meaninglessness in Brussels; this is just a tiny piece of the grease machine’s effluvia. But who’da thunk anyone was going to notice, much less give a fig? “Settled consensus” issues like abortion, euthanasia, climate poo, etc., will just have to wait for the Mid-Century Weed-Out, coming to a polity near you:
It’s Not the End of the World, It’s Just the End of You: The Great Extinction of the Nations
Meanwhile, here’s the the risible attempt of those extremist haters who would interfere with issues that well-mannered people don’t discuss. Or rather, they won’t be discussing it for another generation or so. Then we’ll see.
I think the serfs have had enough of this EU farce and are starting to become a little restless. The sparks of freedom are still igniting and there is the odd spotfire from time to time, just a matter of when and not if, it all comes together.
“Illegitimate and anti-democratic.” But who said that democracy is the only legitimate political form? I’d rather have a strong king who protects unborn children, than a democracy that doesn’t. Whether I get to vote is, of itself, immaterial.
This is where the MSM should be baying for blood, where are they? Looking at celebrity boobies no doubt.
In Vienna. Last night, the AIDS charity ball, heavily subsidized by the socialist city government I.e. the taxpayer, celebrated in the Gardens of Lust (this year’s motto). It was disgusting as every year. Bill Clinton also attended. Nuff said.
The previous left before I was able to sign in…
Here a link to the ball’s Wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_Ball
Great news that this petition was shut down. In defending itself in this way the EU merely encourages the growth in opposition to it. Europe is heading towards serious conflict.
The percentage of signatories is, I note, rather higher in the predominately Catholic countries that the Protestant ones. So we have what appears to be people of faith trying to impose their morality on others. I though GoV was opposed to such practices?
Never expected to find myself defending the unelected EU Commission!
(And of course abortion happens in places where it’s forbidden; it’s just more dangerous).
Mark —
This post isn’t about the issue itself, which should be open to debate (and political action) within a democratic society.
This post is about process. It is about the fact that the EC abrogated its own deliberately implemented laws and doctrines to squash a citizens’ initiative it opposed, even though those citizens went through the exact process that was required for the European people themselves to propose legislation.
Such legislation could then have been discussed and voted on in a democratic manner.
Or would you prefer that the “correct” position be imposed autocratically, without any attempt at democratic decision-making?
I’ve asked you similar questions in the past, but have never received a meaningful answer.
Of course you’re right, Baron; the correct procedure should have been followed.
However had the petition led to legislation being passed (unlikely), my point about imposing beliefs on others would stand.
Correct Baron. And, also Mark, the signatories are not attempting to impose THEIR morals, they are trying to prevent being forced to subsidize someone else`s behavior.
JBP, if individual taxpayers could opt out of paying for the government programmes they disapproved of, the system would be unworkable.
And what, exactly, is wrong with that?
Let’s stop beating around the bush: the harder the Eurocrats clamp down, the more they will lose legitimacy in the people’s eyes.
One does not have to be a Catholic to recognize this latest move of the unelected Eurocrats is a blow against religious freedom—any pro-choice liberal with his head on straight should recognize it for what it really is.
The long-term consequences are literally incalculable: let us ask ourselves, who among us expected Chernobyl to lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall as swiftly as it did?
Nevertheless, the two are causally related: Chernobyl forced the Soviet leadership to acknowledge the fact that they had crushed their country under the weight of the insane magnitude of their government’s military expenditures.
The fall of the wall, starting as it did, in a corner of the former Soviet empire whose hopes for a small degree of independence everyone had thought had been thoroughly crushed (Czechoslovakia). The Soviet Union’s former puppet states’ minor bureaucrats had recognized the extent of the utter rottenness of the Soviet Unions’ decay when they started allowing escape visas, and the rest is history—it took only nine months. (I felt thunderstruck by the acausal connectedness, the synchronicity, of the timeline of events—it takes only nine months to have one’s life transformed into parenthood—and nine months to have Germany transformed into a paradigm-shattering state.
Alas, I do not think I turned out to be as capable a parent as I could possibly have been, and I am sure Germany has not turned out to be nearly as capable a parent state is it could possibly have been. In the case of Germany, one wonders what might have happened should Germany have had a Bundeskanzler with the personality of an Atatürk rather than that of a cabbage (ein Kohl).
We are not imaginative enough to second-guess God’s plan for the Universe.
Pleasant dreams . . . .
(And please forgive my dreadful puns.)
It is really flabbergasting to see how openly anti-Christian the EU rulers have become. They are so eager to eradicate Christianity that they welcome any allies to attain this unholy goal – including militant Islamists, i.e. those very people who reject practically every single value of secular liberalism.
Aren’t they afraid that, when Christianity has been liquidated, the Islamists will butcher their secularist liberal friends and put an end to any hint of tolerance?
An AIDS Charity Ball, in Vienna?
What, did the Drag Queens parade in Maria-Therese gowns, while Conchita Wurst sang?
And this, from a culture that once gave us Beethoven, Mozart, Mahler and Johann Strauss.
Unglaublich.