The lies of our Eurocrat founding fathers

Subject: The lies of our Eurocrat founding fathers Tue Feb 12, 2008 4:53 am

But their ruses for selling us the constitution aren’t fooling anyone, says Daniel Hannan

It's not the fact that they're fibbing to us that stings; it's the credit they're giving to our intelligence. Since the signature of the Lisbon Treaty last month, Eurocrats and their useful idiots (Denis MacShane springs immediately to mind) have been telling anyone who'll listen that, while many of the features of the old constitution have been retained, some of the articles most offensive to public opinion have been excised. Accordingly, the new draft is shorter: 287 pages to the old one's 349.

Hang on, though. An analysis of the text shows that the new draft contains 76,250 words, as against 67,850 for the old one. So how did the Eurocrats manage to make the text shorter? By the brilliant technique of changing the line spacing.

Quite apart from illustrating the low opinion which EU leaders have of their voters, the episode reminds us of how absurdly lengthy the constitution is. The United States Constitution contains 4,550 words in the original draft, 7,600 with all 27 amendments. It is, in other words, a tenth of the length of the European version. Which is hardly surprising when you compare the contents.

Where the American constitution (left) is mainly about the rights of the individual, the European one is mainly about the power of the state. Where the American concerns itself chiefly with delineating the powers of the various institutions, the European busies itself with such minutiae as the rights of asylum seekers and the status of disabled people.

Oh, and where the US constitution was ratified by specially elected conventions in each of the 13 signatory states - the 18th century equivalent of referendums - the EU version has been explicitly rejected by the voters. Then again, as is clear from the contents, the voters couldn't matter less.

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/?storyID=11336

The lies of our Eurocrat founding fathers

The lies of our Eurocrat founding fathers

Anarcho-Capitalist Categorical Imperatives

AnCaps On Realpolitik, Statism & Bureaucracy