The new Europe that emerges from the Lisbon Treaty could be the stepping stone to something even larger…something no one today can imagine or foresee.

The EU wants the ability to govern without the fundamental restraints essential to democratic government. Nothing looks more stable than a bureaucratic empire. But restraints on government, as Napoleon found to his cost, exist for a reason: sooner or later, government without restraint stumbles into a crisis beyond its power to master. And when that clarifying moment arrives, the obscurity of the EU’s new 248 page constitution will be no defense against reality. Today, the Irish people are a problem for the EU to overcome. But tomorrow, the EU will find that their obstinacy, their refusal to simply let it have its way, was the best service they could offer it.

http://newledger.com/2009/10/vote-until-you-get-it-right-ireland-and-the-eu-constitution-redux/