Gotta love those Irish!

Here’s one for you…

Very soon, the Irish people will be voting on a general referendum to decide if they want to support an “over-haul” of the European Union’s executive structure and institute an office of “President”. The trend in Ireland right now seems to show that the vote is very, very close… only last week, the “nays” had the edge, but as many as 35% of voters are undecided.

I find it ironic that this decision is now left in the hands of a people that are rapidly taking the lead in the EU’s “conservative” set… Ireland, Norway, Denmark, and the Baltic States all tend to trend away from the “liberal” left-leaning EU “power-houses” like France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. I’m not using “liberal” in the American-sense of the word, either… I’m talking about European nations that fight the trend of relinquishing sovereignty through the surrender of military, diplomatic and economic control on a national level to the EU’s broader, general control.

What do I see that these smaller, less prominent European states share in common? They all share a “living” memory of individual armed resistance to outside oppression from neighboring nations… and ALL of these smaller states are experiencing record economic growth and prosperity while the larger, traditional European power-brokers are watching their economies tank.

Don’t get me wrong… an American conservative like Ryan would still see the word “liberal” as the best adjective to use in describing much of these state’s domestic policies… but they are still on the “right side” of the European spectrum, believe me.

The EU has spent far too much time trying to re-write it’s charter, in my opinion. Now, the Irish have the chance to say “enough” and start the Union on the road to actually getting something useful done for the participant nations.

Oh, and one more thing…

The Military Channel had a show on recently about a competition between the US service branches and 11 foreign services in the field of “sniper teams”. A GREAT show (I wish I could remember the name of it), by the way. The winner of the competition was a two-man sniper team from the US Rangers… but can you guess who had the #2 spot?

The Irish Defense Force. Second best sniper-team in a field of 17 teams from some of the world’s BEST trained forces… beating out even the US Navy, Air Force, Royal Marines, US Marine “Recon”, et al.

I thought that was rather impressive.