The European Commission is an unelected bureaucracy that is slowly but surely seizing powers to govern member nations. This is bad news for national sovereignty and jurisdictional competition, but it also leads to crazy regulations, including proposals to prohibit the British from using acres instead of hectares, banning the traditional preparation of Peking Duck, and detailed rules about the proper size and shape of vegetables.

But regulatory overkill is just the tip of the iceberg. Far more troubling is the effort to subvert democracy in order to further centralize power in Brussels. The EU Constitution, which would have expanded the powers of the European Commission, was rejected by the voters of France and the Netherlands a few years ago. Rather than shelve the proposal, the European elites renamed it the Lisbon Treaty and said that it no longer was necessary to let the people vote. Fortunately, Ireland still has the rule of law and held a referendum — and the EU Constitution/​Lisbon Treaty was decisively rejected.

The French President has since asserted that the Irish should vote again (and presumably again and again) until they reach the “right” decision. But perhaps the most Kafkaesque reaction came from a French bureaucrat, who was quoted in Le Figaro stating, “It isn’t about putting pressure on the Irish. We well understand that they have expressed themselves democratically. But so have the other 26!” Only the French could deny their people the right to vote and then claim their voters (and the disenfranchised people in the European Union’s other 25 nations) had somehow expressed their views.