The following comment at <a href="http://www.plastic.com/article.html?sid=08/06/14/08353370#3" source="Plastic" author="logbass">Irish Vote Scuttles Treaty Of Lisbon</a> was rated as brilliant, but it seemed to miss the point by a mile: <bq>It is funny that Europe is so quick to point out failings in the US democracy, but when push came to shove they tried to completely subvert democracy to get Lisbon approved. Kudos to Ireland for actually caring what its citizens want.</bq> There are probably many who will agree with this type of flailing logic, but it mixes many false assumptions in order to come to the wrong conclusions. Here's the text of the comment I left in response: First of all, there is no requirement that one be perfect, or even good, at some task in order to provide constructive criticism of someone else's performance at the same task. It might make them a hypocrite, but it doesn't necessarily make them wrong. The US does have problems with its democracy and so, apparently, do the Europeans. I will not attempt to rank them, as that's not really salient to the argument. That said, I think the phrase "subvert[ing] democracy" is a bit strong, as the US also purports to have a democracy and it doesn't let its people vote on constitutional changes either. The US elects representatives and they take care of things until the next election cycle. So, let's leave the bar for declaring a country or conglameration of countries as democratic as being that the representatives of the people are elected in a fair and democratic way. The laws of all of the other EU countries allow constitutional changes without a referendum; Ireland does not. It's arguable that the representatives of the other countries are not being very "representative" when they vote "yes" to a constitution that polls very low among their constituents, but that does not make those countries any less democratic in any official or legal sense. It's also arguable that countries, like Ireland or Switzerland, that require ratification of constitutional amendments, are more likely to express the will of the people. Switzerland, in fact, has the kind of relationship with the EU that it seems many of the smaller members of the EU would like to have. It's interesting to see a push in that direction from some EU member nations.