Irish voters said absolutely not to a European Union treaty that would have given the EU's obese bureaucracy even more power:

Europe was thrown into political chaos Friday by Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty, a painstakingly negotiated blueprint for consolidating the European Union's power and streamlining its increasingly unwieldy bureaucracy.

The defeat of the treaty, by a vote of 53.4 percent to 46.6 percent, was the result of a highly organized campaign that played to Irish voters' deepest fears about the EU. For all its benefits, many people feel, the Union is remote, undemocratic and ever more inclined to strip its smaller members of the right to make their own laws and decide their own futures.

Well, duh! Of course that's what the EU is all about. The International Herald Tribune describes Irish voters as paranoid dolts who aren't nuanced enough to understand what the more enlightened European leaders want to do. And it's obvious the IHT doesn't like the fact that Irish voters had this kind of power.

Although the Irish are less than 1 percent of the EU population of almost 500 million, the repercussions of the vote Thursday - whose results were announced Friday - are enormous. To take effect, the treaty must be ratified by all 27 members of the EU. So the defeat by a single country, even one as tiny as Ireland, has the potential effect of stopping the whole thing cold.

Good. Way to go Ireland! I think the next time our family plans a big vacation, we need to visit Ireland and give these good folks a little American tourism love.

Update: The Anchoress cheers the Irish for saving civilization once again and tells a short but sweet story about a trip she took to the island in 2002.