Ireland does it right

For those of you who think you know what I mean by that, you don't.

What makes Ireland right is not the outcome of the vote, but that they took a vote of millions of people and not the backdoor shortcut of settling on 5 out of 9 judges to ram something down the throats of millions Without asking or allowing the 'governed' the right to have their say.

Libertarian.

Lots of people like to call it state's rights, but the principle is deeper than states, it means change should always be bottom up and not top down.

It's a harder road, a tougher path, but it's bathed in sunshine and not nearly so offensive. Now, some will be offended by my use of 'offensive' but I assure you that whatever side of the line you stand on, someone is offended. Just as some are offended by having to make wedding cakes, others are offended when the bakery turns them away.

It is one thing when five out of nine say "we unelected few have just rewritten the constitution by 'finding something' that nobody saw for hundreds of years'; that is a bitter and contentious pill for millions to be forced to swallow, and is more likely than not to fuel anger and rage against gays than to forward any good. BUT, when millions of your own countrymen, your neighbors, your cousins and uncles, cast their voice into the official record and the only poll that really matters, then there is no where to hide.

It is one thing when your teacher tells you Santa is not real, but something else entirely when everyone in your class says the same thing.

Before Ireland cast the vote, the only thing that was a certainty was that whoever lost would be offended by the results.

But there was something else that they knew before the votes were cast. They knew that if it was a landslide, that the losers could Not blame some unaccountable judge or a hundred tricky politicians, but that whatever the result, it would be the will of the governed.

The will of the people.

Libertarianism. It's another word for bottom up in a world of politicians that always think top down.

It doesn't matter if I agree or disagree with the outcome, so long as it is so loudly the will of the governed, and not the will of the elected few or the unelected 9.

I hope the activists in America see this for what it is, an example of the right way to do something.

It isn't the easy path, but giving women the vote didn't come from a 5-4 decision, it came from a constitutional amendment. If you want acceptance from the masses, you have to get it from the masses, you can't force the masses to accept it or else.

And that's not easy.

It's hard.

And it should always be hard.

Ireland did it the right way.

They convinced the people to accept it, and they voted that way.