EU've Got to Be Kidding Me

If one more person on the news says that Britain's withdrawal from the European Union will harm European defense efforts, I do believe I'll scream loud enough to be heard in London.

The European Union's defense effort is a joke. They can't defend against a horde of unarmed migrants overrunning Europe let alone stop the Russians or even bomb a Libyan dictator.

Every Euro that the EU spends on duplicate defense capacity is money taken from the organization that actually does defend Europe right now--the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Britain remains in NATO--along with America and Canada--and provides more military power for European defenses than the continentals do.

At least try to make sense when discussing Brexit. Yes, there will be at least short-term economic costs of Britain disentangling from the EU. Debate that and how to minimize it rather than how to increase the pain on Britain (which will harm Europeans, too) for daring to leave the EU.

But the British have rightly decided that loss of liberty is too high a price to pay for that incremental increase in economic activity that membership in the EU represents--in the short run anyway.

In the long run, Britain will be fine. It would be nice if in the short run Britain's withdrawal from the EU was treated by the EU as an administrative event rather than an unforgivable revolt against the Brussels-based proto-empire.