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Wednesday, September 11, 2019

The Real Enemy

Britain is continuing to battle over the Brexit vote that was supposed to settle the issue once and for all.

Three years after voting to leave, Britain remains in the European Union while Remainers who support the EU continue to undermine the efforts to implement the will of the British people expressed in the Brexit vote.

That Britain remains in this state of limbo should be a damning indictment of the Brussels-based proto-empire:

This endless crisis has led to widespread criticism of British politicians of all hues, some of it justified. I find it deeply distasteful to see very senior Conservatives plotting with the opposition to bring down the Prime Minister. But far less criticism has been levelled at the EU itself — which is odd, because Brussels is the cause of our agonies, past and present. The Brexit vote would have gone the other way if it had had the wit to give David Cameron the concessions he begged for. But that is not the nature of the EU imperial class. They intended to send a message: Brussels does not respond to democratic pressure. The British public got that message, and voted to leave.

Yes. The real enemy is the anti-democratic European Union. They've rebuffed unfortunate outbreaks of democracy in France, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Ireland.

And the EU feels they can reverse this British spasm of democracy, too.

Let this be Britain's finest hour against the latest attempt by a continental empire to crush Britain's freedom.

UPDATE: Will Britain save itself by re-embracing its Atlantic heritage and rejecting the authoritarian impulses of the continent?

Johnson’s efforts as the new prime minister ostensibly are to carry out the will of the British people as voiced in 2016, against the wishes of the European Union apparat and most of the British establishment. But after hundreds of years of rugged independence, will Britain finally merge into Europe, or will it retain its singular culture and grow closer to the English-speaking countries it once founded — which are doing better than most of the members of the increasingly regulated and anti-democratic European Union.

And yes, the continent has authoritarian impulses. We forget the role America has had in the post-World War II spread of democracy in Europe:

It is easy to forget--and this was a useful reminder to me--that Europe with its autocracies and monarchies was not fully part of a free West (although obviously part of the Western tradition) until we rebuilt Western Europe in that template after World War II. And NATO expansion after defeating the Soviet Union was more explicit in demanding democracy and rule of law for new members.

That reminder was from this author.

If America is ejected from Europe by the European Union, the old impulses will revive even faster.