In Europe, the French Revolution and the non-democratic autocracies and state bureaucracies that followed it became more of a blueprint for the European Union than the U.S. Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence did.
Whether you are Polish, Belgian, Spanish, Flemish, Catalan, or migrant/refugee without citizenship, you will be a subject--not citizen--of the Brussels-based empire, with no more rights than anybody outside of the apparatchiki class that runs the whole EU show.
As I've mentioned, post-World War II Europe owes its culture of freedom to American influence that cut through the old European statist impulses on the continent:
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.
We think Europe is free because that is how we've seen it in our lifetime. First expanding within Western Europe and then flowing into the former Warsaw Pact and into the former Soviet Union itself. But the Europe we see is the Europe we built after World War II during the Cold War. Western culture gave birth to political and personal freedom but is not synonymous with it. That's a British innovation given a huge boost by America. And without the big Soviet threat to get Europeans to accept our influence as the price of their defense, that American (and British) influence is waning.
The European Union is anti-democratic and anti-liberty, and so naturally tries to wreck NATO in order to push America and our influence out of Europe, to let them return to their autocratic roots.
For our own good we should defend and strengthen NATO. A Britain safely out of the EU where it won't be infected or overwhelmed by the continental statists but able to promote NATO as a force for freedom is a good thing.
And we should take care that change doesn't happen here, too.
