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March 29, 2024
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PI Newsletter #79

1. Why Hasn’t Brexit Happened?

Many statesmen warned from the outset that British ideas of liberty would not survive a merger with the E.U. […] In 1962, as Tory Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was eying EEC membership, Labor leader Hugh Gaitskell warned, “[I]t does mean the end of Britain as an independent nation state…. It means the end of a thousand years of history. You may say ‘Let it end’ but, my goodness, it is a decision that needs a little care and thought.”
[…]

Only when the Leave side won the referendum did it become clear that the vote had been about not just a policy preference but also an identity. It raised the question for each voter of whether he considered himself an Englishman or a European, and of whether it was legitimate to be ruled by one power or the other. As such it made certain things explicit.

The main legacy of the European Union in the past three decades has been the suppression of democracy and sovereignty in the countries that belong to it. We can argue about whether this is the main purpose of the federation, but suppression of self-rule certainly counts as one of its purposes. Extinguishing national sovereignty was E.U. technocrats’ way of assuring that what Germany, Italy, and Spain set in motion in the 20th century would not repeat itself in the 21st. The architects of the Brussels order proclaimed this intention loudly until they discovered it cost them elections and support. The E.U.’s suspicion of nationalism is understandable. But its hostility to democracy is real.

The self-image of today’s E.U. elites is still that of protecting Europe from its historic dark side. They are confident history will regard them as the fathers of a Common European Home. In the imaginary biography he carries around inside his own head, a British builder of the European Union, whether a human rights lawyer or a hectoring journalist, will cast himself as one of the righteous heroes of his time, one of the enlightened. He is a man who “stood alone” to “fight for his principles” and so on. Maybe posterity will even see him as a European James Madison.

Many people in all member states have sought to puncture this kind of “Eurocrat” self-regard, but Britain’s anti-E.U. intellectuals have been particularly direct and pitiless. In mid-July, Robin Harris, a longtime adviser to Cold War Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, wrote an article in the Telegraph urging Boris Johnson to carry out “a peaceful but revolutionary seizure of power by the British people from a supranational authority and a home-grown but deracinated, collaborationist elite.”

Imagine how it strikes a man who has spent decades working for the E.U. dream—Tony Blair or Donald Tusk, for instance—to see his work likened to “collaboration.” Special place in hell, indeed! Those who sought the Brexit referendum placed a proposition before the British electorate that these self-styled architects of “Europe,” these idealists, had been, all along, not Europe’s Madisons but its Quislings. Worse, when that proposition was placed before the British people, they assented to it.

[….]And yet, given that Britain is the first country to issue such an ultimatum, given that pro-E.U. elites in other European countries have reason to fear its replication, given the moral ambitions of the E.U. project, given that the British who support Remain have transferred their sentiments and their allegiances across the channel, given the social disparity between those who rule the E.U. and most of those who want to leave it, how could the reaction of Britain’s establishment be anything but all-out administrative, judicial, economic, media, political, and parliamentary war? The battle against Brexit is being fought, Europe-wide, with all the weaponry a cornered elite has at its disposal.

https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/why-hasnt-brexit-happened-yet/?fbclid=IwAR2l5kSTk1sSEK1rdqpZryQxaJMAmcmhRaBgy3zXZGITBfWjlvWHMUCWFJk#.XXU_1ZxuvrA.facebook

2. My encounter with George Soros’s bright-eyed missionaries left me deeply disturbed

Why am I not surprised that the billionaire George Soros has decided to give £400,000 to the anti-Brexit crusading group Best for Britain? Because, since the 1980s, Soros has acted as if his considerable wealth entitles him to influence and alter the policies of governments throughout the world.

Soros believes that if the people voted the wrong way, he is entitled to thwart decisions made by them. From his perspective, the vote for Brexit was a big mistake, which needs and can be fixed by a well-financed propaganda campaign such as Best for Britain.
Soros does not believe in the legitimacy of borders nor in the authority of national electorates. Consequently, he feels entitled to influence and if possible direct the political destiny of societies all over the world.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/02/08/encounter-george-soross-bright-eyed-missionaries-left-deeply/amp/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_tw&__twitter_impression=true&fbclid=IwAR0zD_qeeTs5ZnVBNdwIdJ0OWPeaOlV9ZbnZatNfjh4Tf6C7WxqkZMmCH34

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