For 1000 years, British men, women and even children, have fought and died to move power from elites to people, to increase their liberty, and to ensure that those to whom they delegate political power can be booted out when they do something wrong or stupid. It started in 1014, with the Anglo-Saxon charter, went through Magna Carta in 1215, the Petition of Right, the Bill of Rights (1689), the Reform Acts and so on – each step protecting the basic rights of the people to run their own lives. Most gloriously, the British gave themselves and the world Common Law that comes up from the people – not down from the State.
The EU reverses all of that. It is a tyranny. European Laws are written by unelected officials. The EU is not just non-democratic; it is anti-democratic: its institutions are actually built to resist change by the will of the people. There is no way that the British can prevent a law from being imposed on them from the EU even if every single last one of them voted against European politicians who supported it.
Indeed, when the European Constitution was written, it was put to referendums in multiple countries – and voted down by every one… and then imposed anyway through the Lisbon Treaty. This is Tyranny in Black and White.
The EU President, Jean-Claude Junker, said it himself: “There can be no democratic choice against the European treaties.” That’s the thing with tyrants. In their utter self-righteousness, they tell you exactly what they are going to do to you.
If we vote to “Remain”, the British will be consenting – even choosing – to eliminate democratic representation and Common Law. In other words, we will be reversing the most important achievements of our culture. That is moral suicide because it is giving up on the most fundamental shared values that have brought us all our freedoms and prosperity, and it is the literal suicide of the nation because it says that we no longer wish to be self-determined people.
It turns out Star Wars is wrong: liberty does not die with thunderous applause. It dies with forty million marks on forty million bits of paper. But die it does.
Today, people are dying in Europe because of a dogmatic commitment to a political project that exists primarily because of the egos of the politicians who benefit from it – and their banker friends (used advisedly: they really are friends) who fund them.
If we vote to leave, and say “No more. This is simply wrong and we will play no more part in it”, then we draw a line, just as we did in 1939, that would give all of Europe the impetus to demand their most basic democratic and liberal rights too. The British could again save Europe from itself. How great a day would that be… How could the British nation show its love for Europe and its greatest values more perfectly than that?
All of the arguments for Remaining in the EU are, to me, reminiscent of the argument made for slavery in the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries: “If we end slavery, then who will pick the cotton?” The answer is, of course, that it doesn’t matter who will pick the bloody cotton. We will sort that out later. Today, we must fix the fundamental evil and choose freedom and self-determination.
I am about to find out something fundamental about my native land. If this vote goes the wrong way, it will be sadly, awfully, and for all time, my “former country” . In fact, bizarrely, it will not even be a country in any meaningful sense of the word…
Tomorrow will simply be one of the happiest days of my life – or one of the saddest. I feel it in my stomach.
Robin Koerner is a British-born citizen of the USA, who currently serves as Academic Dean of the John Locke Institute. He holds graduate degrees in both Physics and the Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge (U.K.). He is also the founder of WatchingAmerica.com, an organization of over 100 volunteers that translates and posts in English views about the USA from all over the world.
Robin may be best known for having coined the term “Blue Republican” to refer to liberals and independents who joined the GOP to support Ron Paul’s bid for the presidency in 2012 (and, in so doing, launching the largest coalition that existed for that candidate).
Robin’s current work as a trainer and a consultant, and his book If You Can Keep It , focus on overcoming distrust and bridging ideological division to improve politics and lives. His current project, Humilitarian, promotes humility and civility as a basis for improved political discourse and outcomes.