When Brexit passed by a popular vote in 2016, shockwaves hit global markets as the voting citizens of England declared their own independence.
Now almost four years have passed and the UK has gone through two Prime Ministers, a new political party rose out of the ashes of UKIP, and now British citizens have to go through another general election in order to solidify whether or not the promises of Brexit will ever come through.
The question is, why should this matter to Americans?
Our American experiment was founded on the premise of self-determination. One of the primary legal arguments prior to the American Revolution was that “taxation without representation” voided obligations of the American colonists to the King and his parliament. Because America had no representation in the British parliament – and none would be allowed – this sparked our Founding Fathers to met in Philadelphia to declare their independence.
Now hundreds of years later, the British people are in a remarkably similar situation despite some big differences. Because of the pressure to constantly conform their borders, their economies, and their civil liberties to that of the collectivist standards of the European Union, the British citizenry use their rights to decide whether England should be a true and sovereign nation, or simply a sub-state of the European Union powers. First, they fought, then they won, but now it seems that Prime Minister Boris Johnson – who became a late champion for Brexit when it became a possibility of coming true – can’t “get Brexit done” as the Conservatives say.
It is not a secret that internationally binding trade agreements formed by corporate interest, supranational organizations such as the WTO, the UN, and NATO, and other globalist initiatives are everyday attempting to dwindle the size and authority of the nation-state system in order slowly erode the voting power and the rights of the everyday citizen.
Americans should ask themselves some simple questions: Do we take our civil liberties at home for granted or do we far too often trade them for the false theater of security? Are our taxes better spent being used at home or being used to bargain with dictators and foreign nations who don’t have our interest at heart? Regardless of whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, or another political party, how much individual authority are you willing to give away until you have nothing at all?
Regardless of the outcome of Brexit, what this moment in the history of Western democracies shows are the successes and failures of the democratic system, how special interests are capable of circumventing the authority of the citizenry, and the nightmare that has become far too real for people who, by definition, are now subservient to a foreign power they have no say in.
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