Not the Sheeple You Thought They Were

from BBC.com

What the British people just did in the Brexit vote, regardless of whether or not it was wise, is extraordinary as an act of a free people. A majority of the people, after a lengthy and vigorous public campaign in which the entire political, cultural, and commercial establishment told everyone that remaining was the only sensible option, 52% voted to leave the EU. If you remove Scotland from the equation where people had good reason to remain, and discount the youth vote which I suspect was moved inordinately by celebrities like David Beckham and Keira Knightley, the remaining vote was even more decisive. Consider also that Greater London which, understandably, would want to leave the business environment unruffled also voted strongly in favor of remaining. Yet Leave won.

Fraser Nelson, editor of the Spectator, puts it this way in today's Wall Street Journal:

Never has there been a greater coalition of the establishment than that assembled by Prime Minister David Cameron for his referendum campaign to keep the U.K. in the European Union. There was almost every Westminster party leader, most of their troops and almost every trade union and employers’ federation. There were retired spy chiefs, historians, football clubs, national treasures like Stephen Hawking and divinities like Keira Knightley. And some global glamour too: President Barack Obama flew to London to do his bit, and Goldman Sachs opened its checkbook. 

And none of it worked. The opinion polls barely moved over the course of the campaign, and 52% of Britons voted to leave the EU. That slender majority was probably the biggest slap in the face ever delivered to the British establishment in the history of universal suffrage.

This is all the more reason for those who are in charge to take seriously what the people have just said. By the same measure, they should take just as seriously what Scotland has said with one clear voice.

Congratulations, John Bull. You Have Your Home Back.

A post-Hogarth, Napoleonic era (1803) John Bull
"If you won't let me eat my bread and cheese in peace and comfort, I'll blow you away"

According to Derek Jarrett in England in the Age of Hogarth, British satirist William Hogarth (1697-1764) transformed the familiar image of John Bull into "an archetype of the freeborn Englishman" overagainst the slavish and sluttish Frenchies of the pre-revolutionary, Bourbon era. Hogarth pictured him "like the animal from which he took his name: strong, virile...superbly stubborn and intractable, always ready to toss and gore those who tried to tame him" (p.22). It is the spirit of John Bull that made Great Britain, even after more than half a century of the welfare state, not quite a good fit for the European super-state and summon enough pluck to bid political adieu to their busily and efficiently benevolent overlords on the continent in the Brexit vote.

When the BBC announced just before midnight on June 23 that Leave had won the referendum on British membership in the European Union, I hurried upstairs to break the historic news to my children, two of whom were still bickering in their dark room. My 14-year old son interrupted my short history of the EU, asking me if I could put this issue in simple terms. "Syrians and sausages," I said. "Essentially, many people were upset at not having control over who comes into the country and how they make their sausages." Any citizen of the EU or anyone admitted to it by a member state (so, whether a Pole or a Syrian) is free to take up residence in Britain. Brits were looking at the flood of Middle Eastern migrants, their strain on social services, the terrorist attacks in Paris and Belgium, and the problems they already suffer in these regards, and said, "Not on my island!"

Just as burdensome has been the flood of at times ridiculous regulations from Brussels, the natural product of  politically coupling, as Bret Stephens put it, "France's obsession with bureaucracy with Germany's obsession with rules." Eggs may not be bought by the dozen but only by weight. Cucumbers with greater than allowable curvature may not be sold. In a restaurant, olive oil at your table must be served in a factory-sealed, pre-packaged dispenser. Just do a web search for "silly European regulations" and explore.

In brief, as Boris Johnson said in his sober and statesmanly victory reflections, the British people decided 52-48 "to take back control."

When warned of, and at times even threatened with, dire economic consequences should they decide to leave, Britons on balance were more impressed with the money they could save as one of the three net givers in the 28-nation European partnership (along with France and Germany, obviously). Greece? See to yourself.

Scotland, however, voted uniformly to remain. I asked on Twitter why Scots would rather be governed by unaccountable overseas bureaucrats than by an assembly of their own elected representatives in London. My father, who emigrated from Scotland to Canada in 1958, gave me the answer.

"I grew up in one of the satellite areas of the English realm. London looked after England and did as little as possible for the outliers. The EU with its laws and funds changed that and raised the status and profile of those areas. The UK became more of a reality. Brexit may put the Scots under London rule again, to their disadvantage. Scots say, "If its not Scottish it's crap." English normally say, "If its not English it's not British."

Westminster governed as though Scotland were the crazy aunt in the attic. Scots would send MPs to London only to see them co-opted into the power circuit and social scene and forget who sent them. But the EU didn't know enough to treat Scots like irrelevant blue-painted savages, so they provided the same funding benefits (i.e., statist redistribution of wealth) that they supplied to every needy region. Caledonia will soon find herself once more alone in the home with her self-absorbed husband who doesn't provide. It is expected that she will soon want out. Whether by that time there is still an EU to which they can flee for refuge is yet to be seen.

As for Europe, they would be wise to pull back and retrench. Refuse Turkey. Deregulate. Prefer the harmony of local diversity to harmonization by centrally issued edicts. I think of the king who ceded power to the demos and received scorn from his friends who shamed him for handing down to his son a diminished crown. He responded that it would be a more long-lasting one. Just as David Cameron promised Scotland meaningful reforms and a better partnership in the future after he turned back their independence bid, Europe, having lost Britain to their independence and seeing others now call for the same way out, should re-envision their union for the times -- less ambitious, less intrusive, but more durable.

But they won't. They are in their positions of power and in this position of crisis because they are people of a self-righteous and controlling nature. So they won't.

God’s Candidate

I was recently interviewed by a small Brooklyn media outfit on how evangelicals see the current election. Several times I was asked, “So who is God’s candidate?” I didn’t give a straight answer because it’s a complicated question. But it’s one that Christians are required to ponder.

On one level, “God’s candidate” means the one who perfectly conforms his policies and judgments to the mind of God. But there is not, and cannot be, such a candidate. Only King Jesus fits that description.

But the question can also be asking which of the candidates, given what God has revealed of himself, does God want us to select. In the past, that question has seemed deceptively easy to answer. In 1980, the choice was arguably the Moral Majority backed Ronald Reagan, despite his divorce and irregular church attendance. In 2000, it seemed to be George W. Bush, the born again Reaganite. In 1976, the Southern Baptist Jimmy Carter was the evangelical choice. But some of these weren’t so obviously the godly choice further into their presidencies.

In 2016, however, God has really stirred the pot. Donald Trump says he’s Presbyterian, but he has spent his churchless life in the pursuit of mammon, and not for charitable giving or serving people through commerce – just filling bigger and bigger barns. Hillary Clinton is nominally Methodist but shares this obsession with self-enrichment and adds the progressive agenda of radical human autonomy, a religion of its own.

Bernie Sanders, though Jewish by birth, is an atheistic socialist. Interestingly, a poll revealed that more people see his policies reflecting the ethics of Jesus than see it in any other candidate. (Admittedly, all the numbers are low.) Surely they have in mind his concern for the poor. But he cares in a way that God has not instructed us to care for them. In fact, his proposed remedies undermine our ability to love them biblically. Vastly higher taxes leave people with less money to give either directly or through churches and charitable organizations. This is true of the well-to-do and ordinary income earners alike. We would also have less inclination to give. “The government will provide.” It should come as no surprise, therefore, that such policies actually end up hurting the people they attempt to help.

But all three candidates share in that spirit. Hillary Clinton is a statist for whom the federal government is the answer to every ill, though she is less convincingly concerned about the poor. Donald Trump has lived his life based, as he says, on three principles: grab, grab, and grab. Now he is promising to bring the rest of us in on the deal. But what does it profit a nation of voters if they can grab even a whole world of mammon but lose their eternal inheritance.

On yet another, quite unavoidable level, God’s candidate is the one he will raise up by our democratic republican system to govern us, and who is perhaps none of these three. But that’s his business (Deut. 29:29). Ours is to know his word, to know our world, and to apply the one to the other in the exercise of our civic duty on Election Day, whether it be to vote or abstain from voting.