British voters wanted their country back

Maybe it was those college courses on the history of Europe that soured me on the idea of a united continent. How could a conglomeration of nation states noted for invading and pillaging each other and warring against each other form a union? How could a continent with different languages, cultures and money become a united states of Europe modeled after the USA?

Unity is not union. As the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher observed: “European unity has been tried before, and the outcome was far from happy.”

The euro, which I also mocked at the time it was introduced on Jan. 1, 1999, replaced the French franc (the Swiss wisely kept their franc), the German mark, the Dutch guilder and most other circulating currencies.

A majority of British voters want their country back. They are tired of being dictated to by an unelected and unaccountable elite in Brussels. They are tired of the wave of immigrants who do not assimilate and who seem uninterested in becoming fully British. And they are tired of being called names for wishing to preserve what was handed down to them by previous generations who fought and died so their descendants might continue to enjoy the British way of life.

Already people are comparing former London Mayor Boris Johnson, who led the exit campaign and wants to succeed departing Prime Minister David Cameron, to Donald Trump. Trump had the good fortune and perfect timing to be in Scotland when the voting results were announced. His news conference was carried live throughout Europe and on U.S. cable news networks.

Like so many of the British, Trump supporters are sick of the elites dictating to them. They too want their country back.

Scottish separatists vow to hold another vote because their leader, Nicola Sturgeon, wants to remain in the EU. But the die has been cast. I suspect the EU will eventually fall apart and the nations that currently comprise it could return to their previous borders and currencies – but, it is to be hoped, not their previous feuds.

The main lesson for Britain and the U.S. is that the people, properly informed and engaged, don’t have to put up with elitist big government whose leaders think they can run people’s lives and who callously “import” immigrants from nations that do not have a democratic history, much less practice religious pluralism.

We can take back our countries and make them what the founders intended them to be. Britain is on the way to doing so, though the left will not give up easily, if at all. The other shoe may be about to drop in the United States this November.

This story was originally published June 29, 2016 at 12:01 AM with the headline "British voters wanted their country back."