Brexit is the shorthand phrase for the British exit of the European Union. On June 23, 2016, the British people voted on a referendum that asked: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?” The pro-Brexit forces argued that Britain should leave the European Union in order to restore and protect the nation’s culture, independence, and identity in the world. In addition to a loss of national freedom to a super state, one of the contributing factors was the unsettling massive influx of immigrants spreading across Europe and Great Britain. The principal argument of the anti-Brexit forces was that the economic benefits were far better for Britain as a member of the EU and that leaving would cause severe immediate and long-term damage to the British economy.[1]
Many of those favoring Brexit were generally from the lower classes and the poor who felt forsaken by the country’s political and cultural leadership. Many believed that their lives were controlled by “gray-suited Brussels bureaucrats” at the EU’s headquarters.[2]
Brian Klaas of the London School of Economics said that many Britons felt that they were losing their cultural and national identity. That belief was clearly revealed by a 2013 survey that found that three-fourths of Britons wanted a reduction in immigration numbers including fifty-six percent who said that the reduction should be substantial even though Britain’s immigration levels were lower than other European countries.[3]
Approximately 33.6 million Britons representing seventy-two percent of the UK electorate voted on the referendum, and the results shocked many British and Western leaders. The combined vote throughout the United Kingdom favored exiting the EU 51.9% to 48.1%. The results by its individual members were as follows:
England voted to exit the EU 53.4% to 46.6% (28,455,000 total votes).
Wales voted to exit the EU 52.5% to 47.5% (1,627,000 total votes).
Northern Ireland voted to stay in the EU 55.8% to 44.2% (790,000 total votes).
Scotland voted to stay in the EU 62.0% to 38.0% (2,680,000 total votes).
Other UK members voted to stay in the EU 81.1% to 18.9% (55,000 total votes).[4]
Prime Minister David Cameron, leader of the Conservative government, announced his resignation following the Brexit vote. He had campaigned hard to defeat the resolution. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labor Party, received a no-confidence vote from the members of his party but vowed not to resign. Corbyn was accused of conducting a weak campaign against the referendum.[5]
Opponents of Brexit predicted dire economic consequences for the UK should it vote to exit the EU. Opposition to Britain’s separation from the UK was almost universal among the leadership of Western nations including President Obama. Because of the overwhelming predictions of economic disaster should the UK exit the EU, many predicted that the referendum would fail. But one French op-ed writer cut to the heart of the matter in his explanation of why the majority of the British people voted to exit the EU in spite of such dire economic predictions.
The decision that the people of Britain have just made was indeed an act of courage — the courage of a people who embrace their freedom.
Brexit won out, defeating all forecasts. Britain decided to cast off from the European Union and reclaim its independence among the world’s nations. It had been said that the election would hinge solely on economic matters; the British, however, were more insightful in understanding the real issue than commentators like to admit.
British voters understood that behind prognostications about the pound’s exchange rate and behind the debates of financial experts, only one question, at once simple and fundamental, was being asked: Do we want an undemocratic authority ruling our lives, or would we rather regain control over our destiny? Brexit is, above all, a political issue. It’s about the free choice of a people deciding to govern itself. Even when it is touted by all the propaganda in the world, a cage remains a cage, and a cage is unbearable to a human being in love with freedom.
The European Union has become a prison of peoples. Each of the 28 countries that constitute it has slowly lost its democratic prerogatives to commissions and councils with no popular mandate. Every nation in the union has had to apply laws it did not want for itself. Member nations no longer determine their own budgets. They are called upon to open their borders against their will…
And what about the European Parliament? It’s democratic in appearance only, because it’s based on a lie: the pretense that there is a homogeneous European people, and that a Polish member of the European Parliament has the legitimacy to make law for the Spanish. We have tried to deny the existence of sovereign nations. It’s only natural that they would not allow being denied.[6]
The European Union is the poster child for cultural failure. It is by nature syncretistic (the combination of different forms of belief or practice). And under the syncretistic banner of multiculturalism and diversity, the EU promotes the false worldview of humanism whose tenets lack the necessary elements for cultures to survive. Richard Weaver described the true nature of culture and the elements necessary for its survival.
It is the essence of culture to feel its own imperative and to believe in the uniqueness of its worth…Syncretistic cultures like syncretistic religions have always proved relatively powerless to create and to influence; there is no weight or authentic history behind them. Culture derives its very desire to continue from its unitariness…There is at the heart of every culture a center of authority from which there proceed subtle and pervasive pressures upon us to conform and to repel the unlike as disruptive…it must insist on a pattern of inclusion and exclusion…[It is] inward facing toward some high representation…Culture is by nature aristocratic, for it is a means of discriminating between what counts for much and what counts for little…For this reason it is the very nature of culture to be exclusive…There can be no such thing as a “democratic” culture in the sense of one open to everybody at all times on equal terms…For once the inward-looking vision and the impulse to resist the alien are lost, disruption must ensue.”[7]
The two essentials that any culture must have and without which it disintegrates over time are unity and truth. A society’s central cultural vision must command unity, and such unity must filter up from individuals, not be coerced or forced down on society by its elites. Also, a culture’s central cultural vision must be based on truth with regard to the nature of man, creation, and God. Without a central cultural vision that commands unity and is based on truth, there can be no order to the soul or society, and without order in both, society deteriorates over time and eventually disintegrates.
Where does a society get its central cultural vision (the “collective consciousness of the group”)? In a free society it is the collective worldviews of its people which flow upward and give direction to its leaders. In a socialistic society it is the worldviews and philosophies of the ruling elites which flow downward and are imposed on each sphere of society.
But even when the collective consciousness of the group is in unity, it will not survive if it is not based on truth. Germany in the 1930s met the first essential of unity. Although Germany’s central cultural vision flowed downward from the Nazi elites, it was embraced by the majority of the German population which was unified around certain patterns of inclusion and exclusion, what counted for much and what counted for little. Although unified, its central cultural vision was based on a faulty humanistic understanding of the world. As a result German culture died in literal ruins at the end of World War II.
When one examines the European Union’s organization, treaties, laws, and regulations and compares those with the following excerpts from Humanist Manifesto II, the goals of the two are strikingly similar.
We deplore the division of humankind on nationalistic grounds. We have reached a turning point in human history where the best option is to transcend the limits of national sovereignty and to move toward the building of a world community in which all sectors of the human family can participate. Thus we look to the development of a system of world law and a world order based upon transnational federal government. This would appreciate cultural pluralism and diversity…Travel restrictions must cease…What more daring a goal for humankind than for each person to become, in ideal as well as practice, a citizen of a world community.[8]
The similarities were not lost on the British people. Brexit was the reaction of a majority of the British people to the progressive imposition of the tenets of humanism promoted by the elected and unelected cultural elites found principally in Europe and North America. These tenets stand in opposition to the nature of man and are destructive to the Christian foundations upon which Western civilization was built.
Humanism is a divisive and flawed view of the world that is the enemy of freedom, contrary to what it means to be human, a hopeless narrative built on a false view of man’s nature and the world, and the principal weapon of Satan that is responsible for the vast majority of misery in the human soul, cultures, and nations.
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
[1] Amanda Taub, “Brexit, explained: 7 Questions About What It Means and Why It Matters,” The New York Times, June 23, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/world/europe/brexit-britain-eu-explained.html?_r=0 (accessed October 5, 2016).
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] “EU Referendum Results,” BBC News. http://www.bbc.com/news/politics/eu_referendum/results (accessed October 5, 2016).
[5] “Brexit fallout: Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn says he won’t resign after no-confidence vote,” Fox News World, June 28, 2016. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/06/28/brexit-fallout-embattled-labor-party-leader-jeremy-corbyn-loses-confidence-vote.html (accessed October 10, 2016).
[6] Marine Le Pen, “Marine Le Pen: After Brexit, the People’s Spring Is Inevitable,” The New York Times, June 28, 2016. www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/opinion/marine-le-pen-after-brexit-the-peoples-spring-is-inevitable.html (accessed October 5, 2016).
[7] Richard M. Weaver, Visions of Order – The Cultural Crisis of Our Time, (Wilmington, Delaware: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1964), pp. 10-12.
[8] Paul Kurtz, ed., Humanist Manifestos I and II, (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1973), pp. 21-23.
