Motus Mentis

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial today calling (unsurprisingly, given that it is the globalist WSJ we are talking about here) for the United Kingdom to stay in the European Union.

The reasons they give are mostly to do with interests other than those of the U.K. itself:

While we hope Britain votes to remain in the European Union, the reasons have less to do with the sturdy British than with the damage an exit could do to a Europe that is failing to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

America’s interests lie in a free and prosperous Europe, and we’ve long thought this is best served with Britain as part of the European Union to balance France and Germany. The British look west across the Atlantic more than continentals, and the Brits have largely been a voice of reason in Europe’s councils.

Certainly true: by my lights, the Brits have been a voice of reason, for the most part, always and everywhere. But as the son of British expats, and as a former citizen of the Commonwealth, I want the British to do what’s best for themselves. And as an ardent supporter of every people’s wish to live in a homeland that expresses their own “extended phenotype“, and as someone with a visceral revulsion for universalist, power-centralizing, power-seeking busybodies, I welcome the prospect that Brexit would, in the WSJ’s words, “be a blow to the confidence and coherence of Europe”. “Europe”, to the WSJ, simply means the E.U., and such a “blow” to that malevolent organization would, rather, be a welcome indication of the growing confidence of the several European peoples that they have the right — nay, the duty), to their ancient heritage and folkways — to stand on their own, and to live under their own rules, rather than the suffocating authority of an unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy in Brussels. If Brexit were to begin a cascade of similar referenda throughout Europe, so much the better. Whether, as the WSJ points out, much of Britain’s problems have to do with local politics rather than with E.U. diktats, is immaterial; Brexit will at least open up the possibility for them to solve them, or not, as the British see fit.

(Unsurprisingly, the WSJ dismisses any concern about immigration.)

It is amusing that the WSJ begins its piece with this:

The British people go to the polls Thursday in their most important vote since they elected Margaret Thatcher in 1979.

Here, thanks to Frontpage, is Mrs. Thatcher on the topic.

Nations feel comfortable in their own nationhood. Pride enables you to do things you otherwise might not be able to do. Europe should be each group in its own national identity. Don’t try to extinguish that. If you try to push people into a mold, you’ll create resentment, and you’re creating it now.

That was in 1992. Were the great lady alive today, she’d be saying: “LEAVE!!”

The WSJ piece is behind a paywall. To read it, do this:

Open an “incognito” browser window, go to Google, and put some of the text in quotes, e.g. “the reasons have less to do with the sturdy British”. Open the WSJ link in the search results. (They’ll probably catch on to this backdoor eventually, but they haven’t yet.)

Finally, with a hat-tip to our friend David Duff, see also this piece from National Review.