How To Tell Whether Brexit Is A Good Thing

Is the British people's vote for Brexit a good thing or a bad thing?  How do you tell?  It's easy!  Just look at the list of personages and pooh-bahs who have gone into full meltdown.  And then look at the ridiculous statements they make to try to instill fear in everyone else and maybe get this thing reversed.  They've become completely unhinged!  And also consider the utter contempt in which the defeated opponents of Brexit hold the victorious supporters.  This losing side, sometimes known as the "elite," is the coalition of the "leaders," the academics, the journalists, the crony capitalists, and the government functionaries who believe that they and others like them are the experts and they should run the world with no accountability, and issue the orders to the productive people who pay the bills.  Most of the members of this coalition currently live off some kind of government salary or grant or handout, and the rest of them expect to do so at some point.  Honestly, are these people you want to be aligned with?  Not me!  And I guess I was not the only one.

And if you still have any doubts, just remember that Switzerland is not a member of the EU.  So the future downside for Britain is that it might end up "suffering like Switzerland."  Scary!  (Switzerland is per capita the wealthiest country of over one million people in the world.  OK, some lists have Norway as the wealthiest country, although I think that was based on last year's price of oil.  Anyway, Norway is not a member of the EU either.)

Here's just a small roundup of links.  I love the headlines at the New York Times.  "Brexit Rattles the World's Postwar Order," and "In Vote, Hints of a Larger Unraveling."  Ye Gods, the World As We Know It is Coming Apart!  And then from the editorial:

Defying the warnings of every major economic and political institution in Britain, Europe and the United States, millions of voters across Britain concluded that a gamble on a dangerous unknown was better than staying with a present over which they felt they had lost control. It was a cry of anger and frustration from more than half the country against those who wield power, wealth and privilege, both in their own government and in Brussels. . . .  

In New York Times-world, it is not possible to come to a rational position in opposition to increasing unaccountable bureaucratic control; you can only get there via "anger" and "frustration."

At Bloomberg it's "Picking Through Brexit Rubble, Leaders Try To Plot The Future."  Sebastian Mallaby at the Washington Post, in a relatively sober assessment of what he calls this "awful vote," sees financial turmoil and recession and the ascendancy of the ghastly "Euroskeptics" and "populists":

There will be consequences for financial markets, both in Britain and abroad. Already, the British pound and the London stock market have been hammered, anticipating the recession that is likely to come. . . .  Already, Euroskeptics in Sweden, France and the Netherlands have demanded a copycat referendum. . . .  The fear that Europe’s cohesion is weakening could reignite economic turmoil in the euro zone. Government bonds in Spain and Italy look riskier now that the continent’s cohesion is in doubt.

At the Huffington Post, the game plan is to document that the Brexiteers are all a bunch of violent racists.

But absolutely the best is the primal fear of the climate establishment that the gravy train of funding could be in jeopardy.  Check out National Geographic or Scientific American.  National Geographic's headline is "Why Brexit Freaks Out So Many Scientists."  Excerpt:

The British public’s vote to leave the European Union has set off political and scientific shock waves that could roil Europe and the world for years to come.  The decision has dismayed scientists in the United Kingdom and across Europe, as it stands to disrupt scientific funding and the United Kingdom’s stature in the European and international research communities.  “It’s depressing, but the uncertainty doesn’t help,” says Philip Jones, research director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in Norwich, England. “I just hope that science doesn’t get forgotten in all of this.”

Yes, that is the Phil Jones of Climategate.  Could the ascendancy of the Brexiteers mean the de-funding of the climate scamsters at the University of East Anglia?  One can only hope.

One can also not help noticing the close association of the Brexit movement with climate skepticism.  Somewhere along the line, the forces of the Left convinced themselves that "saving the planet" from the threat of energy usage was a value so important that it trumped human freedom, prosperity and democracy.  More than a few have now begun to notice.  You might enjoy this article by Christopher Monckton at The Europrobe:

It is no accident, therefore, that the bankers, the corporate profiteers, the Greens and the National Socialist Workers’ Party of Scotland – the corporatists and the communists together – made common totalitarian cause and heavily promoted the campaign to keep Britain in the EU, that paradise of vested interests and their poisonous lobbyists.  It is likewise no accident that precisely these same national and global vested interests heavily promote the campaign to subject Britain and the world to various unnecessary and damaging measures whose ostensible purpose is to control the climate but whose real ambition is to curb capitalism, fetter freedom, punish prosperity, limit liberty and deny democracy.

For the moment, the forces of freedom and prosperity have at least had their voices briefly heard in Britain.  But do not expect the totalitarians and vested interests to give up easily.  I anticipate a protracted campaign of obstruction and delay, as the grafters desperately fight and claw to hang onto every last grant and perk.  

Here in the U.S., the Brexit campaign shows a potential winning strategy for Trump.  I'm not sure he is informed enough to pick up on it.  In Britain, where "climate" regulations have approximately doubled the cost of energy, it should surprise no one that opposition to more such regulations (and to plans to raise the cost of energy by more like a factor of five or ten) suddenly is a majority position.  Over here, despite Barack Obama's best efforts to make the price of energy "skyrocket," he somehow got outmaneuvered by the frackers, and the price of energy instead declined.  There is not yet the same level of anger here over intentional efforts of the political class to impoverish the ordinary people.  But it's a piece of a broader anger that is building.