printThe new book, “The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed,” is available on Amazon. The new column, “Americans No Longer Have ‘the Money,’ But Brexiter Brits Still Have ‘the Brains,’” is excerpted below:
During the Bretton Woods Conference, in 1944, Lord Halifax is said to have “whispered to Lord Keynes: ‘It’s true: they have the money bags but we have all the brains.’” By “they,” Halifax meant the Americans.
His frustration with the American mind—often prosaic and anti-intellectual—during the critical Bretton-Woods negotiations seems as valid today. As odious as Britain’s elites are; boy, are they cleverer than ours. Take the impromptu interview, on June 28, which Richard Quest, CNN’s imported British broadcast journalist, conducted with Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party.
Farage had emerged exhilarated from the coven that is the European Parliament, where he had shared some home truths with the ponces leeching off Britain.
Other than to mouth formulaically about “small government, big military, balanced budgets and the penny plan”—America’s chattering class and ruling elites seem incapable of expressing the principles undergirding freedom. And members of this political Idiocracy dissolve into a puddle if their cue cards disappear.
Farage, however, spoke to some difficult ideas with ease, and without notes.
The act of secession, the quests for sovereignty, decentralization and regional autonomy from a second tier of tyrants—the first being the national, British government—involve comprehending complicated ideas.
About this, Milton Friedman forewarned in the introduction to F.A. Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom.” Whereas “the argument for collectivism is simple if false; it is an immediate emotional argument.” “The argument for individualism” and freedom, on the other hand, “is subtle and sophisticated; it is an indirect rational argument.”
Put differently: If you can’t express the principles of liberty, can you properly pursue them? Will you not forgo them?
It’s difficult for dummies to understand liberty, let alone defend it, a problem the scintillating, cerebral Mr. Farage doesn’t have.
“You as a political project are in denial,” he told the grumbling laggards in the EU chamber. The EU had, “by stealth by deception, and without ever telling the truth to the British and European people, imposed political union upon them.”
Not to be trusted, EU advocate Segolene Royal, French environment minister and former socialist candidate for the French presidency, praised this coerced union, calling it a “family.” “The family is supposed to have a say in when a member leaves,” she griped to BBC’s tough talker, Stephen Sackur.
The sort of family Royal describes is known as La Familia, a crime family that knee caps you if you leave.
Heckling Eurocrats were reminded by Farage that when, in 2005, the people of the Netherlands and France said adieu to an enforced political union—the Eurocrats had “ignored them and brought in the Lisbon Treaty through the backdoor.” Indeed, the last refuge of a Brussels scoundrel is the bureaucracy. When voters scuttled the EU Constitution in that referenda; the rogues being upbraided by Farage dissolved one illegitimate political structure and constituted another.
“You’re in denial,” continued Farage, “about Mrs. Merkel’s invitation to any and all to cross the Mediterranean and enter the EU, all of which has led to massive divisions between and within countries.”
What the little people did, what the ordinary people did, what the people who’ve been oppressed have done is to reject the multinationals, reject the merchant banks, reject Big Politics, and demand their country back, their fishing waters back, their borders back. We want to be an independent self-governing nation. [If anything], we offer a beacon of hope. The UK will not be the last member state to leave the EU.
A series of similar watersheds would follow, predicted Farage.
Fleetingly, at least, Farage’s fluency with the ideas of freedom took effect. The blank faces flanking UKIP’s leader looked somewhat animated. Fewer jeered; some even clapped and cheered as Farage went on to submit that no stalling would be tolerated. The will of the British people would be heeded forthwith. Called for was “a grown-up and sensible attitude” toward executing popular—in this case, naturally licit—wishes.
Mr. Farage was not done, …
… Read the complete column, “Americans No Longer Have ‘the Money,’ But Brexiter Brits Still Have ‘the Brains,’” on the Unz Review. The book, “The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed,” you’ll need to purchase.