The EU started with great intentions, as a free trade zone meant foster cooperation and connectedness within Europe.
Over time, it has become the opposite: A giant bureaucratic regulatory boondoggle that helps some Europeans at the expense of others. As bureaucracies often do, it helps those closest to power while harming those furthest from it, all in the name of serving them.
If we are interested in well being for all, it’s important to have free trade between nations, as great European thinkers like Smith and Bastiat understood years ago. Many of those in the “Remain” camp, who wished to stay in the EU, understood this too, and they should be given credit for it.
But those same great thinkers also understood that centralization of power often presents greater risks to truly free cooperation between people that it may bestow. De-centralization is the way of the 21st century. From the Magna Carta to Abolition and beyond it is indeed, the way of the civilized world.
This is probably the beginning of the end for the EU as we now know it. And the vote split in the same way that interest did in the US in 1776: Roughly 1/3 for revolution, 1/3 for loyalty to the old crumbling powers, and 1/3 who couldn’t be bothered.
Change is always scary, but history has a way of sorting these things out for the better.
Improvement from here, is not guaranteed, of course. It requires action and discussion and thought. But it’s hard to get much of the latter when we jump to vilify those on the other side of the issue.
Those of us outside Britain have no business telling the British what to do as long as they are not harming others. The best we can do is listen, and then lend our thoughts. As always, it’s important to do the former before the latter.