by John Brian Shannon | September 7, 2016

To Be, or not to Be (from Hamlet 3:1)

by William Shakespeare

To be, or not to be: that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?

To die: to sleep no more, and by sleep we say end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d.

To die, to sleep. To sleep. Perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause. There’s the respect that makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, the insolence of office and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes, when he himself might his quietus make with bare bodkin?

Who would fardels bear to grunt and sweat under a weary life; But that the dread of something after death, the undiscover’d country from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pith and moment with this regard, their currents turn awry and lose the name of action.

Soft you now the fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons, be all my sins remember’d.

Courtesy of Art of Europe

And so it is with regards to Brexit.

It would be so much easier to not Brexit and to continue along in a substandard life rather than strive to become more — the so much more that Britain is capable of should she decide to shrug-off her complacency and (declining) comforts.

What is a calling more than a science, a search more than a destination, a way of life more than a set of rules issued by others in foreign countries? It’s name? Democracy.

And that’s what the Brexiters are looking for, whether stated or unstated, whether fully reasoned in advance or not.

The same sort of people who threw off the blanket in the time of King George III in search of a more democratic government (“No taxation without representation!”) are the same sort of people who don’t want Brussels to dictate the price of bread or the ingredients in their butter. Let’s be honest, the EU has rules on everything from how many fish in a can of kippers to the price of petrol, and everything in between.

Many of these rules are good and fair rules to be sure. However, they are rules made in Brussels for the benefit of EU corporations and the EU’s 504 million citizens — and Britain’s input is minimal with only 64 million people. To put it succinctly, only the utterly naive Britons think EU membership revolves around them and that the EU was created for Britain’s benefit.

Each year, billions more pounds sterling leave Britain than the country receives in return. The early American settlers railed against “No taxation without representation!” — yet this situation is worse because there is some amount of representation, but it is representation in a foreign capital, by foreigners, and with the demands of 440 million other EU citizens taking priority over British citizens. It is a carefully crafted schadenfreude and almost every EU nation is on the receiving end of it — including Britain and Germany.

Not only that, but those billions of pounds could be better-spent by a British government that dedicates itself to the people of Britain.

The way forward for the well-being of Britain’s people is not by handing billions of pounds sterling and complete authority over their lives to eurocrats in Brussels — the way forward is by increasing trade links with all Anglosphere nations and by forging evermore bilateral trade links around the world with non-Anglo nations.

True Democracy doesn’t require the handing-over of all the money and all of the rights in exchange for whatever allowance Brussels deems to send in return.

That’s not Democracy, that’s Prostitution.