BREXIT – Part 6: Steven Erlanger

By William K. Black
July 5, 2016     Bloomington, MN

The sixth column that the New York Time published on the same date condemning the vote in favor of BREXIT can be dealt with briefly.  It too attacked the legitimacy of democracy, which it presented as a threat to “representative government.”

Steven Erlanger – Part 6

Steven Erlanger quoted with apparent approval this revealing quotation in his column condemning BREXIT.

Bronwen Maddox, former editor of Prospect Magazine and the new director of the Institute for Government, a research institution, commented by email that “there is a growing intolerance for representative government, which is likely to have consequences for the ability of any government to run the country.”

It takes real chutzpah to condemn a freely democratic election favoring BREXIT on the grounds that it represents “a growing intolerance for representative government.”  Erlanger is upset that a majority of the UK voters upset the EU leaders by showing through their BREXIT votes that most voters believed the EU leaders had been misrepresenting them for decades.  Erlanger isn’t disturbed that most voters believed that they had been misrepresented.  He’s upset that the voters did something about their belief and, in essence, fired the people who had so consistently misrepresented their interests.  Erlanger rightly believes that democracy is the great threat to the EU leaders’ anti-democratic decisions and tendencies.  Erlanger, of course, thinks that makes democracy a bad thing.