Are those who oppose the EU really backward-looking and bigoted?

Reversing Brexit is currently the chief General Election objective of all those people, especially Liberal Democrats, passionately committed to furthering the goal of European union.

This group includes many of our young people, particularly those in higher education, because of a deeply rooted but mistaken belief that the desire to preserve or (in Britain’s case) re-gain national sovereignty is somehow ‘racist’ and reactionary. They are taught that ‘nationalism’ leads to war, and being patriotic supposedly implies that one dislikes foreigners.

However sincerely held this belief may be, it should be rejected firmly by biblically informed and historically literate Christians.

The fallen human nature of ambitious and despotic rulers, obsessed by the selfish pursuit of wealth and power, has been the chief cause of war down the ages - not the existence of self-governing nation-states.

As for World Wars I and II, they, like so many armed conflicts of the modern era, were launched by militaristic dictatorships against mainly liberal democracies, whose peaceful exercise of their national sovereignty threatened nobody.

Reversing Brexit is the chief General Election objective of all those passionately committed to furthering the goal of European union.

Consequently, the real lesson of history is the very opposite of that drawn by the supporters of European integration. Since power corrupts because human beings are fallen creatures, it is essential that it remain dispersed, in an international system of ‘checks and balances’, rather than centralised and concentrated in a European Super-State.

Curbing Immigration: Right or Wrong

These ideas about national sovereignty and freedom are highly relevant to the controversial issue of immigration.

Politically correct ‘liberals’ always imply that the desire to restrict immigration is morally suspect, because it stems (supposedly) from a xenophobic, bigoted dislike of foreigners. Even when political pressures force them to acknowledge people’s legitimate concerns about the impacts of mass uncontrolled immigration on schools, hospitals, housing and transport, they do so reluctantly, always wanting to change the subject to the need for more government action to create jobs and improve public services.

Yet whilst it is obviously important to combat racists and welcome the positive contributions made by so many immigrants to our economies and societies, there is a strong and principled case for acknowledging the right of individual countries to control their own borders.

Border Control is Moral

In the first place, a country’s right to control its borders and restrict immigration is an essential component of its national sovereignty. If it is not allowed to determine who is or is not permitted to cross its frontiers and settle within them, it cannot maintain its distinctive national character or preserve its political independence.

Consequently, if we value an international system in which political power is de-centralised, we should recognise that mass uncontrolled migration threatens these institutional and cultural foundations, and should therefore be curbed.

There is a strong and principled case for acknowledging the right of individual countries to control their own borders.

A second and related argument is that liberal democracies cannot preserve their sovereignty, cultural unity and liberties if they open their doors to too many migrants whose cultural beliefs and values are fundamentally at variance with those of a free society. This truth is particularly relevant to the question of mass migration from the Muslim world, especially within the context of the global spread of radical Islam.

Freedom to Critique Islam

As the annual reports of international human rights monitoring organisations like Freedom House regularly reveal, most of the Islamic world is blighted by religious intolerance, sectarian violence and political tyranny. Women largely remain second-class citizens, freedom of thought and speech is non-existent or heavily restricted, and the rights of religious and ethnic minorities are generally trampled underfoot.

Some two million Christians, for example, have been driven out of their Middle East homelands over the past 20 years. But the greatest victims of Muslim violence and intolerance have been and continue to be other Muslims. According to a 2007 study by Harvard-trained scholar and Middle East expert Daniel Pipes, and Professor Gunnar Heinsohn of the University of Bremen:

…some 11,000,000 Muslims have been violently killed since 1948, of which 35,000, or 0.3%, died during the sixty years of fighting Israel, or just 1 out of every 315 Muslim fatalities. In contrast, over 90% of the 11 million who perished were killed by fellow Muslims.¹

To highlight these facts, and the difficulties they pose for European countries struggling to control immigration from the Muslim world, is not to indulge in Islamophobia or to deny the fact that most Muslims currently living in Western countries live at peace with their neighbours and contribute to our societies. It is simply to draw attention to what is a genuine political and cultural problem widely acknowledged by liberal Muslims and human rights activists.

In March 2007, for example, a brave group of Muslim writers and intellectuals came together at a ‘Secular Muslim Summit’ in St Petersburg, Florida, USA, and issued a freedom manifesto called The St. Petersburg Declaration. This declared, amongst other things, that:

We see no colonialism, racism, or so-called ‘Islamophobia’ in submitting Islamic practices to criticism or condemnation when they violate human reason or rights…We demand the release of Islam from its captivity to the totalitarian ambitions of power-hungry men and the rigid structures of orthodoxy…²

Against this background, is it really ‘racist’ or illiberal for Western governments to seek to limit the entry into their countries of large waves of migrants? These will inevitably include a minority of Muslims who advocate Sharia law, do not recognise freedom of conscience or speech, treat women as inferior beings, and feel no loyalty or attachment to their host communities.

Liberal democracies cannot preserve their liberties if they open their doors to too many migrants whose cultural beliefs and values are fundamentally at variance with those of a free society.

Protecting Personal Freedom

It remains, finally, to observe that peace, harmony and wealth creation depend primarily on the voluntary co-operation and enterprise of private individuals, organisations, and businesses - that is, on all the myriad relationships, activities, and institutions of civil society outside the State.

Therefore, a peaceful and harmonious world requires that the coercive power of government be kept to a minimum, and maximum scope be given to personal initiative, effort and creativity.

That may seem a utopian dream, but such a world is more likely to become a reality (at least in part) if its existing free societies retain (or re-gain) their sovereignty and independence, trading freely with each other and co-operating in defensive alliances and the pursuit of common solutions to regional and global problems.

In such an international environment of competing tax systems, centres of power, and legal jurisdictions, connected to each other by free trade, travel and communication, private individuals and independent institutions will always have more room to breathe, and greater freedom of action, than if they are imprisoned within a world of regional power blocs – or, worst of all, some monopolistic system of global government.

Note Well

The single most important historical fact about the 20th Century is that more people (170 million of them) died in internal repression under tyrannical rulers and governments, than in all its wars combined.³

Bearing this in mind, no true friend of liberty should have any hesitation in opposing the misguided idealism of those who believe that abolishing national sovereignty will lead to a better world.

References

1 Click here for full details.
2 Click here to read the full text of the Declaration.
3 For fuller details, see: R.J. Rummel, 1996. Death by Government. Transaction Publishers, USA. Also The Black Book of Communism (Harvard University Press, USA, 1999).