Thursday, March 28, 2024
Miles from the Mainstream
D. R. ZUKERMAN, proprietor

“Why Populist Now?”

July 5, 2016 --

Mr. Tanenhaus briefly reviewed eight books in his essay, but he did not mention “The Semisovereign People, by E.E. Schattschneider which has an insight (previously noted by LPR) to explain the current resurgence of populism: “It is remarkable how little opposition is aroused by general changes that affect us like the pressure of an atmosphere. How easily we become accustomed to changes that have become universalized!... Changes in the relative position of things are painful.”

As LPR sees it, we have a lot of “relative” changes in the U.S. that are economically painful, and, given the Brexit result, apparently this pain is also felt in Britain, vis-à-vis distant, and unaccountable, rule from European Union (EU) headquartered in Brussels.

The Wall Street Journal op-ed by Quentin Letts, June 25-26, “A Peasant Revolt Upends Britain’s Ruling Elite,” noted that “Many of those supporting continued membership in the EU were politicians, academics, lawyers, big-business leaders, church leaders and well-paid journalists.” No one in these groups was likely to have felt EU actions with any sort of pain.