And so, after all, Brexit has happened. On Jan. 31, at 11 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time, five hours ahead of my desk in Washington, Britain quit the European Union.
For those of us who desired and sometimes sought this outcome for two or three decades, it is a thrill. But it is also a somber moment, undeniably poignant. The sight of European Parliament members mournfully singing “Auld Lang Syne” after approving Britain’s exit deal was perhaps a little ridiculous, but it was also genuinely sad. There was a shared understanding that this was an inflection point of pound seriousness.
Most of my relatives and good friends in Britain find Brexit a cause of mild or deep gloom. One recently quoted a Remainer who felt he’d lost his country. That’s a dispiriting feeling. I know, for I experienced it on and off for years as Britain seemed to be disappearing inexorably into the maw of the EU oligarchy. Love of country can be a strong emotion, and to see a thing one loves destroyed provokes occasional rage and abiding sadness.
I never entirely gave up hope, and so kept my British passport. But in the run-up to the 2016 referendum, I thought I might give it up if voters squandered the chance to retrieve their sovereignty and agreed that Britain should dwindle into a province of the EU superstate.
Americans seem instinctively to understand the Brexit urge. U.S. history is couched in a narrative about freedom, and animated by principles of self-government. The willingness of European peoples to abandon not just the things that made them different from each other but also the freedom to govern themselves is alien and baffling to many Americans, who prize those blessings above all others.
The first of those freedoms, and a prerequisite of all the others, is freedom of speech, and that is the subject of our cover story this week. Big tech companies used to boast that they were champions of free speech but have swiftly become the opposite, dismissing free speech, literally, as a joke and instead setting themselves up as censors. And the people and views they censor are conservative. Author Peter Hasson writes about the big tech bullies who are silencing dissent and reshaping politics.
The March for Life came to Washington for the 47th time in January, but this year was a first in two ways. Donald Trump became the first president to attend in person. And for the first time, the pro-life movement can be said to be cool. Nic Rowan reports on a new spring in the step of marchers on the biggest human rights demonstration in the world.
Jack Butler pays an affectionate farewell to the Washington swamp, Becket Adams examines why the political media suddenly think satire is a threat to democracy, and Ben Sixsmith realizes that politics has taken over where pro wrestling left off. Coleman Hughes reviews a new history of racial preferences, and Anthony Paletta visits the United Nations’s striking art collection.
