EU falling?

Brexit spreads across Europe: Italy, France, Holland and Denmark all call for referendums

EU faces Brexit 'contagion' as populist parties across Europe call for referendums

Like the Euroskeptics of Britain, the populists across Europe have three defining features.

They are against mass immigration, disenamored of Islam, and for exit from the EU.

The former issue is the biggest thing driving the movement, everywhere, though the EU's infamous "democracy deficit" and its remote bureaucracy have not helped.

On the whole, they tend also to be pro-Israeli and, in varying degrees and with exceptions, anti-Welfare State.

Globonewsies are flipping out.

Should I turn on the TV, I wonder, to watch the train-wreck coverage?

On the web, several stories indicate that the white working class - people who continue to rely on and support British Social Democracy and were before the vote led to believe Brexit would free over 350 million additional pounds a week to be spent on the cash-strapped NHS - contributed much to the victory of Leave over Remain, despite the nearly unanimous support in the Labor Party and the support of its leader for Remain.

And many others have noted how the voters who supported Brexit are similar to the American voters who support Donald Trump.

As is customary in the American press, where the right interprets support for Trump as support for the conservative project to abolish social democracy and the left interprets it as racism and bigotry, support for Brexit is described by the left as basically racist bigotry and by the right as rejection of bureaucracy and the Welfare State.

The pro-EU left says the EU is crucial for the stability and security of Europe, while the anti-EU right points to NATO as the force that provides those things and has done so since just after WW2.

Panic by some who see the EU as an engine for coercing implementation of social liberalism, and fear loss of that engine.

Liberals and other pro-EU types along with the major media are screaming bloody murder, the sky is falling, evil is triumphant, the world will burst into warfare, the economy will collapse, and so on.

And if the EU does a complete crackup the security and economic costs will really be considerable.

American conservatives cheerfully emphasize the persistent significance of democracy in nation states.