Folks would vote en masse on clearly articulated issues, and if leaders took note of it, there'd be less calamity.
Right now the Executive doesn't really care what Europeans think, because they assume they know best, it's appallingly clear. It happens everywhere there aren't proper checks and balances.
FYI the treaty of Lisbon was shot down in a few referendums, and the leaders decided to go forward with some rather fundamental, 'constitutional' issues anyhow. As a result of failed referendums in some countries, they decided to skip referendums in the remaining countries because of the high likelihood of failure. Instead of truly reconsidering the legislation, they just went ahead and passed it. And now they are paying the price.
As someone else pointed out, the EU is boring infrastructure: people don't care about power and sewers until they stop working.
I'm not convinced that people intrinsically "care" about migration, rather that they have a set of material problems (employment, wages, housing, public services) and have been told to blame migration for them.
And to the extent that they do care, how can they care about the "flow" rate of migration, which is impossible to see except in statistics; what they care about is the "level". This is far scarier because that's how you get ethnic cleansing.
>I'm not convinced that people intrinsically "care" about migration
Lots of people do. For many people it genuinely is about maintaining the nations their ancestors spent hundreds of generations creating. Nations, not states. Somalians can never be part of the German nation, no matter how long they have citizenship in the state called Germany. You can't spend decades telling white people how evil colonialism was, and then say "by the way you have to allow your native land to be colonized and if you say no you are an evil racist and we'll throw you in jail". People have a natural instinct for fairness.
Your idea of nations "their ancestors spent hundreds of generations creating is historical fiction. A hundred generations is around 2500 years. Look at some maps of migrations in Europe over the last 2500 years, and the idea of people mostly staying put over that time frame is demolished.
Modern English is a West Germanic language, coming from the Germanic tribes that pushed aside the Celts, for example. The reason it doesn't sound more like Dutch and German being the Norman invasion and subsequent exchange with the French. Modern German on the other hand isn't closer to Dutch or Danish than it is because High German from the South has supplanted the Low German native to Northern Germany, parts of the Netherlands and Southern Denmark as political shifted in the last 100-200 years.
And from the UK at least, it is clear that the people who care most are the people who have the least experience with it.
>the idea of people mostly staying put over that time frame is demolished.
That idea was never put forward. Again, a nation is a people.
>It's about fear, where origin is a proxy.
It seems rather arrogant to tell other people what their beliefs are and what they are about. Would you tell Indians that they were evil racists for being "afraid" of the British invaders? That they just don't have enough experience, and you, being so much more wise and experienced know better than they do, and should be allowed to dictate to them who is allowed in their country?
> That idea was never put forward. Again, a nation is a people.
"A nation is a people" does not say anything. It's a totally empty phrase given that the notion of what makes up "a people" is totally fluid, and changes dramatically over time, as I pointed out. You won't find anyone in England who consider themselves Germans, for example, but most of them are descendants predominantly of Germanic tribes. And despite "British" as an identity is even more of a fabrication you'll find plenty of people who see no distinction between English and Scottish people, for example
And it changes rapidly: Even surveys of what nationality people in the UK consider themselves to have shows massive shifts over even the last 30-40 years. These things can not be measured meaningfully in "hundreds of generations" - they often change dramatically in as little of 1-2 generations.
The irony of what one finds in such surveys is that contrary to your earlier attempt to paint this as something lasting, families of recent immigrants to the UK tend to show much stronger feelings of national belonging than "ethnic British" people, and are largely accepted as British. Unsurprisingly given how much of the culture of many of these immigrants have become an integral part of British culture.
> It seems rather arrogant to tell other people what their beliefs are and what they are about.
Not when there is plenty of evidence.
> Would you tell Indians that they were evil racists for being "afraid" of the British invaders?
I wouldn't tell anyone they're racist for being afraid of people who are actually invading and taking their country. That you even try to equate this with immigration says enough.
> dictate to them who is allowed in their country?
You're the one assuming I am suggesting I should have a right to dictate to them. People are free to be xenophobes and bigots if they wish. That does not make them any less so, and I'm equally free to call them out on it.
> being so much more wise and experienced know better than they do
In terms of the UK for example, as I pointed out, it is not at all about my experience. It's about the fact that anti-immigration sentiments linked to opposition to the EU was strongest in the areas where people have the least personal experience with it, and in fact opposition to the EU in general was largest in areas with the least immigration. If they had actual experience of it, I'd have slightly more sympathy for their position, but most of this xenophobia is linked to lack of experience.
Living in London, as an immigrant, the vast majority of British people I meet are equally exasperated over the xenophobia in "Middle England", because most people here know immigrants, work with immigrants, or are in relationships with immigrants.
""A nation is a people" does not say anything. It's a totally empty phrase"
No, this is absurdly false.
If you visit different nations, you find different kinds of cultures.
This is obvious.
The very words 'culture' and 'ethnicity' exist in every language to describe such a thing.
That they are 'fluid', of course, does not deny their existence.
I understand that we want to be wary of ethnocentrism, and hyper-nationalism, but the denial that there is such a thing as ethnic groups that constitute 'people' who have a shared culture and history is just as repulsive.
"People are free to be xenophobes and bigots if they wish"
This is childish, anti-intellectual rhetoric.
The mere observance that there is such a thing as different groups of people on the planet does not constitute any, even remote form of negative connotation.
Finally - the position that 'those with less exposure to migrants in the UK voted for Brexit, ergo, ignorance' is not necessarily true. Those in highly cosmopolitan areas tend to identify less with the groups around them, whereas those in areas with lower rates of migration, are more likely to identify as part of an ethnic group to which they belong.
I live as a tiny English speaking minority in a fully Quebecois part of Quebec. I'm only one of a handful of people in my area that speaks English as a first language - moreover, the area is not multicultural at all: it's very much Quebecois. The coherence of this community is obvious and palpable to anyone. My family members (English) notice it immediately when they visit. In fact - we 'English Canadians' have a very globalized culture, much less affinity for one another to the point wherein the level of social cohesion among the Quebecois seems strange to us. Sadly - this also implies that it's 'harder to break into' this culture, and that they are less successful with integration.
Whatever the Quebecois are, for better or worse - they are absolutely 'a people' of some kind. Because it's so gloriously obvious to anyone without an ideological bone to pick, one might have to consider how one could possibly arrive at the conclusion that the sky is not blue when it obviously is? That's the interesting question.
A mere 10km drive from my home to the English speaking area yields obvious, quantifiable and measurable differences. A child would see the difference. That's literally what 'diversity' is.
There are nations of people in the world. It doesn't make some better than others and it doesn't deny our common humanity. Of course there are nary any 'hard boundaries' between cultures, and as you say - it's all fluid. But they still exist, and it absolutely must be part of the equation as we move forward, otherwise there'll be calamity.
It was attempts to align the borders of Germany the state with the German-speaking areas of Europe that got us into this mess, with the annexation of the Sudetenland.
The borders among 'German speaking people' have been nutbars since time immemorial, frankly the concept of a fairly federalized Germany is a very, very new thing in history.
But they care about things like migration.
Folks would vote en masse on clearly articulated issues, and if leaders took note of it, there'd be less calamity.
Right now the Executive doesn't really care what Europeans think, because they assume they know best, it's appallingly clear. It happens everywhere there aren't proper checks and balances.
FYI the treaty of Lisbon was shot down in a few referendums, and the leaders decided to go forward with some rather fundamental, 'constitutional' issues anyhow. As a result of failed referendums in some countries, they decided to skip referendums in the remaining countries because of the high likelihood of failure. Instead of truly reconsidering the legislation, they just went ahead and passed it. And now they are paying the price.