The Rights of Englishmen

There were lots of issues leading up to the American Revolution, but they mostly revolved around King George III. Britain had a long history of gradually shifting power from the king to Parliament, and George was an old fashioned kind of guy who wanted to reverse that trend. He met some resistance in England, so he thought he might have better luck with the Colonies, which he considered to be vassal states. The Colonies, on the other hand, were accustomed to a certain amount of autonomy and considered themselves to be as good as any English province. When George tried to shorten their chain, the colonists insisted that they were entitled to the rights of Englishmen. After arguing about that for years, the colonists started drifting towards the notion of full independence. There were some cooler heads in Parliament who tried to get George to back off a little, but he didn't listen to them. The more he jerked on the colonists' chain, the more they jerked back, and one thing led to another.

According to Wiki, the EU kind of evolved from the European Economic Community, aka Common Market. Britain joined the EEC in 1973, and they conducted a referendum in 1975 to see if their citizens wanted to remain in it. The referendum passed, but many Brits were not happy about it, and still aren't. By 1993, due to a number of treaties that had been negotiated over the years, the EEC had evolved into a political union as well as an economic one, and its name was changed to European Union in recognition of that. It's pretty complicated but, as near as I can make out, all the member states still have their own governments, but the EU also has its own parliament, its own court system, and a ruling council that is made up of representatives from each member state. The EU courts have ruled that, if there is a conflict between EU law and the law of any member state, the EU law is supreme. While this isn't exactly tyranny, I can see how it might piss some people off. Britain and all the other member states have given up some of their sovereignty, and now some of their citizens want it back. There are exit movements in several other EU countries, Britain is just the first one to have brought it to a vote.

I don't think any area within a hundred miles of Beaglesonia could be considered urban. We have one incorporated city, Cheboygan, in our county, and neighboring Emmet County has one, Petoskey, about the same size, between 5,000 and 6,000 people, small towns by any standard. Then there is Mackinaw City, which straddles the border between the two counties. Despite its name, Mackinaw City is actually incorporated as a village. There are several other incorporated villages in the two counties, and then there are lots of unincorporated communities where the houses are spaced within a stone's throw of each other. These places all have names, and a few of them have their own zip codes, but they are still unincorporated and likely to remain so forever. Whatever local governance is needed is provided by either their townships or homeowner's associations. I don't think that any new municipalities have been incorporated in the last century or so, even though the population of the two counties has greatly increased in that time. Of course Cheboygan County, Michigan is nothing like Cook County, Illinois, which is why I live here. 

I know that lots of people like to speculate about that stuff, but I hardly give any thought to apocalyptic scenarios anymore. I think I got that way from the Cuban Missile Crisis of the early '60s. I had grown up living under the shadow of nuclear annihilation, but I don't remember worrying about it, I just accepted it as fact of life. Then, when the Cuban Missile Crisis broke, I heard a guy on the radio say that we would all be dead within 24 hours. I understand that some of my high school classmates got drunk and/or pregnant that night, but all I did was blow off my algebra homework assignment. My algebra class was late in the day but, when the bombs hadn't fallen by noon, I panicked and did my homework during lunch period. It's a good thing I did, because those bombs never did fall, and I narrowly escaped getting in trouble with my algebra teacher. What I learned from this was to be self reliant and not count on anybody else to solve my problems for me.