I read with great dismay the recent letter to the editor headlined, “Europe will ‘never be like America’” (North & South Brunswick Sentinel, July 7), which seemed to imply that the recent vote in Great Britain in favor of leaving the European Union was driven primarily by the same tribal instinct currently being promoted here in the United States by national figures such as Donald Trump, among others, and that this instinct is actually what keeps the United States from falling apart.
Aside from obvious problems with asserting that the United States has a “common language,” describing Great Britain as “our former motherland” and implying that the European Union differs from the United States in that it lacks a “common monetary system,” it seems to me misleading to disregard the numerous reports that the voters in the “Brexit” referendum were strongly divided along socioeconomic lines, with older voters and voters in more difficult economic situations much more likely than others to vote in favor of leaving the European Union.
It also seems misleading to reference the 1776 Declaration of Independence in this context without acknowledging that the driving force behind it was also primarily economic — most notably the American colonists’ anger against British support for the monopolistic practices of the East India Company (the Walmart of its day), which kept small businesses in the Colonies from thriving.
Kenneth J. O’Dowd
North Brunswick