DON’T EXPECT THE LEADERS TO BELIEVE THIS: The Problem with Brexit is the Leaders, not the Voters: Elites have pushed policies that go against the basic sense of identity, security, common sense, and morality of many citizens.

What is more significant—and more worrying about the Brexit vote—is that it demonstrates just how deep the gulf has become that separates governing elites and the people they are meant to govern.

Whether in Europe or the United States, our ruling elites have pushed policies—political, economic and social—that go beyond what sits well with the basic sense of identity, security, common sense, and morality of many citizens.

Failure to control immigration? Amnesty? Social benefits for non-citizens when citizens are suffering? Nation-building wars abroad instead of nation-building at home? Massive debt? Failures to confront terrorism effectively? Businesses moving jobs overseas? Recession in the countryside while the capital prospers? Rapid changes in gender politics? Bizarre contortions of politically correct speech, which shout down what many see as common sense? It has left many in the electorate angry and disenfranchised. And when those in the public who feel this way have objected or resisted, elites have doubled-down, rather than listen and adjust.

The rulers of the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States—take your pick—are so convinced that they know better than the masses, and that they are building a better world, that even in defeat, they are bemoaning how wrongly the masses have voted. And that is the looming danger for the future that the Brexit vote foreshadows: that elites will still not address the concerns of a large proportion of their own citizens.

They see us as, at best, livestock to be managed.