For 1000 years, British men, women and even children, have fought and died to move power from elites to people, to increase their liberty, and to ensure that those to whom they delegate political power can be booted out when they do something wrong or stupid. It started in 1014, with the Anglo-Saxon charter, went through Magna Carta in 1215, the Petition of Right, the Bill of Rights (1689), the Reform Acts and so on - each step protecting the basic rights of the people to run their own lives. Most gloriously, the British gave themselves and the world Common Law that comes up from the people - not down from the State.
The EU reverses all of that. It is a tyranny. European Laws are written by unelected officials. The EU is not just non-democratic. It is ANTI-democratic: its institutions are actually built to resist change by the will of the people. There is no way that the British can prevent a law from being imposed on them from the EU even if every single last one of them voted against European politicians that supported it.
Indeed, when the European Constitution was written, it was put to referendums in multiple countries. It was VOTED DOWN by every one... and then it was imposed anyway through the Lisbon Treaty. This is Tyranny in Black and White.
The EU President, Jean-Claude Junker, said it himself: "There can be no democratic choice against the European treaties." That's the thing with tyrants. In their utter self-righteousness, they tell you exactly what they are going to do to you.
If we vote to Remain, the British will be consenting -- even choosing -- to eliminate democratic representation and Common Law. In other words, we will be reversing the most important achievements of our culture. That is suicide, because it is giving up on the most fundamental shared values that have brought us all our freedoms and prosperity. It is also literally the suicide of the nation per se because it says that we no longer wish to be self-determined people.
It turns out Star Wars is wrong: liberty does not die with thunderous applause. It dies with forty million marks on forty million bits of paper. But die it does.
Today, people are dying in Europe because of a dogmatic commitment to a political project that exists primarily because of the egos of the politicians that benefit from it - and their banker friends (used advisedly: they really are friends) who fund them.
If we vote to leave, and say "No more. This is simply wrong and we will simply play no more part in it", then we draw a line, just as we did in 1939, that would give all of Europe the impetus to demand their most basic democratic and liberal rights too. The British could again save Europe from itself. How great a day would that be... How could the British nation show its love for Europe and its greatest values more perfectly than that?
All the arguments for Remaining in the EU are reminiscent of the argument made for slavery in the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries: "If we end slavery, then who will pick the cotton?" The answer is, of course, that it doesn't matter who will pick the bloody cotton. We will sort that out later. Today, we must fix the fundamental evil and choose freedom and self-determination.
As I mentioned, I am about to find out something fundamental about my native land. If this vote goes the wrong way, it will be sadly, awfully, and for all time, my "former country" . It will not even be anyone's country in any meaningful sense of the word...
This will simply be one of the happiest days of my life - or one of the saddest. I feel it in my stomach.