AT YOUR OWN PERIL

Populist shock waves rattled through the elite in Germany after last Sunday's election in France led by Marine Le Pen's National Front party.

Since the EU's inception France and Germany have worked together trying to keep the far-flung EU intact. Some of the dismayed German elite are calling the election results a tragedy, a real threat to the stability of the EU. 

What many of these critics fail or refuse to understand is many of these voters don't want their history, their culture and their sovereignty washed away by Brussels bureaucrats. Globalization for all of its so-called advantages, though many will deny it, is about loss of sovereignty. 

To think there wouldn't be a reaction the first time things get dicey is naive and shortsighted. To think that people are going to go gently into that wasteland is just plain arrogant. It's elitism of the first degree. Germany is to France economically as oil is to water. The two don't really mix.

Still another sign of the problem is the disagreement in high places as to whom the next EU president will be.  Jean-Claude Juncker, once the leading candidate, comes with some baggage many view as unacceptable given the recent anti-EU vote.

As one reader wrote to the Financial Times, calling attention to the bad rap populism seems to be getting in the MSM, he listed the dictionary's definition of a populist as "someone who believes in the right and ability of the common people to play a major part in governing themselves."

He concluded with: "It is understandable that advocates of  Brussels centralist government should regard this as a term of abuse but why do you all continue to portray populism as some sort of extremist and undesirable activity?"

And here's your answer, folks. The worst nightmare of bureaucrats and the MSM is the fact that some people are actually paying attention. Fail to do so at your own peril.