Considering that we spend a lot of time here criticizing the legacy of a 19th-century English gentleman scientist and the ideas of his latter-day followers, linking intelligent design with Anglophile sentiments might not seem an obvious connection to make.

On the other hand, Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin’s compatriot and erstwhile colleague in articulating the theory of evolution, is the major forerunner of modern ID thinking. Historical associations aside, ID is very much a cross-Atlantic phenomenon, so preserving the U.K. as an independent nation in a special relationship with the U.S. resonates with many of us.

With such considerations in mind, and recalling his own formative intellectual experiences at Cambridge University, Stephen Meyer has issued a series of well-informed warnings about the stakes in Thursday’s Brexit vote. Meyer, director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture, did so first at National Review Online and The Stream, now again at The Stream.

This latest is a kind of summing up (“The EU Threatens America and Britain’s Alliance. Brexit Could Save It“):

The rise of the European Union as an increasingly socialist, utopian and anti-American political force represents a portentous geopolitical realignment at a time when the U.S. is facing military challenges from China and Russia and overt hostility from a worldwide network of Jihadists.

The European Union, like the United Nations, tends to indulge a lowest common denominator anti-American (and anti-Israeli) foreign policy. To cite just one example, the EU long refused to join the U.S. in identifying Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and still now only recognizes the military wing of Hezbollah on its list of terrorist organizations. The reflexive hostility to U.S. interests was also clearly evident in the EU reaction to the U.S. war effort in Iraq, in its arms sales to China, in its anemic response to the Russian annexation of Crimea, in its litigation against U.S. businesses and in the consistent rhetoric of its spokesmen.

In a still-dangerous world wracked by instability, the United States needs more allies, not fewer. Americans should welcome the prospect of their British cousins freeing themselves from the EU’s suffocating embrace.

Needless to say, ID has no stance on the European Union and its embrace, and we generally try hard to avoid expressing opinions on political issues of almost any kind. But independence of mind and resistance to intimidation and bullying are deeply engrained in the ID community. They would have to be.

Want to show your solidarity? Here’s an idea. Check out and support the important work of our U.K. friends over at the Centre for Intelligent Design.

Photo: Roosevelt and Churchill aboard the HMS Prince of Wales, by US Navy [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.