Brexit and the United States

As the political season heats up, we are beginning to learn the extent to which the progressive left will stoop to get their way.

A massive batch of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee this week revealed an extensive, sophisticated and highly-orchestrated plot to undo the growing success of rogue candidate Bernie Sanders in favor of their anointed hopeful Hillary Clinton.

We'll surely hear more of the progressive plots in the days and weeks ahead. But what we have learned is illustrative -- the left will use every available avenue regardless of the ethics, to achieve their goals.

But in so many other ways, the American progressive left can't hold a candle to the European leftists who want to somehow ban future voting from those who supported Britain's exit from the European Union.

The United States is perhaps as polarized as at any point in our history. But Europe too is polarized primarily along the question of massive immigration that has brought havoc to that region.

The Brexit vote was the first showdown in that polarization. When the votes were counted, the Brits voted to leave the EU.

But the dissection of that historic vote has created a firestorm of opposition from those who favored remaining in the EU.

Older voters overwhelmingly voted to leave. Younger more progressive voters opted overwhelmingly to stay.

There is one other element to the British vote that may well parallel the November vote here.

The turnout of older more conservative voters was extremely large. The young progressives failed to turn out in large numbers as had been predicted.

But the kicker to the story came after the vote.

Members of the progressive left have actually proposed that older voters be banned from any future election.

The left there believes that the older and more conservative voters should be banned because they have less stake in the future.

These British leftists argue that since it's legal to take away driving privileges of older residents, it should also be legal to remove their voting privileges.

The WikiLeaks hacked email release clearly shows the left here is willing to do virtually anything to further their agenda.

It may just be a matter of time before our left adopts the European approach and suggests an older voting ban here.

If you think this is pure fantasy, think again.

Michael Jensen is the editor of the Standard Democrat in Sikeston, Missouri.