He said that he asked those listening to him to dedicate themselves to a concept that government of the people, by the people and for the people should not perish from the earth. And the reason I was there was I was standing in exactly the same spot where the greatest of all the presidents once stood on the 19 of November, 1863, and gave vent to the Gettysburg declaration, which echoes down the centuries.įORSYTH: A hundred and fifty years later, it's pretty damn apposite now.
Some years ago, I was standing on the edge of a graveyard in a little town in Pennsylvania, which you may have heard of. I'm going to tell you a very short anecdote. INSKEEP: So do you feel you're being ruled by some outside force or simply by mindless technocrats? I mean, who's the enemy here?įORSYTH: Well, the enemy, I think, is a system. It's an endorsing body that endorses the findings, decisions of the bureaucratic committee called the Commission. But it is very much a tame parliament - in other words, what I call bought and paid for.įORSYTH: It is not a law-creating Parliament like your Congress, nor, indeed, our House of Commons. STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Do you not have a vote on European leaders? You vote for a European Parliament, don't you?įORSYTH: There is a European Parliament. And that skepticism has now morphed into outright opposition due to, I think, what I regard as the arrogance and the wastefulness and the corruption and the incompetence of the Brussels government. He talked with our colleague Steve Inskeep about why he is planning to vote to quit the EU.įREDERICK FORSYTH: I've been skeptical of it for some years. He's the author of "The Day Of The Jackal," "The Odessa File" and many other classic thriller novels.
One voice in that camp is Frederick Forsyth. And they just don't think the economic benefits are real. Others, though, are fed up with regulations imposed by European bureaucrats. Many Brits want to remain part of the EU bloc for economic and cultural reasons. Voters in Great Britain cast their ballots Thursday on whether or not to stay in the European Union.