From: Hannan, Daniel. Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World. Kindle sample. British and American historians point to a series of events that had brought their ancestors ineluctably toward modernity and greatness: the establishment of the common law, Magna Carta, the Grand Remonstrance, the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution , the scientific revolution, the abolition of slavery. During the twentieth century, such flag-waving views of the past became unfashionable. As Marxism, anti-colonialism, and multiculturalism came into vogue, historiography altered. The writers who had celebrated the great political milestones of Anglo-American history were charged with having been complacent, culturally arrogant, and, worst of all, anachronistic. One popular pamphlet published in 1775 defined the American Patriots’ creed as resting on the principles of Whigs before the Glorious Revolution of 1688. What were these principles? The pamphleteer listed them concisely. Lawmakers should be directly accountable through the ballot box; the executive should be controlled by the legislature; taxes should not be levied, nor laws passed, without popular consent; the individual should be free from arbitrary punishment or confiscation; decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affected; power should be dispersed; no one, not even the head of state, should be above the law; property rights should be secure; disputes should be arbitrated by independent magistrates; freedom of speech, religion, and assembly should be guaranteed. Having developed and exported the most successful system of government known to the human race, the English-speaking peoples are tiptoeing away from their own creation. Britain’s intellectual elites see Anglosphere values as an impediment to assimilation into a European polity. In every English-speaking country, a multiculturalist establishment hangs back from teaching children that they are heirs to a unique political heritage. Laws are now regularly made without parliamentary approval, taking the form of executive decrees. Taxes are levied without popular consent, as during the bank bailouts. Power is shifting from local, provincial, or state level to national capitals, and from elected representatives to standing bureaucracies. State spending has grown to a level that earlier Anglosphere populations would have regarded as a cause for popular revolt. If we want to understand why the Anglosphere hegemony is failing, we need look no further. The owl of Minerva, wrote Hegel, spreads its wings only with the gathering of the dusk. As the sun sets on the Anglosphere imperium, we understand with sudden clarity what it is that we stand to lose. What raised the English-speaking peoples to greatness was not a magical property in their DNA, nor a special richness in their earth, nor yet an advantage in military technology, but their political and legal institutions. The happiness of the human race depends, more than anyone likes to admit, on the survival and success of those institutions. As a devolved network of allied nations, the Anglosphere might yet exert its benign pull on the rest of this century. Without that pull, future looks altogether grayer and colder.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Feb 2014 01:26:10 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015