Posted on 03/30/2005 6:03:23 PM PST by quidnunc
Q: Conservative essayists have been tossing around the idea that America's natural allies are in a cultural alliance known as the Anglosphere: the U.S., U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and Canada (with perhaps India as an honorary member). I have also heard that Margaret Thatcher is somehow involved in the creation of a foundation to promote the idea. What are your thoughts?
Hanson: I’ve read bits and pieces of such doctrines, though not the book by, I think, James Bennett on the topic. At first glance, it makes sense. Australia, the UK, and the United States in the present war against the Islamicists and autocrats have pretty much shared values, reflecting the influence of the British and Scottish Enlightenment that were antithetical to both the French version and much of what later became German determinism and nihilism in Hegel and Nietzsche. British colonies were in much better shape than their French or Italian counterparts, and the stability of both the UK and the United States stands in dire contrast to most countries both in Europe and elsewhere during the 20th century.
But for some reason both Canada and New Zealand — perhaps because of their proximity to larger and more muscular America and Australia that protect the two and thus give them safe soapboxes to hector without consequences — have become Europhiles, statist, and deeply anti-American. So I don’t know how much we can say that we should prefer a New Zealand to a Poland, Italy, or Holland. And if John Kerry had won, no doubt France would be the new close American friend. In general, I have always trusted the UK and Australia above all other countries, and assume New Zealand and Canada sound crazy in their bitterness and envy.…
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at victorhanson.com ...
Washington – There are a few "loose cannons" in Canada who have disparaged the United States but that doesn't mean the country is anti-American, Ambassador Frank McKenna told a call-in television show Wednesday.
Appearing for a half-hour on C-SPAN, a political cable TV show, McKenna also attacked the "urban legend" that any terrorists involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks crossed into the U.S. from Canada and persistent views that the border is a major security problem.
"The northern border, and it's the only one I can speak about, is not terrorist friendly at all," McKenna said. "We've spent some $10 billion Cdn ourselves as a country to make sure the border is safe."
One caller from Arkansas listed a litany of grievances against Canada, from its refusal to participate in the Iraq war and the U.S. missile defence program to a former prime ministerial aide who called Bush a "moron" and an MP who called Americans "bastards."
"I don't really think Canada is too much without America," said the caller. "Without our trade and without our defence, you guys would be in a bad spot. It just disgusts me and makes me sick when I hear these things."
McKenna noted Americans have also said "some pretty nasty things about Canada," adding that it doesn't reflect badly on relations.
"We have offered support to each other in so many ways that transcend the narrow and parochial comments from a few individuals from time to time."
"We're family and we're friends and we're colleagues and we're allies," he said. "This is an enduring relationship."
-snip-
(Beth Gorham [Canadian Press] in The Ottawa Citizen, March 30, 2005)
To Read This Article Click Here
A new international forum of freedom-loving nations, to replace the UN, is long overdue.
The United States, Australia and Britain are the obvious founding members. After that, we'd have to pick and choose VERY carefully.
I used to like Hanson. However, lately I have found him stuffy and pompous. I know that someone will flame me for saying this, but Hansen is getting a bit full of himself
I say we ignore him & focus on Charles Colson instead. Mr. Colson is a humble and Christian man, who is a good writer to boot.
That is not just Hanson's opinion -- it is also the opinion of US military authorities.
More Americans have ancestors from Germany, Poland, Italy, Ireland, Scandinavia, and other parts of Eastern and Central Europe than from Britain.
What he has to say about the subversion and ruination of the American university system is alarming and enlightening. I am afraid a systemic cure is at least one, and probably two, generations away. This is not likely to be an era noted for its scholarship unless it is in the keeping of a few who still honor what it used to be. As for the rest - phrenologists and astrologers, interesting only to the most morbid of future cultural anthropologists.
Was there a "British and Scottish Enlightenment"? There was a Scottish Enlightenment for sure, but were there enough participants in England to justify talking of a British Enlightenment?
It's hard to say how large a proportion of Americans have some English ancestry (and Scottish or "Scotch-Irish" ancestry is something different)...probably a great many people have a little English ancestry that they are unaware of.
There has been so much intermarriage among people descended from pre-Revolutionary settlers that it would be hard in many cases to assign percentages (since some surnames are ambiguous and it's hard to track down every ancestor back in the 17th and 18th centuries).
Even among more recent immigrant groups there has been a lot of mixing (Irish with Italian, Irish with German, Slovene with German, English with Chinese, Jewish with Japanese, and so on).
But for some reason both Canada and New Zealand—perhaps because of their proximity to larger and more muscular America and Australia that protect the two and thus give them safe soapboxes to hector without consequences—have become Europhiles, statist, and deeply anti-American. So I don’t know how much we can say that we should prefer a New Zealand to a Poland, Italy, or Holland. And if John Kerry had won, no doubt France would be the new close American friend. In general, I have always trusted the UK and Australia above all other countries, and assume New Zealand and Canada sound crazy in their bitterness and envy. This is a long answer to say I am intrigued by the idea, but am not sure that some former commonwealth countries are really our friends or have much in common with us anymore.
Ping!
We?
Thank you very much, but I will go my way and please go your way,
well, you're partially right; not a flame, but a strong disagreement. VDH, along with Mark Steyn & Thomas Sowell, are our three Giants of the West.
Read his books, especially Carnage & Culture & Ripples of Battle (you may have already, and if so, forgive my presumption; but your note seems to me a judgement based more on his letters &/or response to angry readers columns - in which he is replying more "on the fly"); read his columns (I have saved about 90% of all his web-based work from over the past 30 months) - he has an incisive mind, cuts to the quick of any issue he takes on. I've only found disagreement with him on one point, & I can't remember what that was, it being so insignificant compared to the rest of his brilliant work.
And if you're still not convinced, see if you can get to view an interview done by CSpan on him (just after the release of MEXIFORNIA) - The man Speaks as he Writes as he Thinks: clearly, with humility and conviction.
One thing I noticed and like best about him is that just behind the particulars of his exposition (be it verbal or written) I always sense the essence of his classical training and wary acknowledgement/belief that Man (though capable of great accomplishments...) is yet a flawed creature. On this last, the best comparison I can draw to this, my self-admitted inadequate attempt to describe this aspect: it is like the thoughts/feelings I get when I hear the Jazz greats and find echoes of musicians (Miles can be heard in Coltrane, for example; listen to Freddie Hubbard and Clifford Brown isn't too far off...) in a particular piece.
Finally, the above no doubt may strike you as being a Paean to VDH - culpable soy. As I mentioned above; together with Steyn & Sowell, VDH writes such compelling and outstanding material that I have all sorts of AGAPE love for these three Patriots. But of the three, Mr. Hanson is, IMO, "Primero Entre Iguales".
CGVet58
PS: Colson, otoh, gets my head fuzzy for using too many words... ironic, isn't it? I "suffer" from the same writing flaw myself.
Thanks for the ping and I quite agree with VDH's assessment - he is spot on as usual. But I think there is a deeper root of anti-Americanism in New Zealand and Canada than VDH had thought, and this concerns with ethnicity and culture of New Zealand.
As an outsider coming to live and settle in this country, the thing that strikes myself most is the deference New Zealand gave and still gives to everything from the "Home Country" i.e. British Isles. New Zealand is a kin migrant country when compared to other former British colonies - almost 96% of all Euroepan New Zealanders (Pakehas or whites) are pure British and Irish ancestry (with Irish Catholics accounting for less than 16% of all British/Irish descendent Kiwis). An important factor to consider for British/Irish ancestry New Zealand is their migrant ancestors were all lower middle class that were not quite the poor, huddled masses, wretched refuse that characterize migrants to Australia the US, and Canada - it was true they yearned for a better life, but they were going not to "burn the bridges" with Britain and in many cases some were actually thinking they were moving for the Empire. In addition, New Zealand achieved mass literacy early among all industrialized countries - an essential for mass acceptance of intellectual goods and fads.
Because of these factors New Zealand regards itself as the Antipodian extension of Mother Britain and looks itself through the British Empire, and essentially it has no time for American culture before 1940 and after 1985 (The current New Zealand accepts things like mass shopping centres/malls, jeans, McD, Hollywood, Microsoft software with a gusto, but so is Mother Britain and everyone on the "Old continent", but the secondary layers of American cultures like Mark Twain or Ralph Waldo Emerson are still not welcome in NZ). It always sees itself as having a superior culture than the Americans because "we British are the best in the world". The consequence of this is a constant stream of anti-Americanism right from the start. Befroe WWII it was the classical snobbery from the British Establishment like the Old Right - New Zealanders absorbed this from the books and news articles they read carried over from Mother Britain. They, as subjects of the Empire, looked down on brash America at that time and the anti-Americanism is a snobbery. I have read accounts that one of the early Maori-descent scholars was refused NZ government research grants in the 1930s just because he wanted to conduct a research on Pacific and Maori culture in conjunction with Harvard rather than Oxbridge!
After WWII it is apparent that the US is an ascending power and the British Empire was no more. New Zealanders took it hard and particularly after 1973 when Britsh became a member of the Euroepan Economic Community, persuror to today's EU. New Zealanders took it hard and also in response to the national identity crisis, they have not surprisingly adopted the "progressive" leftismn and just like the Old British Right, this New Left is anti-Americanism as well, but it is now in the name of leftist ideology. The rest, as they say, is history, and Americans are familiar with the usual leftist ideology flourishing in NZ today.
But deep down the facade of New Zealand's pretension to be an enlightened "progressive" tolerant paradise it must be understood that the old racial factor still matters - mainstream New Zealand still accepts the old idea of assimilation to the point of complete submersion into British/Anglo/Irish culture. Completely non-British migrants, like Italians, Koreans, or Taiwanese, I have observed, have the hardest hurdle to integrate into NZ life. We fared better as Hong Kong Chinese (HK being former British colony) but there is a sense New Zealand is still not "quite there" when it comes to accepting everyone not British/Irish or Maori - and certainly not migrants that exhol free-market and praise the United States! Ironically, the same New Zealanders would be the most whining when they travel to the US, and they would demand Americans to be "multi-cultural to the Democrats standards" for the case of migrants to the US. Hypocrisy to the finest degree.
A level of similarity goes for Canada. Of course groups like German and Ukrainian migrant descendents predominate in regions like Saskatcheswan or Alberta but Canada has always been characterized as bi-cultural - English Canada and French Canada. For English Canada, it was only Ontario that mattered, and English Canada's political powerhouses were all British descents and the big Ontarian cities like Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa were exclusively British/Irish descent right up to WWII. It is still the same results - the cultural narrative is in step with British establishment and Canada was anti-US at the time just like it is today - the difference is it was Old British/Empire Right rather than today's case of post-modern Left.
This perhaps sums up what I think of New Zealand's roots of anti-Americanism so far. I will perhaps add more to this below if there are anything important missing.
In a sense it is true. When you look at America's whites there are fewer last names like Wood, Horner, Bailey while I have seen a lot more of Roosevelt, Klemm, Bernstein, Soprano etc which are extremely rare in New Zealand's case. A lot of you also look "less British" and more continental Euroepans to myself. But in New Zealand Irish descents are included under "British descents" so the figures for the US would be a lot higher for predominantly British descended Americans.
I think I read somewhere that predominantly German descendent Americans are around 28% of US populations, while British (excluding Irish) descents number only 17% of US populations. In New Zealand's case the 2001 census put British/Irish descent New Zealanders to be 80% - British 69% while the other 11% being Irish (and 83% of New Zealanders are Euroepans by ethnicity i.e. 96% of whites in NZ are British/Irish descendents). It will be interesting to know the figure for combined British/Irish descent Americans.
. The difference is fundamental. If you aren't able to see it, you are, in Hanson's words, as passionate and opinionate as Michael "The Lard Ass Rihfenstal" Moore is - and equally infantile in knowledge.
But for some reason both Canada and New Zealand—perhaps because of their proximity to larger and more muscular America and Australia that protect the two and thus give them safe soapboxes to hector without consequences—have become Europhiles, statist, and deeply anti-American. So I don’t know how much we can say that we should prefer a New Zealand to a Poland, Italy, or Holland. And if John Kerry had won, no doubt France would be the new close American friend. In general, I have always trusted the UK and Australia above all other countries, and assume New Zealand and Canada sound crazy in their bitterness and envy. This is a long answer to say I am intrigued by the idea, but am not sure that some former commonwealth countries are really our friends or have much in common with us anymore.
Another ping! Also have a look at my post No. 14.
<< The United States, Australia and Britain are the obvious founding members. >>
Nope.
Not until the Poms pull their paddles from the piled poo of the Euro-peons' pathologically-hesperophobic Neo-Soviet. If and when they do that they MIGHT be up for consideration.
Until then it's the United States, Australia and Israel that are only obvious members.
My wife's parents both have French surnames. However, after some genealogical research, it turned out that she has more English blood (and German blood) than French.
-ccm
Hanson has every right to be full of himself .He is a massively brilliant thinker and writer. He blows away everyone out there..Man is so on the money as always.
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