The English-speaking century

These are compelling arguments, but I wonder if the author is focusing too much on language rather than freedom.

Perhaps they're intertwined. By that I mean, it's been the English speaking peoples who have, nurtured and exported freedom, in both socio, economic and political terms.

If Rome had used it mighty empire to do as much, the author might have titled his book "A History of the Latin-Speaking Peoples Since 0001" (only in Latin of course) or some such.

Of course Rome, and Greece and many others that came before the rise of Britain And America, were only precursors to what was to come. They had some pieces to the puzzle, but not the whole.

It took a while to analyze those classical civilizations to come up with what we have now. Fortunately our fore fathers had a very good classical education.

In another thousand years....

Although not exactly filled with hotbeds of conservatism, the list of top 20 universities in the world (as compiled by a Chinese university!) does highlight the highly successful Anglo-Saxon conspiracy for world domination :)

1 Harvard Univ Americas USA
2 Univ Cambridge Europe UK
3 Stanford Univ Americas USA
4 Univ California - Berkeley USA
5 Massachusetts Inst Tech (MIT) USA
6 California Inst Tech Americas USA
7 Columbia Univ Americas USA
8 Princeton Univ Americas USA
9 Univ Chicago Americas USA
10 Univ Oxford Europe UK
11 Yale Univ Americas USA
12 Cornell Univ Americas USA
13 Univ California - San Diego Americas USA
14 Univ California - Los Angeles Americas USA
15 Univ Pennsylvania USA
16 Univ Wisconsin - Madison USA
17 Univ Washington - Seattle USA
18 Univ California - San Francisco USA
19 Johns Hopkins Univ Americas USA
20 Tokyo Univ Japan

This is yet another reason why Europeans are so envious of the US and UK.

“The unimaginative, bourgeois, earth-bound English-speaking peoples,” he writes, “refuse to dream dreams, see visions and follow fanatics and demagogues, from whom they are protected by their liberal constitutions, free press, rationalist philosophy and representative institutions.” He quotes the British Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain in 1927: “our preference for the real and the practical, and the cold douche of common sense which we administer, are repugnant to the races who express themselves in a much more rhetorical form, who love broad generalizations and noble sentiments.”

. . .

the greatest danger to their continued imperium came not from their declared enemies without, but from vociferous critics within. One of the constants of their common culture’s freedom of expression has been its propensity to harbor a degree of internal censure that among many other peoples would probably prove fatal. As early as 1901, British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury was complaining: “England is, I believe, the only country in which, during a great war, eminent men write and speak as if they belonged to the enemy.” He wrote this about the critics of his policy on the Boer War, an encounter which Roberts demonstrates has ever since been perversely and unfairly blamed entirely on Britain. Winston Churchill was later to remark in a similar vein: “I think I can save the British Empire from anything—except the British.”

Across the Atlantic, the most virulent criticisms of America and Americans come from Americans themselves. Self-hatred, often through guilt over their supposed materialism and obsession with money, Roberts demonstrates, is an abiding defect. “The politics of the pre-emptive cringe is evident throughout the culture of the English-speaking peoples who in reality ought to be proud of the way that their citizenry can aspire to better themselves.”

The "protection from demagogues" of the English speaking peoples by the free press is, I fear, quite illusory. In fact the free press is itself demagogic; journalists promote fantastic claims about their own supposed "objectivity," and the "liberalism" and "progressivism" of their acolytes. Socialism is nothing more than a bunch of journalists in charge of a government and at liberty to impose the (il)logical conclusion of their second guessing criticism of the producers and protectors of society.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.