Victor Davis Hanson on solidarity and differences between US and Britain

Qus: In some articles, you allude to Anglo-American solidarity and differences. Do you agree the United States is more like an overseas nation spun-off from Britain similar to Canada, Australia, or New Zealand, or is it a more radical new nation that has drawn parts of its basis from British culture and institutions, but fundamentally different from the former mother country as it adopts a lot of classical Greek and Roman Republican institutions and values?

The answer from CDH:

"VDH: Well, we are much more similar of course to the U.K. and its epigones than to Europe in our common language, basis for law, and strong Protestant ethic. But America is also exceptional in being radically egalitarian in ways even the anti-U.K. elements in Australia or Canada are not quite. The seeds of a multiracial pluralistic society — anti-aristocratic and populist — were formed in the very beginning and have been evolving more radically so each decade since, to the wonderment and fear of the rest of the world.

We are like a snowball: our classical core was layered with the Christian tradition, then picked up the peculiar Anglo-Saxon strain of the West, and finally finished out with the veneer of our peculiar Founding Fathers and the frontier to make us unlike any civilization in history — one that is even emulated and envied by those who profess the greatest disdain. These past two weeks traveling around Europe have once again reminded me just how different we are from other nations — and how lucky we are to be so!"

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