Why Anglos Lead

This article is total BS, of course, but I thought it was interesting as an insight into the thinking of the racist right. I offer it to you on that basis alone.

OVER THE last few years, due to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, many commentators have discerned the emergence of a new American empire. Some critics blame the Bush Administration, arguing that, but for Bush, there would be no crisis over American "unilateralism" or "hegemony." Others blame the end of the Cold War for "unleashing" America on the world.

Actually, American pre-eminence extends much further back--to World War II or before. It really continues a British primacy that dated back at least to 1815. During the 20th century, Germany, Japan and Soviet Russia challenged the Anglo ascendancy, but they were turned back. So today the world order bears a remarkable resemblance to the late Victorian era. Now as then, the world is globalizing, and English is its lingua franca. The United States has merely supplanted Britain as the leading power.

American primacy is not an accident of this or that administration. It reflects the special capacity of English-speaking countries to lead the world order. These "Anglo nations", or the "Anglos" as I will call them, include Britain and the chief territories that were settled initially from Britain--pre-eminently the United States but also Australia, Canada and New Zealand. What makes a country Anglo is that its original settler population came mainly from Britain. So even though a minority of Americans today have British roots, they inherit a political culture initially formed by the British. Some other countries that Britain ruled, such as India or South Africa, are not Anglo in this sense because British settlers never formed the bulk of their populations. They may be English-speaking, and their public institutions have British roots, but British culture did not form the society as it did in the Anglo countries.

The original link is

http://www.nationalinterest.org/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications::Article&mid=1ABA92EFCD8348688A4EBEB3D69D33EF&tier=4&id=F8A686FC861D4DE99CE3A08477BAF970


I welcome your comments. I have already made mine.

author means the fact that is the richest, and militarily the strongest, country in the world. That kind of Prue-eminence.

strongest, militarily. We just blow more money on military weapons than the rest of the world combined, but try stacking up our army to that of China and in shear numbers, we lose. Besides, we're not 'winning' the 'war on terror' nor in Iraq. What the author is spewing is American hubris.

See, this is the kind of comment that I was looking for. Still the US has more influence on world events than China does,IMO.

For a century after the end of the Napoleonic Wars (perhaps the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805) the British Empire ruled the waves so to speak and its principles and cultural values were the dominant ones. Its dominions and former colonies copied these values, and sometimes took them further. Former colonies like India, Malaysia, Hong Kong, did far far better than the Belgian Congo, French West Africa, to name a few places.

It was these countries that resisted the temptation of fascism, Nazism and communism. They were the ones that liberated Europe twice (three times if you count the Cold War). Of the top 20 GDP-per capita jurisdictions, 9 are former/existing British colonies

http://www.photius.com/rankings/economy/gdp_per_capita_2004_0.html

Now its an American dominated world, and may well be for much of this century. Of the two big countries on the horizon - China and India - India also has shared "anglo" values. I don't think its the people, I think its the values, education and culture.

Anyone who knows world history has seen this crap before. The Romans and the Persians thought the same stuff, and so did the Mongols and Turks, the Han Chinese, the Moguls proper, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Germans, the Russians, the Austrians, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Zulu, the Incas, the Iroquois, the rulers of ancient Zimbabwe, and so on.

The only fun thing about this article is that it evades racism outright and turns into propaganda for colonial mercantilism, as if that were somehow a British invention. If in the 16th and 17th centuries the Netherlands or France or Spain had simply had a lot more trees from which to build ships and as many people to properly man them as the British did, things would have gone rather differently.

You are correct Mr. Lexingtonian, its a historical fallacy to believe nothing ever changes, and what make you successful yesterday will make you impervious to threats tomorrow. Arrogance like that always comes before the fall.