Sixty Joyless De-Britished Uncrowned Commonpoor Years (1949-2009)

Elizabeth II Vice-Regal Saint: Remembering Paul Comtois (1895–1966), Lt.-Governor of Québec
Britannic Inheritance: Britain's proud legacy. What legacy will America leave?
English Debate: Daniel Hannan revels in making mince meat of Gordon Brown
Crazy Canucks: British MP banned from Canada on national security grounds
Happy St. Patrick's: Will Ireland ever return to the Commonwealth?
Voyage Through the Commonwealth: World cruise around the faded bits of pink.
No Queen for the Green: The Green Party of Canada votes to dispense with monarchy.
"Sir Edward Kennedy": The Queen has awarded the senator an honorary Knighthood.
President Obama: Hates Britain, but is keen to meet the Queen?
The Princess Royal: Princess Anne "outstanding" in Australia.
H.M.S. Victory: In 1744, 1000 sailors went down with a cargo of gold.
Queen's Commonwealth: Britain is letting the Commonwealth die.
Justice Kirby: His support for monarchy almost lost him appointment to High Court
Royal Military Academy: Sandhurst abolishes the Apostles' Creed.
Air Marshal Alec Maisner, R.I.P. Half Polish, half German and 100% British.
Cherie Blair: Not a vain, self regarding, shallow thinking viper after all.
Harry Potter: Celebrated rich kid thinks the Royals should not be celebrated
The Royal Jelly: A new king has been coronated, and his subjects are in a merry mood
Victoria Cross: Australian TROOPER MARK DONALDSON awarded the VC
Godless Buses: Royal Navy veteran, Ron Heather, refuses to drive his bus
Labour's Class War: To expunge those with the slightest pretensions to gentility
100 Top English Novels of All Time: The Essential Fictional Library
BIG BEN: Celebrating 150 Years of the Clock Tower

Friday 4 January 2008

England, a future?

If we are to navigate our way out of the dark and dreadful waters we find ourselves here in Britain, it is in articles and ideas such as the following that we see something of an encouraging light:

Britannia_Poster

'An Anglo-Alliance', John O'Sullivan, National Review

I had recently been reading a Heritage Foundation study by the American writer (and a friend), James C. Bennett, in which he argued that such forms of developing cooperation were especially characteristic of English-speaking, Common-Law countries such as, well, Britain, Australia, and the U.S. There was, he argued, a definite pattern to them.

Citizens, voluntary bodies, companies, lower levels of government form their own networks of useful cooperation for practical purposes across national boundaries. Over time these networks become denser, more complementary, more useful, and more self-conscious, creating what Bennett calls a “network civilization.” In time governments see the value of these networks and underpin them with new political links — trade deals, military pacts, reciprocal immigration agreements — creating what he calls a “network commonwealth.”

Such network commonwealths, which like Topsy, “just growed,” may end up being more integrated — psychologically and socially, as well as economically — than consciously-designed entities such as the European Union. If you want to know which countries the British feel really close to, check which ones they telephone on Christmas Day. (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.S…. but you knew that.) Moreover, network commonwealths don’t demand the surrender of sovereignty that is a feature of supra-national bodies like the EU.
Personally, in light of how the EU cleverly hands our shires over to the influence and rule of Leftist Germans and ex-Marxist Frenchmen, I have often been struck by the happy thought of handing a good dollop of our sovereignty over to John Howard's Australia, or stout-hearted Gibraltar, and having the similar arrangement produce quite contrary and far healthier results. It's too late for the former, of course, now the Labo(u)r party has swept the whole nation into something of a one-party state, but we live in hope. O'Sullivan's article is the latest in a sequence of them by numerous Anglosphere writers. It is worth a good look over for some much-needed encouragement, even in these days of Mohammed being our most popular boy's name, and Gordon being our Prime Minister.

4 comments:

mrcawp said...

I've no idea how to put the quote in a nice quote box, embarrassingly.

Beaverbrook said...

You simply highlight the section you want to quote, and then you hit the " symbol in the template boxes at the top.

Anonymous said...

All too pessimistic. Nice letter on Mark Steyn's website on the future of Britain a few weeks back:

http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/762/59/

Cato

Unknown said...

The Heritage paper John O'Sullivan mentioned can be found at http://www.heritage.org/bookstore/anglosphere.pdf, by the way.