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| Mark Steyn reviews The History of the English-Speaking Peoples | |
| 2007-02-28 | |
Of the three great global conflicts of the 20th century - the First, Second and Cold Wars - who called it right every time? Germany: one out of three. Italy: two out of three. France: well, let's not even go there. For a perfect hat trick, there are only those nations on the front of Roberts' London edition [The UK, the US, Australia, and Canada]. There is a distinction between the "English-speaking peoples" and the rest of "the west", and at key moments in human history that distinction has proved critical. Europe has given us plenty of nice paintings and agreeable symphonies, French wine and Italian actresses and whatnot, but, for all our fetishization of multiculturalism, you can't help noticing that when it comes to the notion of a political west - a sustained commitment to individual liberty - the historical record looks a lot more unicultural and indeed (given that three of the four nations on that cover share the same head of state) uniregal. Roberts provides a good summation:Although they are ancient states, many of the constitutions of European countries are very young indeed, far younger than those of Britain's constitutional monarchy (1688-9), America's democracy (1776), Canada's responsible government (1848) or even Australia's Federation (1900). By contrast, the French Constitution establishing its Fifth Republic was only promulgated in 1958, Germany's Basic Law was passed in 1949... Italy's was adopted in 1949... and Portugal's became law in 1976... Or, as I like to say, the US Constitution is not only older than the French, German, Italian and Spanish constitutions, it's older than all of them put together. The entire political class of Portugal, Spain and Greece spent their childhoods living under dictatorships. So did Jacques Chirac and Angela Merkel. We forget how rare in this world is sustained peaceful constitutional evolution and, to be honest, it's kinda hard to remember when the principal political party of our own demented Dominion peddles non-stop Canada Day smiley-face banalities about how "we are such a young country" (Paul Martin) - which, aside from being obvious tripe, gives us the faintly creepy air of a professional virgin. "The English-speaking peoples did not invent the ideas that nonetheless made them great," concedes Roberts. "The Romans invented the concept of Law, the Greeks one-freeman-one-vote democracy, the Dutch modern capitalism..." But it is the English world that has managed to make these blessings seemingly permanent features of the landscape. As Roberts sees it, the story of the 20th century is one of anglophone democracies defending the planet against what he calls four assaults: "The First Assault: Prussian Militarism 1914-17", "The Second Assault: Fascist Aggression 1931-39", "The Third Assault: Soviet Communism 1945-49" and "The Fourth Assault: Islamicist Terrorism and its De Facto Allies". In between come periods of complacency ("The Wasted Breathing Space: 1990-11 September 2001") and loss of faith ("The Long, Dismal, Drawling Tides: The 1970s"), but in the end the good guys always step up to the plate.
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| Posted by:Mike |
| #5 KBK: If you click the link at the bottom it will lead you to an amusing review of d'Souza's book: What D'Souza says about Muslim views is, in my view, accurate - they do see the US as Satan (in the guise of say, Liz Hurley dressed in a suitably skimpy costume) luring them towards perversion. The Europeans are far more libertine, but the pull of American culture is far greater because of the accessibility of its pop culture, the undeniable success of its consumer brands and its technological dominance - success is extremely seductive. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2007-02-28 21:36 |
| #4 If you click the link at the bottom it will lead you to an amusing review of d'Souza's book: But D’Souza identifies a much more widespread and dangerous form of “ethnocentrism” in the photographs from Abu Ghraib. For hysterical liberal ninnies, this was (and remains) a shocking expose of torture. The question for western commentators was very simple: How far up the chain of command did authorization for these revolting techniques go? Faced with a guy being led around on a dog collar with female panties on his head and a banana sticking out his butt, the anti-war crowd wanted to know whether the Attorney-General had issued a memo on the use of tropical fruits in interrogation techniques and whether there was a smoking-gun invoice at the Pentagon revealing massive bulk purchases from Victoria’s Secret. The larkier conservative commentators scoffed: Anyone who’d spent ten minutes in an Iraqi – or Syrian or Egyptian or Saudi or Yemeni – prison would not regard the Abu Ghraib scenes as torture. We scoffers were only half-right. In the Arab world, the “shocking expose of torture” was shocking not because it was torture but because it exposed something worse. “Most Muslims did not view it as a torture story at all,” writes D’Souza. “Abu Ghraib was one of Saddam Hussein’s most notorious prisons. Tens of thousands of people were held there and many were subject to indescribable beatings and abuse. Twice a week, there were hangings outside the prison. This is what Muslims mean by torture, not the lights-on, lights-off version that American liberals are so indignant about… The main focus of Islamic disgust was what Muslims perceived as extreme sexual perversion.” Saddam’s guards pulling out your fingernails is torture. But a nobody like Lynndie England, a female soldier and adulteress, boozed up and knocked up and posing naked for photographs with paralytic casual acquaintances and making men masturbate in front of her and e-mailing the photographs all over the Internet, all that to Muslims that represented something far darker than a psycho dictator: “It was just for fun,” reported Paul Arthur, the military investigator who interviewed Private England. “They didn’t think it was a big deal.” That’s the point: a society whose army recruits drunken pregnant adulterous fornicating exhibitionist women, and it’s no big deal. When the Ayatollah Khomeini dubbed America “the Great Satan”, he was making a far more perceptive critique than Canadians and Europeans who dismiss the US as the Great Moron. Satan is a seducer, and so is America. And, when Muslims see Lynndie England, they don’t like where that leads. |
| Posted by: KBK 2007-02-28 20:50 |
| #3 Here's my favorite quote: "But, in their present political sensibilities, Canada is semi-French, Britain is semi-European, and New Zealand is semi-bananas." |
| Posted by: xbalanke 2007-02-28 13:42 |
| #2 Of the three great global conflicts of the 20th century - the First, Second and Cold Wars - who called it right every time? Germany: one out of three. I'd give Germany half out of three. East Germany was on the wrong side of the cold war. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2007-02-28 11:38 |
| #1 LOL, raping and pillaging the world be lurid crime matey. |
| Posted by: Spamp Chinelet6903 2007-02-28 11:30 |