The other night I enjoyed a pleasant meal with a business contact, who works in the property industry and for a large U.S. company. He was talking to a group of people and struck me as a thoroughly charming fellow: articulate, funny, interested in other people, highly intelligent. And then he said something that slightly vexed me in that he started to go on and on about how we must be so appalled by this nutcase rightwinger in the White House, how most Americans were insular and dumb, yadda-yadda. It was so obviously an attempt to deflect what anti-American prejudices potentially might have existed by getting in the blow first. He was, then, slightly surprised me when I said over a drink later that I did not like the way that Americans felt the need to abase themselves this way, or denigrate their home country, or its people. In fact, I told him that, much that I disagreed with many of Bush's policies, such as his fiscal profiligacy and Big Government leanings, I liked the United States a great deal, not least much of its culture, its vitality and the niceness of most Americans.

So a gentle tip for American travellers from this Brit: don't slag off your own country when abroad. The locals will see through it and despise you for it. Be proud of what you are as an individual living in Jefferson's Republic, which for all its faults is the greatest free nation on the planet, and likely to be so for a while to come.

On Friday the 13th of January I listened to BBC Radio 4's Any Questions, The first question was "Can we trust President Bush over Iran...?"

Now I am no fan of President George Walker Bush (on his watch there has been the biggest increase of government spending since President Johnson and the biggest increase in domestic government spending since President Nixon), but it was an odd to hear someone clearly regard President Bush as worse than the President of Iran (a man who has denied the Holocaust, pledged to wipe Israel off the map, and has supported suicide bombers, in various parts of the Middle East, for many years).

The audience cheered and clapped the various anti Bush comments of Clare Short M.P., and the (rather milder) anti-Bush and pro-UN comments of the Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes present.

The Conservative party person on the panel (Mr Ian Duncan-Smith) did not really try to defend President Bush (although he did say we should not exclude the United States from world affairs). So that left the last member of the panel.

This man (whose name I can not remember) is the new editor of the 'Financial Times'. Now this newspaper has (perhaps surprisingly, given its name and target readership) normally been on the left of British politics (it tends to favour government spending and regulations, and it favours the statist European Union) so I did not hold out much hope for balance.

And indeed, later on, the editor turned out to have some very standard statist opinions - for example he supported a total ban on smoking in bars and restaurants (almost needless to say, the audience was wildly in favour of a ban "by 98%" - most likely they would have supported any bit of statism that was put in front of them). However, I was surprised as the editor started a pro Bush story of how he had met the President some time ago and...

Then the BBC suddenly went off the air. The broadcast of the show started again when the story was over. At the end of the programme the BBC blamed "technical difficulties" for the break in transmission.

So I listened to the repeat of the show (today Saturday the 14th of January) in order to hear the editor's story of his meeting with President Bush. It was cut out of the programme - even the start of the story that had been broadcast on Friday night. It seems that the BBC will not tolerate any pro-Bush comment.

Of course it is not a simple of hatred of President Bush as a man (indeed if the B.B.C. people bothered to find out about his policies they would be surprised to find that they support some of them - the bad ones, "No Child Left Behind", the medicare extension, and so on). They hate President Bush as a symbol of certain American characteristics that they, as members of the 'liberal' (i.e. illiberal) left hate - opposition to higher taxes, opposition to 'gun control', a belief that crime is caused by evil human choices (not poverty), belief in the family, and in tradition (including traditional religion), national pride and resistance to would-be world government institutions (such as the U.N., the various international 'rights' treaties, and the 'World Court').

President Bush may not be up to much, but as long as he serves as a symbol of all the BBC hates about the United States (i.e. all the good things in the United States) I find it hard to totally dislike him.

As I have mentioned before, I am weary of the endless programmes going out seeking to show that Islam in Britain is peachy and they are 'just like us'. I do not want to see communal tensions raised either but enough with the damn propaganda.

But what really annoys the hell out of me is when I read yesterday that Prince Charles intends to lecture President Bush and other Americans on how they need to take Islam more seriously and be less 'confrontational'. Oh that is going to down just splendidly. We have heard this before from Charles closer to home and my view has always been that as Britain is an overwhelmingly secular country and most tend not to take Christianity all that seriously, he has got to be joking if he thinks all too many people give a rats arse about what Islam has to offer global civilisation.

The Prince, who leaves on Tuesday for an eight-day tour of the US, has voiced private concerns over America's "confrontational" approach to Muslim countries and its failure to appreciate Islam's strengths. The Prince raised his concerns when he met senior Muslims in London in November 2001. The gathering took place just two months after the attacks on New York and Washington. "I find the language and rhetoric coming from America too confrontational," the Prince said, according to one leader at the meeting.

And when I regularly read Muslims standing up and openly repudiating putting apostates and homosexuals to death, perhaps I will conclude Islam might be anything other than a blight on any tolerant culture. Oh and please, spare me the tales of how historically 'tolerant' Islam can be because it is only tolerant on its own very narrow terms.

It used to be that many Christians would burn or hang 'witches', slaughter those who did not share their denomination and kill scientific free thinkers. All of those things were done based on biblical justifications, some convoluted and other much less so.

Yet you would be hard pressed to find a Christian who would regard going back to that as desirable and I doubt many would have a problem if someone stood up and said "Yes, I know it says in the Bible that we should kill witches or people who use 'evil magic', but that's barbaric nonsense and we just do not tolerate that sort of stuff any more". Of course no one needs to stand up and say that because it goes without saying.

And when I hear lots of Muslims say "yes I know it says in the Koran that the penalty for turning your back on Islam is death, but that is barbaric nonsense and we just will not tolerate that sort of stuff any more", then, and only then, will I think that Prince Charles is anything other than a fool for suggesting modern Islam could possibly be an overall force for good. I am not a Christian any more but I do not keep looking over my shoulder for a Jesuit with a garrotte sneaking up behind me because I dared to publicly state that fact. Ex-Muslims should feel just as free as I do to publicly repudiate their religion if that is their wish, even if there are social consequences for them in their narrower community.

Khalid Mahmood, the Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Bar, was also at the meeting at St James's Palace. "His criticism of America was a general one of the Americans not having the appreciation we have for Islam and its culture," he said.

I have news for Khalid, it is not just Americans who do not have much 'appreciation' for Islamic culture. Many aspects of Islamic culture are not something with which people who value tolerance and pluralism should be trying to reach an accommodation. You cannot compromise with something that is inimical and there is nothing illogical about refusing to tolerate the practice of a creed in a way that requires intolerance.

Well, one hopes this means George Galloway will never sully our shores again.

Although, really, how low does a man have to sink to be contemptible, to a US Senator?

Mihir Bose has a very interesting and though provoking article in the Telegraph about why many of the lessons of the American 'melting pot' have little resonance or even relevance to Britain.

The difference is simple but profound: America can impose a coherent historical narrative on immigrants because the countries they come from had no previous involvement with America. Settlers are able and encouraged to discard their native histories and accept the American version.

But the vast majority of non-white immigrants to Britain have come from our former colonies, and bring not only their own cultures but also their own versions of our shared history. So, in trying to construct a single coherent narrative for this island, we are faced with trying to marry two historical streams: the "home" version and the "export" version.

I am not sure I agree with the entire thrust of the article but it certainly provides considerable food for thought. Certainly I have always found it curious how, at least in my experience, race relations in Britain have been (generally) far better compared to the USA (and I only speak from my personal observations) and with far less government intervention forcing that state of affairs to be the norm, at least until quite recently. Perhaps Mihir Bose's article contains some of the reasons underpinning that. That could be worth pondering.

I am watching that supreme embodiment of the Anglosphere culture at the moment - cricket, surely the finest game invented by Man. England are building on their first-innings batting performance against a rather shaky-looking Australia, although the Aussies have a chance to draw the match I think thanks to a superb batting effort by Shane Warne. Warne is normally and rightly famed for his leg spin, able to make the ball move in a bewitching fashion.

The Ashes series, as the England vs Australia Test matches are known, are currently shown on the Channel 4 terrestrial tv channel. The channel has made a huge success of its cricket coverage, I think. Its commenators are excellent, intelligent and don't interrupt the flow of play. Even the adverts shown during a brief pause in play don't irritate me like I thought they would. Simon Hughes, a true cricket geek, does a fine job of explaining key terms and tactics to novices. Cricket is a complex game and yet the presenters seem to make it accessible without dumbing it down.

Four of us Samizdata scribblers are split down the middle on this Ashes series, I guess. Two Aussies - Scott Wickstein and Michael Jennings - pitted against Brian Micklethwait and yours truly.

Update, despite the so-far snarky remarks in the comments sections, my joy continues to rise thanks to today's batting performance. Summary of the game here.

Occasionally, life throws up little synergistic surprises. Last Sunday, I was reading a rather interesting opinon piece in the Daily Telegraph in the morning and then (quite unexpectedly) found myself breaking bread with the author of that article in the evening.

In common with a great many pundits (both amateur and professional) John O'Sullivan casts his eye over the persistantly and curiously comatose Conservative Party and, in doing so, makes a rather astute observation:

Throughout the West, but especially in the English-speaking world, parties are changing their class composition. Working and lower-middle-class voters are moving Rightwards, middle and upper-class voters, Leftwards. George W Bush won the votes of West Virginia miners in the last two elections; in Australia, John Howard was cheered by loggers: both lost votes among their own progressive middle class. Most "missing" votes in Britain belong to the working and lower-middles who have left Labour and are repelled by the Lib Dems but have not been given good reasons to vote Tory.

That may seem like a strange and rather radical suggestion to some but, actually, it does make quite a lot of sense. A great swathe of what we now call the 'middle-class' are not really bourgeois in the true sense of that word. Rather they are public sector professionals or elsewise beneficiaries of the client-state whose wealth and status is entirely dependent on a bloated and active government. Lower tax and less regulation is simply not in their interests.

On the other hand, members of the lower-middle and working class are having to hand over ever more of their hard-earned (either directly or by stealth) for ever less in return. It is their elderly parents who are expiring, neglected, in the corridors of state hospitals; it is their children who are being turned out from state schools without being able to read, write or articulate themselves.

This changing dynamic is just begging to be seized by anyone with the political savvy to spot the opportunity. Mind you, that probably rules out the Tories.

A review written by Keith Windschuttle has appeared in National Review. The book reviewed is The Anglosphere Challenge by James C. Bennett. (N.B. updated link allows access to US, British or Canadian Amazon and lets you read some of the book content.) I liked the book and liked the review and want to talk about them.

Let me start with a disclosure: I have biffed many an email to and fro with Jim Bennett, and have had the pleasure of meeting him once at one of Perry's blogger parties. The ease with which that came to pass is of interest in itself. I cannot exactly remember how I went from hearing my husband say, 'some bloke on the radio was talking about something called the "Anglosphere"', to talking to said bloke at a party. But it was not difficult and the internet was involved at all stages. There is nothing new about an interlocking network of informal communities (sustained by the exchange of letters) that include authors and people interested in their ideas, and whose existence is enlivened by the odd party. However what is new is that the ease of formation of such micro-communities has vastly increased. Their transaction costs have decreased.

People exchanging their writings (including but not limited to blogging) and ending up at the same parties are found at one end of an axis against which are plotted possible meanings of the word "community." The quantity changing as one moves along the axis could be informality, size, fluidity, non-exclusiveness (in the sense that you can belong to many of them) or voluntariness: for any of these variables the resulting spectrum would still show the same types of community appearing in the same order. Libertarians by definition like the fact that email-swapping, partygoing micro-communities are voluntary, and they also tend to have a preference of taste for the fact that they are small, fluid, and non-exclusive.

Libertarians generally have a good deal less affection for the thing we come to as we move to the other end of the spectrum: the liberal democratic nation-state. But in general we acknowledge that there is a great distinction between a civic state built up from individuals and maintained, in daily practice if not in theory, by consent and non-civic states that, in Bennett's words, "place individuals under the permanent discipline of inherited or assigned collectivities." Libertarians of a more conservative bent also tend to feel that there is merit and safety in seeking to evolve the institutions we have rather than to build whole new ones.

Which brings me to the idea of the Anglosphere. In Keith Windschuttle's review he says:

The Anglosphere he [Bennett] envisages would be a “network commonwealth” of English-speaking nations based on the existing shared values of Anglo-American cultural and political traditions. His concept offers the prospect not of radical change but of a reaffirmation of deep cultural roots. Politically, it is diametrically opposed to the two major movements that, since the demise of socialism, have absorbed the Western intellectual Left: radical multiculturalism at home and bureaucratic internationalism abroad.

Bennett urges various non-utopian changes (for example the introduction of a "sojourner" status making it easy for people to live and work in another Anglosphere country for a number of years) to bring about a societal unit containing more people than a nation-state but less demanding in nature. In Windschuttle's paraphrase:

"...a long-term civilizational relationship, more between the citizens of its various nations than between their governments. "

Bennett is suggesting a move off my axis where communities become ever more inflexible, exclusive and involuntary as they get bigger. The Anglosphere network commonwealth could exist alongside states and corporations, "cultural nations" and religions, tribes and hobby-groups. And, of course, alongside other network commonwealths, such as the Hispanosphere or the Sinosphere. I could have done with more in the book about the possible ways in which relations between network commonwealths could be more fruitful and less tense than relations between nation-states or trading blocs.

There is a lot of history in this book, explaining the author's belief that the English speaking world is well placed - though certainly not destined - to exploit the information revolution. Windschuttle chose a good quote:

It is our core values and characteristics that have made us dynamic,” he writes, “and it is to those values that we must return”: individualism, rule of law, the honoring of covenants, and an emphasis on freedom.

Elsewhere Bennett adds another value not mentioned by Windschuttle. It is not one that is particularly inspiring but it is useful: ease of dissociation. Ease of dissociation makes it less risky to start cooperative relationships.

I have not talked in this post about one huge aspect of the book, namely Bennett's discussion of why political units coalesce around a common language. That, too, comes down to trust and transaction costs. As distance becomes no obstacle to communication, and disapproval of interaction with people of different race or religion dwindles, language is all that remains.

It occurs to me that a really good system of computer translation might change things - although, then again, the mental concepts of the tongue in which one first learnt to speak surely have a major effect on what one finds worth speaking about. Even if some super version of AltaVista Babelfish translation were providing a real time fully grammatical translation of everything we said, I still think people at parties would tend to clump together in same-language groups for more comfortable conversation and cross-language groups for the pleasure and stimulus of hearing alien ideas.

Windschuttle remains sceptical of Bennett's ideas in some areas:

One further problem with Bennett’s thesis is his rather excessive faith in technological change. Bennett’s day job involves him in futuristic high-tech industries. He knows a great deal about their potential and is bound to generate enthusiasm among people of a like mind; the rest of us, however, are likely to remain cool until we see the results in practice. In the last ten years we have all gone through the Internet revolution, which has radically affected almost every industry and profession. Yet at the same time, we have been subject to so much speculation that has turned out to be empty or mistaken — the paperless office, self-replicating robots, all the overblown claims made during the dot-com boom — that most of us will believe it only when we see it. A network commonwealth with the kind of political impact Bennett envisages may well be a viable proposition, but it has yet to prove itself so.

It is true that some of the predictions of radical change in the way most of us do our daily work have failed to come to pass. (Though some have.) But if you reading this spent more than two hours today blogging or blog-reading and have twenty or thirty English-speaking conversational partners scattered across the globe who you may never meet but whose input provides a considerable part of your perceptions about the state of the world, then you can testify that there is potential for major change in the way we associate.

Although I knew this day was coming, it is profoundly depressing nevertheless. It is now the law that ID cards will be imposed by force in Britain, with the support of the Leaders of the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. They have won and as far as I am concerned, the guttering flame of the culture of liberty in Britain just blew out.

I do not expect a truly repressive state to be implemented for many years yet (hopefully), but the infrastructure of tyranny is now well and truly in place, all of which came to pass with a soundtrack of a faint bleating sound of an indifferent public in the background. You might as well flip a coin to figure out which party will usher it in but a authoritarian panoptic state is coming. If this is what the majority of British people want, then may they get exactly what they deserve, but I am out of here. For those of you who will be happy to see me go, trust me, the feeling is mutual.

I realise most people will just shrug their ovine shoulders and find my worries inexplicable, crazy even, as it is not like Blair and Howard are setting up Gulags, right? No, of course not. Who needs those when there is a camera on every corner and your every purchase and phone call will eventually be logged on a central government database? As far as I concerned, the war is over and my side lost.

I have to try and speed up my business ventures and get out as soon as I can afford to do so. I shall try to be out of Britain and have my primary residence in the USA by 2007 at the latest to avoid being forced to submit to this intolerable imposition... and I shall be taking my wealth generating assets with me. I cannot say I am looking forward to winters in New Hampshire but I do not really see that I have much choice anymore. I do not see the United States as a paragon of civil liberties (to put it mildly), but at least it is a place in which the battle can be fought within the last bastion of the Anglosphere's culture of liberty.

Damn it.

I hear the term "Anglosphere" as meaning that there is some community of the English-speaking nations on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. But when I come across this site, I feel like I am living in a foreign country to Americans.

Trying to list all the reasons why Adopt a Sniper is definitely not an English website would take hours. And that is a shame.

[via Instapundit]

The liberal-leaning USA Today describes The Guardian today as a "left-leaning British newspaper", showing a rather more sophisticated understanding of British political culture than the self-styled most intelligent newspaper in the UK can demonstrate of the world.

We now know that Clark County, the target for a Guardian operation to get out the vote for the Democrats, was the only county in Ohio to switch from a Democrat majority to a Republican one. The idea that Holland Park socialists living in £5 million homes could communicate with the concerns of a district of Ohio where $100,000 is considered a lot of money to spend on housing is bizarre.

In fact it is the exact reverse of the old Tory caricature: grandees looking down their noses at the 'Great Unwashed' and telling them what to do, for their own good of course. The true sign of just how ridiculous the Guardianistas are, they have no idea how arrogant and stupid they sound in the real world.

Every conservative and libertarian criticism of President Bush is at least partly justified. He has not vetoed any spending proposal from Congress. He has presided over a terrible budgetary situation (to the point where I almost oppose the tax cuts on the grounds that the budget deficit has to be contained first). He did introduce steel tariffs (which did not win him Pennsylvania or Michigan). The policy in Iraq worries me (since the spectacular successes of liberating Bagdad and later capturing Saddam Hussein) by looking all too similar to the political fudges of Vietnam in the late 1960s. I like the idea of the US spending money on Iraqi state education and a national health service no more than I would like it in Camden. I still think North Korea was and remains a bigger threat to the West than Iraq. The Patriot Act is at the very best a temporary necessary evil. And I am not so sure about "at the very best" or it being "temporary" and "necessary".

But the tribal test of elections is simple. All the bad guys, the Guardian readers, the little-Hitler bureaucrats, anti-smokers, the Socialists, idiot British Conservatives like Alan Duncan, the Palestinian 9/11 cheerleaders, the terrorists, the UN crooks, virtually the entire Left worldwide. They are the ones reaching for Kleenex, anti-depressant pills and shaking their fists at God.

All the people I know that are cheering are the good guys. I have even made this Guardian article my home page on IE, so that every morning for the next few weeks, I am reminded that We win and They lose sometimes.

My annual reminder that less government equals more wealth, or why I am English and poor, has come round again, with another vacation in the United States of America. This year, to combat the ennui and Autumn chills, Florida and the Keys beckons.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of a trip out West is finding some facet of American life that affirms the surprising echoes and extraordinary mixtures of the British Isles and other cultures. Such experiences confirm that the Anglosphere is certainly a cultural, if not a political project, although this is heresy in some quarters.

This year, my sojourn in the Keys coincides with the "Meeting of the Minds", an annual shindig for the Parrot Head Clubs, an organisation that I had never heard of. Since their gathering cramped my search for accommodation, this piqued my curiosity. The Parrotheads are fans of Jimmy Buffett, a country rock singer and aficianado of the island lifestyle, who I had also never heard of. He became a far more likeable figure as soon as a website on music banned by the BBC revealed that he was censored:

Jimmy Buffett's single, "come Monday" contained the line, "I've got my Hush Puppies on." Since the BBC considered this to be advertising he re-recorded that line so it said, "I've got my hiking shoes on."

The Parrotheads are a reminder of the strong links between civil society, charitable activities and other interests which bind individuals together. Such associations are now rare in Europe. The knowing classes would no doubt laugh at the voluntary activities of such simpletons and point out that their activities are wonderful examples of 'false consciousness'.

It is therefore no surprise that, in the most modern of societies, the prevailing moralism is a hard nut to crack for radical critics. This moralism is not only a theoretical matter, a form of false consciousness. From the seamstress to the First Lady, people have an urge to practice the ideals of altruism, modesty, honesty, compassion, charity, etc. Everyone donates to the Cancer Fund, UNICEF and so on. People join associations which promote stupidity in young people, firmly believing that this is an opportunity to experience something workaday life denies them: community of purpose, solidarity, friendship. They compensate for the necessity to compete against each other by forming disgusting groups on the basis of their ideals, even if their idealism demands further sacrifices.

However, groups still crop up amongst the British and their expatriate communities, proving our traditional bent for voluntarist activities. A recent phenomenon is the Hash House Harriers: running clubs that replicate the joy of hare and hounds:

The Hash House Harriers is a more social version of Hare and Hounds, where you join the pack of hounds (runners) to chase down the trail set by the hare or hares (other runners), then gather together for a little social activity known as the On In or Down Down. In most groups, all are welcome, young and old, fast or slow. The only prerequisite to hashing is a sense of humor, so check out a hash near you.

To split the cultural difference, the emphasis is on humour rather than charity Still, if they ban hunting, this will provide suitable enjoyment for the interregnum, until liberty returns.

I read a very odd story a few days ago on Front Page Magazine called An American in London, in which Carol Gould recounts how she and other Americans have been repeatedly subjected to anti-American abuse in London.

What I find so frightening is that I cannot conduct business or even take a taxi ride in London, Bournemouth or Edinburgh without a scathing tirade about the scurrilous Yanks. The day after 9/11 I was obliged to keep a consultant’s appointment and the minicab driver informed me that the 'yellow Americans' on the four hijacked planes were typical of the way 'the Yanks do battle' -- they chicken out and let the Brits do the dirty work.

Now the title of my article might suggest that I do not believe what she wrote to be true, but that is not what I am saying. If she says that is what people have said to her, then I will take her at her word. However I also know a significant number of Americans here in the UK and I am puzzled that they do not tell me that they have shared Carol Gould's experiences. In fact a fellow Samizdatista who is an American, is living in my house most of the time and we often go out places in London both casually and for business and although we talk together (and thereby announce to all nearby that she is an American), I have yet to see her nationality pique the slightest bit of interest from anyone at all. Here in London Americans are like taxicabs... they are just normal part of the fabric of this enormous and most cosmopolitan of cities.

Now I realise that Anti-Americanism exists in Britain... hell, it exists in America (and amongst the same ilk of people generally), but I must say that Ms. Gould describes a Britain that bears very little relation to the one I see every day. No doubt if I actively sought out the people who despise all things American I could find them in so diverse a metropolis, but then I could say the same about almost any set of views. However I suspect I would say the same if I still lived in Manhattan (which I did... and moreover worked in the World Trade Center at the time).

Ms. Gould says she knows many other expat Americans with similar experiences to hers. Well all I can say is we clearly know a very different set of expat Americans then. In fact, we clearly encounter a very different set of British people as well. I do not know what circles Carol Gould moves in but I do not think she has heard the real England speak.

And that is why it seems to me that if we are both in London, then the two of us must be existing in alternate realities.

Alert readers will have noted that I often write here about education. What happens is that I dash off a piece for my Education Blog, and then say to myself: this will just about do for Samizdata. And since I now find writing adequately for Samizdata harder than for my private blogs, and since Samizdata has many more readers, here is another such piece which I hope will suffice for here, provoked by an essay I am in the middle of reading, by Paul Graham. (Thank you Arts & Letters Daily, a daily resource without which I could not now do.) The first few paragraphs of this esssay grabbed my attention, and I am now about half way through it.

In that previous reaction to Graham's essay, I made much of the idea of an essay being "persuasive".

I am right, and wrong, says Paul Graham. Yes, a lot of education is rooted in legal education, but, he says, too much. An essay, he says, is not – or should not be – lawyering:

Defending a position may be a necessary evil in a legal dispute, but it's not the best way to get at the truth, as I think lawyers would be the first to admit. It's not just that you miss subtleties this way. The real problem is that you can't change the question.

And yet this principle is built into the very structure of the things they teach you to write in high school. The topic sentence is your thesis, chosen in advance, the supporting paragraphs the blows you strike in the conflict, and the conclusion – uh, what is the conclusion? I was never sure about that in high school. It seemed as if we were just supposed to restate what we said in the first paragraph, but in different enough words that no one could tell. Why bother? But when you understand the origins of this sort of "essay", you can see where the conclusion comes from. It's the concluding remarks to the jury.

As I often find myself saying, to justify my enthusiasm for argument: my dad was a trial lawyer, and so were both my grandfathers. My family's basic activity when dining, when we weren't eating or listening to classical music on the Third Programme or Family Fun Chat on the Home Service, was arguing. And if no one was disagreeing with a dominant consensus, someone would, just for the fun of it. "Defending a position" is, I think, a pretty good way to get at the truth, provided more than one position is being defended, which is exactly what is happening when a jury is involved. The adversarial principle is, I would say, a whole hell of a lot better than a "necessary evil".

Think only of the clash of conclusions – of, in Dan Rather's words, "political agendas" – that recently got the truth of the Rather documents fracas out into the light of day in the space of a few hours.

In our legal world, the advocates start with their rival conclusions and defend them, and attack them, while the judge listens, occasionally asking a question, or insisting that a question already asked be answered. ("The witness will answer the question.") Also, the judge occasionally, sports umpire style, restrains the advocates if they get too rude, or if they use arguments that are too sneaky. ("I object your honour!" – "Objection sustained.") In the blogosphere, the 'judge' is other bloggers and other journalists, and the 'jury' is the people reading it all and buying things and voting for things on the strength of all that arguing and counter-arguing.

On the Continent of Europe their legal tradition is very different from the one shared by Paul Graham and me, and by most of you reading this. There, the judge takes the initiative. He does not merely endure the clash of the advocates and help the jury to decide. He decides, by doing just what Graham says an essayist should do. He searches disinterestedly for the truth. He walks, to use Graham's excellent metaphor, through the open door into the room where the truth of the matter is to be found, and he finds whatever he finds. Then he announces it, and that is what is true and what is to be done.

These contrasting traditions have a profound effect on the different ways in which education is done in the Anglo-Saxon world and in Continental Europe, or so I am persuasively informed by my continental friends). (By the way, in Scotland, they also have a 'Continental' legal system. They do not have judges. They have 'intendants' in Scottish courts. I think that is what they are called. That is, active investigators, as in 'super-intendant'.)

Anglo-Saxon schools are often experienced by their congregations as boring churches in which the God Almighty Preacher says what is what and they, the congregation, just have to suck it up. But it is the very things that these Preachers often say in these churches, to say nothing of all the things said outside of them, that do much to make the congregation so restive. On the Continent, the Teacher/Professeur (the Judge substitute) finds The Truth, and then announces it. Your job as a mere pupil is to learn it, not to argue about it. Anglo-Saxon schools are anarchic dog-fights compared to the average secondary school on the Continent of Europe.

The weakness of the Anglo-Saxon system is that the truth gets lost in the mayhem and din of battle. Juries emerge from trials wondering what the f*** that was all about and having chosen their verdict with a coin toss or because the prosecuting lawyer had a cute smile. We tune into the Internet, and retreat in confusion from the hubbub. School pupils just become confused and give up, steamrollered by their more confident and louder rivals. Or they do not know which is the right answer and hate having to decide it for themselves.

But the weakness of the Continental system is that the actual truth of this or that particular matter may be forbidden or ignored, with only lies or obsolete platitudes about it being taught by the Man At The Front, and these lies and platitudes may not be contested by the peasantry.

It is in the nature of educated people brought up in either tradition, but aware of the existence of the other tradition, that they often perceive only the vices of their own system and cast envious eyes over the fence, or in this case over the English Channel (known over there as 'La Manche').

No accident, then, that 'essay' is a French word.

So. On with Paul Graham's essay...

As government gets ever bigger in various parts of the world, one sign of this is how many signs there are. In the USA, as I discovered over the past two weeks, it is now increasingly common to see signs telling you all about how to prevent death by choking.

That's right. Apparently, I understand that it is now a bylaw in many states to require owners of restaurants and bars to put up signs showing folk how to avoid death by choking on food, and how to assist someone who may be in trouble. The notices seem to be very detailed. What on earth is going on? Have there been a large number of folk keeling over after choking on a pretzel, as nearly happened to President Bush about a year ago?

That our political and health-conscious masters want to help us to avoid death - so they say - is hardly new. It is also pretty difficult to get indignant about putting up a poster giving handy hints on how to avoid death. It caused me a certain amount of wry amusement, although other state infractions of property rights, such as bans on smoking in privately owned bars, are far less amusing.
(Bars in New York are not quite the smelly places of old, but seemed to be less full than the last time I was in town).

Back here in Britain, though, it seems the country has a bad case of "sign overload", as Rod Liddle describes here in the Spectator. He argues, rightly, that any place which carries lots of signs telling us not to hit the staff or behave like a thug is precisely the sort of place to avoid. It is now routine for London Underground stations, railway stations and hospital waiting rooms to have signs warning us not to be rude to staff and to refrain from beating them up.

In a healthy civil society where moral standards are 'internalised' and tacitly accepted, it is not necessary to state what ought to be blindingly obvious to the average man or woman. Telling folk with signs to behave decently is a reflection of how infantilised our society has become, and tells us everything about the mindset of those who run what are laughably called our "public services". It is a lame admission that once-widely accepted standards of conduct are no longer part of the common stock of human knowledge, but have to be spelled out as if explaining maths to a five-year-old for the first time.

Of course there are many factors to explain this tendency. That great vehicle of moral hazard, known as the Welfare State, has a lot to do with erosion of behaviours, but it is by no means the only reason. Some may cite the decline in religious belief, although it is by no means clear to this atheist that belief in a Supreme Being is necessary to avoid society collapsing into some sort of Hobbesian chaos.

Is it too much to hope that if we treat our fellows like adults, that they will behave accordingly? Perhaps I am an incurable optimist.

(As a side-observation, I have noted that whenever the announcer on the London Underground tells us to "mind the gap" between the train and the platform, it produces howls of mirth from foreigners. I think they imagine it is some sort of strange national ritual, like tea, Wimbledon fortnight or the Proms).

Yesterday I finally got around to renting the DVD of the documentary ("D – O – C – U – M – E – N – T" um er "A – R – Y") movie Spellbound, which is about a bunch of American kids selected for their variety of ethnic backgound – as well as unity of linguistic ("L – I – N – G" er "U – I – S – TIC") foreground or course – who took part in the 1999 National Spelling Bee Championships in Washington DC. Until now I had not really appreciated what an important piece of Americana the institution of the Spelling Bee is. (And by the way, what does the "Bee" bit mean? Is that bee as in the insect, and if so, how did that come about?)

The spelling of English is notoriously perverse and difficult. Spelling Bees turn what might have been a horrible barrier to becoming an American into a patriotically shared ordeal, and this movie shows this process still to be in rude health. Spelling Bees for other languages would not make nearly so much sense, because other languages are so much easier to spell. Spanish spelling, for instance, is a doddle (doddle? – could you give me the language of origin please? – language unknown) compared to English spelling.

My favourite bit of Spellbound was watching an Indian-American boy who had sailed through hundreds of other words being struck dumb by "Darjeeling" ("DAR" – "D – A – R" pause, etc.). You could really see the American Dream and the American Melting Pot working at full power, melting the various ethnically diverse peoples who still now flood into America into Americans, in the heat of competition, gripped by a shared desire to Get Educated and to Get Ahead, and join in being Americans by competing with other Americans for the Good Life and the Glory of winning the National Spelling Bee Championship. Since competition is such a huge part of American culture, the psychological art of handling it is also central to being a successful American, and you could see them all learning about that also. ("Our daughter was a winner just by getting this far", etc.)

The key quote probably came from the mother of the Indian-American girl who actually won it, in the form of the claim that she now felt that she "belonged". Quite so. Americans, bound together by their shared struggle to spell the American language. Bound by spelling, that being the point of this movie's title.

I know, I know, champion spellers are only a geeky freaky minority. But think how much trouble such intellectuals can make when they have some ethnic differences and resentments to work with. Getting the clever ones stirred really thoroughly into the Melting Pot counts for a lot more than their mere numbers would suggest.

All this was further brought home by my coincidental reading today of an article by Samuel P. Huntington about the retreat of English in the American South West in the face of the advancing Spanish. Huntington's point is that the linguistic unity of the USA is now in the process of being destroyed. The USA is being turned into a bilingual nation. Whatever that "U" in USA used to mean, it is no longer, in the future, going to mean linguistically united. Third and fourth generation immigrants from Mexico and from other parts of Latin America are growing up with no more knowledge of English than their grandparents or great grandparents had when they first arrived in America.

Huntington even alludes to the spelling bee tradition in this article, quoting the late California Republican Senator S. I. Hayakawa:

"Why is it that no Filipinos, no Koreans object to making English the official language? No Japanese have done so. And certainly not the Vietnamese, who are so damn happy to be here. They're learning English as fast as they can and winning spelling bees all across the country. But the Hispanics alone have maintained there is a problem. There [has been] considerable movement to make Spanish the second official language."

One of the kids in Spellboungwas a Mexican American, whose dad came into America as an illegal immigrant. The dad's elderly employers, a couple far too old and grizzled to be bothering with political correctness, were shown opining that this Mexican dad illustrated that not all Mexicans were layabout good-for-nothings, or words to that tactless effect. And you couldn't help wondering if this opinion was all mixed up with the fact that this particular Mexican family was learning English, so much so that one of their sons was proud to be a champion English speller. For they are exceptions, according to Huntington. Most incoming Mexicans are now quite consciously resisting being swept up in American values of competitiveness and educational advancement, and speaking English.

Author Robert Kaplan quotes Alex Villa, a third-generation Mexican American in Tucson, Arizona, as saying that he knows almost no one in the Mexican community of South Tucson who believes in "education and hard work" as the way to material prosperity and is thus willing to "buy into America." Profound cultural differences clearly separate Mexicans and Americans, and the high level of immigration from Mexico sustains and reinforces the prevalence of Mexican values among Mexican Americans.

To put it unkindly: we are layabouts and we are proud of it.

Here in Britain, we have many problems associated with mass immigration, but a contiguous border with a Third World country, speaking one of the great non-English World Languages is not one of them. Our Muslim immigrants are a potential problem because we fear that they will not ever become culturally assimilated. But the biggest linguistic minority in Britain looks, for the foreseeable future, like being, and remaining … the Welsh! But imagine if the Welsh speakers of Britain were only the advance guard of another thirty million Welsh speakers in a separate and much poorer state right next to us, where Ireland actually is for instance, and of another two hundred million Welsh speakers elsewhere in the world. That would certainly change how we Anglos would feel about our Welsh minority, and how they would feel about themselves. It would also make the prospect of serious Anglo-Welsh conflict far more likely.

As it is, Britain looks, and no thanks to all the multi-culturalist in our midst, likely to continue with its ongoing project of linguistic assimilation. There are just no incoming linguistic groups big enough, relative to the rest of the population, to make not learning English a rational educational or economic choice. And indeed, there is something very turn of the century New York about London just now – which is all part of why I am so optimistic and excited about the immediate future of London.

Maybe language will prove more unifying in Britain than Muslim culture threatens to be divisive. And maybe the linguistic disunity of America could spell more trouble for them than we face from our Muslims-versus-the-Rest divide, because that linguistic divide threatens to bring with it cultural differences every bit as profound, but in addition to that, to freeze those cultural differences into a permanent pattern.

Talking of British linguistic unification, why don't we in Britain have Spelling Bees? Because I say that we definitely should. Now would be an excellent time to make a big fuss of such clever kids, and about the art of spelling in general. Maybe we do, in which case, British commenters, please enlighten me about that. But although mention was made in Spellbound of how this Spelling Bee thing has gone global, I'm not aware of it having caught on here. If it hasn't, yet, maybe Spellbound will change that – either by unleashing it from a standing start, or by fanning the flames of whatever Spelling Bee sparks are sputtering away here already, to mix the metaphors ("M E T A" – "PHOR"). I was quite surprised to see Spellbound in Blockbuster, which is not an enterprise given to sentimental, politically correct gestures. They only offer for rent what they reckon people will want to rent. And quite a lot of people besides me did seem to be renting it.

Before anybody else says it, let me say it. It doesn't matter how many British schoolteachers would moan about excessive competition and try to stop the thing. It could all be run by a TV company. All that is needed is for some clever kids willing to participate to be rounded up and quizzed, and then for others to join in, and I reckon plenty would.

We in Britain could certainly use such a tradition. What's the betting that in twenty years time, a British Muslim kid will be the Spelling Bee World Champion?

Arts & Letters Daily links to this article by Leo Marx in the Boston Review. Here are its first two paragraphs [their italics in our bold]:

When I was teaching in England in 1957, Richard Hoggart, a founder of the British school of cultural criticism, told me about having met a young Fulbright scholar who identified himself as a teacher of something called "American studies." "And what is that?" Hoggart asked. An exciting new field of interdisciplinary teaching and research, he was told. "But what is new about that?" It combines the study of history and literature. "In England we’ve been doing that for a long time," Hoggart protested. "Yes," said the eager Americanist, "but we look at American society as a whole – the entire culture, at all levels, high and low." Hoggart, who was about to publish The Uses of Literacy, his groundbreaking study of British working-class culture, remained unimpressed. After a moment, in a fit of exasperation, his informant blurted out: "But you don’t understand, I believe in America!"

"That was it!" Hoggart said to me, "then I did understand." It was unimaginable, he dryly added, that a British scholar would ever be heard saying, "I believe in Britain."

Of course it could just be coincidence, but I reckon this contrast does illustrate rather nicely the power of academic ideas.

Britain is now ruled by an elite which is busily breaking it into fragments and melting them into the European Union. I'm not saying that this is necessarily as terrible an idea as some writers here think it is (although personally I think it's a pretty bad one), but it is nevertheless beyond denial that this is what they are doing.

The USA, on the other hand, is still very much together.

Granted, in 1957 there was a lot less Britain to believe in than there was, or still is, USA, but still …

On the other hand, I dare say that "American Studies" perhaps now means something rather different to what it meant in 1957.

(WARNING - some of you may find the following article annoying as it was written after the author shortly enjoyed a fabulous holiday in the sunny Caribbean. Readers forced to stay in grimy and cold parts of the world during this period should skip forward below).

I have recently returned to England from Barbados, the eastern-most island in the group of volcanic islands stretching in a parabola arc across the Caribbean. The trip was obviously thoroughly enjoyable across a number of fronts - not least the cool rum punches, the sea fishing and the seascape. However, away from the usual tourist stuff, I noticed plenty of things I thought worth recording.

Barbados has been an independent nation since decolonisation in 1966, the year of my birth. Despite throwing off the shackles of colonial status, Barbados remains a remarkably pro-British and pro-Anglosphere nation. This is understanderble on a number of fronts. For starters, a huge slice of its earnings derive from British tourism. Britons and Americans are among the main nationalities who visit. From what I could see there were few continental Europeans there.

There are many reminders of its past, not least the grim reality that Barbados's wealth as a sugar-growing island was initially produced by imported slave labour. There is a moving and large statue of an emancipated slave, dubbed 'freedom', close to the main airport on the island. No citizen of this island needs to be reminded of what oppression is. As a Briton I am conflicted about this vile part of our history, in that yes, we built up the island on the back of this institution, but we also were among the first rank of nations to actually abolish it.

You might think that because of this legacy, there would be a great deal of resentment of the British, but if there is, it is very well hidden. School kids regularly sport English soccer T-shirts, there are red telephone boxes everywhere, you drive on the left hand side of the road, and Nelson's column is still proudly displayed in the centre of Bridgetown, the main city. And of course there is cricket. Brian Micklethwait of this blog has already written about this, but surely if the Anglosphere has a defining sport, it is (I now expect abuse from Jefferson's Republic) cricket. The Barbados people are mad on cricket. Sir Gary Sobers, the former West Indies all-rounder, is probably the country's living symbol.

Barbados is a deeply religious island. The Anglican church continues to pull in large congregations. And yet despite, or possibly even because of the Anglican faith's hold, this is a liberal island. For example, prostitution is legal. I was taken aback at how young men, often in the middle of one of the busiest streets in the capital, were offering to sell me drugs. (I did not take up the offer). Of course this was perhaps not so surprising, given the proximity to Latin America.

The people seem to be very entrepreneurial. Taxes are low. Immigration is restricted to those able to show they are financially self-supporting. Men and women are constantly on the lookout to sell you a house, fix you up with jewellery and tell you the best place to get a meal, offer to take you fishing, and the like. Yep, I know the vantage of point of a tourist means I probably missed out on all signs of serious poverty, and after all many people left the island for opportunities elsewhere after WW2, but nevertheless I was impressed. There was nothing like this sort of businesslike buzz when I recently visited France, for example.

On other fronts, Barbados folk seem fairly patriotic. A limited period of military service for young men is compulsory, though it seems not to - yet - cause great unrest. I did not have a chance to check the local press much - I was on holiday! - but I have the impression that there is no great demand for stuff like compulsory ID cards, though like I said, immigration controls are strictly enforced.

I am not trying to claim any profound insights here nor to present the country as some sort of paragon (some may say I had consumed too much Banks beer). But let me finish on this note. Here we have a beautiful island, surrounded by the blue Caribbean, filled with industrious folk speaking English in a lovely accent, who love cricket, Mount Gay Rum, and hot music. What's not to like? Screw the summer holiday, pack your bags, save your pennies, and go to the Gem of the Anglosphere.

A famous Texan is over here in town. So, given the rude noises coming out of the bottom-feeders of the 'peace' movement, with their oh-so original cracks about the 'cowboy Bush', here's a quotation to ponder taken from Ian Fleming's first, and arguably best, James Bond adventure, Casino Royale:

Bond reflected that Americans were fine people, and that most of them seemed to come from Texas.

No rudeness implied, by the way, to citizens of any state outside the Lone Star State, just in case folk get upset!

The Mayor of London (and you cannot begin to imagine how ashamed I am to have to type those words) Ken Livingstone is making a play for the Moonbat Demographic: [From the UK Times]

But the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, branded Mr Bush as "the greatest threat to life on this planet” whose policies will “doom us to extinction".

Obviously the 'global warming' schtick has played itself out.

The mayor also said that he did not recognise Mr Bush as a lawful president and he condemned America’s rapacious capitalist agenda.

Those protestors are wasting their time. The President of the USA will not be in London this week. Just some guy from Texas.

Poor old 'Red Ken' must have been provoked into this outburst by the unbearable thought of those steel tariffs.

I shall miss the fuss in London on Thursday because of a prior engagement in Brussels, but I will spare a thought for the demonstration of collectivists versus the protectionist.

Mr Bush is in the unlikely position of being a villain during this visit to London because he is defending tariffs on steel imports, and I can hardly praise a man for making the European Commission appear like the good guys!

Some of his opponents will actually be protesting against protectionism on the grounds that opening trade is the best hope for greater prosperity worldwide, with the handy by-product of reducing the number of layabout juveniles dreaming of doing something spectacular and violent: they are too busy doing MBAs or training to become plastic surgeons.

I could even support the demonstration if there were a chance that the message would be received in Washington DC that protectionism is an abomination and a great source of warfare (I believe it even triggered the US Civil War, and in that respect the wrong side won).

As for the occupation of Iraq: I continue to despair at the difficulty that anglosphere writers have in comprehending the humiliation of occupation. Admittedly this is for the best of reasons: Washington DC was last under foreign armed occupation in 1812, London in 1066. The dislike of foreign occupation is neither entirely rational nor without ambivalence. Of course the occupying troops in Iraq overthrew a dictator who committed atrocities against his neigbouring countries, his own people, even his own family.

British soldiers may know that when their predecessors first patrolled the streets of Belfast in 1969 (I don't remember the precise date, I was about 4 years old at the time), the Catholic inhabitants cheered them, offered them cups of tea, etc. The welcome did not last.

If the purpose of allied occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq is as cynical as attracting potential Islamic fundamentalist terrorists to those countries and fight them (and kill many of them) away from Western cities, it could be a good plan. There is a certain logic to persuading the extremists to make their way to Jalalabad and Tikrit and face professional troops instead of Manhattan or the City of London and kill civilians.

If I thought the 'War on Terrorism' were being fought so capably I would be far more confident. But I do not, and I am not.

So let 'the indefensible pursue the inedible': I went on the Countryside marches in support of the right of hunters to chase foxes. I shall be in the Grande Place enjoying my Trappist beer with mussels and frites whilst following the sport on the streets of London. Tally Ho!

Do not listen to the lies of those who would describe the protesters as hypocritical apologists for mass murdering fascism. Being caring, sharing people, the smiling protestors who will be marching through London to protest the visit of George Bush to Britain, will be decrying the state of unemployment in Iraq (Bush strangely seems to get no credit at all for his protectionist, anti-globalisation economic policies).

The brutal, uncaring British and American capitalists now in occupation of that hapless country have, with malice of forethought, simply thrown previously industrious workers on the scrap heap of life without the slightest concern for their well being. Hundred of highly skilled 'information retrieval' experts that were happily at work debriefing people in every city, town and village in Iraq are now reduced to pouring through the 'help wanted' add in the Guardian as they look for alternative uses for their skills with pliers, blowtorches and electricity. The management and workers in the chemical industry of that once proud nation, the people who gained world fame from the use of their products in Halabja, are almost to a man reduced to flipping burgers and slicing donner kebabs or working in Syria. Is there no end to the iniquities of global capitalism?

And so it is hardly surprising that the people who will be baying for Bush's downfall were conspicuously absent on the streets in March of 1988, when Iraqi industry was humming along rather nicely producing useful products, not to feed the evil capitalist Bushist machine, but for local use in Iraq by local Iraqi people, and who could possibly object to that?

Mother and child sleeping well thanks to better science!
Products produced for the people's need, not capitalist greed

I mean, it must all be true, Michael Moore said so!

Mark Steyn is one of those writers whose effortless prose intimidates me into not taking up a writing career. An expat Canadian who lives in New Hampshire, he has a very nice piece on the apparently permanent supine position that conservatism has assumed in England. Starting about halfway down, though, he gets to the really interesting part, when he talks about the dangers of centralization and the benefits of devolved power:

Conservatism should be committed to as decentralised a politics as possible. If my town has lousy policing, it’s no skin off my neighbours 15 miles down the road. Conversely, if my town hits on a good idea, my neighbours are happy to borrow it. Decentralisation is the best way to ensure a dynamic political culture, full of low-key field studies. That’s one reason why every good idea Britain’s law-and-order monopoly takes up was started in a local American jurisdiction (the ‘broken window’ theory) and every bad idea was cooked up by the national Home Office bureaucracy (the gun ban).

Decentralisation is also the best way to get new politicians in. London’s Euroleft conventional wisdom disdains not only the rude unlovely electorate at large but also any representatives chosen from without the full-time political class. As the Guardian sniffed, ‘Putting Arnie in charge of the world’s fifth largest economy is like making Benny Hill Chancellor of the Exchequer: quirky but unreal — and not very funny.’ Get a grip, lads. Benny Hill would have made a terrific chancellor.

Go for the wit. Stay for the ideas. Ponder how to raise decentralization and devolution on the political radar screen.

There is an enormous hill to climb, of course - politics seems to be subject to a law of centripetal gravitational convergence, where power naturally centralizes, but only devolves during catastrophes or revolutions. Still, devolution strikes me as a fundamentally libertarian project, if for no other reason than it lays the groundwork for that bane of statism - competition between jurisdictions.

Yesterday I bought the paper version of the Daily Telegraph, to read about how England defeated South Africa at cricket (basically by winning the toss – never mind), and in the City Diary I read this.

Madsen Pirie, the president of the Adam Smith Institute, is feeling pretty smug. Three years ago he wagered £100 at 25-1 on Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming the next governor of California.

The best price you can get now is even money and Pirie is already dreaming of spending his winnings. "I'm going to have an absolutely great party," he says, before adding, "and I'm going to ask Sir Clive Sinclair to host it."

Pirie and Sinclair have been mates since they ran Mensa together and our gambler is particularly impressed by his friend's pad in Trafalgar Square. "Nelson's his nearest neighbour," he gushes. "Clive has lots of gadgets so we will be able to show clips of The Terminator."

So will Arnie make a good governor? "Maybe California needs someone with an economics degree," Pirie replies. Arnie has one, by the way.

And then, I actually managed to track this story down in its electronic manifestation.

I think Madsen Pirie's foresight deserves to get around and be celebrated.

For those of you who've been shipwrecked in the South Seas, or sitting in a hospital queue in London, or are just coming round from a spectacular drunk, there's a bizarre election going on in California. The two issues are: should Governor Gray Davis be forced to resign because enough voters managed to put a petition together, and if so, who should replace him.

The front runner is exciting not least for fans of the scene in 'Demolition Man' where Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock) says to a de-frosted John Champion (Sylvester Stallone) that they should research in the Schwarzenegger Presidential Library. His response: "NO WAY!"

Well Arnold Schwarzenegger, who once polled one vote in a (British) Conservative Students' poll "Who should be the next Prime Minister" (after Margaret Thatcher), is the favourite in terms of money, polls and name recognition to become Governor of California. Should he win, a mere amendment to the US Constitution (or an outrageous 're-interpretation' by Supreme Court judges having a giggle) seperates the Terminator from the nuclear button. (Is this the plot for T4? The Machine runs for President!)

The election itself is fairly extraordinary. 135 candidates (3 of them libertarians). A straight first past the post which means that a candidate could win - in theory at least - with less than 0.75 per cent of any turnout. That is to say 3 actual votes out of every 400 votes cast. And we know that turnouts can be low.

I must confess that the Libertarian candidate who strikes me as worthy of support is Ned Fenton Roscoe, of Napa County, occupation "Cigarette retailer" and whose website is www.smokersparty.com. I almost suspect the hand of Paul Staines... The other two libertarians are described as a "Healthcare District Director" and a "State tax officer" from Sacramento. See here for a full list of candidates.

N.B. Non-US citizens are not allowed to give money to any candidate.

Sir Ernest Benn's The State The Enemy was first published in 1953, in other words exactly half a century ago. Chapter 1, also entitled "The State The Enemy" begins with a justification for this title:

To the Individualist the State is the Enemy. Herbert Spencer put the whole matter into five words in the title of his book The Man Versus The State. Talk of the people, the country, or the nation stirs the emotions, but the word State has a hard steely ruthless suggestion, and the notion of a State with a soul or a heart does not occur because it cannot exist.

But Benn was aware that this word "State" might suggest different things, and different emotions to potential American readers. So he concluded his first chapter thus:

I am not unhopeful that these arguments may be of interest, and indeed use, to those in America who are concerned at the growth of governmental power and influence – and I must therefore justify my use of the word State to signify the evil which it is my aim to describe and mitigate. This book could be named The Bureaucracy, but that would only put the blame upon the hirelings who have undertaken for a price to do the will of an evil spirit which resides above them.

From a purely British point of view I conclude that the word State signifies more correctly the troubles with which I am concerned; but to the American reader still jealous of the rights and privileges of each of the forty-eight States my meaning may be obscured by the label I put on to it. Had I used the title Whitehall the Enemy the American sympathiser with my view could easily read "Washington" for "Whitehall." I hope, however, that my use of the word State will not deter my American cousins, who look to the forty-eight separate self-governing States as instruments for restraining the Super-State at Washington, from examining arguments which apply to them as much as to us in Britain.

For some Americans, in other words, the "State" is a friend. But such Americans shouldn't be put off from reading The State The Enemy.

And the same applies to reading Samizdata, no matter what they may sometimes read here.

hehehehehehe. Just click the damn link, I am laughing too hard to write anymore.

Phil Bradley asks us to spot the common thread here

The Cato institute has just released its annual Economic Freedom of the World Report and interesting reading it makes.

The top 10 rankings of economic freedom - 1. being the most free - are as follows:

1. Hong Kong
   
2. Singapore
   
3. United States
   
4. New Zealand
   
5. United Kingdom
   
6. Canada
   
7. Switzerland
   
8. Ireland
   
9. Australia
   
10. Netherlands

The report itself analyses how over the long term differences in economic freedom results in large differences in economic growth and prosperity. If you are interested in the details you can read the report.

What struck me is that every significant anglophone country makes the top ten and only a single continental EU country (Holland) sneaks in at last place. The list is rounded out by Britain's last colony of any size (Hong Kong), another ex-british colony that has 100% anglophone middle class (Singapore), and the last continental EU hold-out (Switzerland).

France comes far down the list at number 44, Italy and German do a little better, ranked at 35th and 20th respectively.

Most people think of the Anglosphere in terms of political alignment in world affairs. The Cato report identifies something more important, which is a common understanding of how economic freedoms are integral to society, our economic well-being and personal liberty. Those in continental Europe who wonder why Britain is so sceptical of the EU and its attempts to 'harmonize', have only to read this report to see that harmonization would unavoidably result in the erosion of freedoms in Britain.

Phil Bradley

Today being the date that it is, here are two pictures, which I took today, of two of the statues in Parliament Square, which is a walk away from my home. As you can see, I have much to learn about photography, and these images are weak on detail, especially Lincoln. Plus, ever since I had it 'mended' about a year ago, my camera has imparted a pinkish hue to any bright light that it sees, of a sort that my knowledge of Photoshop is insufficient completely to remove. The sky over Lincoln started out bright pink, I kid you not, and the blossoms behind Churchill likewise. My camera sees the world through a rose tinted lense. (Helpful Photoshop comments would be welcome.) Nevertheless, I hope that the thought will count for something.

 

These two personages are both commonly regarded as that grandest variety of politician, known as statesmen, and what is more they were neither of them exactly shrinking violets when it came to expanding and strengthening their respective state apparatuses. So, given how we feel about the state and all its works here, maybe they aren't perfect for all the nuances of the sentiments being expressed. But they'll do.

Given the importance of tomorrow to our many American readers, I have been toying with the idea of posting the words of the Star Spangled Banner as a Samizdata Quote of the day at a minute past midnight this evening. However, although the anthem is stirring, the words are a celebration of an American military defeat of the British. And while this defeat led to the foundation of a great nation, it is not the whole story. In the longer term the two nations who fought that war have of course become extremely good friends. The country of which I am a citizen, Australia, is today an equally good friend of both. And I would rather be celebrating these friendships.

In particular, the third verse of the American anthem is somewhat problematic today.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash'd out
their foul footstep's pollution.
No refuge could save
the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight
or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

This is not terribly complimentary to the British enemy, and our American friends note this by generally leaving it out these days.

Amusingly, the national anthem of Australia has precisely the opposite problem. The second verse of our anthem is this:

When gallant Cook from Albion sail'd,
To trace wide oceans o'er,
True British courage bore him on,
Till he landed on our shore.
Then here he raised Old England's flag,
The standard of the brave;
With all her faults we love her still,
"Britannia rules the waves!"
In joyful strains then let us sing
"Advance Australia fair!"

And while many Australians have great fondness for the British (although we still really enjoy it when they lose at sporting events), this verse is today considered a little too sycophantic, as well as being a little out of date about who rules the waves. Therefore, it isn't normally sung either.

In any event, Jonathan Pearce beat me to action, and has expressed the appropriate sentiments about tomorrow already. I would simply like to wish the nation that actually does rule the waves a happy fourth of July.

Update: Yes, the Star Spangled Banner was actually written during and about the War of 1812. Notwithstanding that, I still wish everyone a happy Independence Day.

It appears the US is not the only nation fed up with the UN:

"The Australian government on Thursday branded multilateral forums such as the United Nations as "ineffective and unfocused" and said its future foreign policy would increasingly rely on "coalitions of the willing" like the one that waged war in Iraq."

Strewth!

And of course I am sure he does not particularly care what I think either. In an article titled Europe and Liberalism, he notes that Ramesh Ponnuru has praised him for changing his mind about the European Union.

Sullivan now thinks the European Union is not such a good thing as he once thought and both he and Ponnuru have finally noticed that having the EU completely swallow Britain is also not in the national interests of the USA. In fact that Americentric utilitarian observation seems to be the entire basis for their opposition to The Great European Project. Massive regulatory statism? Dramatic erosion of due process? Ever higher taxes? 'Fortress Europe' trade barriers with the rest of the world? Spectacular corruption? Higher unemployment? No... the reason to finally start glaring at the EU across the Atlantic is to preserve the UK's ability to support the US in foreign policy matters and to work for US interests from within the bastions of Fortress Europe.

This narrow utilitarian argument seems to be what has brought Sullivan to stop being a cheerleader for the EU without much of a nod to the idea that maybe the EU is bad for Britain. So whilst I am happy to see a fairly influential commentator like Sullivan stop arguing Britain should embrace the EU even more deeply, he has nothing whatsoever to contribute to the British domestic debate on the subject. In fact, the stated views of Sullivan play to anti-American sentiments within Britain so harmoniously that I really wish he would just shut the f**k up.

To argue that the reason Britain should not allow its national sovereignty and identity to be submerged by Europe is because it does not suit the United States, is to put many of the people who dislike the EU in Britain in rather a quandary. Many such folks dislike the EU because British interests matter far more to them that those of the EU... and for exactly the same reason they are also highly suspicious of the USA, seeing it as subordinating 'our' interests to 'their' interests. For an example of anti-EU sentiments allied to deep and festering suspicion of the USA, you need look no further than Air Strip One. I see little value in Sullivan actively kicking the none-too-tight lid off latent anti-Americanism with statements like:

Keeping Britain both in the [United States of Europe] and outside of it militarily, diplomatically, and monetarily should become a prime U.S. objective in foreign policy. Without it, the United States could lose its most valuable military and diplomatic ally.

But the fact is almost no one who actually (in theory) gets a vote on the subject, not even Atlanticist enthusiasts like myself, think US interests are more than passingly germane when trying to argue against Britain sleepwalking to the gaping maw of that half-dead and half-mad leviathan called the European Union.

It seems Sullivan is no fan of the social/cultural Anglosphere meme. What with him being a party political right-statist (a Republican) and only a passing commentator on things like objective rights and moral philosophy, I suppose it is not all that surprising to read him taking a highly collectivist 'American national interests' view of pretty much everything, but then this is precisely why his views are of little value in any positive way to people outside his American national collective.

I would argue that the Anglosphere does exist as a cultural vibe, but it is something that can be made a great deal weaker precisely by attitudes like Sullivan's. The underlying cultural basis for UK political support for US actions in Iraq sprang from these very real Anglosphere notions. Yet if I thought the United States government was working to keep Britain inside a United States of Europe (just not too far inside) for its own interests and at our expense, which is to say working against people like me who are calling for the UK's complete withdrawal from the EU, then I would be bulk purchasing US flags to burn in demonstrations in central London... and if a relentlessly Atlanticist Anglosphere person such as me thinks that, one can only speculate what less pro-American segments of popular opinion might think.

If the US government wants Britain as an ally, fine. But if it wants to sacrifice individual British people as political cannon fodder to mitigate the effects of EU power? Want to know where you can stick that? I will continue to regard US civil society as having many admirable qualities and still feel an Atlanticist affinity to it regardless... but at that point the US government loses its 'lesser evil' status for me and becomes just another enemy on every level as the last basis for having incidental common goals vanishes.

I detect a distinct air of despondency in the ranks of the libertarian camp in ever seeing any point in voting for, or co-opting with, right-of-centre parties such as the Conservatives in Britain (see David Carr's remarks) or the Republican Party in the U.S. (see Jim Henley in similar vein).

I see no reason for being surprised. Even if you support Bush on the war, as I do, albeit while detesting the Patriot act and the Dept. of Homeland Security, what is there to like? The vast increase in the budget deficit is a real worry - and I say that as a supply sider, not as a 'deficit hawk' - we have had the steel tariffs, the Farm bill, etc. Okay, the first tax cut was better than nothing, but not as good as a cut to marginal tax rates across the board. Oh, Dubya did at least stiff the Kyoto Treaty. But while he is probably a tad better than the likely alternatives, his GOP makes an unlikely suitor for libertarians.

As for the Tories, I despair utterly of them being in a fit state for any outreach to us. With the sole and erratic exception of shadow Home Secretary Oliver Letwin, there is not a single top-ranking Tory MP I come across who seems to have a thorough grasp of the extent to which our civil as well as economic liberties have been crushed.

Which leaves us with the usual cul-de-sac of a possible new party. And I cannot see how that is going to work.

Members of Sinn Fein/IRA have been protesting against the war in Iraq, both yesterday and today, as President Bush and Prime Minister Blair meet in Belfast to discuss the shape of post-war Iraq and the Northern Irish peace process.

For some strange reason,
Ba'athist Socialism's crimes do not get any mention...
I wonder why?

That the Marxists of Sinn Fein/IRA should be making common cause with Iraqi Ba'athist Socialism should be no surprise, but that they should be publicly supporting them at a time when the torture chambers and corpse filled warehouses of the regime's victims are now coming to light is very revealing not just of the true character of these people but is a measure of just how out of touch they are. To be honest I can hardly contain my delight at their public display of sheer unalloyed stupidity.

As US and British soldiers fight and die together in Iraq to overthrow a mass murdering tyranny, I wonder how this scene in Ulster will look on television screens in Boston? I look forward seeing what happens the next time someone tries a little fund raising for the Irish Republican 'Army' across the water.

Hello America! We love you!

As stories of the Irish Guards operating skillfully in Basra with tactics honed in Northern Ireland are recounted, I hope a few more noisy protests from the Sinn Fein supporters also make their way across the world's computer and TV screens as they make an interesting contrast.

Irish Guards snipers in Iraq demonstrate the true meaning of Anglosphere solidarity



Irish Guards in Basra

Patrick Crozier has some views on our cousins across the Big Pond

America is a great country. Yes, I know they never stop reminding us of the fact and it can become a bit irksome but it is still true and perhaps we should take the time to remind ourselves from time to time.

For starters America is a rich country. Not only is the average wage higher but the cost of living is lower. The average American has a bigger house, a better car and more consumer durables than just about anywhere else. Healthcare for the vast majority is excellent and an astonishing proportion of Americans attend college.

America is a land of opportunity - still. Just ask Anthony Hopkins or Catherine Zeta-Jones or Tracy Ullman or Jane Leeves or Henry Kissinger or Andrew Sullivan (he is a Brit isn't he?) or Tina Brown (likewise?) or Arnold Schwarzenegger or Colin Powell's dad. And that's just the foreigners. America is a country where the "can do" attitude prevails and dreams can come true.

America has contributed massively to the rest of the world. From Hollywood movies to McDonalds to the personal computer to, well, closer to home, blogging. America has been responsible for 80% of the world's rock music and 95% of its dance music. Oh, and ending two world wars. OK, so they weren't decisive in the first (that was the Canadians and Australians) but I think we can credit them with the second. And then there's the Cold War.

America is a free country. More than just about anywhere in the world American citizens are free from arbitrary arrest, torture and arbitrary punishment. The right to free speech is even enshrined in the constitution. And then, unlike most places, honoured. In America you can hold on to more of the property you have worked for than just about anywhere else and once the government has taken its cut you are more or less free to do whatever you like with it.

America is not without fault but even there many of America's alleged faults are not faults at all. It is often accused of racism and racism certainly exists but racism exists everywhere. The Russians hate the Chechens, the Romanians hate the Hungarians and the Japanese hate everyone. What is remarkable about America is how little racism there is and how deeply its governing classes want to do something about it. The fact that so many Hollywood movies nowadays have a black in a leading or main supporting role speaks volumes for this desire.

People also complain about the crime rate but they are behind the times. With the exception of murder America's crime rate is lower than that of the UK. That really ought to fill us with shame.

We Brits often get a bit snooty about American English but should we? I have this dreadful fear that my UK v US English competition will end in a US victory. US English does the job just well as our own version - it's just that the words are different, that's all.

People say that Americans are rude and pushy - just like the one out of Fawlty Towers. Some are for sure. But so are many Britons. And vast swathes of middle America contain some of the nicest, friendliest people you could ever want to meet.

It can be bruising to come face to face with the American corporate steamroller but is it really all that bad? American firms from Ford, to Oracle, to Mars and McDonalds have provided good jobs for thousands in Britain and millions around the world. Lest we forget, it was American money that built most of the London tube and the Ford Cortina MkII 1600E. And if American corporate dominance is such an issue, rather than getting angry, wouldn't it be better to get even?

Actually, this is a general point. If we want to be as rich and as free as the Americans (and surely we do) rather than fume and rage, get snooty about things and bind up America in stupid international treaties wouldn't the smart thing be to work out how they got that way and then do it for ourselves?

Well, wouldn't it?

Malcolm Hutty spots someone taking a frequent 'Samizdata.net' position...

An article in the Telegraph argues that Britain should seek maximum political capital through institutionalising a re-invigorated permanent alliance with America. France and Germany should be left to take care of the neccessary fence-mending; since when has it been in Britains interests to increase French political influence?

So far, so very Samizdata. And not at all suprising for a Telegraph op-ed. However, down at the bottom of the web page is this significant byline:

David Frum was President Bush's speech writer and author of his 'axis of evil' speech.

You do not have to believe in 'argument from authority' to realise that sometimes who is making an argument is as important as anything they say.

Malcolm Hutty

We have got the war we argued for. Now we who called for it can only pray that the cost is not too terrible for the soldiers of the United States and Britain, nor of course for the long suffering hapless people of Iraq. At this moment of truth for the Anglosphere I have very few words of my own right now that do not stick in my throat, so I will just quote Julia Ward Howe's famous song (large file) that was also sung at the funeral of Winston Churchill.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored,
He has loosed the fateful lightening of His terrible swift sword
His truth is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps
l can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps
His day is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnish'd rows of steel,
"As ye deal with my contemners, So with you my grace shall deal;"
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel
Since God is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

God speed, Gentlemen.

For an anarchist libertarian, things are easy. Of course government folk find ways round every effort to limit the powers of the state - government is a malignant cancer and limited state people and minimal state people are just fools.

For those people (such as myself) who have doubt about anarchism things are difficult. We tend to fall back on ideas about Constitutions to limit the power of government - and the record of such things is not good.

Firstly few Constitutions even try to limit what things government can spend money on, and even those Constitutions that do try and do this by listing what government can spend on do not tend to hold back the state.

In the case of Australian Constitution there were amendments to the Constitution to allow the government to spend money on various welfare state programs (it is, of course, the welfare state or 'entitlement' programs that constitute the vast majority of government spending in all Western nations). In the American case the Constitution was simply ignored.

Some Classical Liberals and libertarians regard the fact that United States Constitution was not amended to allow for the growth of the government as a sign of hope ("the Constitution still exists, all we need to do is enforce it"), but I tend to agree with the anarchists that the fact that the United States Constitution has been used for toilet paper (without any real resistance) is deeply scary.

And make no mistake the U.S. Constitution has been smashed. Take the example of paper money. The Founders all opposed the concept of making unbacked notes money simply by government order (they had the example of the 'Continental' to remind them of some of the problems with the idea). And the Constitution seems clear enough.

The Congress has the power "To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures" - point 5, Section 8, Article 1.

And of course no State of the United States may "make anything but gold or silver coins a tender of payment for debts" point 1, Section 10, Article I. And this is not fitted it with any words such as "this is because the Feds are going to it".

The Tenth Amendment, of course, states "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people",

I will not going into the corrupt history here (the second 'Greenback case' and all the rest of it). But by the 1930's not only were government (sorry 'Federal Reserve Board') notes in circulation, but one could no longer claim gold for these notes and indeed contracts expressed in terms of gold were ripped up (in spite of all the words in the Constitution about upholding contracts), and even owning decent amounts of gold was a 'crime' punishable by imprisonment.

I give the above example in such detail in order to (hopefully) inform people who might say "but the United States Constitution is still enforced".

After all the powers that be have managed to get two of the words from the start of Section 8, Article 1 "general welfare" to justify all the welfare state programs. In fact (of course) "the common defence and general welfare of the United States" are what the long list of powers in Section 8 are supposed to be FOR, the 'general welfare' is not a power itself.

When one is dealing with a power elite so corrupt that it will do the above and a general public so badly informed that it will allow it I am tempted to despair.

All one can really say is that the idea of using Judges to limit the spending and regulation of government is a nonstarter. If Judges are decent men (such as the 'four horsemen of the apocalypse' on the United States Supreme Court in the 1930's) then they will be denounced as out of touch 'economic royalists' (or whatever).

Perhaps if there were juries of ordinary people (rather than government appointed judges) there might be a chance - but that leads on to the structure of government.

I think structure does matter.

For example if a State legislature only meets for a few days a year (as, for example, the Texas State legislature does) it is likely to do less harm than a State legislature that is in session for most of the year (the latter simply has more time to do harm). If one thinks a government needs a budget that can be worked out in a quite limited time (if it has to be so worked out), why have politicians hanging about with time on their hands? "The devil makes work for idle hands".

Also why should politicians be paid? People in the lower house of the New Hampshire State legislature are not paid very much - are they less wise (or whatever) than State legislature people in other States? 

People should not see politics as a job. They should have a real job - sitting in an Assembly or a Parliament should be a part time activity (and the hours should reflect that).

But one can go further. Why should there be a group of politicians sitting in a legislature at all?

Get a group of politicians together and they will find ways to increase government power. After all they went into politics (for the most part) to 'help people' - so of course they will spend lots of money and pass lots of laws (and create a big modern administration - and the administrators will create a hundred or a thousand regulations for every law the politicians create).

Why not just let the people assembly each year and decide what they want to spend money on directly. Like a New Hampshire township or a couple of Swiss Cantons - and with no 'mandates' from on high, telling them what they must spend money on. Would this not be the 'democracy' that we are all told is a good idea?

The nation is too big and needs a defence budget? Still no need for politicians to sit in Congress or Parliament, just select a few hundred people at random (a big jury) and have the military and the anti military activists make there case before them.

If there really is a need for professional politicians (which I doubt) it is in the Executive.

But does this really have to be one person? A Prime Minister or a President who can pretend that "I am the nation" - "I am your father" - "I speak for you" (and so on). The Big Dad or the Big Mother.

Why not an Executive Council (say of five people - the traditional number) small enough to make quick decisions in a crises (say the nation has just been invaded) but not a single 'Head of State' or 'Head of Government'. True one of the five would end up the head person - but it would not be quite the same.

Remember the nature of law.

One thing that all libertarians can agree on is that the system of allowing a group of politicians to make laws in an assembly or a parliament has proved to be a very bad one.

Give politicians (people who tend to be rather interested in 'doing things' and are, by definition, interested in power) the ability to 'make laws' and it is like letting young children loose in a sweet shop. The young children may learn a valuable lessons when they are sick - but what the politicians do will make the nation become very sick indeed (and the various gangs of politicians are not likely to learn anything).

No libertarian (I hope) would defend the practice of broad statutes that allow civil servants to make up rules and regulations ("delegated legislation") that it is said that a "modern state" can not survive without delegated legislation just shows how unlimited the modern government is.

However, it is also time to say that politicians ('democratically elected' or not) should also not make laws. Whether one believes in the concept of "nature law" or regards the concept as absurd one can still see that Parliament made law is crazy.

Some libertarians favour a grand law code written by libertarian legal philosophers (for although the principles of justice may be "natural" the details of applying them in the circumstances of time and place will still need a lot of working out) and some libertarians believe that law should be 'judge made' or 'discovered by judges' - i.e. law should emerge by the settlement of disputes on a case by case basis (the common law way).

But for all of the above structure still matters. If a legal code who writes it? Will it really be libertarian philosophers of jurisprudence - How did they get in this position?

As for common law. Which judges will decide disputes - modern government appointed judges, taught all about 'social justice' and 'human rights law' in their university days?

The ancient system of such lands as Ireland and (more often) Iceland are pointed to - where people choose which judge they went before and judges were not appointed by a government. Of course their might be no agreement on the judge or his judgement might not be accepted (in which case, in ancient Iceland, the matter still went to the people assembled), and one would still have to worry about the corruption of the structure (even in ancient Ireland the the rights of jurisdiction eventually got concentrated into a few families and there was strife - "and his sons walked not in his ways" as the bible says of the sons of Judge Samuel in a different context).

Not everyone can be a good judge, and people tend to demand that judges (even if they are arbitrators) have a certain standing, in religion, or in learning, or in family tradition - and such standards can be abused.

Perhaps it is my silly British pride, but for all the absurd judgements they have made I still have a soft spot for ordinary juries. By the 16th century non government judges and other such had died out in the known world and juries were confined to the British Isles.

This little bit of structure these grand and petty juries, these bastard offspring of a mixture of Anglo Saxon and Norman French tradition formed (by judging facts and law - jury nullification) helped limit the power of British rulers in the centuries ahead - when the rulers of most other lands had made themselves depots.

It was not that the British were better people, or that they had better ideas, or even that they had better laws, it was a little bit of structure (an absurd feudal relic - as it was thought of the great legal scholars of the civilized world) that helped contain Britain's rulers.

Structure does matter.

And now, a bit of homegrown outrage. If you live in a EU country, in a few years, you could be subjected to the new European arrest warrant. Under legislation going through Parliament, it might soon be possible to have you extradited to the Continent for "racism" and "xenophobia".

There is a new form of bigotry - "monetary xenophobia", or opposition to the euro as identified by some EU funded bodies, such as EUMC, the European Monitoring Centre for Racism and Xenophobia.

It has become increasingly obvious that European integration means transfer of authority to ever greater number of EU institutions, further from the reach of the member states' citizens. Despite the decades of assurances that there are no plans to set up a common legal system and its enformcement, the Federasts just couldn't contain themselves.

Now, it is becoming a reality - smuggled past unsuspecting publics in the traumatic days after September 11, 2001. If the emerging European constitution is ever implemented, Britain seems destined to give up its remaining veto in home affairs.

This has already been seriously diluted since the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997 - which, incidentally, committed Europol to a more aggressive role in combating "racism" and "xenophobia". Indeed, clause 3, section 20, sub-section 2 of the proposed legislation states that arrests under such warrants can be effected by policemen or "other appropriate persons". Who are they? Commission officials? Europol?

Apologists for Europol have always claimed that it would be nothing more than a 'clearing house for information'. Yet, Europol is initiating changes in policy and is in the vanguard of moves to increase the power of the authorities over ordinary citizens within the EU.

Europol can hold information on individuals on its Central Information System database that includes their 'sexual orientation, religion, or politics', as well ethnic origin, age, address, and so on. Indeed under article 8.4 of the Europol Convention there is a catch-all category of 'additional information' that could include hearsay and unsubstantiated allegations. Individuals included in the database need not have been convicted of committing criminal offences under national law or be thought likely to have carried out crimes for which they were never convicted. Information can be entered about persons who it is believed will commit crimes in the future.

The difference between British and Continental public culture, manifested in the legal realm, could not be more obvious.

In Britain, expression of heinous - even unconventional - views can marginalise you. But unless you seek to incite violence, your opinions in and of themselves cannot subject you to the rigour of the criminal law.

Not so in Europe, where technocratic elites have inherited the jealous intolerance of absolute sovereigns. Even as ministers struggle feebly to minimise the remit of Brussels in criminalising opinion, one is left with the abiding impression that they are acquiring far more influence over our traditional way of life than we will ever enjoy over theirs.

I think we should now be thinking of how best to live 'independently' of the EU avoiding its technocratic nightmare, whilst aligning Britain's strategy with allies more powerful and far more natural to our Anglosphere traditions.

The State is not your friend...
and the Superstate even less so

One of the best things about the British Channel 4 television slot is its history programmes. I recall watching a number of programmes about the Napoleonic wars, and they ended with a remarkably Euro-sceptic take on the different visions of social order as evinced by British Prime Minister Pitt the Younger and politician Edmund Burke on the one hand, and those of Robespierre and his fellow totalitarian psychos, on the other. So maybe Channel 4 is not quite the haven of idiotarian marxoid nonsense I used to think after all.

Further proof of that view came last night in the end of the series Empire, a series on the British Empire by historian Niall Ferguson, who also has a good book out.

Anyway, last night's programme ended with a comment much to the effect that for all its faults, the British Empire spread the English language (good thing), the rule of law (same), capitalism (yep, good thing again), and team sports (ditto). And although it eventually broke up, our influence is still large, albeit indirectly, via the US, although the US dare not call its reach of influence an empire.

In other words, Ferguson has gotten the Anglosphere bug. This meme is spreading fast. Where will it go next, I wonder?

A number of commentators in the Big Media and of course in blogosphere have remarked on how UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to back up the US on the Iraq issue has put Britain at odds with Germany and France while mightily improving the standing of lil 'ol Britain in the eyes of Uncle Sam.

Christopher Caldwell makes the point eloquently in the latest edition of British weekly, The Spectator. The whole thing is worth a read but I have one quibble with a remark he makes in the final paragraph, where he says Britain has an "economy in far better shape than that of the United States". Huh? The British stock market has been falling proportionately more severely than the main indices of the U.S., a fact which can be explained by the higher taxes and red tape emanating from Whitehall and Brussels.

But that is a quibble. Overall, Caldwell's article reads true to me and suggests that Blair, either by luck or judgement, has put the UK on a much stronger geo-political footing by siding with the U.S.. Optimism is always easy to knock but I cannot help thinking that Blair may have unwittingly given the Anglosphere a powerful boost, and pushed this country a little further from the EU behemoth.

Of course, I may be eating these words soon.

After watching the news tonight, I am coming around ever more to David Carr's way of thinking. Perhaps sheer irritation by the Bush Administration about the obscurantist stance of the French and German governments regarding the use of force to depose Saddam Hussain may achieve something I have long wanted to see... the end of the fiction in American minds that either France or Germany are in fact US allies in any meaningful sense.

This is the first step needed to de-couple the Anglosphere Atlantic Alliance from the legacy of World War Two and the Cold War. The first clear step that this process is under way will be the permanent withdrawal of most US forces currently stationed in Germany, a situation which is a costly anachronism in the post Cold War world. Maybe the opportunity will be immediatly post-Gulf War II, with the US troops currently based in Germany which are going to be involved in Iraq going back to bases in the USA instead.

I just hope the pompous Chirac and the buffoonish Schroeder keep plucking on the eagle's feathers... sooner of later Blair, or his successor, is going to have to decide if they want to be on the side of history's winners or history's losers.

Hell, changing the name of N.A.F.T.A. to North Atlantic Free Trade Area would not even require reprinting all that stationary with the acronym on it!

It is a rare thing indeed when I trawl through the pages of the Subservient only to emerge with a smile and a jaunty spring in my step but today is just such an occasion.

Since the credentials of both the author of the article, a Liberal Democrat MP, and the organ in which the article appears, are impeccably federast I think it is safe to say that dire warnings of a split between the UK and Europe is not merely a product of wishful thinking.

"But there are two more profound reasons for the plunge in Britain's status within the EU that should give Tony Blair real cause for concern. First, there is the euro. Last month, the Portuguese Prime Minister, Jose Durao Barroso, voiced in public what EU heads of government have long whispered in private – why should the UK be granted a leadership role as long as it is unwilling to sign up to one of the central tenets of EU membership? As long as EU leaders believed Tony Blair was merely biding his time before putting the issue to a referendum, there was sufficient goodwill to forgive Britain's procrastination. But, as the Continent looks on with perplexity at the gridlock between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, fears have deepened that Mr Blair has missed his chance.

And then, most important of all, there is Britain's special relationship with the United States. It is difficult to capture the conflicting reactions which Blair's ostentatious loyalty to George Bush's foreign policy elicits within the rest of the EU."

As I have indicated previously, our strategic alliance with the USA is something which the EU cannot tolerate alongside it's new-found ethos of being a rival to the US and not an ally. The day of British liberation is not at hand and may not even be close but it is just a little bit closer than it was a year ago.

Tony Blair has turned out to be a love-rat; forever declaring his affections for Europe while flaunting his high-profile affair with George Bush. The question is how long he can go on two-timing them both? Surely one of these girls is going to put her foot down and demand Tony's fidelity before much longer and who can resist the heady romance of being a war-time bride?

I didn't vote for Blair and I do not count myself among his fans but I find myself being forced to concede that he is doing more to pave the way for British independence than any number of phoney, careerist Tories.

America is to award the Congressional Medal of Honour, the equivalent of the Victoria Cross, to a British Special Boat Service (formerly Special Boat Squadron) commando who led the rescue of a CIA officer from an Afghan prison revolt.

It will be the first time the medal has been awarded to a living foreigner. The Queen will have to give permission for the SBS soldier to wear it.

The SBS senior NCO led a patrol of half-a-dozen SBS commandos who rescued a member of the CIA's special activities section from the fort at Qala-i-Jangi near Mazar-i-Sharif, last November. The fort was holding 500 al-Qa'eda and Taliban prisoners, many of whom had not been searched and were still armed.

An exchange of fire developed into a full-scale revolt and two CIA officers who had been interrogating the prisoners were caught in the battle in which one was killed. The uprising went on for three days and the SBS commandos remained throughout, bringing down aerial fire to quell the revolt.

The battle was one of the most contentious episodes in the war last year with human rights groups raising concerns over air strikes against prisoners, some of them unarmed.

The eagerness of the Americans to recognise the courage of the NCO contrasts with suspicion within the regiment that two SAS soldiers being considered for VCs for an attack on the al-Qaeda cave complex will not get them.

Not by strength, by guile

Long before the Great Unwashed got it into their tiny minds to start smashing up city centres in protests about 'globalisation', there was a healthy trade in cultural memes going on between Britain and the USA.

Jazz music made the transatlantic crossing some time in the 1920's I believe, and took off so successfully in Britain that we began sending our own band-leaders, like Ray Noble, over to the States. The process was enhanced during World War II when US soldiers romanced British 'dames' to the tunes of Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller.

Post-war, America gave us Elvis and, a few years later, we launched a British invasion of the USA spearheaded by the Beatles.

But it wasn't just a trade in popular music. Thanks to that engine of global cultural hegemony, Hollywood, American speech idioms also found their way into British culture. Whilst some British pundits sneered contemptuously at all these 'ghastly Americanisms', they were unable to stop Brits picking up terms like 'ballpark figure' or 'okay, I'm outta here'.

The stalwarts who vainly attempted to arrest this process were misguided. Since language is one of the few aspects of life that is not controlled by the government, it is a free market of terms and idioms and many Brits casually adopted American expressions that they found to be more expressive and colourful than their own and seamlessly weaved them into their everyday conversations. That's how choice works and I'm all for it.

But, alongside (or possibly, underneath) this healthy cultural cross-fertilisation is an equally lively, but rather less celebrated, trade in obscenities. I remember clearly back in about 1975 when an American boy at my school used the term 'motherf*cker'. We were so shocked. It was quite the rudest thing we'd ever heard. But, since then, it has duly taken it's place in the British lexicon of pre-fight insults.

Of course, it is encumbent on us Brits to return the favour by bestowing upon our American cousins an etymological treasure of our own. I am delighted to be able to say that it appears that we have done so.

On my journey's around blogland, I came across Rachel Lucas, a 'gun-totin' anti-idiot from Texas (and you can't get more American than that, surely) who has a category on her blog called 'Liberals and other Wankers'.

Seeing it made me grin from ear to ear because she uses the term with such casual aplomb and without a word of explanation and that means that Rachel is confident that her American readers will recognise and understand the word 'wanker'.

Now, 'wanker' is a pure, home-grown British slang the American equivalent of which is 'jerk-off'. But, let's face it, 'wanker' is pithier, punchier and altogether more abusive. Calling somebody a 'jerk-off' is merely naughty, but calling them a 'wanker' is downright rude and is, therefore, an infintely preferable term when your intention is to be downright rude. Rachel Lucas clearly intends to be downright rude to her left-wing compatriots.

I believe this is a recent development and I would hazard that the British end of the blogosphere has played a part in this successful export drive. In any event, we Brits have bestowed upon our US cousins a valuable tool in the armoury of bellicose confrontation, and at a time when they need it most. We have responded to their market need as they have often responded to ours.

Whilst it won't appear on any balance sheets, the term 'wanker' has now taken its place on Unofficial Honour Role of transatlantic trade history. Hurrah!

...you fat (alliterative expletive deleted)?

No, not you, dear reader. I refer only to a few words quoted in Jim Bennett's latest column. The opening sentences might be of particular interest to Samizdata readers. If the line quoted sounds slightly different from the way you remember it, bear in mind that they are a pure-minded lot at UPI. Not like us lot who will print anything.

Oh, and just as an aside, Jim Bennett touches on two subjects that I'd like him to explore further: tort law reform and Ireland.

The BBC Protection Ministry (sometimes knowns as the 'Independent' Television Commission), has banned the US news program "The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board With Stuart Varney" and threatened CNBC with fines. As the Opinion Journal puts it:

"Let us see if we get this straight. The ITC thinks it is protecting viewers by refusing to let them hear the viewpoints of a roundtable of American newspaper editors? These same editors may state their views in a newspaper that bears the name of The Wall Street Journal, but if they utter them on a TV program that bears that newspaper's name, their views are somehow tainted? That sure sounds like a free-speech issue to us.

Which leads to the question of what the case is really about. The answer--and we wish we could say this with the requisite plummy accent--is the BBC. The ITC's actions against CNBC Europe and CNN amount to little more than the British government harassing private competitors of the publicly funded British Broadcasting Corp."

I'll be a bit less compromising than our friends across the water. What the bureaucracy really doesn't like is the non-Tranzi slant of the WSJ. They don't want the BBC to have to compete with ideas.

I hope our Russian ex-pat friend succeeds in taking the Beeb down a peg or two!

Please consider this modest posting as an addendum to David Carr's article As good as it currently gets. I have little in the way of words to add to his observations but it seemed to me that the picture below, which I have just taken here in London whilst returning from the supermarket, is a delightful addition.

Alas, grotesque self-publicist, leading Idiotarian and BBC favourite Michael Moore is currently blighting the shores of these sceptred Isles by his rotund presence... but it would seem that some passing Brit with an impeccable interest in Anglosphere affairs has seen fit to ennoble Moore's poster with some pithy observations of his or her own...

"Congress Falls to Republicans" is how the BBC reports the catastrophic news to impartial observers (or should that be left-wing activists?).

Jeb Bush holds on to the Florida governorship.

President Bush may be a vicious protectionist, but I can't help feeling that this is one of those days for quiet gloating. Or should that be overt mirth?

I have come across a useful list of terms that I post herewith for the benefit of our US readers. For more insults regarding the common language which divides us, please click on the link.

British biscuit scone lump of dough fag homo gay socialist whig tory right-wing tory green bloke< sod oops oh jolly very really quite guy bloody darn , . ! nude nudity flat lift chemists loo complain chips maize corn coffee tepid water cold water tipsy drunk pissed annoyed irate nice cool cold snow drizzle rain light breeze windy foreign weather brolly telly umpire bowler football

American cookie biscuit scone cigarette fag happy communist socialist democrat republican tree-hugging buddy fuck fuck fuck fucking fucking fucking fucking motherfucker motherfucking motherfucking , you know , know what I mean , man! pornographic porn apartment elevator drug store rest room sue fries corn grain espresso coffee beer drunk plastered dead drunk pissed postal cool cold freezing snow storm rain storm flood warning wind storm hurricane sunshine umbrella TV referee pitcher soccer

Via Monkeyfarts.

Dr. Jan Fortune-Wood is a freelance writer and home educator. She is a supporter of Taking Children Seriously and writes on home education, autonomous education and non-coercive parenting from a libertarian perspective.

In both the United States and Britain home education is on the increase. Roland Meighan, formerly special professor of education at Nottingham university estimates that at least 1% of school aged children are home educated in Britain. In the United States the figure is 5% with a growth rate of 20% each year and rising. In both the United States and Britain home education is increasingly a step taken by families disillusioned by the provision of mainstream education.

However, the content of this disillusionment seems to vary enormously. In the States, despite a growing number of secular home educators, the religious reason continues to dominate. In a society that separates religion and state, religious parents, especially those on the fundamentalist right are likely to withdraw their children from schooling. In contrast, Britain has no such separation of religion and state. Religious education and a daily act of worship are mandatory in state schools and the government is set to forge ahead with plans to increase the number of state funded schools with an explicitly religious foundation despite the protests of the National Secular Society. Of course, for some religious families this weak inoculation of school based religion is insufficient, especially when evolution is taught routinely in biology classes, but those who withdraw their children for religious reasons are very much in the minority of British home educators.

In the United States, Ronald Presitto¹ tells us that the right of parents to raise their children according to their religious convictions is at the heart of the divergence between 'home schooling' and the educational establishment. In contrast, most British home educators begin with pragmatic concerns - children are withdrawn when severe bullying incidents fail to be resolved, when they are too bored to tolerate the standardised national curriculum, when their special needs are not taken into account or when the only school place offered is at some dismal, failing institution where you wouldn't leave a dog. Some do start out with convictions about individualised education or religion, but these are the minority.

What American home schoolers and British home educators have in common is the reaction of their 'authorities' to their presence. From local officials to policy makers to government ministers there is a swathe of opinion that believes that parents are not to be trusted with their children and that the State, whether it is secular, socialist or broadly Judaeo-Christian, represents safer hands and inculcates more objective values. Recently in Britain the host of a prestigious legal radio programme (Radio 4 'Law in Action') opined exactly that in his weekly Guardian column - teachers are trained, accredited and hand down the official package to children, but heaven (or not) only knows what parents might be doing to their children.

In America, Presitto traces these attitudes to modern American liberalism, to progressives who rated common enterprise above the interests of the individual, giving rise to increased state powers and justifying this expansion as being in the people's best interests - secular and scientific. Parents, on the other hand, were suspect - they might infect and instill their young with dogma. In Britain education was first provided by the church and continues to be apparently 'Christian', but it is a mild, perhaps peculiarly British, strain of Christianity that goes hand in hand with socialist fears that parents might exploit or abuse children or that individualism might run rampant against the idol of communitarianism. In both countries, Marx's scorn for "the bourgeois claptrap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parent and child" is alive and well in educational and political arenas near you right now.

Despite Britain's recent adoption of the convention on human rights, which protects a right to a family life, this scorn is made all too evident in recent British politics. The Blairite government has introduced Connexions an iniquitous Orwellian electronic card issued to young people to enable them to access educational and other services, but only after they have gone through detailed interviews revealing every scrap of their own and their parents private lives. More recently a Bill which makes compulsory the drugging of children deemed to have 'ADHD' and which will criminalise parents who try to stand in the state's way has been introduced.

In Britain, despite having stepped out of the state provision of education, many home educators come from left wing backgrounds and have a great deal of sympathy with the view that if they have nothing to hide then they should be willing to let the authorities into their homes or produce their children on request - often in the name of saving other children from supposed exploitation or abuse. In Britain it often takes a first hand encounter with an intrusive and bullying local education authority inspector to make people reconsider their stance and ideology is usually something that develops along the way. Without the lobbying numbers of their American counterparts, many British home educators are fearful of putting their heads over the political parapet at all and though there are an increasing number of activists and signs of mature political thinking, there is also a great deal of suspicion of making any kind of stand. Behind the scenes in British home education there is certainly disillusionment with state provision, but the fight is not a religious one and, for many, not even an ideological one. Instead there is a confused picture - astute thinking and activism jostle alongside the concerns of down shifters, eco-worriers and socialists who just can't quite stomach the system when it comes to their own children.

In the States parents have won battles to protect the 'traditional interests of parents'. In Britain, home educators are holding their breath - they have watched French and Irish home educators loose rights and, within their own community, are witnessing an ongoing and protracted attack on the rights of Scottish home educators (where a separate law to that of England and Wales operates). British home educators have the advantage of being broad based, largely secular, not easily dismissed as wild dogmatists, but for all that they are living in interesting times in the face of Blairite infractions into liberty and need to galvanise before the fence they are sitting on is bulldozed for
their own good.

Dr. Jan Fortune-Wood

¹ = What's Behind Home Schooling? by Ronald J. Pestritto in 2002 edition of the San Diego Union-Tribune,Thursday, October 3. This
article is archived at The Claremont Institute.

It’s Sunday, and since Friday evening I’ve been staying with my older sister Daphne and brother-in-law Denis in western Wales, in the countryside very near the coast, just east of Fishguard, which is where the ferries to southern Ireland sail from. They’ve been living here for the best part of a decade, but this is my first visit to them. They seem very content. That this is a most beautiful part of the world is true, but to be expected. Countryside, especially if next to the sea and viewed in the fine weather I’ve enjoyed, is beautiful.

Many Samizdata readers will also know two other facts about this part of Britain. First, that Daphne and Denis aren’t the only retired English people living in Wales, and second, that in these parts, although they mostly speak English, a substantial minority of the people speak their own local language, Welsh.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Daphne and Denis are both learning Welsh. They are taking it very seriously. From October 1st of this year until March 31st 2003 (at which time the plan will be reassessed) they will be speaking to each other entirely in Welsh, unless third parties who only understand English are present. Daphne has also told all her local acquaintances that she would also like to speak Welsh with all of them who speak it.

They are not the only retired English expats here to do this, in fact Denis tells me that it was meeting another Englishman who had become fluent in Welsh was what first encouraged him. Welsh classes abound.

Why are these people doing this?

Basically, they are learning Welsh because it is there. Welsh is by far the most substantial non-English language spoken in Britain. Eighteen per cent of the Welsh people speak it, so Denis tells me, and although hardly anyone is fluent only in Welsh, many prefer Welsh and speak it whenever they can. In a mere couple of days I have already experience the feeling of exclusion that you get here as a mono-lingual Englishman. Yesterday Denis and I walked to a local tourist site, an ancient Celtic burial mound with a weird looking mini-stonehenge-like structure on the top which looks down on their home across the valley, and he was soon chatting away in Welsh to some of the other visitors. What were they talking about? And exactly which Welsh words on the bilingual signposts that they have everywhere correspond to which English words on the signposts? If you’re an Anglo living here, that question must occur to you pretty well every time you go out.

Denis is saying to me as I type that there is nothing threatening about this, at any rate not in this bit of Wales - which is known as "Little England". The Welsh, as I have always found, are charming people. But when Denis switches from English to Welsh, politeness turns at once to genuine friendliness. I remember being told that the Japanese get very twitchy if, when in Japan, you try to speak to them in Japanese. It’s as if you had tried to barge your way into a private club. Here it’s the opposite. Yes, join the club. Come on in and be welcome. So once you start to learn Welsh, you get nothing but help and encouragement from the locals to stick with it.

And the other big reason why these people are learning it is that the Welsh language is, like other mountains that people climb because they are there, a challenge. It is not easy. The first letters of words, for instance, fluctuate wildly according to how exactly the words are being used - who owns it, what they’re doing with it, and so on. There are, apparently, about a dozen different ways of saying "yes", depending on what exactly is being agreed with. So, an intellectual battle. But intellectual battlers is what Daphne and Denis, and many other retired Anglos out here, are. They had tough, intellectually demanding jobs - they were doctors (like Daphne), lawyers, university professors, highish ranking army people, in other words they are the educated upper-middle classes, which is how they earned the money to buy nice places here. Now they don’t have their challenging jobs any more, and they need new challenges. What better than the challenge of learning the one foreign language that you can learn in Britain that you can actually practise using with the locals for real?

That’s it, that’s the end of this. I don’t know what it means. Very little I imagine. But as a little titbit of life in a corner of the Anglosphere, I think it rates a mention.

It is always a pleasure to meet an American, Mr. Moulton, for I am one of those who believe that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far-gone years will not prevent our children from being one day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be the quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes.
- Sherlock Holmes, as reported by Dr. Watson (from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Noble Bachelor)

Yesterday I wrote a short article called The real England speaks in which I described a spontaneous expression of transatlantic solidarity. Much to my surprise, I clearly touched a raw nerve and the response was thunderous (see the comments section of the article to see what I mean).

As anyone who has read this blog for more than a few weeks will have surmised, samizdata.net is not just an overtly libertarian group of writers, but represents what can only be described as libertarianism's 'hawk' wing... a sort of anti-anti-war.com. But I was not writing to encourage hawkish memes (well, not that time). In truth, when I wrote my article yesterday, I was not so much extending the sympathy of Britain to our confreres in the United States, at least not as the main thrust of the article, but rather highlighting the existence of a trans-national Anglosphere civil society of sorts that transcends the confines of states and governments.

That does not mean I think the remarkable outpouring of responses was 'wrong', far from it... just that it was not my objective and certainly not what I was expecting. Yet the response goes quite some way to confirm the contention of my article that there is indeed an 'Anglosphere' civil society and not just the distinct English speaking civil societies around the world, connected by sentiments far deeper than mere politics or state.

Pubs, ladies fashion stores, restaurants, banks, cafes, mobile phone stores, boutiques, gift shops...

If you are looking for the real England, you will not find it in the pages of the Guardian, but rather on the high streets and in the shop windows.

I have just got back from lunch and what I saw on the King's Road in Chelsea, here in London, amazed me. There is no law requiring it, no government departments 'encouraging' it loudly, yet shop after shop are displaying signs saying words to the effects of "At 1:46 pm to day, we will be observing two minutes silence in remembrance of the atrocities on September 11^th of last year in the United States." Others are expressing memorial sentiments, still others just displaying small American flags. No doubt these signs will all be gone by this evening, but they are there now.

Some signs are hand written by shop managers, others were clearly printed by a head office... but the signs are there and they come not from above, passed down from the salons of the chattering classes, but from below, from the true heart of England.

There is indeed an Anglosphere and it is very, very real.

It looks like Tony Blair has decided which of Jim Bennett's two horses to ride and has selected the Anglospherian one..

It certainly does look like the ducks are lining up in a row really fast now.

On this day in 1814, following the defeat of US Army and Marines defending the capital at Bladensburg, the British military occupied Washington DC, burning most major government buildings.

Perhaps it is time for a really realistic historical re-enactment, starting with 1111 Constitution Avenue, with US taxpayers wearing the Red Coats this time...

Steve Sailer has written a very good article called How tolerant are the British? that takes a good look at Anglosphere attitudes without the rather self-congratulatory tones of many in the blogosphere.

In a rather different article a while back, I came to some similar conclusions and pointed out the agreeabe implications of the high incidence of miscegenation in Britain.

Although he is not the first to comment on the large (and growing) rift between the USA and Europe, James Bennett delivers up a superb analysis of the role of Tony Blair in trying to act as a bridge between them and why he may well end up as political hamburger as a result:

"As always, the biggest problem is the inherent structural one implied in Blair's strategy: the assumption that by integrating more completely into the European Union, Britain is also serving America's interests by being a bridge between the two continents. This is not an eccentric position; it has been the standard assumption of the American foreign policy establishment from the end of the Second World War. It is, however, wrong. Where it fails is the assumption that Europe as a whole and America are sufficiently alike that their interests will naturally be aligned.

Jim is spot on. For all his blather about 'modernisation', Blair has both feet firmly planted in the past, seemingly unaware of his inability to bridge the gulf between the two civilisations and equally oblivious to the harsh fact that the gulf may not be bridgeable at all. This is not just about the Middle East or Iraq; they are merely symptoms of a divergence that is economic, political, cultural and even spiritual.

In some senses, the EU and Radical Islam have more in common. Their respective visions are, for sure, not the same, but they do share the quality of being a settled view about the way the world should be and neither can really brook any meaningful alternatives, lest their own visions be undermined. For Radical Islam, the answer is endless Jihad; for the EU the answer is the Kyoto Protocol, the ICC and global regulation. In both cases, the message to America is the same: submit.

For the EU elite, America is like a rebellious teenager that they simply don't understand. How can they insist on sovereignty when it obstructs 'progress'? How can they insist on the right of self-defence when we know that true security comes only through concessions and negotiation? How dare they cherish Western values when we know that all values are equal? For the Eurocrats, America is not just mystifying, it's offensive.

But there is also a deeper, darker cause of Europe's mistrust. The political classes of Europe may disagree on many things but of on one issue there is no dissent: the European Union and the overriding importance of creating a country called 'Europe'. Everything else, all policy, all laws and all effort must be focussed on melding together a continent's worth of fractious nations into one monolithic political and social entity with one government, one flag, one currency, one voice etc. They can't do it and they know in their hearts that they can't do it. So instead of having an identity, they are creating an anti-identity and that anti-identity is anti-America. It is how the EU will define itself, being unable to define itself by any other totems.

Regardless of the fate of the Iraqi regime, America will most likely get more American and, Europe, with the cancer of post-modernism coded into its DNA, will get more anti-American. Cold War it may not be, but it will be cold. Freezing, in fact.

I've just listened to Lawrence Lessig's lecture on Free Culture and highly recommend it. Larry describes how much liberty we have lost in the last fifty years. A small number of giant media Corps have used their lobbying power to criminalize more and more of what was once unregulated behavior.

Government acting alone is not the only threat to liberty. The self interest of exceedingly greedy corporations in conjunction with exceedingly greedy lawmakers is a formula for the destruction of civil society. Think how close the world of William Gibson's Corp ruled dystopia is. The combination of latent totalitarians such as Jack Valenti and outright crooked politicians - Sen Hollings (D Disney) comes to mind - is a deadly one for everything we as libertarians stand for. It is also an attack on the core of everything the Left and the Right believe in as well.

Therein lies our hope.

As Ben Franklin said: "We must indeed all hang together, or assuredly, we shall all hang separately."

A few weeks ago I emailed an American who contacted Samizdata, wanting to know about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the libertarian movement in the US and the UK.

I included in my response the sentence: "America is the worst country in the world to have a libertarian party", without qualification (it would have taken too long to cover all the ground).

However this extract from an appeal email sent out from the US Libertarian Party gives a flavour of one of the problems:

"And, unless we can raise a lot more than $2,375 for ballot access right away, we aren't going to be able to help other at-risk ballot drives and candidates around the country. We need:

· Up to $6,000 for filing fees and petitioning costs to qualify six U.S. House candidates in Kentucky. Deadline: August 13.
· Up to $4,200 in Louisiana to run a full slate of seven U.S. House candidates. Deadline: August 23.
· Up to $1,500 to qualify a full slate of five U.S. House candidates on the ballot in Iowa. Deadline: August 16.
· Up to $4,000 to petition the ballot in Washington, DC, which gives us a shot at major-party status in our nation's capitol. Deadline: August 28.
· Up to $5,000 to put the Maryland ballot drive over the top. Deadline: August 5.

And, there may be other drives that will require last minute assistance to succeed.

For example, over the past month, we had to step in and provide $8,000 to Illinois and $5,000 to Pennsylvania to put those ballot drives over the top. Both drives would have probably failed without our last-minute assistance."

Now compare this with the barriers to entry in the UK.

1) To register a political party costs £150 (about 220 US dollars) for mainland Britain and the same again for registering in Northern Ireland. To comply with this a party has to send in a list of national officers, audited accounts, and a copy of the party's constitution. This allows the name to be registered and a logo to be displayed on ballot papers. The charge includes a web page for the party which lists public contacts, constitution etc.

2) Local council elections require no deposit and there is a spending limit for all candidates. Ten signatures of local registered voters (who don't need to be supporters) and the candidate must live or work in the borough are the only requirements. A typical spending limit per candidate is about £400 (600 dollars US). This limit obviously favours poorer political parties.

3) Parliamentary elections (legislature) there is a deposit of £ 500 (about 750 US dollars). Ten signatures from local electorate must be found. The candidate doesn't need to be local, there is a free postal delivery, and each candidate has a spending restriction. The spending limit is under £20,000 (30,000 US dollars). National campaigning which doesn't promote individual candidates are currently exempt from spending limits.

4) European Parliament and regional elections are by party list and cost about £3,000 (4,500 US dollars). I forget how many signatures must be gathered but I'm sure it's 100 or less. For these elections the parties have one page in a booklet sent to every registered voter. In Greater London this amounts to over five million copies.

N.B. All deposits are refundable to the candidate if he or she scores 5 per cent of the total polled. The two Independent Libertarian Party election campaigns to date have cost less than £100 between them.

The contrast with the US is astonishing: in one state, the LP has to gather 5 per cent of the entire electorate's support to be allowed to put up a candidate for the presidency. Yet neither Republican nor Democrat party have to comply with this barrier to entry: they are simply excused. In the UK this would require over two million signatures, as opposed to the 6,570 needed to contest every Parliamentary seat.

Another significant problem for the LP is that it is illegal for the party to receive donations from non-US citizens, so I can't give money to the LP. But I can send money to the US on behalf of the Costa Rica Movimiento Libertario and US citizens can send money to the UK for a British political party, provided donations don't exceed £5,000 (7,500 US dollars).

I'm currently looking into registering for next year's London elections.

It seems Britain's Labour government is quite keen to confer honorary knighthoods on men not usually regarded as being on the left from the United States. Earlier this year former New York mayor Rudy Guiliani was so honoured, and now it's the turn of Federal Reserve Chairman no less.

Greenspan has come in for some stick of late for perhaps allowing the money supply to grow too fast during the helter-skelter stock market of the late 1990s, though as with all these things, hindsight is easy. But surely it's ironic that the jazz-loving central banker, a former acolyte of Ayn Rand and one-time supporter of gold-backed money should receive a gong from a left-wing British government.

In the United States, property forfeiture laws effectively make the 'protection' of their vaunted constitution meaningless against seizure of pretty much anything, as various arms of the state can help themselves to property without the owner having ever been convicted of a crime and often without even being charged with one.

Alas this tyrannous state of affairs can now be found in Britain as well, at least when it comes to HM Customs and Excise. The fact that just on the opinion of a customs inspector that you have too much alcohol or tobacco for personal use, the presumption of innocence can be swept away, reversed in fact, and your property stolen by the state without you ever being convicted of smuggling. Without so much as setting foot in a court of law, if the representative of the state says you are a criminal smuggler, then you must prove otherwise on the spot or not only will he take the goods you are trying to bring into the country but he will also appropriate the vehicle in which you are transporting them, i.e. your car or van. You are guilty unless you can prove otherwise.

There are many things to admire in the USA that Britain should seek to emulate... however its legal system that allows convictionless theft by the state just on the say-so of state functionaries is not one of those things.

A few days ago I did a posting about the EU, and ended it by saying that all Americans should oppose the EU because the EU is anti-American. But then I thought, yes, but so are lots of Americans, so maybe that won't work so well as an argument as it should. Great minds think alike (but the winner is the one who writes it first). Read this, from "Anglosphere: Why I am not an Anglophile", a UPI piece of yesterday (Saturday) by Mr Anglosphere himself, James C. Bennett:

Of course there are anti-American idiots wherever one goes. However, this is true of America as well. The only difference is that anti-Americans in the rest of the Anglosphere can disguise themselves as nationalists; but they are pretty much the same types of people, and for the most part have the same things to say. Anti-Americanism has itself been globalized, with a sort of McChomsky franchise in every city.

Presumably anti-American Americans like the EU because it is anti-American. My thanks to Professor Instapundit himself for guiding me to this piece.

Anglosphere writer Jim Bennett weighs in with another fine salvo against EU Commissioner Chris (oh no, not him again!) Patten. Rather than repeat my earlier comments last week about the wretched Commissioner, just take a look at what Mr Bennett has to say. What impresses me so much about Bennett's writing is that he manages to maintain a civil, pleasant tone even when trashing ideas he regards as dumb.

Oh, and changing the subject, another excellent article, if one has the time, is Andrew Sullivan's Sunday Times column on the vast wealth of what he calls the Western world's "overclass". Sullivan makes the point - obvious to we libertarians if not to collectivists - that the tremendous wealth of Bill Gates and the like is not made at the expense of we humbler mortals, but is part of an ever-increasing pie. However, Sullivan frets that the growth of such an overclass" is a problem, since society can become fragmented if the very rich are seen as detached from the mores and concerns of the middle class. A sort of mirror-problem of the "underclass". I am not entirely sure he is right, but agree this is worth thinking about. It is also instructive to look at what Sullivan says about the proportion of tax paid by rich Americans. Completely undermines the idea that supply-side tax cuts are unfair. If anything, the rich were entitled to a bigger cut than that which Bush gave them last year.

However, Sullivan backs away from the obvious conclusion - the moral tax rate is Nil!

It is not often that I use this blog as an advertising medium. In fact, I cannot remember ever having done so. So this is a first.

We Brits at the Samizdata require some help from our American readers (we know you're out there, we can hear you breathing). We have decided that we need a change of political representation, our own having chucked its lot in with Soviet EUnion. We need to 'clean house' and begin again and we think we can best do this by appointing a US Senator for Britain

We think this is a marvelous way of reconnecting us with our Anglo-Saxon heritage and of bringing the two most dynamic lynchpins of that community closer together. As well as that, it will help in the drive to get Britain out of the EU and, without Britain, the EU will not survive.

We should make it clear that we do not have the time or resources to mount any sort of election campaign so we simply intend to appoint the said Senator without he/she having any say in the matter. It may be somewhat presumptuous but these are interesting times and they call for interesting measures.

We have already pledged that we will not bother add to their administrative burdens by sending letters to their office but we do intend to write open letters to them on this blog for time to time as occasion requires.

However, we being Brits and all that, have no idea to appoint and this is where our US contributors and readers come in. If you really want to stick it to the Euro-snots, then unzip your trusty computer keyboards and mail us with your suggestions for a suitable Senator for Britain and the reasons why he/she would be suitable.

Mock not. We are serious.

Patrick Hayden over on Electolite makes 'A brief detour into wild generalizations' when talking about the supposed 'cultural cringe' that characterises part of the transatlantic relationship:

But it is hard to imagine anything in recent American history to compare with (for instance) Margaret Thatcher's comprehensive destruction of autonomous local government bodies or the widespread European surrender of regulatory power to unelected transnational officials.

That is an interesting perspective but looking the other way across the Atlantic I see the RICO statutes wiping out at a stroke two of the supposedly sacrosanct amendments of the Bill of Rights, not to mention the lives of thousands of people each year that they are used against.

Whilst I certainly abominate the transfer of powers of criminal appropriation and force to EU bodies (because they are force backed appropriators, not because they are undemocratic), I also see Margaret Thatcher's hatchet job on local authorities in Britain as a good thing which just did not go far enough. I saw local bodies engaged in democratically sanctioned theft of wealth, taking money by force from one section of the community and giving it to another more numerous section, being restrained in the extent they could continue to do so by the central government (via rate capping, or abolition in the case of the GLC). I used to work in UK local authority finance and I for one was delighted to see them reined in. Theft is still theft regardless of which tier of government is engaged in it, but obviously less theft is better than more.

Romano Prodi may be a hackneyed old Eurocrat but he is definitely onto something when he says that the British are afraid of full engagement in the EU.

According to The Great Protuberant One, Britain is:

"...constantly on the defensive, putting the brakes on, dragging its feet on vital issues, fighting a rearguard action that can hold up, but cannot stem, the tide of history."

Sadly, that's not how it looks from where I sit. And would that we could 'stem' this particular 'tide of history'. Unfortunately, we can't. The only thing we can do is save our nation and watch from the sidelines as this 'tide of history' drowns all those it engulfs.

Nonetheless, credit where it is due. Prodi is on an honesty roll as he notes:

"I wonder what makes this great nation happy to be a junior partner in a transatlantic relationship, but afraid to take its rightful place alongside its European allies?"

Allow me to clue you in, Prodi: it's because the Channel is wider than the Atlantic. Across the Channel are friends, across the Atlantic is family.

In 1909, British prime minister Lloyd George imposed a levy which was transformed by William Beveridge in 1946 into the modern idea of 'National Insurance' by which the welfare state would appropriate money from people to fund various socialist objectives. William Beveridge was the main architect of the British model of force based theft by the state of a huge chunk of national private property.

Today, Britain's socialist 'National Health Service' (NHS) is set to consume £184 billion per year soon... which an article in the Times today pointed put was enough to fight the 1982 Falklands War with Argentine 40 times, or about the same at the total Gross Domestic Product of Belgium or twice that of the GDP of Saudi Arabia or South Africa... and this is just Britain's appropriated healthcare budget.

In the US, the process has not really been all that different, merely started somewhat later. This process really began under FDR during the Depression but did not start in earnest until the 'Great Society' programmes of Lyndon B. Johnson. Clinton recently tried to go a more socialist route by moving US healthcare towards a more state-based system of appropriated funding, which thankfully failed.

But it should show that regardless of the example of failed socialist programmes the world over, not even information rich societies such as the USA and UK are immune to the intellectually bankrupt and economically moronic lure of such ideas as nationally directed healthcare. You may be sure than the next time the Democrats are back in control in the USA, such ideas will reappear, suitably re-branded and re-spun.

Joshua Marshall has been discussing why he does not approve of dual-citizenship in several interesting posts. Not surprisingly I see it in very different terms to him. It is not one of those things that I feel I must 'take him to task' over because I do understand his view and realise that the root of our disagreement lies much further up the causal chain than the issue of 'citizenship'. I see our difference of opinion as springing not so much from error but rather from radically different views of the world itself. He wrote:

To my mind, this isn't a conservative view. It's a liberal one. One of the things that makes us all equal as citizens is the fundamental reality that makes us citizens: membership and allegiance to this political community, this country. That's what allows an immigrant citizen to be just as much an American as the guy whose ancestors came on the Mayflower.

He is quite right that the way he reasonably describes 'citizenship' is indeed 'liberal' (in the American sense of the word: i.e. what Europeans call 'democratic socialist'). The 'political community' Josh describes is not civil society at all. Civil society is something to which people like me have no problem belonging and which does not require the permission (citizenship) of the state thus to do. No, what Josh is talking about is 'The State' because state and society are not the same thing. That is because civil society is not a 'political' community at all (i.e. a community in which politics, which is entirely about the use of force, governs the interactions), but rather a community which works by affinity and economic interaction rather than legislation.

In a sense I suppose it's not a very big deal. But doesn't this trivialize what it should mean to be a citizen of one of those countries? It's sounds less like a civic, national identity than a sort of heritage knickknack or heirloom. Citizenship isn't just about having a standing right of residency or something you have because you have some attachment or family connection to a particular country. I think it's something more than that -- particularly in the context of American citizenship.

Josh is also quite right that dual-citizenship trivialises what it does mean to be a citizen of one of those countries. His objections mirror those of Marx with his disdain for 'rootless cosmopolitans'. When a person sees political rather than social interaction as the core of society, then a person who stands outside, indeed above, the political structure in question is surely a threat to the authority of the political order. Yet globalization, technology and trade are indeed inexorably producing a larger and more culturally influential cosmopolitan class, not just a 'Jet Set' of people who work in banking and broking, but also a more broadly based group who have 'emigrated' yet retain close and active ties across the oceans in ways that were previously either too expensive or technologically impossible to maintain. In past times, a family moving from India or Jamaica or China to a new life in Britain or North America or Australia, would have only the slow and remote link of written mail sent by ship to stay in contact.

However in this era of global communications, it is a simple matter of picking up a mobile (cell) phone whilst out shopping to call your similarly equipped cousin 'in the old country'. I have myself moved continents several times in my life and yet have never thought of myself as an 'immigrant'. It was just that I moved to a place, acquired a house, worked there for as long as it suited me, and then... went somewhere else because that suited me better now. Britain, Ireland, South Africa, India, USA, Canada... so what? Each has their own cultures yet that Anglosphere meta-culture (and not just the language) is more similar than dissimilar on so many levels.

So when Josh says "It's sounds less like a civic, national identity than a sort of heritage knickknack or heirloom", well yeah... that really is all that we are talking about. A heritage knickknack. The Brits with their flavour of popular culture, Marmite, localised curries, irony intensive humour... the Yanks with their u starved spelling, shopping malls in the middle of nowhere, high fat diets, dynamic business culture... these are interesting and also trivial because compared to the shared cultural connections and similarities that are Anglosphere in nature and essentially trans-national, these other things are just the result of localised quirk rather than the rapidly evolving commonality of assumptions of the emerging cosmopolitanism.

Although I have mentioned before on this blog that I reject the moral validity of the very concept of 'citizenship', as a practical matter I think that because the state likes to insist on the importance of citizenship, well, the more the merrier then. The Smorgasbord approach to nationality is very appealing to 'rootless cosmopolitans' of the rapidly developing Anglosphere meta-culture, for exactly the reasons why Marx (and presumably Joshua) dislike it. Gaining the perspectives of not just Britain or America but Britain and America... and Israel and China and Slovakia and India and Croatia and Italy and Australia and Turkey... this is the 'cosmopolitanisation' process at work and also does wonders to export Anglosphere values of severalty, contract, technological civilisation and civil society to the rest of the world via the web of family and relationships, rather that the directed, force backed arbitration of what 'culture' should be that exclusionary states try to impose.

American civil society is something I admire and which spreads the values conducive to liberty as no other society currently does... but American citizenship particularly (more than any other advanced nation's citizenship) is rather like being branded like livestock. To have that brand means that, unlike almost every other state on earth, the US government will always claim a pecuniary interest in the private property that you acquire, even if you live outside the USA and make your living outside the USA and keep your assets outside the USA. Unlike other countries, which by and large lose interest in you the moment you step outside their borders, the USA actually makes itself your super-owner. The USA do not just claim a territorial monopoly on the means of force, it actually claims to own part of your labour regardless of where you are. It owns your labour not because you are in America, but because you are a citizen. That is the reality of how the US state actually sees its people (i.e. that citizens are the property of the state) even though that is not how most US citizens perceive the nature of the 'relationship'. Yet that is what I think the truth is beyond the perception: The USA does not just control land and what people do on that land (all states do that), it actually claims ownership of the anointed inhabitants themselves regardless of where they are.

The basis of the club and our membership in it is our fundamental equality. And the essence of that equality, as I see it, is that we've all thrown in our lots together. Some of us who were born here do it implicitly others who are newcomers did explicitly. But we've all committed ourselves to this group, this enterprise, this club, this nation. If some of us are American citizens and others of us are citizens of this and another country then we're not quite equal anymore. The basis of our equality and citizenship is challenged.

Indeed. But then I do not regard myself as 'equal' to other people. And nor does anyone else if they are being sensible. I regard myself as interacting within the frames of reference of a society and that, the shared understandings, the common axioms, the cultural shorthand...that is the basis for my ability to engage fellow members of this society, not some coloured bit of cloth or weird hand-over-heart declaiming and certainly not some damn bureaucrat or judge's imprimatur of 'citizenship'. Nor have I 'thrown my lot in' with anyone nor given them the right to presume that I have. When the state requires me to give my monies to others in tax, if I do so it is the vote of force, not some implied social contract. I have thrown my lot in with my friends and business associates, the ones I choose, and their citizenship means less than nothing to me when I judge the value of my relationship to them.

In much the same way that if I ever marry again, I will not even tell the state because I refuse to accept it is anyone else's business, so too I urge people to regard their passports as an imposition, not a privilege. Treat your national passport as a way of getting to stand in the shorter line at the airport and not some sacred document. You do not have to be a citizen to be a member of a society, regardless of what the state says. If I can find a way to marketize citizenship, that might be my next entrepreneurial venture. Hmm... maybe 'Free American Passport with all purchases of fitted kitchens over $5,000: order a fitted Italian marble bathroom at the same time and we will throw in a Italian citizenship and 1,000 Frequent Flyer Miles!'...

Yes, I like the sound of that.

It is interesting how one things leads to another. Following a totally parochial inter-Samizdata phone (i.e. telephone) conversation between Perry de Havilland and myself in which he pointed out how we must not confuse Americans, South Africans, Indians or New Zealanders with unexplained British words like "tube" (London's underground railway system) or with unexplained British acronyms like "HSE" (which is Britain's "Health and Safety Executive", not a cow disease) provoked thoughts in me of a grander sort. For what Perry is urging upon us is a new "international" variant of the English language, comprehensible all over the Anglosphere.

Jim Bennett, popularised the term "Anglosphere" to describe a set of shared cultural values, a meme-stream of common references, that is not just the British Isles and North America or even the USA plus the 'white commonwealth'. It is the totality of the English speaking world united by more than just a common language: an English speaking cosmopolitan meta-culture.

Most discussions of the "Anglosphere" that I've read have concentrated on the ideological affinities of the nations and cultures thus alluded to. Common law, liberal democracy, and so forth. That's not wrong, but there is a more mundane affinity at work here.

It is no accident that the word "Anglosphere" has erupted into vigorous life at the same time as the eruption of the Internet. Language zones are strengthened by international electronic communication, and physical distance rendered relatively less important, and this would be true even if ideology counted for nothing. We can be sure, for example, that in Spain (or is it Portugal, I can never remember which, and that's my point), there are 'internetted' networks devoted to every tiny detail of what's now happening in Argentina, patronised by readers on both sides of the Atlantic who never give a single thought from one month to the next about happenings in the USA or Britain or Germany or China, and all because of language. Spanish versions of Perry link Spaniards to the dramas of Spanish South America, just as Perry himself links us all to the dramas going on in Anglo-speaking America, Britain, India, New Zealand, etc.

With the modern "knowledge" economy heading the way it is, this is bound to count economically for more and more as the years go by. Which presents us in little old Britain with a dilemma. A generation ago, in the pre-internet age, geography ("zone") counted for relatively more than it does now. Hence, partly, our desire to hook up economically with mainland Europe. But what if the new economy is now knowledge and language dominated, and trade of this newer sort with Tasmania is now massively easier for us mostly stubbornly mono-linguistic British than trade with France or Germany or China? And what if the English-language-based culture of the internet is creating (re-creating) stubbornly unbreakable bonds of loyalty and friendship, as it surely is? You would expect a drawing back by Britain from the European political commitment, wouldn't you? A period of Euro-revisionism. Which might be a part of why that's what is now happening.

But now forget politics, and think of sport. A few weeks back I did a semi-triumphalist semi-jocular posting about how England now has the best international rugby team on earth. Antipodeans were complaining furiously about this post by e-mail long before France made nonsense of it by beating England in Paris on March 2nd. The Antipodeans protested, quite rightly, that England's alleged rugby superiority over South Africa, Australia and New Zealand wasn't based on regularly beating these guys in actual serious rugby games, but on guesswork based on England regularly annihilating the likes of Wales and Scotland, and doing okay in very occasional and not-that-vital games involving touring sides, ours and Antipodean, with home advantage going massively to whoever is playing at home. That one simple barrier, jet lag, dooms us to playing regularly only against people geographically close to us. France has the same problem.

So what do we do? Send our entire international rugby squad out to Australia for the entire season, every season? Doesn't work. If they can't also play locally, how do we decide who these people are to be? Yet the alternative seems to be that England will remain stuck permanently just below the very top level. Here's a case where zone counts for more than phone, even though phone is almost the entire reason that all these geographically dispersed countries are still playing the same game by the same rules. (On the other hand, if all the teams played each other regularly anyway, the rugby World Cup wouldn't count for nearly so much…)

I don't have an "answer" to this phone versus zone stuff. I'm just saying that this is an interesting way of looking at the world.

For a more detailed introduction to Jim Bennett's fascinating Anglosphere ideas, the Anglosphere Primer can be downloaded here in rich text format.

As is the case with many libertarians, I am opposed to the death penalty not on the grounds the state is wrong to kill people, it does that all the time on an almost casual basis via more indirect means, but rather that as a falliblist I am all too aware that miscarriages of justice occur with frightening regularity and you cannot 'undo' an execution. However I have no objective moral problem with the idea of a murderer paying with his life per se, just a problem entrusting that decision to a fallible judiciary.

In the USA, convicted murderer Tracy Housel has been on death row for 16 years for the 1985 rape and murder of 46-year-old Jeanne Drew. Because he is a British passport holder, the usual parade of people from the UK have been petitioning to commute his sentence to one of life imprisonment. Even our blessed leader Tony Blair has written to the US authorities on behalf of this man. Vera Baird, the Labour MP for Redcar is in the USA and has said that "at a time when British troops are working along side American troops in Afghanistan, some special consideration is called for".

And so given my libertarian opposition to the death penalty, presumably I agree, right?

Wrong. In this case, the murderer Tracy Housel admits he raped and strangled his victim. There is absolutely no grounds for reasonable doubt here and so I say let him get exactly what he deserves. What is more, the conflation of value by the Member of Parliament for Redcar of British soldiers putting their lives on the line alongside their US comrades in the fight against terrorism, and a self confessed British rapist-murderer in the US is nothing less that a disgusting insult to British soldiers everywhere. To hear the two mentioned in the same sentence is an absolute disgrace of the sort I have come to expect from moral relativists like Vera Baird.

Over on Vodkapundit Stephen Green waxes lyrical about us Brits and speaks of us as 'Congruent Forces', a phrase which lends itself to so much more than the reactions to 9/11 and contains within it a recognition of ties that go beyond a common langauge

Thanks to the Bush Telegraph of Blogdom the Americans have learned that, despite the best efforts of our Sneering Classes, every voxpop opinion poll in the country puts support for the USA at over 90%! Is there any country in the world where pro-USA feeling runs so high? Come to think of it, does it run that high in certain parts of California?

This is more than a Fifth Column (although it is that as well); it is the big ghost in Blair's machine, the great, immovable mass of Britain that he must, by some means or other, tear away from its Common Law roots and into the arms of Napoleon's Code where rule of the people by the people is replaced by rule of the people by the their betters. Theirs is the other 10% and they are the New Aristocracy, taking their holidays in Tuscany while the vulgar, embarrassing , white-bread English serfs chug Budweisers in Florida and insist on defending their homes. The former, almost without exception, rely on various forms of government activity for their wealth and power. While the latter consist of the plumbers, electricians, small businessmen, shopkeepers, hairdressers and builders; the real 'warp and weft' of any country

This is the congruent force that goes deeper than World Wars or 9/11. It is a shared epistimology of liberty assumed not requested; of Magna Carta, Habeus Corpus and each to his own. A worldview that binds at a cellular level and is bedded in the sense of objective rightness that power over the individual should vest, ultimately, in that individual and not in the capricious favour of potentates

These are the values breathed into America by the great English and Scottish enlightenment and it is why Americans like Stephen Green rightly call us The Mother Country for the 'American Revolution' was not so much a revolution as a Civil War between the rebels trying to champion those ideas and their imperial rulers whose persistant continental wars had so wounded them

Yet, despite all the wars the British fought, because they too often tried to rape instead of seduce, in every bit of the globe in which the Sons of Albion planted the Union Jack they left behind those Common Law values and good administration and, hence, shaped so much of it. Britain gave birth not just to America but to Gibraltar and Hong Kong and New Zealand. It is not mere coincidence that, today, of the world's top ten most liberal economies, no less than eight of them are former British colonies

Those Yeomen of England are now the Bloggers of Cyberspace and we lie beneath; we are chained in the attic, buried under the floorboards. That blury shape in America's bathroom mirror is us; that shocking reflection in their bathwater is us. We are trying to communicate with you Americans. We're trying to tell you something. We're trying to warn you that Tony Blair may be sleeping with your President; he may be whispering sussurating, cooing declarations of eternal love in your ear, but really he is a murderer and he is trying to kill us. Can you hear us, America? Can you see us?

...very different things to different people. Let us consult the Oxford English Dictionary:

patriot /n.a person who is devoted to and ready to support or defend his or her country. ../patriotic adj. //patriotically adv. //patriotism n. [F patriote f. LL patriota f. Gk. patriotes f. patros of one's father f. pater patros father]

Of course this also rather depends on what you mean by 'country'

country n. (pl.-ies) 1 a the territory of a nation with its own government; a State. b a territory possessing its own language, people, culture, etc. [...] 3 the land of a person's birth or citizenship; a fatherland or motherland.

And therein lies one of the problems with Patriotism. When some one says 'I am a patriot', what the hell does that actually mean? Let's take me, for example. My mother was American and I have lived about one quarter of my life in the USA. My father was British and I have lived a little under half my life here. For purely accidental reasons, I was actually born in the Netherlands. I feel both/neither British and/or American. So much for the complicated heredity and biology. Now for some ideology: I personally reject as illegitimate any function of the state which is not related to the defence of the individual liberty of people within their area of control, within a broad reasonable definition of those terms. I see the State as, at best, a provider of a service (security) in much the same way as I see the Pepsi-Cola Beverage Company as a provider of cans of fizzy brown liquid. I do not accept the very notion of 'citizenship' as I regard that as tantamount to denying me free association with non-citizens and implies the State somehow owns me in some way.

So can I be 'patriotic'?

To the State? Absolutely not. Try to make me pledge allegiance to Old Glory or the Union Jack or the Tricolour with the intention of extracting an admission of loyalty to the state and I will set it on fire instead. And if it is on a tee shirt saying "Try to burn these colors asshole", the wearer might just get their wish. Try to conscript me and the state will discover that I am not a pacifist and have no problem with using force against someone who tries to impose servitude upon me: starting with the guy who tries to serve call up papers on me.

And yet...

I live in London at the moment but I have 'Old Glory' displayed in my front window for all to see. Try walking down Upper Cheyne Row in Chelsea and you will see which is my house. It has been there since September 12^th. I do indeed feel an affinity for what James Bennett aptly calls The Anglosphere. I regard myself as a member of a cosmopolitan, English speaking global community, a civil society far greater than any mere nation state. For all its flaws, that extended society is the best hope for freedom and liberty the world has ever known and that is something worth defending. Unlike British society, which has a myriad cultural and regional symbols redolent with meaning, only Old Glory, the Stars and Stripes, the Star Spangled Banner, truly represents not just the American state but also American society, warts and all. Truth is I prefer the Gadsden flag (see side bar of this blog) but most people would not know what it means. And so that is why the Stars and Stripes is stuck in my window for all to see. It was not just the people of New York who were wounded, it was all of us and that is a point I think well worth making publicly.

So is that 'patriotism'? Opinions vary.

Two days ago, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness the two leading members of Sinn Fein took up an office in the British House of Commons from where they will continue their campaign to wrest Northern Ireland from British control, over the wishes of the majority of its inhabitants. In this task they will be assisted by an annual grant of £400,000 of British taxpayers money. This is how the British government fights a war against terrorism

Sinn Fein is the quasi-marxist political wing of the Irish Republican Army, an utterly ruthless terrorist group that has conducted a murderous war against British state agents and civilians for over 30 years claiming as many victims as the WTC attacks (albeit over a longer period). The wholly understandable howls of protest from the families of some of those IRA victims (both British and Irish) have been callously ignored

This is the latest stage in what is euphamistically called the Peace Process started several years ago under the then Major government and heralded by all as the start of a new era for Northern Ireland. Little did any of us suspect that is was, in fact, the start of an abject surrender by a British establishment that had decided that fighting against terrorists was more trouble than it was worth

The British public had been spun a line but Sinn Fein were under no illusions and all the time the 'peace' was being 'processed' , the killings, bombings, intimidation and beatings when on almost without a pause. Yet, at every stage, the British government withdrew that bit further under the heat. After all, they couldn't break their committment to the 'process' now, could they

It has to be said that Sinn Fein can hardly be blamed for any of this. In fact, their bloody methods aside, I can almost concede to them a certain grudging admiration for the tenacity and single-mindedness with which they have pursued their political goals. They are surely the most brazen example of a spectacularly successful insurrection movement

No, the blame must lie with the craven and self-serving British political class that will cut any deal, shake any hand, stab any back and spin any lie in order to keep itself grazing peacefully in the pastures of power; a political class that has abandoned even any pretence that it still upholds the core principle that underpins any government of any nation state - the protection and security of its citizens

One can only be grateful that the campaign against Al-Qaeda is being conducted from the Whitehouse and not Westminster for, if the latter, then apparatchicks in the Foreign Office would already be busy negotiating to give Osama Bin Laden a seat in the Cabinet while the compliant and lickspittle media would faithfully distribute and amplify any government propoganda they were fed

How can the message to the world be anything less than crystal clear? Kill Americans and you sign your own death warrant; kill Britons and you sign a book deal

It used to be said that the USA and Britain were two countries divided by a common language. Sadly, they are now divided by a great deal more than that

The US has made it clear that acts of terrorism involving Americans will not be tolerated and will be met with military action. Anyone doubting US resolve has but to look at Afghanistan to see the truth. Tony Blair stands with George Bush on this issue, supporting and indeed participating in US military actions with both Royal Navy sub-launched cruise missiles and Britain's peerless special forces. Clearly where the US is concerned, tyranny and murder will not be tolerated by Her Majesties Government, and quite right too I might add.

What a pity the many British citizens who own land in Zimbabwe are not instead US citizens...because if they were, rather than threatening tyrant and mass murderer Robert Mugabe with expulsion from the Commonwealth, something which no doubt has him quaking in his boots, the UK Government would be planning military action against him. However it appears Tony Blair is only willing to fight for American interests, not British ones.

Perhaps Blair will send his precious friend Peter Mandelson to Harare to meet with Mugabe. No doubt he will be invited to join the British government if only he will agree to stop murdering people. After all, that seems to have been the approach favoured by Mandelson in Northern Ireland, so why not try it in Zimbabwe?

Whilst perusing Bryan Preston's worthy junkyardblog, I came across this

Jonah Golberg has a lot to say about the Europeans. Dead on. The last good thing to come from the Continent, excepting the Beatles and U2, is the United States of America.

The Beatles were from Britain and U2 are from Ireland. Last time I looked, both were islands off-shore of said Continent.

Call me a chauvinist but I would also like to point out that all three 'good things' are a product of the Anglosphere, not 'the Continent'.