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| Home Front: Politix |
| British-American Parallels? |
| 2005-10-10 |
| EFL Reg Req. Interesting parallels. Particularly in what the teachers and leaders of our youth teach them. In an important sense, the British Empire's strength failed because its elite liberal citizens stopped believing in it. The parallels with 21st-century America are striking. In little more than 10 years, England went from victory in World War I to serious discussions about completely disarming herself. Talk of a "peace dividend" began with the fall of the Berlin Wall and culminated 10 years later with a major draw-down of forces and the abandonment of the two-war doctrine. Where the Great War robbed England of a generation of its best and brightest, in America the baby boom generation was lost in Vietnam or, perhaps worse, in Canada, in the Air National Guard, and in the universities, where they learned to hide and not lead. This has taken its toll. Our two baby boom presidents have been exceedingly imperfect. (As Edmund Burke once cautioned, "A great empire and little minds go ill together.") The American left, too, eerily echoes its British counterparts. Consider the "Peace is Patriotic" bumper stickers; the howls of protest against the nomination of John Bolton to be ambassador to the United Nations, for fear that he might be too assertive of American values; the comparison - by Sen. Richard Durbin (D., Ill.) - of American soldiers at Guantanamo Bay to Nazis and Guantanamo Bay to the Soviet gulag; the protest cries of "No blood for oil" and the left-wing fringe speculation that the endgame of George W. Bush's 9/11 fear-mongering would be to cancel elections and establish a fascist police state. The liberal opponents of the British Empire were proved wrong, but their misplaced disillusionment was enough to sap the vitality of imperial confidence. After rising one last time to fight Nazism, the sun set on the British Empire. Likewise, it is pleasant to believe that the crisis of confidence in today's liberal elites won't affect the outcome of our war with Islamist extremism. The greater worry concerns what happens next. Will protestations of liberal elites become mainstream diffidence about America's place in the world? Will we, too, stop believing that America stands firm, as a great force for good - and then see our place in the world diminish? History, it turns out, can be both a comfort and a caution. |
| Posted by:Clomonter Gruter7860 |
| #4 Pax Britania was not the Empire but the Peace of created because of the overwhelming seapower of the Empire just as the Pax Romana was the peace and stability created by the Romans when they dominated. I think that my comments are correct. The empire was enabled by the Pax Britania and could have continued under the Pax Americana had the British wished to devote the blood and treasure to doing it. The US has no empire. We have unquestionably created a Pax Americana so the only Apples to Apples comparisons have to be along those lines. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2005-10-10 23:34 |
| #3 Ick. I reject the comparison. And no, I would disagree that those who foresaw the collapse of the Empire were wrong. Britain had no real ability to dominate India or several other parts of its Empire anymore. By their efforts to make those places profitable to Britain, they gave them to tools to make themselves independent. While those places did inherit their British *way*, they were too great to be kept as subordinate states. Ironically, this set the stage for the model of the next dominant power, the United States. To make it a principal to *not* annex other nations, but to set them up to run themselves, then leave, conserving much of itself in the process. Once the US left a place, leaving it in better shape, with a few exceptions, it could return home and restore its strength. To turn the comparison on its head, one could say that the Empire died of a thousand cuts, trying to keep up a hundred "Vietnams" of its own around the world. The US may get cut once as it involves itself around the world, but then it withdrawls to heal its wound, before going forth again. And the US, like Britain, also leaves its *way* in its wake, those other countries often adopting and keeping a better form of government, a wiser public policy, and a more open economy. Certainly the US expends much treasure to do this, as did Britain before it, but the US does not loot those nations it has invested, it offers them fair trade, and relies on itself to create new treasure. And while Britain held to the idea of mercantilism, that owning specie, gold and silver, meant that it had power in the world; the US has evolved, not eliminated, the concept. US mercantilism is that not only are goods, but are services, to be accounted for in determining who is the strongest, and not just in static quantities, but in their *dynamic* use. A (virtual) dollar bill in circulation anywhere in the world is used for more purposes, in more transactions, by far than any other currency. By dint of its being used, it actually creates a stronger US economy. Finally, I would point out the most amusing error in the article at all. The assumption that our self-appointed elites are *actually* our elites. What blue-Staters dominate the debate? Do liberals infest our military? Does the democrat party control Washington as it did in the time of "old Frank"? Are the media elite in ascendency? It is not the US that is collapsing, it is those who deride the US and call for its collapse. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-10-10 23:28 |
| #2 advantages of Pax Britania (control of the seas and free trade) You're confused Pax had nothing to do with it. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-10-10 17:48 |
| #1 The difference is the British knew the advantages of Pax Britania (control of the seas and free trade) would continue under the American Flag. It might hurt the pride but the sealanes would remain open. The US can't pass the buck to anyone. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2005-10-10 17:17 |