By: BILL FLAX in FORBES
A history professor once postulated that the most pivotal battle shaping America’s destiny was not Yorktown or Gettysburg, but Quebec in 1759. There General Wolfe demolished French claims to Canada, which confirmed that America would develop decisively within the Anglo-protestant mold.
The latest Economic Freedom of the World rankings (for 2009) highlight the good fortune that resulted from Wolfe’s win. Many commentators will rightly deplore America’s precipitous descent over the past decade – down to tenth, yet another startling detail leaps from the page. Eight of the ten freest lands were once owned by Britain.
The nations enjoying limited government, property rights, sound currency, free trade, ease of regulation, low taxes and restrained public spending include: Hong Kong, followed by Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Chile, United Kingdom, Mauritius and the United States.
The study reveals a potent correlation linking freedom to economic progress. Nations following market principles propel past their government laden counterparts. They earn more, grow faster and “the poorest people in the most economically free countries are nearly twice as rich as the average people in the least free countries.”
The USA has likely fallen further since 2009 as abrasive government expansion continued. Obamacare and Dodd-Frank both passed in 2010. The EPA and NLRB wage regulatory crusades against businesses. Spending remains elevated. Liberty perishes underneath government’s persistent pursuit of power.
In this time of economic stagnation, perhaps prosperity can be retracted from America’s past. As the U.S. declared independence, the Industrial Revolution launched in England. History had heretofore exhibited minimal progress from antiquity. Most remained mired in subsistence level agriculture until suddenly advances in the Anglosphere catapulted living standards forward.
Capitalism offers both abstract liberties as well as freedom from want. Thanks to free markets, common laborers can access more comfort, superior sanitation and even entertainment than nobles experienced before the stirrings of modern industry. The advent of superior medicine and better nutrition even extended life. It’s estimated that prior to the aforementioned advances, three-fourths of everyone ever born died by age 35.
America’s diminished freedom is thus alarming. Historically, America’s unparalleled liberty shone hope across the seas. Our independence was essentially a counter-revolution. America, as Mark Steyn writes, “derives its political character from eighteenth-century British subjects who took English ideas a little further than the mother country was willing to go.”
The colonists reasserted their “ancient rights as Englishmen,” then threatened by London’s encroachments after a long span of benign neglect. Previously, enforcement of the Navigation Acts and other laws had been lackluster and easily skirted. But suddenly parliament began interceding to “extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction.”
Jefferson and company believed London violated the laws of nature and saw independence in keeping with British tradition’s historic trajectory towards liberty. Independence climaxed a long quest which commenced on the fields of Runnymede in 1215 when the Magna Carta curtailed the crown’s reach.
The Declaration meant “not to find out new principles, or new arguments” but to appeal to “ common sense.” Thomas Jefferson was particularly enamored with Anglo-Saxon culture; seeing the American Revolution as an historical step to restore liberties lost under Norman rule. He reminded King George, “America was not conquered by William the Norman, nor its lands surrendered to him.”
Like many American settlers, the Anglo-Saxons developed tribal mores around commonwealths of sovereign individuals claiming inherent, inviolable rights. Even the local king was subject to laws and custom. Property was respected and common law superseded civil statutes. Modern rights to juries and public hearings emanated from Saxon councils.
The Anglo-Saxons fashioned society on individuals, families, communities and later churches. Problems were resolved locally and only if necessary, by the broader nation. Little interference from without was tolerated. People adjoined, not as spokes on a wheel oriented toward a mystical state, but as webs of interlocking dependencies where neighbors bolstered others by shouldering their share of the load.
Modern historians dismiss this as mere lore, but many colonists, Jefferson foremost, believed Anglo-Saxon culture striking similar to theirs and reminiscent of ancient Israel. Jefferson even proposed a national seal emblazoned with Israel wandering toward the Promised Land and the flip side showing Anglo-Saxon heroes. America’s settlement harkened both. Adams credited the Anglo-Saxons “whose political principles and form of government we have assumed.”
Anglo-Saxon customs had eroded and the historicity is murky, but England suffered far less feudal paralysis than Continental Europe with a relatively fluid class system. The colonists bent British culture towards still greater liberties, forging a uniquely American perspective. Governments were established indigenously by small, often isolated groups dealing practically with local exigencies.
America shared the mother country’s language, culture and common law legal systems, without her predisposition for hereditary nobility or top down suzerainty. Republican principles prevailed. Government was instituted to protect life, liberty and property, further defined to incorporate propriety over conscience as the “pursuit of happiness.”
These free market platforms so prospered America that she soon eclipsed England’s vast prosperity. Jefferson boasted that you could travel the entire Eastern seaboard and see nary an American begging. Today, even our poor are wealthy by any material measure. So too have non-British immigrants fared well by adopting Anglo-American norms.
The USA’s two most affluent segments are Jews and Asians. Those who assimilate flourish, but every ethnicity does better economically in America than from whence their ancestors came. Likewise, the top beneficiaries of an English legacy are Asian – Hong Kong and Singapore.
It is the Left’s sacred cow that the Third World suffers from Western hegemony. Yet, the greatest happening to befall many peoples was seemingly being colonized by Britain or conquered by America. Until China’s recent epiphany, Germany and Japan were the world’s next largest economies.
China and India began their ascents by arcing toward the Anglo-American model. Beijing abandoned communism after seeing her Chinese cousins thrive in Asia’s capitalist outposts. India, as reflected by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has begun to recognize certain benefits from British rule.
When His Britannic Majesty’s forces vanquished India’s Muslim overloads (who invaded India themselves), they did more than establish British preeminence. They also bequeathed the rule of law, functioning courts, property rights and the language of international commerce: English.
While Britain’s empire wasn’t built on altruism, many former colonies profit immensely from her rule. This extends beyond economics. For all of President Obama’s anti-colonialism, remember Britain entered Kenya to abolish the Muslim slave trade, already banished to the interior by the Royal Navy.
Political correctness has so infected American thought that we recoil reflexively at the mere hint of Western brilliance. To the multiculturalists, the only culture that can’t be unequivocally praised is the very Anglo-protestant heritage which spurred America’s greatness. Ironically, it is often guilt laden WASPs, heirs of their wealth, leading the slanderous denunciations of their forbears.
“E Pluribus Unum” – from many, one – gives way to Balkanization where multiculturalists hitch grievance wagons to government’s gravy train. Attracting venturesome immigrants has long boosted America’s fortunes, but success no longer entails mimicking Anglo-American culture. Instead of assimilation, we now espouse bilingual education to abstain from “cultural imperialism.
A quasi-Marxism supplements class warfare with identity politics under the mantle of diversity. Obama’s reelection strategy advocates taxing the affluent to finance public favoritism for others he deems mistreated by what has historically been a libertarian American experiment. Identity politics transform elections into feudal patronage schemes sacrificing property and liberty on the altar of political correctness.
Vigilant Americans must restore the founders’ vision before multiculturalism forever eclipses our last vestiges of liberty.
