Anti-Americanism

Most Brit anti-Americanism is so transparently motivated by envy and spite that those of us who have lived there and know what we're talking about are dragged down to the level of discourse set by ignorant malice.

This is tiresome, because there is much to learn from an intelligently critical analysis of the States. Unfortunately the very same people who denounce American imperialism, etc., have been most slavish in adopting every social engineering initiative to emerge across the Atlantic, usually well after its objective failure to deliver the promised result has become apparent in its country of origin.

The vector appears to be the academics, many of whom dream of getting a well-paid job in the States and tailor their views accordingly. To list just a few:

• Comprehensive education
• Political correctness
• Eeek!-o-freakery
• Multiculturalism
• Perversion of the word 'liberal'
• Perversion of the word 'personality'

The last two may seem out of place, yet may be the most damaging. Liberal used to describe a world view that embraced liberty from arbitrary authority in the political, and freedom in the social and economic spheres. The keystone of liberalism was property rights, of which the foremost was vested in personality.

In law, personality describes an individual or organization that can legally enter into a contract, and may be sued for failure to comply with the terms of the contract. Hence the liberal concept of a 'Social Contract', from which a democratically elected government derived its legitimacy - for as long as it complied with the contract entered into with the electorate. 

There are certain core duties that all governments implicitly undertake, such as protecting the populace from domestic and foreign predators and preserving the value of the currency; but the rest of the contract consists of the promises collectively made by those who form the government at the time of their election.

Now, one can readily see why American 'progressives' have been so assiduous in perverting language. The big stumbling block to their totalitarian ambitions has been a Constitution written by men deeply imbued in classical liberalism, in revolt against unchecked government power, and acutely aware that the Achilles Heel of the social contract was that unscrupulous politicians would get elected by promising whatever their audience wanted to hear, only to alter the terms of the contract arbitrarily when in power.

By adopting whatever 'progressive' ideological sewage washes across the Atlantic, the rather dim-witted leftists in Britain have made much deeper inroads into collective liberty and personal freedom than their far cleverer equivalents in the States - because they have no such constraint.

Ah, you may say, then let's adopt a written constitution. Yeah, but any such document would be written by people brain-washed since childhood against true liberalism, and would be voted on by an electorate that has an exaggerated idea of the rights and no concept of the obligations implicit in properly defined personality.

I have little hope that the tide will turn, but a small start could be made by ceasing forthwith to describe the Marxhorroids as 'liberals' and to stop using 'personality' when what we mean is 'character'.

But above all, the envy and resentment that pervades modern Britain might be usefully harnessed to incite rebellion against the cultural cringe that has led to the unthinking adoption of whatever social engineering fad emerges from the fetid hothouse of American academia.