Wednesday, February 28, 2007

The Anglosphere Century

In this week’s Maclean’s Magazine Mark Steyn reviews Andrew Roberts’ new book,‘The History of the English Speaking People Since 1900'.

I haven’t read the book yet but Mark’s review brings it to the top of my list. Steyn at his best:
...that's one of the pleasures of Roberts' book: muscular polemical prose
that cheerfully invites an argument about something or other on almost every page.
[...]
The British jacket bears four flags - the Union Jack, the Stars and Stripes, the Southern Cross and the Maple Leaf (surely it should have been the Red Ensign).
[...]
Of the three great global conflicts of the 20th century - the First, Second and Cold Wars - who called it right every time? Germany: one out of three. Italy: two out of three. France: well, let's not even go there.
[...]
...for all our fetishization of multiculturalism, you can't help noticing that when it comes to the notion of a political west - a sustained commitment to individual liberty - the historical record looks a lot more unicultural and indeed.... uniregal.

And in classic Steyn style, Canada gets a realistic assessment:
...it's kinda hard to remember when the principal political party of our own demented Dominion peddles non-stop Canada Day smiley-face banalities about how "we are such a young country" (Paul Martin) - which, aside from being obvious tripe, gives us the faintly creepy air of a professional virgin.
[...]
...Canada is an instructive example: we are a solid presence in the first half of his story, yet all but entirely absent from the second. .....We are a wealthy G7 nation of 30 million people but chose under the cover of Trudeaupian narcissism to embrace global irrelevance.
[...]
...in their present political sensibilities, Canada is semi-French, Britain is
semi-European, and New Zealand is semi-bananas.
Great review!

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