JJV cements his reputation as raging Angloinstitutionophile, while I provide edifying links after the first one:
Here we have Niall Ferguson opining that the reason Europe is the home of sclerotic economies, soon to be subsumed by the Sons of the Prophet, is because of Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz.
Pitt the Younger, upon hearing of the battle, is said to have remarked, "Roll up that map, we shan't be needing it for ten years." I guess he should have said 200. I think Ferguson is a bright guy but he doesn't even fully believe his own theory here. World War I, the post-WWII Franco-German condominium and the end of the Faith on the continent have more to do with it. Still the common law invigorates the economy and rule of law in every nation state that retains it. The Code Napoleon gives us the fine political culture and economic dynamism that has stood Louisiana in such fine stead lo these many years.
Ferguson is correct that British exceptionalism is being undercut by the importation of foreign ideas on economics and culture via Marx, Maastricht, and MTV. The outlawing of 1) fox hunting, 2) the right of self-defense, 3) the death penalty, 4) the hereditary Lords, 5) Imperial weights and measures, and 6) the proposed scrapping of the Pound Sterling for Belgian money are all outrages that if inflicted upon Her Majesty's subjects by Johnny foreigner would have instigated a return to guerrilla war from Sherwood. That they have come by imposition of Red Labor and Tory Wets in the name of egalitarianism and greater unity with Europe makes them no less odious or outside the British tradition.
The new found insistence that immigrants learn about and have an appreciation of British life, imposed in response to the London terror bombings, may if more widely taught to Britons themselves, save them from the inevitable slide into dirigiste, multi-culti suicide that the Continent has chosen.
Ed. note: Well now. I may work up a response to this but right now I am very tired and a bit stunned. Comments, anyone?
1 comment:
I must say, I was always fond of Pitt the Younger but your linked biography makes him, except for the strange indifference to sex, and the unfortunate imposition of the income tax almost the perfect prime minister.
After brief reflection, given British political scandals, I judge complete indifference to sex a plus in a prime minister. Now only the income tax blackens his name.
jjv
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