Anglosphere

Daniel Hannan at the Acton Institute, October 9, 2014

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This is an outstanding talk by Daniel Hannan to the Acton Institute on October 9, 2014.

Hannan notes that conservatives almost want to believe that there is no hope in the future, that we have seen the best times and they are behind us. But he disagrees.

But my friends we are at our most persuasive, and at our most electorally successful, when as Ronald Reagan did in this country, as Margaret Thatcher did in mine, when we imbue our message with a little breath of warmth, a little hint of optimism, a promise that the best lies ahead.
 
Things do get better, provided that you have trade and exchange, and that you release the genius of a free people, things will get better at an accelerating rate

We make a similar point in America 3.0, which has the subtitle, “Why America’s Greatest Days are Yet to Come.”

They really are, if we make it happen.

Happy Thanksgiving

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Happy Thanksgiving from this side of the Pond. We are all very envious of a holiday that has all the good things of Christmas and none or, at least, very few of the bad ones.

And for those brave souls who, sated with turkey and pumpkin pie, would like to read something about the situation over here, I have a couple of links: one to a blog posting about Owen Paterson, a fairly senior back-bench Conservative MP (Cameron should never have sacked him from the Cabinet) calling for British withdrawal from the European Union and another one on a different blog that concentrates on the fisheries issue on that speech and its importance as against the presence of two UKIP MPs in the House of Commons. Hope they will not spoil the festivities.

Where the 19th Century Died

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It’s always been said that the 19th century died on the Western Front; the writer Gene Smith said so, in his brief and lyrical account of a winding south-to-north trip, fifty years later. “…Verdun, … the disappearance forever of all represented by France’s glorious uniform of red pantaloons, and Germany’s wonderfully martial spiked helmets. Madelon and Germania flocked to the stations to kiss the warriors— “À Berlin!” “Nach Paris!” — and in the end the trains stopped at Verdun. After terrible Verdun, after the mules drowning in this shell hole here, after the disemboweled boys screaming in this fallen-in dug-out, the nineteenth century was over and history was back on the track for what the twentieth was meant to be.”

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