Thomas Lifson defines the "Anglosphere"

By Aussiegirl

The incomparable Thomas Lifson, writing in today's American Thinker, makes a powerful (if politically incorrect) statement about the dominant power of the new Anglosphere -- and why you don't even have to speak English to join -- and why it is the world's last best hope for peace, stability and freedom.

In a sense Lifson is saying that any nation can become part of the "Anglosphere", even non-English speaking ones, just as anyone can become an American.

Furthermore, he makes the additionally politically incorrect statement that it has been helpful for a country to have been either colonized in the past by an "Anglo" power, or as in WWII, soundly defeated militarily by one.

Here he extends at length the short and rather pithy phrase used by Ann Coulter shortly after 9/11, when she famously proclaimed that we need to "invade their countries, kill their leaders, and forcibly convert their populations." Bold words which got her promptly fired by the editors of National Review Online, who blanched at her uncompromising and politically insensitive language. But she was correct. As she pointed out at the time in defense of herself -- what else did we do in Japan in WWI but exactly those three things? And now, as Lifson so correctly points out, Japan is a member of the "Anglosphere".

Similarly, one can't help but remember the timeless humor of those British comedic geniuses, Peter Sellers and Terry Thomas, in their sendup of the benevolence of an American military conquest which they depicted so brilliantly in the classic movie, "The Mouse That Roared". In the film a small mythical principality, facing economic ruin, decides to invade America in order to lose the war and receive American post-war reconstruction assistance. How far have we come since those days when being conquered by America seemed like a nation's last best hope?

This is precisely what we are trying to do in Iraq and Afghanistan as well -- insisting on democratic reforms, free elections, secular constitutions and the rights of women -- all western values, all "Anglo" values. In all of human history, none have been found to work better to ensure economic progress and prosperity and individual rights and democracy.

If not for the "Anglosphere", what does the rest of the world have to offer? The theocracy of a religion mired in the 7th century which denies all human rights to women and engages in barbaric forms of punishment like dismemberment or stoning to death? Or the moribund, economically stagnant and morally bankrupt Socialist model of Europe, which is seeing soaring rates of unemployment and staggering rates of taxation just to keep overlarded welfare-state social programs funded.

As Churchill so succinctly put it: "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried."

We live in an age in which few important conflicts can be described accurately and economically, which is to say, bluntly. Race and religion are obvious examples of domains�in which condescension-masquerading-as-sensitivity must be employed.

So too, the realities of world power. Ask any journalist, almost anywhere, and she will tell you that the world is a lamentably "unipolar" power construct, with hyperpower America lording it over the rest of the world's nations, all of them consigned to second-class (or worse) membership in the community of man. Such an arrangement is deemed unnatural, exploitative, unduly hierarchical, and inherently unstable. By our allies. Our enemies use far harsher terminology.

The truth is rather different.

The world's future lies in the hands of a surprisingly open coalition of countries, regions, cities, and individuals, all of whom are members of the Anglosphere. Anyone, potentially, can join.

The Anglosphere is a state of mind, a set of market-centered economic institutions, a philosophical understanding of the role and danger of government power, and a vast, dynamic, and almost universal popular culture, beloved of ordinary people and abhorred by elites.

. . . But the Anglosphere is also a political and (increasingly) a military alliance, aimed at guaranteeing the political, moral, economic and cultural freedoms necessary for Anglospherical societies to function.

Who are the members of the Anglosphere? At its heart are The United States (its leading force) and the United Kingdom (whose culture and imperium gave it birth and made it a world force). Other members include Australia, Japan, India, Israel, Taiwan, and (less closely attached, militarily) Singapore, and even more distantly Hong Kong and Canada, which are controlled by regimes somewhat hostile to the dominance of the Anglosphere. Other nations participate in the Anglosphere in some realms, but not others, as they choose. The Netherlands, South Africa, New Zealand, Costa Rica, and Malaysia are examples of countries which join in some ways, yet stay outside in others.

. . . Most of the world's major geo-strategic conflicts can only be understood in the context of struggle against the dominance of the Anglosphere. Islamo-fascism and terror are sparked by the (well-founded) fear that Anglosphere culture and society will dissolve the power base and control of rulers based in a Ninth Century political economy. Historical memories of a time in which Islamic Civilization was a rising force, prior to the arrival of the Anglosphere as the dominant world force serve to aggravate the fear and humilitaion they feel.

China's quest for ascendancy in East Asia is an understandable attempt to restore an era in which the Central Kingdom was the moving force in the world known to it, and the redress grievances dating from the Opium War, an Anglosphere project, which made evident the inability of China to match, much less exceed the power of what it regarded as a lesser civilization.