James Bowman: Lesser Britain ... Is the "Great" in Britain lost for good?
[James Bowman is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, media essayist for the New Criterion, and The American Spectator's movie and culture critic. His new book, Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, was recently published by Encounter Books.]
Every so often for the last half-century or so, we have seen some American arriving, breathless and sweating, with the latest post from the old country. And his news is always the same. It is that Britain is finished. All washed up. No more to be seen on the world stage -- except, perhaps, as "the sick man of Europe." This Anglo-Jeremiah is sure to quote Dean Acheson's stunning aperçu of 1962 that "Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role" -- which, if it means anything, simply means that the world-historical drama is short of roles, these days, for traditional imperial powers, and that Britain wouldn't want to play it anymore even if there were such a role.
The latest such prophet of doom is Stryker McGuire in Newsweek, who was the journalist who coined the expression "Cool Britannia" in the early days of the now-unlamented Blair government. "Forget the Great in Britain," his article is headed.
Even in the decades after it lost its empire, Britain strode the world like a pocket superpower. Its economic strength and cultural heft, its nuclear-backed military might, its extraordinary relationship with America -- all these things helped this small island nation to punch well above its weight class. Now all that is changing as the bills come due on Britain's role in last year's financial meltdown, the rescue of the banks, and the ensuing recession. Suddenly, the sun that once never set on the British Empire is casting long shadows over what's left of Britain's imperial ambitions, and the country is having to rethink its role in the world -- perhaps as Little Britain, certainly as a lesser Britain.
Of course, there is no shortage of those in the British press who have fired back. Gerald Warner in the Daily Telegraph wrote that
The problem, in the end, is that McGuire has mistaken Britain's cyclical problems -- in particular, the policies and composition of this Government -- for structural flaws. Yes, we have problems, but many of them are eminently fixable. After all, this is hardly the first time our valedictory as a great nation has been delivered, only to be discredited by national resurgence. "Britain is a tragedy," claimed Henry Kissinger in the 1970s. "It has sunk to borrowing, begging, stealing until North Sea oil comes in." The Wall Street Journal concurred: "Goodbye, Great Britain: it was nice knowing you." Over-eager obituarists on the far side of the Atlantic should not be surprised if this country once again disproves their terminal diagnosis.
My own sympathies are by nature and experience more with Mr. Warner than with Mr. McGuire, but sometimes I wonder. One thing that makes me wonder is the way that the British press covered the funeral last week of Harry Patch, "the last fighting Tommy" of the First World War, the last veteran of the trenches, who was laid to rest not with solemn and patriotic music but with the sappy anti-war "folk" ditty, "Where Have all the Flowers Gone," which was said to have been played "to show Mr. Patch's antipathy to violent conflict." For, as it happens, Harry in extreme old age had finally broken his silence about his war-time experiences, now nearly a century distant in the rear-view mirror, and pronounced that "It wasn't worth it." In fact, not only was his war not "worth it," no war was. "War," he said, taking the generic view of the thing, "isn't worth one life."..
Read entire article at Spectator
Every so often for the last half-century or so, we have seen some American arriving, breathless and sweating, with the latest post from the old country. And his news is always the same. It is that Britain is finished. All washed up. No more to be seen on the world stage -- except, perhaps, as "the sick man of Europe." This Anglo-Jeremiah is sure to quote Dean Acheson's stunning aperçu of 1962 that "Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role" -- which, if it means anything, simply means that the world-historical drama is short of roles, these days, for traditional imperial powers, and that Britain wouldn't want to play it anymore even if there were such a role.
The latest such prophet of doom is Stryker McGuire in Newsweek, who was the journalist who coined the expression "Cool Britannia" in the early days of the now-unlamented Blair government. "Forget the Great in Britain," his article is headed.
Even in the decades after it lost its empire, Britain strode the world like a pocket superpower. Its economic strength and cultural heft, its nuclear-backed military might, its extraordinary relationship with America -- all these things helped this small island nation to punch well above its weight class. Now all that is changing as the bills come due on Britain's role in last year's financial meltdown, the rescue of the banks, and the ensuing recession. Suddenly, the sun that once never set on the British Empire is casting long shadows over what's left of Britain's imperial ambitions, and the country is having to rethink its role in the world -- perhaps as Little Britain, certainly as a lesser Britain.
Of course, there is no shortage of those in the British press who have fired back. Gerald Warner in the Daily Telegraph wrote that
The problem, in the end, is that McGuire has mistaken Britain's cyclical problems -- in particular, the policies and composition of this Government -- for structural flaws. Yes, we have problems, but many of them are eminently fixable. After all, this is hardly the first time our valedictory as a great nation has been delivered, only to be discredited by national resurgence. "Britain is a tragedy," claimed Henry Kissinger in the 1970s. "It has sunk to borrowing, begging, stealing until North Sea oil comes in." The Wall Street Journal concurred: "Goodbye, Great Britain: it was nice knowing you." Over-eager obituarists on the far side of the Atlantic should not be surprised if this country once again disproves their terminal diagnosis.
My own sympathies are by nature and experience more with Mr. Warner than with Mr. McGuire, but sometimes I wonder. One thing that makes me wonder is the way that the British press covered the funeral last week of Harry Patch, "the last fighting Tommy" of the First World War, the last veteran of the trenches, who was laid to rest not with solemn and patriotic music but with the sappy anti-war "folk" ditty, "Where Have all the Flowers Gone," which was said to have been played "to show Mr. Patch's antipathy to violent conflict." For, as it happens, Harry in extreme old age had finally broken his silence about his war-time experiences, now nearly a century distant in the rear-view mirror, and pronounced that "It wasn't worth it." In fact, not only was his war not "worth it," no war was. "War," he said, taking the generic view of the thing, "isn't worth one life."..