— This links to the complete text of Owen Harries’ article The Anglosphere Illusion from The National Interest cited below. Here’s a teaser:
Today, a few thoughtful and eloquent individuals–among them Robert Conquest, writing in the pages of this magazine, and John O’Sullivan in various journals–have been making the case for an English-speaking political union. The argument is that the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and a few other smaller entities have so much in common in terms of political culture, values and institutions that they should draw together and enter into some sort of formal arrangement to act in concert–to create, that is, what some are now referring to as a political “Anglosphere.”
Now this line of argument almost exactly replicates one advanced by a group of highly intelligent, well-educated and well-connected young men at the beginning of the last century.
So this old saw has been circulated before, but without the trendy dressing-up with “memes” and “networks.” See “Toward an English-Speaking Union” by Robert Conquest and “The Anglosphere Project” by John Lloyd.
Unfortunately, again you represent two views on the Anglosphere as being the two endpoints which define all the intervening points of the line. A more elegant symbol of your approach is to say that Conquest and Lloyd are two bounding radii and Cecil Rhodes of imperial note is the center about which all the Anglospherical entities revolve.
Unfortunately, times change and even Conquest’s prescription for political unities is rather anachronistic. I’d doubt if you could get the Ulster Irish to ally with the Kiwis even if you paid them. I’d recommend really doing:
1. a simple web search for “James Bennett” AND “anglosphere”, or
2. go to the UPI website [http://www.upi.com/] and do a search for “james bennett”, or
3. write Iain Murray at http://englandssword.blogspot.com/ and ask him for Jim Bennett citations, and
then you’ll be able to address his new paradigm more accurately. Unfortunately, James Bennett has not published his views in comprehensive form, to the best of my knowledge, which is a critique of sorts.
Thank you, but I’ve already read those sources, as well as JC Bennett’s essay on his version of Anglosphere theory.
Then why keep on lumping him into a critique of ideas which are practically dissimilar to his? Arguing against James Bennett by using another writer’s position as your opposite proves nothing about Bennett’s position. In explanation:
“Islam is based on faith, Christianity is based on faith, so isn’t Islam a form of Christianity?”
is as logical as
“Bennett and Churchill both wrote about Anglospheres, therefore they must agree with each other.”
Logically this is called the Fallacy of the Undistributed Middle.
Perhaps the problem with this idea is the attempt to re-use a word: “Anglosphere” and move in into a new context which is not bound by language, but by political ideology.
Richard (and I) both think that excessive dependance on language commonality to forge the “Anglosphere” can be misleading. Not to downplay it’s significance in the spread of ideas, but English has been both a blessing and a boon for countries like India. On one hand it enables ideas to quickly spread within the English-speaking elite, at the same time, it makes it difficult for them (ideas) to trickle down to the masses.
My solution would be the simplest – encourage literacy in English over native languages! Boy am I going to get flamed for this
I wouldn’t know logically why you should get flamed for encouraging linguistic proficiency in common languages as a matter of national priority. Public education should encourage commonalities, not parochial dead ends. If that is important on a family or regional basis, let those social units pay for them, both in terms of time and budgets. Hey, Jewish boys have been learning Hebrew for two thousand years to be bar mitzvahed and come of age. Why not Gujarati for the local kids if its important for them? But its not like I’m going to learn Gujarati to write letters to casual acquaintances in Ahmedabad, unless I’m really going to immerse myself in that local culture for personal reasons, and then I’ll probably not have enough time or energy to learn Bengali dialects and converse with the locals in Kolkata. Lingua francas grow up due to some very practical reasons, but this is not the sole common cultural element which characterizes Anglospheric nations.
Flaming, by definition, is an act committed out of emotional outrage. To make a long story short, language imposition is a very sensitive subject in India. As Brian on Libertarian Samizdata pointed out in a recent post, most state-run schools in India actually prohibit the teaching of English except as an optional foreign language in High school.
In the past this resulted in large numbers of otherwise highly intelligent and scientifically literate young men and women being priced out of the lucrative private sector, which is increasingly globalized and depends on its members fluency in English as one of its primary selling points. Some of that is changing, as the private sector continues to move into the college and technical education areas.
English is spreading as the de facto world language of commerce, something that we’re going to need for globalization to become complete. I don’t think it’s necessary to import the latest trends in Anglo thinking to speak English; if it happens, that will sometimes be good, and sometimes not. But competance in English shouldn’t be a cultural or a political statement, as much as a business statement.
I suspect that English as the language of international business is also one of the carrier waves of Anglosphere cosmopolitanism, a business-friendly meta-culture of business practices and attitudes. A common language facilitates the grown in what Marx called ‘rootless cosmopolitans’ who might actually have roots after all, but not ones trapped by political borders. Cosmopolitanism itself is a highly political notion, or perhaps in a way even unconsciously *anti-political*, as it is by definition a social phenomenon rather than a development of state.