The Cutting Edge of Evolution

Jonathon Last is one of my favorite writers at the Weekly Standard, and he has written a great piece paralleling events leading up to the fall of Great Britian in the early 1900's and the current climate in the U.S. It is a very interesting read that I hope, after a few tastes, you will be inspired to digest in full.

He acknowledges war fatigue following WWI as a factor in Britian's changing culture, but highlights the intellectual elites descent from pacifism into a truly anti-Britian stance. For instance:

In 1933, the Oxford Union - a debating society and one of the strongholds of liberal elite opinion - held a debate on the resolution "this House will in no circumstances fight for king and country." The resolution passed. Margot Asquith, one of England's leading liberal lights, wrote that same year, quite sincerely: "There is only one way of preserving peace in the world, and getting rid of your enemy, and that is to come to some sort of agreement with him. . . . The greatest enemy of mankind today is hate."

Churchill, never one to mince words, was more than willing to describe what he saw in the Queen's english.

Churchill disdained the new liberalism, mocking one of his opponents as part of "that band of degenerate international intellectuals who regard the greatness of Britain and the stability and prosperity of the British Empire as a fatal obstacle. . . . "

Sound familiar? There are myriad examples of the mentality Churchill describes in today's America, but they all boil down to the idea that the world would be a much better place without America the Terrorist running around.

Last goes on to show that, to most of the European liberal elite, there was far more fear for an over-reaching England, who was accused of selling war fever, than there was for Nazi Germany. Somewhat amusingly, Churchill's election to prime minister was feared to bring an end to general elections. A dictatorship, if you can imagine a political party making such an outlandinsh accusation.

Last concludes the article by pointing to some issues and personalities of today's America. Resistence to the Bolton nomination and the antics of Dick Durbin, to name a couple.

Aside from the obvious implications for the future of our own society, what I found interesting about the article is to what little degree the left of England in the early 20th century and that of today's America differ. That is to say, they don't...really.

One of the things that makes us exceptional as human beings is the potential to learn from our mistakes. To evolve. In that than, I guess one could say that the modern American conservative is the beauty of man in flux.

The cutting edge of evolution.

Oh ya.