The world of English freedoms.
The world of English freedoms.
Read it. Daniel Hannan outlines exactly why freedom has prospered first in English-speaking nations.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
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Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
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The world of English freedoms.
Read it. Daniel Hannan outlines exactly why freedom has prospered first in English-speaking nations.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Very very big agree.
Before the Anglosphere the dividing line in technology and as an extension, the thinking that an individual man had individual rights primary, over and above as an extension of God / religion is where Western civilization creates the parting line between it and the Eastern philosophy.
In Eastern philosophy you may not plumb the mind of God to discover the underlying forces that rule the universe. That is the fundamental difference between the two and the germination point at which man comes to understand his proper place in the universe. In the Western world “God” loves man and challenges him to dare to understand “Gods” mind. heads are removed at this point in the Eastern / Islamic world.
Religion is a political construct of man, designed to control him and contained within that mechanism of control are absolute limitations. Western philosophy is without limits. Its the difference between light and dark. And then comes the importance of the unifying language, but first the fundamental “enlightened” change in thinking.
It is so uplifting to read an intelligent article written at an adult level that honestly makes you think. Why can’t Americans have politicians with Mr. Hannon’s command of the English language…hmmm, have I just posed a rhetorical question that seemingly answers itself?
Thanks for this post, Robert; I have just ordered Daniel Hannon’s book, “Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Make the Modern World” upon reading your post. I let you know how I find the book.
I read his commentary as well. He’s an excellent political thinker, and this country ignores his warnings about nationalized healthcare at its peril. I dream of our country in a day when Daniel Hannons are commonplace in the legislator, and our president is as brave, straightforward, experienced and intelligent as Benjamin Netanyahu.
I used to say that it was the freedom that came with capitalism and free markets that made the US and the western world prosperous, the Magna Carta being the foundation of stable laws and property rights that allow for capitalism. My evidence was the prosperity that China and India have had since they began to embrace capitalism and free markets.
I now think that there is more to it. Niall Ferguson wrote a book, “Civilization: The West and the Rest.” He examines why there was a shift from the east being more prosperous than the west in 1500 to the west being more prosperous than the east by 1913. He also names six items that are key to that prosperity that the east didn’t develop as fully as the west did: competition, science, property rights (including stability of the rule of law), medicine, the work ethic, and consumption (consumerism). These may be “the right institutions and the cultural assumptions that go with them” that Hannan wrote about in his essay.
I am in awe that the US went, in a mere four centuries, from a literal backwoods in 1620 to a country powerful enough to swiftly end the stalemated WWI. No other country or civilization has developed so much so quickly (although Argentina was a rival economic powerhouse in the Americas in 1920).
Daniel Hannan mentions Alexis de Tocqueville as saying (from the essay) “that the New World allowed the national characteristics of Europe’s nations the freest possible expression … so English America (as he called it) exaggerated the localism, the libertarianism and the mercantilism of the mother country.” Hannan quotes de Tocqueville as having said, “The American is the Englishman left to himself.” Each of us being left to himself gives us the (Englishman’s exaggerated) freedom to exhibit the American exceptionalism that de Tocqueville suggested — but did not name — in his book.