British pride is essential to national revival
As an American, I am a bit dismayed at the current fashion for many in the UK to apologize for being British. My family left England 400 plus years ago and settled in Virginia; nevertheless, I am proud of my British ancestry and all the accomplishments of the British people.
Despite 400 years of separation, I have more than a few connections to Albion. The British Navy shelled my family’s ancestral home during the War of 1812. My grandmother was best friends with Lady Astor who was also my ex-wife’s great, great Aunt. I named my business Chartwell Capital Advisors out of admiration for Winston Churchill, who is a distant cousin. On June 6, 1944, my dad pushed off from Portsmouth and landed on the beaches of Normandy. I went to graduate school at Cambridge. Over my bed hangs a painting of the Battle of Trafalgar. When I think of Lord Nelson’s signal to the fleet, “England expects every man will do his duty,” I get a chill and the hair on the back of my neck rises. I’m an Anglophile.
Human nature is immutable. History is the recordation of humans thinking they are making rational decisions under the circumstances of the time in which they lived. To trash the past is simplistic and childish. There seems to be a new bubonic plague spreading through Western Europe that is especially lethal in England. It is out of fashion to stand up for one’s culture. One must succumb to the lunacy that all nations, cultures and religions are all of equal value. The dominant cultures that have lifted the rest of the world out of darkness must somehow apologize for doing so. From my vantage point the resurgence of the Reform Party is in response to this self-immolation.
Britons should be proud to be Britons. In the classic Christmas movie, It’s A Wonderful Life, George Bailey was contemplating suicide. Then the angel, Clarence Odbody appears and convinces George to embrace his past by showing George what the world would be like if George hadn’t been born.
What would the world be like if “England had never been born?” It would be a god-awful place. Suppose the United States was colonized by Muslim Mamluks instead of by Englishmen? It would be a trash heap like much of the Middle East. The United States inherited English common law, the sanctity of property rights, concepts of liberty, an entrepreneurial economy born of British systems of commerce and an evangelistic Christianity that believed every person had a soul worth saving. English is the lingua franca of the world because the rest of the world wants to be assimilated into the success of the English-speaking world.
Today’s Britain is George Bailey. It is committing suicide by not having the gumption to stand up against woke ideology and proudly claim that its history, institutions and Judeo-Christian culture are superior to the rest of the world.
Margaret Thatcher had such gumption. She believed in Britain’s past and the policies that made it great; limited government, the rule of law, free markets, protection of the pound and the spirit of enterprise. She didn’t crumble. She stuck to her guns.
In 2022, Liz Truss laid out a very Thatcherite economic policy slashing taxes and demolishing the regulatory state. These policies generate economic growth. Always. When Rishi Sunak and Jeremey Hunt ran away from her shrieking with their pinkies in the air, the tide started to turn away from the Tories. However, the Tories real Waterloo is not having the testicles to protect their countrymen from hordes of 3rd world immigrants who hate Britain, its customs and its people. Oh the irony! The people who endured the Blitz losing their country without a shot being fired!
So, if Great Britain is in the midst of national suicide, is Nigel Farage its Clarence Odbody? If Lady Thatcher was alive today, she would move the Tories to adopt the same platform as Reform, and if they didn’t she would have the courage to leave her party. The revolution that Thatcher started in the late 70s was every bit cultural as it was economic. There were many Tories who felt that England’s decline was a foregone conclusion and had no fight in them until Maggie came along.
It feels like 1979 again. A populist movement is sweeping through the Western world. If alive, Margaret Thatcher, the grocer’s daughter, would be leading the movement with Union Jack in hand.
Rob Smith is a Senior Fellow at the Parkview Institute and the owner and Managing Director of Chartwell Capital Advisors.
