1 - The Anglo-American Condition: Similarities and Differences
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 August 2023
Summary
“We have always been kin: kin in blood, kin in religion, kin in representative government, kin in ideals, kin in just and lofty purposes; and now we are kin in sin, the harmony is complete, the blend is perfect, like Mr. Churchill himself, whom I now have the honor to present to you.”
Mark Twain, introducing Winston Churchill at a meeting on the Boer War at the Waldorf Astoria in New York in December 1900: showing his own distaste for British and American imperialism“Anglo-American households are broke. Too many households have endured years of declining real incomes, bouts of unemployment, rising indebtedness and without sufficient savings: they are bearing the brunt of the economic downturn and are disproportionately paying for the costs of fiscal austerity without any evidence of a lasting recovery.”
Johnna MontgomerieThere is nothing particularly forced or arbitrary about putting the words “Anglo” and “American” together in a single and hyphenated adjective. On the contrary, if only by dint of common usage, it is any opening moment of conceptual separation and doubt that requires some effort: a moment at which the apparent “naturalness” of the coupling between the two terms needs to be explored. But that exploration is necessary: because, as is immediately obvious whenever we stop to reflect upon it, the United Kingdom and the United States are very different places, and there is nothing preordained in the existence of any similarities between them. So, if we are going to study them together, as we are now – and particularly if we are going to make statements that encompass them both, as we definitely will – it behoves us first to justify the underlying design of the exercise upon which we are poised to embark.
Putting the two countries together and setting them apart
So why put the two countries together, separate them off from the rest, and seek out statements that encompass them both? Two different reasons initially spring to mind. The first is that we can undertake that exercise with some confidence because we are not moving into new territory – because there have been many occasions in the past on which governments in both countries have done something similar.
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- Flawed CapitalismThe Anglo-American Condition and its Resolution, pp. 9 - 22Publisher: Agenda PublishingPrint publication year: 2018