Britannia Radio

Britain’s Ominous Smiley-Face Election

From the desk of A. Millar on Mon, 2010-04-19 08:25

With a general election set for May 6, the two main parties have, as Peter Goodspeed notes in Canada’s National Post, busied themselves “adopting U.S. policies, personnel and practices.” The British press, too, is full of talk about “presidential-style” TV debates and “first lady politics”. The Americanizing of the British election becomes even more evident if one listens to Conservative party leader David Cameron, who routinely references president Barack Obama – as an apparent inspiration – and who has even, on a few occasions, cited John F. Kennedy as “a great American president.”

But despite the US-UK “special relationship,” the British, as well as other Europeans, misread American culture. They admire the US’s vitality, yet believe it to be entirely separated from its traditional, Constitutional values.

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Roger Scruton On Islam And The West

From the desk of The Brussels Journal on Sun, 2010-04-18 19:28

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European unity: The Right and the Wrong Way

From the desk of George Handlery on Sat, 2010-04-17 08:55

What is the EU worth if there is real trouble? Hungary: Election day illusions. When violene is recast as a virtue.

 

1. Central and Western Europe’s existing states mirror the region’s multi-polarity. Neither the State nor the Church could centralize continent-wide their power in order to create the idealized unity and uniformity that these institutions have pursued. As a result, numerous entities could emerge and many of these managed to establish themselves as states. A fall-out product –and sometimes a causative force behind this process of fragmentation- has been the emergence of a multitude of idioms. These are all regarded as expressions of essential identity. It is illustrative of diversification that some of these languages are not even Indo-European. Through this process of fragmentation, a number of states could emerge. They survived the efforts of the likes of Charlemagne, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin who all attempted to create unity by force. The firming tradition of independence, distinguished by a “unique” language, geographic factors and “race” proved to be stronger than muscle-driven projects of unification.

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