The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Does Daniel Hannan Support Stimulus Projects?

Posted on | October 4, 2010 | 4 Comments

by Smitty

Cubachi posted a Cato speech, 25 minutes of Hannan from 29 September, 2010, as he visits the Colonies in conjunction with the publication of The New Road to Serfdom, which, despite all initial title appearances, does not describe a shovel-ready Obama Administration project.

Shameless Daniel Hannan fan that I am, I pre-ordered the book. As a blogger, this is advantageous, because one can now pull a quotation from the end of the Introduction, throw in some other links, and get a decent post going:

A hundred years ago, my country was where yours is now: a superpower, admired and resented–sometimes, in a complex way, by the same people. We understand better than most that popularity is not bought through mimicry, but through confidence. You are respected, not when you copy your detractors, but when you outperform them.
Until very recently, the United States did this very well. While it may have drawn sneers from European intellectuals, denunciation from Latin American demagogues, violence from Middle Eastern radicals, the populations of all these parts of the world continued to try to migrate to the United States, and to import aspects of American culture to their own villages.
Now, though, American self-belief is on the wane. No longer are the political structures of Philadelphia automatically regarded as guarantors of liberty. America is becoming less American, by which I mean less independent, less prosperous, and less free.
The character of the United States, more than of any other country on earth, is bound up with its institutions. The U.S. Constitution was both a product and a protector of American optimism. When one is disregarded, the other dwindles.
This book is addressed to the people of the United States on behalf of all those in other lands who, convinced patriots as they may be, nonetheless recognize that America stands for something. Your country actualizes an ideal. If you give up on that ideal, all of us will be left poorer.

I’m only a couple of pages into the first chapter, but, based upon the table of contents, this is likely to be the most polite bitch slapping that Progressivism ever gets.
About the only thing unclear about Daniel Hannan is why he is not yet the Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Category: Politics

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