British - Historian | September 13, 1949 -
Had Barack Obama been obliged to take his degree at the University of Akron, say, it is doubtful that his progress would have been remotely as stellar.
Linda Colley
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Historically, individuals possessed of the confidence that privilege and good fortune bestow have often proved conspicuous reformers: think only of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
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One of the reasons why the personnel of U.S. politics are more diverse is that - unlike the U.K. - one can compete for the top job without spending long years, or any years, in the nation's legislature.
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One knows something is important when the powers that be choose not to acknowledge it in public.
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Even leaving aside its military bases, America's influence on the domestic ordering of British life has been enormous, though sometimes unrecognised.
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Postcolonial critics are, I suspect, wrong when they argue that the mass of British people still mourn the loss of empire. But Britain's politicians - and its Foreign Office - have found it hard to adjust to the loss, not so much of onetime colonies as of the global clout the colonies once afforded.
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Conservative and Labour governments have arguably championed British rights in Brussels so ostentatiously in order to deflect public attention away from their deference to Washington.
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In the 16th and 17th centuries, most people in Britain lived in small village communities. They knew all their neighbours. They dressed alike, and almost all were white. The vast majority belonged to the same religion and spoke much the same language.
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Acts of violence against one's own countrymen that are legitimated by religion are not new. Nor have such acts been unique to Islam.
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Historically, religion has often proved a more lethal and more divisive force than any secular ideology. It has also often been a more divisive force than race.
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States that have experienced revolutions or have acquired their independence from empires - such as the U.S. or Australia - tend to celebrate their constitutional documents and put them on show in special galleries so that every citizen can become familiar with them. In the U.K., this is not properly done.
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Like the proverbial elephant in the room, American anti-Europeanism has loomed large for so long that few trouble to notice it.
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