Britain, America, and the Brotherhood of the Common Tongue

The Japanese video game autiste Hideo Kojima is known for touching on vital truths in his games, albeit while burying them under a mountain of half-translated dialogue and half-cocked story ideas. His recent Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain features a Hungarian villain who seeks to kill everyone who speaks English in order to halt the progress of American imperialism. Poorly written and preposterously plotted, the game nonetheless hits upon a profound truth when the antagonist declares “it is no nation we inhabit, but a language. Make no mistake: our native tongue is our true fatherland.”

I was thinking about this when I read last week that the Trump administration is floating the idea of a new free trade association with the U.K., Canada and Mexico. With Britain on track to leave the European Union, they’re free to explore new partnerships without Brussels weighing them down. Aside from the bizarre inclusion of Mexico, the idea of a free trade agreement between the U.S., Canada and U.K. isn’t just sound, it’s astounding that no one thought of it before. In fact, I’d suggest adding Australia, New Zealand and (possibly) Ireland for the full package.

Bitter British supporters of the Brexit Remain campaign are lamenting that an Anglo trade zone will lead to the U.S. assimilating the U.K., ignoring how the E.U. choked the lifeblood out of Britain for decades. Unfortunately for the Left, language is one of the strongest ways to bring people together. Britain, America and the Anglo Commonwealth countries are bound by many shared traditions, the English language being one of the most important, and closer cooperation between them isn’t just natural, it’s desirable.

Language isn’t merely about communication: it is one of the building blocks of how humans think, act and come together. The nature of your mother tongue—from its words to its sentence structure to its pronunciation—shapes how you view and approach the world. For example, one of the reasons why feminism of the Tumblr/social justice variety is far weaker in France, Italy and other Romance language countries is because of the gendered nature of Latin-derived tongues. This contrasts to the asexual morass of Germanic languages; Common Filth frequently attacks the “Anglo tongue” for helping foster a transactional and hedonistic mentality. In another example, Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, is one of the most violent cities in the world because the country is a Tower of Babel consisting of hundreds of different tribal groups, each with a unique language.

While it’s true that the French aided America against the British during the Revolution, at the end of the day, we have more in common with the British then we ever will with the French thanks to our shared tongue. Continental Europeans used to understand this, which is why Charles de Gaulle famously refused to allow the U.K. to join the European Economic Community (the predecessor to the E.U.) in 1961, viewing them as a vector for American imperialism. It’s also why de Gaulle’s 1967 declaration of “Vive le Quebec libre!” helped fuel the Quebecois independence movement. Similarly, preferential trade and immigration agreements between the U.K. and the Commonwealth nations of Canada, Australia and New Zealand helped them grow: New Zealand’s post-WWII economic prosperity was largely due to agricultural exports to the U.K., which declined when the latter joined the E.E.C. in 1973.

The legal systems and governance of the U.S. and the Commonwealth settler countries are directly derived from English traditions going back to the Middle Ages, specifically the tradition of common law. Common law states that anything that is not explicitly prohibited by government is allowed, a principle that is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s Tenth Amendment. It was British common law that enabled the U.K. and U.S. to leap ahead of France and other European powers in the age of imperialism, as the latter were wedded to a civil law mentality that required them to regulate and control everything. The E.U.’s unaccountable bureaucracy and laws governing every aspect of life are a product of continental civil law and a large part of why the British have always chafed at Brussels’ yoke.

In his 1965 book Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism, George Grant discussed how Canadian culture and government gradually reoriented itself from being British-focused to American-focused. While upset at the arrangement, he also believed it was inevitable, because the U.S. was much larger and closer to Canada than Britain was and both countries were English-speaking. Similarly, the Remoaners angry over the prospect of a U.K.-U.S. free trade association are just being snobs; as Bruce Charlton observed, upper-class Englishmen tend to be pro-French while the lower classes are pro-American. The U.K. made a disastrous error in shunning the U.S. and the Commonwealth in favor of continental Europe, a decision which they’ve only begun to rectify with Brexit.

Free trade and free movement agreements can only work between nations that are culturally similar and at the same level of economic development. NAFTA is a disaster because it included Mexico, a poor, culturally alien nation full of cheap, desperate labor. Conversely, Canada and the U.S. had de facto open borders up until a decade ago with no issues; Australia and New Zealand have a similar arrangement to this day. It’s much like how the Left’s attacks on Melania Trump for allegedly being an illegal immigrant failed to catch fire, because Melania has actually made meaningful contributions to American society, as opposed to the illiterate mestizos streaming over the southern border. An Anglo free trade association is an easy sell in both the U.S. and U.K. because it will be one of mutual cooperation instead of exploitation.

Ultimately, in the emerging nationalist era, alliances and trade agreements will be rearranged based on common cultural bonds. For example, see the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte realigning his country with China, with whom many Filipinos share ethnic ties. It’s as natural for the U.K. to side with the U.S. against continental Europe as it is for men to be attracted to skinny women over tattooed SJW sows. If the English language is our fatherland, then it’s time for the British and Americans to come home.