Appreciating America’s Distinctly British Heritage

“The United States’ British roots also have value because they provide a link to a history older than any homegrown alternative the United States possesses.”

University of Pennsylvania professor Amy Wax has been embroiled in controversy since at least 2017, facing frequent condemnations of her comments and points of view. In September of this year, the university took the unusual step of suspending Wax for one year, at half her normal salary and in spite of her tenure. (Other penalties were also imposed.) Last month, Wax made some bold comments about the makeup of the American population. In conversation with Glenn Loury, Wax argued that the United States should have “one dominant demographic,” which would ideally be “Anglo-Protestant” in nature. Wax has drawn fire with similar remarks in the past. In 2017, fellow scholar Jonathan Klick criticized her for “claims regarding the superiority of Anglo-Protestant norms.” Klick made some good points, and one can certainly argue over details. But on the whole, Wax, in my view, is right. As she suggested to Loury, Anglo-Americans did make the United States successful, and the country would be better off with a strong Anglo-American presence.

As Garett Jones observes in The Culture Transplant, “there’s at least some evidence that, based on patterns around the world, being a British colony was a net economic plus.” That is compared to colonization by other European powers. Jones also casts Britain as the birthplace of the “right to property,” which he says “goes back to Magna Carta.” For hundreds of years, there has been little danger of expropriation in Britain. In Jones’s view, “that low British risk has planted its Deep Roots in North America.” This was surely due in part to the British origin of many Americans. Jones explains that immigrants tend to bring their cultures with them, and such ancestral culture partly overrides that of the countries to which they move. To an extent, “people matter more than places.”

In “Why Anglos Lead,” Lawrence Mead similarly contends that American predominance in international affairs dates back at least to World War II and “continues a British primacy that dated back at least to 1815.” (However, I hasten to add that, as William Wohlforth has shown, American hegemony is greater than any Britain ever achieved.) For Mead, Anglo leadership stems from several causes. One is a friendliness to economic freedom that goes back to medieval Britain. Another is “good governance” and judicial independence, which, likewise, was already present in 12th-century England. Moreover, Anglo politics promotes freedom at home and abroad, which is why Anglo states are trusted by other countries.