British politician Daniel Hannan's Inventing Freedom is an ambitious account of the historical origin and spread of the principles that have made America great and their role in creating a sphere of economic and political liberty that is as crucial as it is imperiled.
The ideas and institutions we consider essential to maintaining and preserving our freedoms—individual rights, private property, the rule of law, and the institutions of representative government—are the legacy of a very specific tradition that was born in England and was inherited by Americans, along with other former British colonies. By the tenth century, England was a nation-state whose people were already starting to define themselves with reference to inherited common-law rights. The story of liberty is the story of how that model triumphed: How it was enshrined in a series of landmark victories—the Magna Carta, the English Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, the US Constitution—and how it came to defeat every international rival.
Today we see those ideas abandoned and scorned in the places where they once went unchallenged. Inventing Freedom is a chronicle of the success of Anglosphere exceptionalism, and it is offered at a time that may turn out to be the end of the age of political freedom.
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“Hannan, a well-known conservative writer and politician in Great
Britain, tells the story of English contributions to the modern world
and the rise of what he calls the ‘Anglosphere’…Hannan’s book adds up
to an entertaining, readable narrative of English triumphs in law,
religion, and freedom and celebrates the Anglosphere’s ‘sublime
tradition.’ At the finish, he encourages his readers to act as stewards
of their rich legacy.”
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Publishers Weekly