Here is Bob Carr dissing the Anglosphere:
Senator Carr said today, “With our heritage of White Australia and membership of the British Empire . . . it’s too risky for us even to glance in the direction of talk of an Anglosphere.”
“It revives all those unfortunate recollections and associations. If we even hint to the world that our self-definition is tied up in being part of the Anglosphere, we give the impression we are fundamentally more comfortable with that sphere . . . than we are with nations with a different history and different cultures.
“We confirm the most outdated stereotypes of Australia . . . stereotypes which aren’t supported by the nature of the Australian population, which is more culturally diverse than the population of any other country you can think about.
“Talk of an Anglosphere is antique and presents us as something different from what we are.”
He is trying too hard. But our American friends – some of them anyway – are trying the same stunt on Mitt Romney.
The recent hullabaloo over a Romney adviser stating that Romney understands better than President Obama the special relationship between Britain and the United States demonstrates a total lack of historical understanding of what the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ means.
What uninformed people do not realize is that long before the term was usurped by ignorant racists such as the KKK, it was used to describe a political system that is the basis of the English-speaking world.
…
… based on its Anglo-Saxon heritage, England became the birthplace of the principles that are (or were) the foundation of liberty—liberty the English-speaking world now takes for granted. Additionally, it is the foundation of what was to become known as ‘Liberal Democracy.’In fact, I argue that there would be no such thing as human rights if not for the Anglo-Saxons since their principles of individual rights, rule of law, and the limited power of government were alien to the system of government that developed on the continent or anywhere else in the world.
I’m not surprised that Australia’s unelected foreign minister doesn’t like that sort of thing.
Those who claim the Anglosphere to some sort of white and racist concept are on shaky ground as Daniel Hannan explains.
One thing that Britain and the US have in common is that they define nationhood in civic rather than ethnic terms. A hundred years ago, 80 per cent of British subjects were neither white nor Christian. You become British, as you become American, by signing up to a set of values.
And a pretty decent set of values they are. In two world wars, hundreds of millions of men crossed half the world in order to take up arms in their defence. Whether they were from Jamaica or Australia, India or Canada, they understood that they were fighting for freedom against tyranny. Not every country got the big calls of the last century – the two world wars and the Cold War – right. The Anglosphere peoples, by and large, did.
During the first half of 2012, I toured the main English-speaking democracies to make the case for the Anglosphere. I was struck by the warmth with which people of non-British backgrounds, especially in Australia and Canada, endorsed the concept.
Bob Carr likes to pass himself off as being a history buff. Australians would also like to think that a minister of the crown knows something about that Crown and the constitution. I’m just not sure that “individual rights, rule of law, and the limited power of government” are “stereotypes which aren’t supported by the nature of the Australian population”. An elected politician would know that.
He’s proud of the Dred Scott decision.
.
27 Jul 12 at 6:29 pm
Carr is quite openly propagating white guilt/anti-white propaganda. Yet when the ‘right’ opposition can only counter with legalistic arguments about “individual rights, rule of law, and the limited power of government” (not that there is anything wrong with these concepts) the disgusting individuals of his ilk will continue to get away with it.
I’d rather that whites stood on both feet and told the anti-white self-haters and racists that we are proud of our race, our European civilisation and our cultures (which personal liberty is but a product of).
Until we gain the courage to look the left in the eye and state this the Cultural Marxist dominance will continue in the Anglosphere and West no matter who the ruling parties are.
Clyde
27 Jul 12 at 6:38 pm
Re-post, with corrections:
You are an idiot savant Sinclair, as is Carr. As is probably most of the Western (Anglosphere mostly) elite.
You know stuff, in fine detail, but you lack a grasp on human fundamentals.
As Goethe said, “the parts lie in the hollow of your hand, you only lack the living link you banned”
Carr wasn’t dissing anyone, if you hold hard to Carr’s thesis (as you do): that is, there is no such thing as race.
He was dissing a concept, that you, he, and the vast majority here hold to hard and fast; that race means nothing, culture holds sway.
But, without asking, where did the culture come from?, and assuming that you could persuade *all* people that libertarianism was the best for mankind (not a WWF reference), you will always be left staggered that things just won’t play out as you wish them.
All things are rooted in family. From whence ethnicity comes. Extended out is race. Born within environment, comes culture. Culture (all sub aspects: politics, religion, song, architecture, writing etc) is the encapsulation of race within environment.
The Chinese must laugh full and long at how easily our former nation has, and will be, easily overcome. No Defence White Papers required. No, armed citizenry to storm and bastille.
Just an open immigration policy, a subjugated populace, a corporate mandated wage, open to all comers. And come they will.
Jack Gibson
27 Jul 12 at 6:42 pm
The subtext of all such ostentatious declarations of race loathing is, ironically, the racist hubris pursuant to which whites alone are high and mighty enough to make them. So you lay it on thick precisely because you can.
More generally, the various white tribes of Europe have been magnificent leaders in almost all of the civilising, scientific, modernising currents of human history. It’s completely stupid for nations like England or Swedan to sell off their race/cultural identity to assuage the infantile guilt of elites, the malicious blackmail of grievance-mongering minorities or the appetite for political gerrymandering exemplified by the Blair government.
As Hannan demonstrates, Anglophone culture is a real, living culture – perhaps the greatest ever. It is not an “antique” that only becomes interesting or liveable to the extent that it is vitaiated and diminished by so-called multiculturalism. Or, rather, is needn’t be that, unless we allow it to be.
C.L.
27 Jul 12 at 6:50 pm
vitiated
C.L.
27 Jul 12 at 6:50 pm
Mr Carr has an Asian wife and no children, it perhaps influences his thinking of heritage. There’s nothing wrong with having an Asian spouse and no children – who cares – but perhaps he’s not objective on the subject.
candy
27 Jul 12 at 6:56 pm
We are fundamentally more comfortable with “that sphere” Bob you twit.
Most of the populations of the rest of the world are fuckwits. And that is a cultural – not racist – observation.
jupes
27 Jul 12 at 6:59 pm
And I’m ashamed of Bob Carr.
jupes
27 Jul 12 at 7:00 pm
English is the official language and/or second language through a fair swathe of Africa. Carr has excluded those Africans from the Anglosphere and then called it white.
Of course, if you just assume black people can’t speak English, then Anglophone does indeed mean “white”.
As for the W.A.P., that’s his dog, not mine.
wreckage
27 Jul 12 at 7:09 pm
Bob Carr, too lazy for Wikipedia.
wreckage
27 Jul 12 at 7:12 pm
Well he would say something like that if he wants to continue [happy to play the man but let's not go overboard. Sinc].These self loathing republican history apologists give me the absolute shits.
Splatacrobat
27 Jul 12 at 7:18 pm
Is that what Carr said?
cohenite
27 Jul 12 at 7:26 pm
Bob is just a garden variety leftist who would never allow mere truth get in the way of standard leftist folklore.
As all leftists know, all middle aged white males are eevil raaacists except if they are leftists.
Moreover middle aged white racists represent the endemic evil white supremacist culture that brave leftists have fought against for millenniae and famously recently against ‘Little’Johnny Howard
JamesK
27 Jul 12 at 7:27 pm
No. I spliced what the Anglosphere stands for with what Carr said. Both pieces of the splice are in the post.
Sinclair Davidson
27 Jul 12 at 7:30 pm
Poor old Bob. As every day passes it becomes more and more obvious that he should have remained retired from politics. While he delivered nothing tangible to NSW when Premier, he talked a good game. Now he can’t even do that and it is painful to watch. Reminds me of a doddery uncle at a family gathering who is gently lead to a corner chair after failing to keep up with the action.
Jack
27 Jul 12 at 7:33 pm
Look at the scoreboard Bob, your backing the wrong teams.
Splatacrobat
27 Jul 12 at 7:33 pm
Gettysburg ended one era and started another in the USA, Bob claims to know this, but still sounds unsure. Regarding UK their era ended on 21 February 1947, when USA assumed the mantle to save Greece, now we await any new force that will seek to steer the world.
stackja
27 Jul 12 at 7:55 pm
Carr is trying to tar Abbott with Hansonism; he’s deliberately conflating heredity or even skin colour and culture — it’s desperation.
manalive
27 Jul 12 at 8:18 pm
English is the official language and/or second language through a fair swathe of Africa
Forget Africa, English is the only unifying language of South Asia.
Quentin George
27 Jul 12 at 8:42 pm
Bobby doesn’t have a driver’s licence.
Can you believe it.
It goes to general societal and cultural competence.
He still thinks life is about stroking undergraduate Soviet socialist cell dogma.
Geeeez……maybe that’s where he met Julia.
Bwaaaa…….
Alfonso
27 Jul 12 at 9:01 pm
Glance in the direction of talk. We may reside in the Anglosphere, but English is still butchered.
ar
27 Jul 12 at 9:19 pm
Can’t drive, can drivel.
ar
27 Jul 12 at 9:21 pm
He’s also a teetotaler – an even bigger ‘black’ mark, given that not only is he a senile, pompous pretentious bore, he’s not even useful as a designated driver.
Rabz
27 Jul 12 at 9:46 pm
Capital show there Rabz old chap! That literally cracked me up, disturbing the coffee and splendid silence here tonight.
Mick Gold Coast QLD
27 Jul 12 at 10:05 pm
Ok, so this is what Carr meant; that sections of the Australian population are misleadingly included as supporting individual rights, a limit on government and the rule of law, which can be broken up to 2 parts: due process and equality of due process.
I suppose those who support Finkelstein and the Green agenda would be excluded from those values; the Muslim community and other assorted religious nutters also would find those values of scant relevance, as would sundry Union leaders and po-faced academics.
But the vast majority of the population would certainly not only esteem those values but see them as essential and defining aspects of Australian society.
Carr is often presented as an intellectual and intelligent; the reality is that he is an elitist, stupid bastard.
cohenite
27 Jul 12 at 10:58 pm
The utterly infuriating fact that he is still a ‘member’ of our so called ‘elected’ legislature says more about ‘us’ than it does about ‘them’…
Rabz
27 Jul 12 at 11:10 pm
A couple of hundred years ago The ‘Anglosphere’ went to war to stop slavery didn’t it?
Forester
27 Jul 12 at 11:18 pm
Carr tarnishes his legacy of running NSW into a brick wall by hooking up his clapped out caravan to Australia’s worst government since WWII.
Anyone want to put money on him serving out his full Senate term when this train wreck is finally thrown out?
H B Bear
27 Jul 12 at 11:20 pm
If the Gillard government wasn’t appointed – Carr certainly was.
Wonder what the numbers would have been like if they actually had to stick him on a ballot paper. I’m sure we’ll never know.
H B Bear
27 Jul 12 at 11:23 pm
Well said, and also sneering, condescending and totalitarian. Like the rest of the inner city Green/Left.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
27 Jul 12 at 11:25 pm
The only thing Carr will be remembered for is introducing more MPs into an Australian parliament that were subsequently convicted for criminal behavior. Carr is a disgrace. Doesn’t drink, can’t drive, no kids and won’t shut up. What a funster Bobby is!
John Comnenus
28 Jul 12 at 12:28 am
Elected, Rabz?
Abu Chowdah
28 Jul 12 at 3:21 am
He is still being fed lines by Bob Ellis, who speaks of Carr fondly and often on his stupid little blog.
derFRED
28 Jul 12 at 6:48 am
You’d probably have to be slightly brain damaged and slightly drug fucked to use Bob Ellis as an adviser or speech writer.
The man has gone troppo. Totally fucking troppo.
Hahahaha. It’s like we’ve picked him out of an early 1900s women’s church auxillary.
.
28 Jul 12 at 8:31 am
i am a proud white australian with both scottish and irish desendency. am i to feel guilty because of what i am? i live in cairns, and i can assure you bob carr, this place isn’t short racists up here, and they’re not all white either! we (us whites) are constantly told as a community, to bend over backwards to help the murris and torres strait islaners, (whom hate each other),but we never get anything in return! to bob, i suggest you live in the real world and DON’T dictate to me that i should feel guilty because of my skin colour! who elected you anyway?!
Steve Iverach
28 Jul 12 at 8:54 am
Does he think they don’t have access to history books in China? I could just imagine Bob with the White-out, trying to blot out the ‘Commonwealth’ from ‘Commonwealth of Australia’ on every piece of correspondence he sends to China and thinking he is doing us all a favour.
Rebel with cause
28 Jul 12 at 8:54 am
i am a proud white australian with both scottish and irish descendency. am i to feel guilty because of what i am? i live in cairns, and i can assure you bob carr, this place isn’t short of racists up here, and they’re not all white either! we, (us whites) are constantly told as a community, to bend over backwards to help the murris and torres strait islanders, (whom hate each other), but we never get anything in return but hatred towards us whites! to bob, i suggest you live in the real world and DON’T dictate to me that i should feel guilty because of my skin colour! who elected you anyway?!
Steve Iverach
28 Jul 12 at 9:07 am
Clyde, yes. Liberals splitting hairs with ultra-liberals is failure. We need to reframe.
Big Jim
28 Jul 12 at 10:26 am
Better that we not talk about that. You know, it ruins the narrative. Along with all that stuff about freedom and democracy. It just gets in the way of denoucing our past. You know, all of that stuff our great, great, great grandparents achieved. It’s better forgotten so we can sing the praise of primative or barbarian cultures than be proud of what our culture has achieved.
johno
28 Jul 12 at 12:54 pm
Carr, like the vast majority of the Green/ALP alliance is an oikophobe. Like all lefties he is very, very stupid.
Rococo Liberal
28 Jul 12 at 5:16 pm
I knew this indisputable fact a very, very long time ago.
Rabz
28 Jul 12 at 5:22 pm
Bob Carr is biased on such matters because of his personal situation, a foreign wife. The Anglosphere needs to be respected. The contribution, of the Anglosphere to the modern world is undeniable.
Nathan
1 Oct 12 at 12:40 am
Bob Carr has a foreign wife, enough said. The Anglosphere has contributed immensely to the modern world, to deny that and trivialise the very notion of the Anglosphere is just irresponsible, never get my vote.
Nathan
1 Oct 12 at 12:45 am