Championing Englishness
I was watching Scott's video on Greenwood's mission and, like the rest of you, thought it sounded rather novel: Anglo-American culture has been under attack from all angles, and many people talk about protecting it, but I have heard very little talk of promoting it.
We may not have the state backing of the Confucius institute, the unlimited funds of the Wahabbis or even the lemming hoards of the communists (all three are attainable), but we have two strong advantages that no other culture promoting organization has: Firstly, we have the home field advantage, even in countries that were never part of the Empire. I am sure everyone here is familiar with Monty Python's sketch “What have the Romans ever done for us?”. The contributions of the British Empire make the roman occupations seem like a passing phase. The Romans gave the world lead plumbing and straight roads. We gave them railroads.
Almost every nation on the planet is a representative democracy with a bicameral legislature and independent courts. Every country tries to provide education and health care to every person. Every country pays lip service, at minimum, to the idea of human rights and every country has abolished slavery. International business, science and philosophy are all conducted in English. We may feel like we are losing, but any of our cultural rivals would consider our current position to be total victory: People fly to England from China to buy nick nack that was made in China. Then they fly back to China and impress their friends with pictures of our buses and telephone booths.
We have successfully promoted our culture in the past. The British Empire was certainly built in the shipyards of Portsmouth, but our ancestors could not have held a tenth of the Empire except that many – usually most – of the locals preferred the British to their old rulers. They read our books, listened to our preachers and learned from our teachers. A great number of them thought British culture had some good ideas. If our ancestors were able to promote our culture to cannibals, slave owners and even the Scots, then surely we can promote our culture to our own people. It's high time we rallied all means to do so, lest we who destroyed slavery become slaves ourselves. — Shubrook, Greenwood Contributor