Hmm, see, that's the thing, we don't know the difference. Say America, and we think of two British colonies, one of which buggered off to rule its own affairs. So even then, we see America as part of a progression, not a revolutionary concept, even though it was. If that makes any sense. America is a cutting from the big tree of Europe, split off to do its own thing in the better soil of revolution, ditching the old soil full of the poisons of monarchy and the class system, and whilst the American shoot has grown as tall as the original tree, it's not as wide or as deep-rooted. It rankles that we're just as tall but the US is claiming all the glory.

We're not brought up, especially in England, to see free speech and universal suffrage as either a God-given right or as a crowning ideal. In fact, I'm no longer sure of what Europe, or even England is supposed to represent. It's not just democracy, it's not Major's warm beer and old maidens cycling through the mists, it's not Blair's multicultural Cool Britannia, it's not even Shakespeare's proto-colonialist power fighting the French for the good of the King. It's all of those stretching back past the Romans to the refugees of Troy, an example to Europe yet entirely alien, a certain decency and love of the underdog, yet imperialist, rotten to the core by class struggle and patronistic outlooks. We've gone through the idealism of the first Elizabeth and the decadence of the Regency, through the cynicism inculcated by two World Wars, up to a time when we're comfortable to be the godfather of greater nations, battered, poorer, wiser.

John Bull is dead, long live John Bull!




Oh hell, I just got carried away again...