Why Does Britain Keep Adopting The Wrong Ideas From The US? Asks UK Commentator

What is it about American ideas that Britain, and New Labour Britain in particular, finds so seductive? Oh, I know how fertile their think-tank culture is and how persuasive US advocates of bold ideas can be. Across the Atlantic, salesmanship is part of success - let's hear it for Bernard Madoff.

But the United States is big enough, diverse enough and decentralised enough to allow itself a bit of social experimentation here and there. You could even argue that the US does it so that our more cautious and less ruthless societies do not have to. Yet still we in the old world are seduced.

And invariably we get it wrong. We fail to take into account the great differences between their culture and ours. We mis-time our borrowing, enthusing even as the unintended consequences have begun to multiply. Or we pick and choose different bits, when the secret is that the whole thing works as a package or not at all. Mainly, though, we just adopt the wrong ideas.

Continue reading at the Independent.

Comments

[spinns17]

http://www.heritage.org/

[spinns17]

its not the us .its the world bank and new world order freaks that put this stuff together.

[LMPE]

Uh, didn't the US adopt many of its ideas from the UK? Y'know, imperialism?

[mamacat]

I have often wondered about this subject.

I think that there is a love affair between our two countries, and that sometimes love makes one blind to faults in the other. I can think of no other rationale for why Britain would follow the United States blindly into Iraq, and then find it so difficult to change their course of action. Their behaviour reminds me of that of a spouse, such as Laura Bush or Mrs. Cheney, who stays by the side of her man no matter how badly he behaves.

[BlackYowe]

I have always felt that if Blair had said no there would not have been and Iraq war.

[RTIII]

The author is right - I've noticed this a few time. -frown-

From my perspective, they've picked up on some of our worst "conservative" ideas. We, on the other hand (in the US) should be picking up the "more liberal" ideas from them!
.

[DelvinMcGee]

Spoken like a true partisan.