Britain Vs America: 1976 Vs 2026

Authored by John Perry via AmericanThinker.com,

July 4, 1976, the American bicentennial.  

Along with other American students at University College, Oxford, I attended a grand banquet celebrating the occasion.  In the high-vaulted dining hall, our familiar, plain wooden tables and benches were awash in linen, china, fresh flowers, silver, silver, and more silver: candlesticks, ewers, wine coolers, chargers, and items a young man from Spring Branch, Texas could not readily identify.  We feasted heartily, drank really good wine, heard speeches, and toasted President Gerald Ford.  It was a great night to be an American.

Looking back at that celebration fifty years on, it’s clear that the U.S. and Britain have gone in very different directions since then.  

Britain in 1976 seemed to this novice traveler like a downtrodden older cousin, tired and worn around the edges yet with a sense of history and purpose, a proud past, a charming personality, and the notion that “there will always be an England.”

Unfortunately, immigration, lawlessness, blind obedience to the global warming hoax, and a fading confidence in their own brilliant history have rendered Great Britain a shadow of its former self.

Britain today seems to have lost its way, given up, and virtually turned itself over to third-world invaders.  Great Britain resolutely held off foreign invasion through two world wars.  But over the past fifty years, in an era of relative peace and prosperity, they have turned one of history’s truly great and accomplished cultures over to gate-crashers who have diluted it almost beyond recognition and possibly beyond saving.

Fortunately, history has shown America a different way, though millions of illegals flooded in before our leaders saw the light.  With its ruinous and indefensible open borders policy, the U.S. nearly went down the same dark path as our British friends.  Only a change of command and a resurgence of common sense saved us in the nick of time.  For now.

In another unfortunate misstep, Britain has spent years destroying itself before the false god of climate change.  Their people freeze and roast while vast and easily extracted stores of coal sit unused.  Their North Sea oil and gas riches wait offshore, largely ignored and untapped today after an initial bonanza of energy production.  Windmills, solar panels, and electric car mandates will do still further damage.  Yes, the climate is changing.  It has always changed.  (Ask the Vikings who lived in Greenland until it got too cold in the 1400s.)  But fossil fuels don’t cause climate change.  And nothing the world does — or doesn’t do — will stop it.

Thank goodness America’s current leadership has the sense to throw out decades of junk science and embrace energy development that keeps Americans comfortable, healthy, and safe.  And gives us freedom to choose.  If you want an electric car, Elon Musk makes the best in the world.  If you can’t resist a scorching V-8, America has some brand-new ones that will make your eyes bug out.  

Even in 1976, the British seemed different from people back home.  Americans appeared more prosperous, ambitious, hopeful, independent, curious, and confident.  They had more sparkle and optimism.  On the train one morning in Oxford, I struck up a conversation with a passenger who was about my age.  Hearing my accent, he pumped me for information about the American West — Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas.  He dreamed of going there to work on a ranch and have his own place one day, he said, because in Britain the land was all bought up and no one had any way to improve his prospects.  No one expected to get ahead.  To him, America was the shining New World of opportunity.

I wrote in my journal that summer about crowds in the street seeming gray and listless, shuffling through the day in a joyless, inevitable sort of way.  I didn’t know exactly how to describe what I felt, but it centered on what my fellow passenger had said about how Americans seemed to have optimism about the future, a sense they could change their lives for the better, while the British were shunted onto a path somehow and that was it.  No New World for them.

Fifty years after my bicentennial celebration abroad, despite all the slings and arrows arraigned against it, the United States is still the United States.  Still the freest, most prosperous country in world history.  Still maintaining the highest per capita income and standard of living in the world (not counting Monaco, Liechtenstein, etc., which have no Democrats).  Still defending its founding principles anywhere and everywhere. 

On the other hand, the Britain of 1976 has disappeared, a victim of irresponsible and short-sighted leadership whose immigration and energy policies have driven the country to its knees.  A nation that was once quirky and a little past its prime, yet still solid at its core and capable of renewal, has devolved into one that is morally and culturally spent, bereft of an identity, embarrassed at its past triumphs, and imprisoned by forces determined to bring it down.

Many noteworthy comparisons between ’76 and today are in the little things.  In 1976, the mail in Oxford came twice a day.  This was of course so one could get a letter in the morning and, like any civilized correspondent, answer it the same afternoon.  Twice-a-day mail delivery is history now.  In fact, unless you pay a premium, routine mail is delivered only every other day and not on weekends.

British trains in ’76 looked as though Hercule Poirot might step off onto the platform at any moment.  Each car had individual compartments connected by an interior corridor along one side.  They were quiet, plush, and easy to get in and out of.  They had plenty of storage, and they lent a degree of British elegance to even the most routine train journey.  It’s all gone today.

Table service in ’76 was a dream for anyone who enjoys the experience and spectacle of dining.  The most mundane meals were enhanced by traditional tea service (strainer, stand, sugar cubes and tongs, milk pitcher), toast racks, fish knives, and an array of spoons from coffee (doll-like, half the size of a teaspoon) to soup (massive; don’t put the whole thing in your mouth).  Even expensive restaurants hardly make the effort now.

At the opera, excellent binoculars were provided in racks on the seat backs.  Those are long gone, I suspect, because they started disappearing.

But the biggest disappearance since 1976 is that in ’76, Britain was full of British people, and in ’26, they have disappeared.  During the course of a day, a visitor can interact with dozens of cashiers, shopkeepers, drivers, clerks, waiters, guards, officials, and strangers at the bus stop without encountering a single native English speaker.  What happened to them?  And why would any business hire employees who cannot clearly speak the local language when it’s the language of the world?

The British today seem embarrassed by their Britishness.  Swamped by a tidal wave of political correctness, they’ve been cowed into submission for even thinking about defending one of the great cultures of the world.

By any reasonable measure, Britain is better than any immigrant homeland.  Their courts, schools, hospitals, law enforcement, business environment, and other institutions are better.  Otherwise, why would hordes of people from Africa, Asia, and elsewhere clamor to get to the British Isles?

Britain has been diluted beyond recognition by foreigners who come not to build a career, but to mooch off the British welfare system.  Rather than compel them to pull their own weight and contribute to the greater good of the Commonwealth, the government allows them to fester, holding on to their third-world ways and customs — sharia courts, Islamic schools — chipping away at all the institutions that shaped Britain, brought it to life, and sustain it today. 

England’s laws are the bedrock of modern jurisprudence.  Its industry has been the template for the modern world.  Its culture and civilization led the way into the industrial age.  Its language is the first international language in history.  Yet somehow the English have allowed themselves to feel inferior to a host of invading cultures and civilizations.  Let us hope that the Spirit of ’26 — or ’76 — will inspire them anew.

After following Great Britain up the ladder to prosperity and influence, America came too close to following it back down these past fifty years.  Yet by God’s grace, our history has led us along a different path, upward to an ever stronger, safer, more prosperous nation — a shining New World of opportunity for all. 

On this glorious occasion of America 250, that’s truly worth celebrating.