Age of Enlightenment ideas in perpetual struggle with atavistic totalitarianism

From The Anglosphere and our present discontents by Johnathan Pearce (London).

Contemplating the riots/demonstrations of the weekend (statues defaced and pulled down, police officers assaulted, social distancing ignored, etc) I ask myself about the extraordinary power of events a thousand-plus miles away in the US to excite supposedly “spontaneous” reactions here in the UK. And yet if, say, French police get all heavy with yellow-jacket protesters, I don’t recall marches of demonstrators in front of the French embassy. Or nor do I see this if or when there are problems in Germany, Italy or Spain (racism is a thing in these countries, after all).

Ironically – and this must drive those of a pro-EU frame of mind nuts – it is still North America, with its rawer culture and politics, its legal similarities to the UK (for good and for ill) that resonates, even in the minds (for want of a better noun) of the sort of folk going on BLM demos. What goes on in France, Germany or Italy tends not to have the same grip on the mind. The Atlantic is wide and the Channel is narrow, but in every other sense, it is the other way around. To that extent, then, the Anglosphere lives, even in the hearts and minds of the far Left.

Indeed, but think there is something more there.

America is the sole surviving Age of Enlightenment revolution and it has been the hardiest, sturdiest, and the most profligately successful.

The flagship revolutions were those of the United States, then France and then Haiti. The second ending in anarchy, dictatorship and a global war; and the third ending in genocide. The royal experiments in Prussia and Russia flourished in their limited fashion and then withered.

Only in the Anglosphere was there some native hospitality to the ideas and beliefs of Enlightenment and only among the remaining Anglosphere countries of Canada, US, Australia, New Zealand and to some extent Britain are there clear echoes of that philosophy. Everywhere else, nationalism, totalitarianism and nativist communitarianism have persisted.

The contest continues between the old forms of governance through nationalism, totalitarianism and nativist communitarianism against the odd ducklings of Enlightenment. The experiment continues. The insidious virus of social justice, pleading the goals of progressive enlightenment but through the means of violent subjugation works its way through the system. Perhaps it triumphs.

I have faith that the strength of the ideas of Enlightenment (a knowable world, empiricism, human universalism, consent of the governed, rule of law, equality before the law, universal natural rights, due process, etc.) will survive this most recent test of raw totalitarianism. But it is an unpleasant experience to see ancient human nature in the raw.