British politician Daniel Hannan’s Inventing Freedom is an ambitious account of the historical origin and spread of the principles that have made America great and their role in creating a sphere of economic and political liberty that is as crucial as it is imperiled.
The ideas and institutions we consider essential to maintaining and preserving our freedoms—individual rights, private property, the rule of law, and the institutions of representative government—are the legacy of a very specific tradition that was born in England and was inherited by Americans, along with other former British colonies. By the tenth century, England was a nation-state whose people were already starting to define themselves with reference to inherited common-law rights. The story of liberty is the story of how that model triumphed: How it was enshrined in a series of landmark victories—the Magna Carta, the English Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, the US Constitution—and how it came to defeat every international rival.
Today we see those ideas abandoned and scorned in the places where they once went unchallenged. Inventing Freedom is a chronicle of the success of Anglosphere exceptionalism, and it is offered at a time that may turn out to be the end of the age of political freedom.
“With the eloquence of Macaulay or Trevelyan—both of whom are liberally quoted here—Hannan sweeps us through English history to show the triumph of law-based liberty and ‘that total understanding which can only exist between people speaking the same tongue.’”—Telegraph (London)
In March 2009 British conservative Daniel Hannan became an overnight celebrity when he assailed Prime Minister Gordon Brown on the floor of the European parliament. The YouTube clip went viral, leading to whirlwind appearances on FOX and other conservative media outlets. A thoughtful and articulate spokesman for conservative ideas, Hannan is better versed in America's traditions and founding documents than many Americans are. In The New Road to Serfdom, Hannan argues forcefully and passionately that Americans must not allow Barack Obama to take us down the road to EU-style social democracy. Instead, he pleads with Americans not to abandon the founding principles that made this country a beacon of liberty for the rest of the world.
