Daniel Hannan speaking:"It is natural to become blasé about the familiar, and Anglosphere societies tend to take for granted the rule of law, personal liberty, free contract, regular elections, uncensored newspapers, equality between men and women, jury trials, habeas corpus …
But these things are not the natural condition of mankind. They’re not even Western values, or rather they became Western values only—if we are to be blunt—because of a series of military victories by the English-speaking people. These were precepts overwhelmingly developed in the language in which you and I are now talking.
We delude ourselves if we imagine that every country will automatically get there when it becomes wealthy, educated or developed enough. Compare Australia with its neighbours, Indonesia or Vietnam, for instance.
Australia was settled in incredibly difficult circumstances, as I understand it. The prospects faced by the first British colonists were, from our current perspective, almost unimaginably harsh—the distance, the unfamiliar flora and fauna, and the lack of any resources beyond what the settlers had brought with them. And yet Australia now enjoys on any measure one of the highest standards of living on the planet.
Why did that happen in Australia rather than in any of it neighbouring countries? Well, the really precious resource those early settlers brought with them to Australia was a way of arranging their affairs that elevated the individual above the state and the rule of law above the power of the executive. That’s the magic ingredient that led to modern capitalism and modern freedom.
Once it’s there, people will come from all over the world and benefit from it. It doesn’t matter whether your ancestors are Croatian or Greek or whatever. Everybody does better under that system. The reason a child of Greek parents in Melbourne is better off than a child of Greek parents in Mytilene has nothing to do with race and everything to do with political structures.
The Anglosphere is why Bermuda is not Haiti. It’s why Hong Kong is not China. It’s why Singapore is not Indonesia. The beauty of these values is they are transferable. Every Anglosphere country, including the United Kingdom, has received massive populations from elsewhere—and the extraordinary thing about this is that it applies to all individuals. Your grandparents could have come from the Ukraine or Vietnam, but once you get the hang of living in a society characterised by personal liberty and the rule of law, there is no going back."
http://www.cis.org.au/publications/transcripts/article/5078-conversation-with-daniel-hannan