“Canadia” rises, Hillaryland recedes

America descends in almost complete submission today to what amounts to a Clinton family political cult, featuring daily now mother, father and even daughter in a public relations blitzkrieg. But veteran ABC reporter Diane Sawyer’s stealth interview reveals the numbing mediocrity at the core of this family as Hillary Clinton blurts out, “Isn’t it great to be our age!” Yes, because everything about us is wonderfulness, including blood clots, Benghazi, brains concussions, the endemic duplicity and $200,000 speaker fees. It should come as no surprise that our Anglosphere cousins have begun to turn away. More prosperous, more competitive academically, more mature perhaps, Australia seeks this week to form its own alliance of like-minded states, leaving America fully off the table and substituting India for the United States in a new vision of Anglosphere.

As The Sydney Morning Herald reports: “[Australian Prime Minister] Tony Abbott is seeking a conservative alliance among ‘like-minded’ countries, aiming to dismantle global moves to introduce carbon pricing, and undermine a push by US President Barack Obama to push the case for action through forums such as the G20. Visiting Ottawa for a full day of talks with the conservative Canadian Prime Minister and close friend Stephen Harper, Mr Abbott flagged intentions to build a new centre-right alliance led by Canada, Britain and Australia along with India and New Zealand.”

{mosads}The Anglosphere, a grouping of English-speaking states with a common culture hanging together since World War II — Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Britain and the United States — finds perhaps a closer alliance with India in the rising Pacific Century. Make no mistake, this is a landmark act of secession from American cultural and political post-World War II dominance by our very closest allies.

“The U.S. is setting a responsible example. We will need leaders and people around the world to do the same,” Secretary of State John Kerry writes this month in an opinion piece reprinted worldwide, claiming what some have been calling dictatorial powers.

Or not. Visiting Canada this week, Abbott inadvertently referred to Canada as “Canadia” which combines Canada with Australia. The media got good laugh out of it, but there may have been a suggestion of truth to the misspeak. The Canadian press dubbs Abbott and Harper “ideological soulmates.”

Australia today declines to act on orders from America where America has no legal right to give orders. This advances a new era rising featuring a degeneration of American soft influence. But the turning has been in process since Canada refused to follow America blindly into Iraq and advanced more recently when Britain’s Parliament just said no when asked to accompany America into Syria.

There is stunning potential in Abbott’s new proposal. Abbott’s Anglosphere divides in binary fashion, leaving the United States behind in the shadow half. Indeed, changing the relationship from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Britain and the U.S. to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Britain and India, substituting India’s multifaceted 1.2 billion for America’s 317 million, could also raise its status of this group enormously. A somewhat more formal arrangement of representative leadership say in Ottawa, as centermost vortex of a cohesive new political order which would run from the borders of Pakistan and Nepal to those of France and the Netherlands, could suddenly awaken a realm as vast as Queen Victoria’s.

Quigley is a prize-winning writer who has worked more than 35 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and reviewer. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and four children. Contact him at quigley1985@gmail.com.