One of the key arguments in that latter half of Mead’s book is that Anglo-Americans are particularly given to visions of history working itself out toward some greater purpose. Mead believes that Anglo-Americans are distinctly oriented toward utopian visions of fixing human affairs. Of course, there are ample examples to support naïve and idealistic American dreams of a...
Mead’s discussion of the Anglo-American Protestant work ethic ventures into the fascinating subject of the sociology of religion. I am by no means an expert in this area, but I once was a student of the subject and I do have some reflections on his discussion of the societal benefits of the Anglo-American Protestant work ethic. His thesis...
This is a terrific read, a Big Book in all the good ways. I’m particularly struck by the way that Mead stretches The End of History out backwards as a persistent trait of Anglo-American culture. One can hardly not have heard of Norman Angell these days, as the herald of false dawns, but connecting the dots from him...
Part Four of Gold and Gold builds upon the previous sections to discuss what Mead calls the golden meme of Anglo-American history and politics. The English-speaking world has adopted a dominant paradigm representing a deeply rooted vision of how the world works. The idea that the world is built (or guided by God) in such a way that...
In God and Gold I write about three elements of England’s success. Roger asks how I combine the three into one story – and wonders whether the whole story hangs together. In response, let me describe the three pieces of my story, and show how I think they fit. First, England was a lucky country – the Goldilocks of early...
Part Three of God and Gold focuses on the question of how the Anglo-Saxons were able to put together the economic and military resources that enabled them to defeat their enemies and build a global order. Mead argues that the decisive factor in the success of the English-speaking world was that they came from a culture that was uniquely...
Chris Borgen taxes me with not paying enough attention to the ways in which the responses of non-Anglo-American powers to the Anglo-Americans may reflect their own hopes and plans for the world, rather than a simple dislike of Anglo-American plans or values. I think the two are connected; people dislike the Anglo-Americans both because they don’t like what we...
Mike Lind asks in effect, what makes England and America special compared to other commercial powers, especially the Italian city states – and why shouldn’t the Anglo-American political tradition be seen as more closely integrated into the history of republican, humanist letters passing through the Italian states back into antiquity? In effect he is asking whether there isn’t too...
There is an interesting paradox in Mead's book between luck and the spoils of war. On the one hand, Mead spends much of the book suggesting that the English were just plain lucky. "By luck or ...
I’d like to begin by thanking Roger Alford and his colleagues for offering this opportunity to engage in a discussion about God and Gold. Writers are like new parents; there is nothing we would rather do than discuss the latest production; if new books sometimes get a chillier reception than new babies, well, that is just the way of the world. As...
God and Gold is a timely and welcome contribution to the rediscovery of America’s political traditions, particularly the characteristic American tradition of internationalism. In this important book Walter Russell Mead makes explicit what has been a subdued theme in his earlier books, including his groundbreaking Special Providence—namely, the rejection of the idea that because American foreign policy has been...
Like Roger, and the rest of the Opinio Juris bloggers, I want to thank Walter Russell Mead for joining us this week. I found God and Gold to be provocative and to contain wonderful insights, particularly concerning why the Anglo-Saxon powers have done remarkably well in conflicts over the last 300 years. But my first comment in this discussion will...
