the author of inventing freedom. he's the recipient of this year's book award. in the book he discusses how how english-speaking people created the modern world. the book award ceremony and lecture are about an hour. [applause]

>> i should begin with a confession. as i was reading the book, "inventing freedom," i couldn't help but have a sense of envy for the constituents. i was hard pressed to think of a politician with such an ambitious and wide ranging persuasive book and i still am hard-pressed to think that way right now. as you will see shortly you'll see shortly the area on display in the buck believe it or not unlike certain american politicians we've come to know all too well he will be voting for this evening without the benefit of the teleprompter.

and the area begins to explain the worthy choice for the 2014 book award. henry as you can see from the back page of your programs were both distinguished scholars and so to be recognized in this award, the book must display a scholarly rigger. she holds a double first from oxford and in this book if you have a chance to read it you'll see he's citing everyone from washington and the winthrop effortlessly. but at the same time there are not scholars intend to see their books gathering dust in the research library. they were public intellectuals in the best sense of the term. henry wrote frequently for publications like "the new york times" and even rain for senate against bobby kennedy in new york representing the

conservative party. and for her part published poems and plays and served on the national council on the humanities. she was the first woman to chair the university new york and daniel in his own right is a very impressive public intellectual in addition to his day job in the european parliament where i should add that he stands out as a very vocal critic of the eu and he is also one of britain's most prominent and respected political commentators. especially for the influential blog at the daily telegraph. so, the intent is to honor the conservative principles and in that regard i think that our panel judges, some of whom are here this evening have made a very high and choice inventing

freedom. the mission is to ensure that the future leaders are prepared to defend and advance the principles that make america free and prosperous. it's a masterful account of the origin and spread of the principles and in the process of the principles created by sphere of liberty that today too many leaders take for granted. too many of our people take for granted but i will let dan tell more about all that. without further delay when to introduce the leader of the book award, daniel hannan. [applause] >> thank you for those generous remarks. i wondered what it was that you were talking about. it's wonderful to salute you and the work that is done and as a

representative as well. i have a day job as a member of the parliament and it is a great relief to be in the room when no one can vote for me or against me and i can say whatever i like. i would have to say i'm in the great state of delaware delaware played on the fact he do none of you are able to vote. there is nothing like an election to remind the representatives of the range of wildlife that he represents. [laughter] the farmer came out and was very keen to speak to me and he told me this story about banning a substance that he had given me to his people. he spent a fortune on the pedigree and apparently it

wouldn't serve any of them and then on the internet they couldn't get enough about it and now he heard that they were going to ban this chemical. i said i will look into that. what is the name of the drug? they can't remember what it's called. [laughter] >> you have those in delaware, right? [laughter] now i'm back in the parliament and to make the move to a little bit more slumber, one of the things about my day job is that you get to meet extraordinary people from extraordinary places and a week ago before i came here i was talking to a friend of mine that was a number of the park, he is my age and he came into politics as i did in his

late 20s and i have two little girls the same age as mine. but he could have grown up different. she had grown up under the dictatorship and his father had gone to canada when he was a small boy. it was the only place that the two of them could go and he said q-quebec with me to canada. he said i'm going to stay in poland. i want to be part of the change and indeed he was right and he ought to serve in one of the first. sadly his father wasn't alive to see it. and as we were talking he was telling me about the impact that had been made on him as a teenager as a boy by john paul to second visit to poland. he told me something that i had never heard before. he said, you know, the holy father never once directly

criticized the communist authorities. he said he didn't have to. he just offered something better and in fact i think should be the creed of conservatives just offered something better. and i saw on the news as i was coming here if you picked up a jihad volunteer from someone that had decided that he was so alienated by the country he was going to take up arms with those in iraq and syria. we have a similar problem in the united kingdom something like 200 boy is born and brought up in the uk who spend so repulsed by whatever they found out that they've taken up arms against their country in the most extreme way by fighting alongside some of the people of the face of the planet and it occurred to me isn't the answer

to be offering something after so that would be the life experience of one of those second-generation immigrant boys growing up in an english city. if you have any history at all it would have been presented to him as a hateful chronicle of racism and exploitation. almost all of his deeds office at the state would have taught him despite when the national brand is systematically produced by the intellectual elite over a decade is it any wonder some of our citizens begin to look around for alternatives? if you're not satisfied with being patriotic some people will look for something more compelling and stronger. we need to offer something

better. i made the point to some of you and the more benign into more benign context this is ultimately what turned scottish referendum. until the last minute they seemed to be saying here or over for things to be scared off if we break away. we don't know know of currency if currency we will have, we don't know which businesses. a lot of those criticisms were perfectly ballot and people don't like to hear it. there is a streak and all english-speaking people particularly if i may say so it responds to 20 with a should and shouldn't be fighting on and it was him in the last few days of the campaign that the unionists began to make a positive case and instead of threatening a began to say here are the good things the country stands for, the extraordinary things that we have achieved together ending the slave trade and the attempts to unite europe dot and

democracy but under the heel of the dictatorship is that something that we are going to throw a way with regret? people responded to the optimism. is there a better story to be told the band that of the free english-speaking peoples and is there a better patrimony than that which we share all of us in the room wherever the ancestors come from either italy it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter because the greatest thing is that they are passed on intellectually rather than genetically. it's why hong kong is not china for now. [laughter] or singapore is not indonesia. the great thing is that we have

a civil nationhood and it doesn't matter. it's the role of the rival models. the state is seen as a servant and not as his master. if you want me to end caps lead and captivated the exceptionalism and the single phrase you can do a lot worse than john adams said about the massachusetts constitution of the governments of law except those words were not john adams. he was closing james harrington

with proof of the shared inheritance that binds us together. >> it's about all the things that make your life comfortable and modern and rational. freedom under the law, regular elections. they are not the condition of the advanced society. imagine that history that ended differently. let me take you back to august,

1941. the height of the fact that the president polio from the country. every photograph showed. they invited churchill to join him on the principle. roosevelt was determined to write supported by his son on the one side and leaning heavily across the prince of wales as the band struck up it's the most vivid imaginable demonstration of what binds the english-speaking peoples together. add to be a sunday morning and

so the crews of the two vessels were paraded for the joint religious. the sailors project. roosevelt and churchill have chosen every atl personally and meticulously the champion gave to the pulpit. they have the same ideas. they are making a bland generalization about being the good guys. think of the world as it appeared from the perspective of

1941. the whole aspect was under one form or another of dictatorship and the constitutional freedom and liberty under the law was confined to the community of the free english-speaking and the invasion of a foreign armies and it had been overthrown by invading the troops because of the internal dynamics of their own. no one in 1941 would have seen their values to the future. listen to the language in which the fascists and communists.

it was the rotten anglo-saxons into the decadent liberties. it seemed to them obvious that our system on the privacy and the rights of the individual that elevated to the individual citizens rather than the collective couldn't possibly stand in the face of ideologies which wanted to sacrifice and martial valor and the subordination of the individual to the collective. it seemed obvious that our system was on the way out and that our old values were finished and that the future way with a powerful organizing state. as we all know the world was beginning a period of the domination which is now at least in theory so widespread that could barely find it but doesn't

at least pay lip service. go to the nastiest dictatorship in the world. anticipating the wishes and gather themselves into things and even the nastiest and most brutal you'll generally find something called the supreme court on paper is not simply a mouthpiece of the regime's but how unusual is the genuine freedom to.

it's to carry liberty to the happier continent. it's not the normal condition of humanity. it isn't almost every age and accepting unsolicited. it's not the cost benefit way. it's the most efficient thing of all was to institutionalize a.

that is what it's going. it's only in one place the great german sociologist goldman solvang filled with the appreciated life of the immigrant and it has only happened once. how did we love and evolved mechanisms to hold. the great takeoff happened in the 17th century and the aging that is when our civilization

reached its end flower. now what struck the foreign citizens as unusual about english-speaking people in that time? is there a clue what do people find to be the peculiarity of the civilization. some extremely distinguished ones. it's a standard thing with the audience that is trotted out as a supreme witness in favor of american exceptionalism. he's much more quoted.

because of the first page of democracy in america he makes it clear that if he sees it it is much narrower than the english channel. he has a theory that you have a point of origin of every civilization. it's been a much freer scope. so when you look to the new world realization and see the pure form of the old world origin. spanish america there exaggerated the corruption. french america, but english america as he always called it an english america took further the localism and what we now

call the libertarianism and the beliefs of individual freedom that he saw as a characteristic of great vision. this is the man that wrote about the american democracy and spend spent time in both of our countries. he came up with the beautiful phrase and said that america is the english man left to himself. not the distinguished ones but the more frequent. what struck them as the defining characteristics of the english-speaking people at the moment of our search. a number of things they picked up on they found us a people

that came with the aristocratic titles that were rather put out both to get what they called their due but they found it materialistic we. the extremists both left and right have always scorned what they see as the moneygrubbing ways of the english-speaking capitalists. but there were three things that really they all focused on that almost every visitor regarded as unique. first to see how unusual it must have seemed in the religious pluralism. i don't mean -- that existed in lots of places including some places that were in turkey. but the freedom for every denomination to proselytize

freedom, that really was unique to the idea that there was an open market as every other idea that you would compete as he was ideologically for any other. this was something without precedent in particular that appealed to the visitors the idea that you could be against the system without being completely outside the bounds of the society. he writes extensively about it and knows that he dilated at great length at what he saw as the extraordinary paradox for catholics and english-speaking countries were what we would now call libertarian but they were catholic neighbors. in other words he said this is not something intrinsic in the theology. it's something that comes from

the idea of there not being one orthodoxy approved as a set of beliefs. the american republic was bad for the first planet by several decades to have complete religious freedom before anyone else got the hang of it. the non-christians which are mainly lifted by the 1830s. at the time of the spanish inquisition was still functioning this was really an extraordinarily developed, and i think that from that float a great deal. something else that struck every bed almost by definition strikes the visitor more than it strikes the nation this is the geographical exceptionalism.

you cannot come from most societies other than overwater. with the exception i will come back to in a moment it is in although north america of course is not an island, the mentality of the founders of the republic was perhaps more than anywhere else that of an island race. look at the inaugural address in one quarter of the globe listened to the words of washington's farewell address listed in the senate and the idea that there was no need to be and tangled with anybody else and therefore there was no need for the opponent.

suddenly the phrases that ran through the federalist papers and the document of the foundation tells about the prohibition of the standing army makes sense. why? if you have no standing army and if your defense depends on the navy or the territory, the government has no mechanism for the internal regression. if the state wants something from the citizens it has to ask them nicely by summoning the representatives in the parliament or congress. adam smith was writing after the active union between england and scotland. his father was then growing on the trade that came from the baltic and from the european country. and as the money flowed in, he realized that the key moment in

scotland into the development of great britain and more generally has been the active union of 1707 which dismantled the last internal land frontier. great britain was an island nation and there were no more internal. it could turn its energies outward and in the historical fact that i was a moment in which britain began. the miracle of the common law, that beautiful system whereby the law is and driven by the principles and then it applies to the cases but rather it grows up case-by-case each judgment serving as a starting point.

we really are the odd ones out. it's not an instrument of state control but rather a mechanism opened it to the individual seeking to redress. and it contains an assumption of the rights. the common law system that begins to the state and assumes it is not expressly prohibited is allowed. i come across the difference in the week where i work. there is a fundamental difference of opinion which is ultimately from the different legal field. again and again i will say to my colleagues why are you

regulating entity answer always comes back because it's not regulated. and the bureaucrats in the bureaucrats mind, i'm regulated at a legal are synonymous concepts. he idea that it should be the default option that that's a natural state of affairs that is seen as a bizarre peculiarity that the european union has been working its way through the alternative remedies prohibiting them one after another and subjecting them to the extensive testing. i'm sure that in this room there's a difference of opinion about the efficacy of the alternatives. there is a difference of opinion she swears they are better than the treatment and they are harmless and expensive to see those but there are certainly an

assumption of innocence. it's not in the interest to poison them. [laughter] and so i thought i better take this up because what did king solomon say it's better to have them in the house where there's love and in the box of hatred they are ready and perhaps never since he offered offered as those words applied quite literally as in this case but they were not venomous. here is where you see why the altar a prescriptive approach lets you down. it was captured by a vested

interest. in this case the pharmaceutical corporations who saw the opportunity to influence the costs which they could easily meet but whose compliance with the beyond their smaller neighbors and again and again that's what happened when you have the altar prescriptive state. how is this really the exception. and if you were designing in the abstract how to run a political system he would say you come out with a law and then applied to the particular pursuit. nobody knows how our fathers stumbled upon this extraordinary system this idea that the law is the property of the people. the director in his introductory remarks spoke of the magna carta it would be 800-years-old.

extraordinary phrase that appeared in the great charter and that indeed has been cited more than 100 times by the supreme court. where the king agrees to be bound by the due process no one shall be denied but tried only by the law of the land. there is a phrase that we use in english so often we don't stop to think about it. it's unusual that we do. whether language has been used in the same way. it is the law of the land. not the holy scripture interpreted by credit but the law that is imminent in the property of everybody. and again and again it turns out to be the hero of the story that shapes us and that's by anybody wherever their ancestors come from when they buy into the legal system is why they can

overcome the members of the joint of civilizations. where does this lead me to coming? i began by talking about offering something better. and i would like to close with the same request. i find myself often having to say this to fellow conservatives. maybe there is something in our temperament that presents us from looking on the bright side. we can find ourselves focusing on the things we don't like. don't get me wrong there are lots of things not to like. our values are scorned and we see our children and grandchildren with a deft unprecedented and it's easy to getting great. when you are on me angry you are not persuasive for successful. i find myself sometimes doing

that and think it's not how ronald reagan used to speak. they had to trigger breathing a little bit of optimism into what they would say. maybe what i'm saying is counterintuitive in the sense that perhaps the human brain expects the worst and the lovely phrase was used in 1848 where he said they may be telling the truth to assure us that our best days are behind us but every previous generation without a cause was in 1848. think of how many times we have been promised a disaster since then. that changes from generation to generation. when i was a little boy it was global cooling and about global warming. it could be drugs, it could he

asteroid strikes or nuclear war. this time it is going to be different. on all of the underlining indicators, most people in most countries most of the time are living healthier and happier lives. on the key metrics, longevity, literacy come in and tell us he, calorie intake. we are living life beyond the dreams of our great grandparents and more and more places in the world are being drawn into that upward surge by the miracle of the free trade and specialization. a lovely line i came across. don't judge the world by its shortcomings. he said rather with the power of

conservatives should take that to heart. don't judge the world by its shortcomings. things are getting better. and that is the model that has lifted us to such wealth and freedom and power in the world is incredibly well-suited to what's coming. we are in enormously inventive civilization because we have released the genius of the free people. we have given free rein to the inventiveness that comes in a market economy. all sorts of great things lie ahead and add the attractive technology and manufacturing and amazing advances in the biotech. we are incredibly well-positioned to live even better longer lifespan we are doing in this generation, provided that we maintain our space in our own values.

don't throw away what's working. that extraordinary civilizational inheritance that your founding fathers didn't have that router maintained and reasserted an inheritance that they traced back through england's civil war and even back before the great charter of the game eight low saxon common-law that has served to make our people the most prosperous and the most free anywhere on the face of the earth. that is our unique inheritance. that is the patrimony that you are privileged to an inherit. [applause]

we have time for more questions and we are looking forward to more question brilliant questions. >> i'm wondering if you address the buck of the influence of calvin and switzerland and the german empire, john knox and the scottish and the westminster defines as giving dignity to regular work in the protestant work ethic that was so strong in establishing america. it's not an easy subject to write about. i think that you heard me mention earlier today i am on one side a libertarian and on the other it gives me the team

that this but english people have and it's something i've always learned that it's impossible to enter into the mindset of the english-speaking peoples in the early modern period without understanding the incredible importance on which the thesis is settled and every one knows about the city on the hill. and what is really fascinating is what they said immediately before. this idea that god has brought us into the new land and in extremes we have to live in a particular way. the american public was founded on the principle. it is as important as the religious port and in our economic model. my children made me put into the book that favorite story of the minister in edinburg cathedral who was thought to be the phrase

in the prayer book that he was reading but here's the thing, yes i think it is fair to acknowledge that the peculiar emphasis they put on the individual and on the individual having a dissenter mediated relationship with the deity had a spillover effect into the political structures, yes i think it is fair to say that if you expect to elect your leaders which is the thing that drove the scottish presbyterians and then the puritans came here and that will also have a spillover effect into how you approach politics. when the republic was founded the expectation is that it would be sectarian. the one bit of the revolutionary story that they tended to brush under the carpet as the anti-catholicism of the

congregation who have been the strongest in their demand for the revolution. there is a lot of american citizens were residents properly report. i don't want to diminish any more but the casualty over the whole of the revolutionary war are low. this wasn't a brutal conflict. it's not just like okay off you go. the exception is the troops from what they called the seven-year war settled along the hudson valley and into the carolinas and they were determined not to live in the protestant republic that they thought would be deeply -- and the extraordinary thing is that none of that happened against all of the

expectations with the religious freedom. >> it came out of this philosophy. >> i think yes that is a fair point. if you have the creed of the particularly emphasized literacy that is going to have an effect on what kind of educated workforce and the emphasis that i don't think that is part of it anymore. i think you find the same value in ireland and hong kong so although as a matter of the historical observation if there are bad things to draw but they've now got bigger. this is a wonderful thing they will take root anywhere provided you get to the legal institutions right.

they no longer are necessarily sustained by the religious worldview and actively her honest come of the sectarian conflicts in the century now seem almost incomprehensible because of the increasingly religious world of the denominations are being drawn very much closer together. the object should with which the puritan town to the roman church in church in the 18th century no longer really apply. the catholic churches were formed and you can argue as the church has become more protestant for example the approach had become slightly more catholic. there have been the convergence and the unfriendly world but the good news is that it doesn't matter. once you have, they take root because they work and you can be hindu or jewish and still see that it's the best system on the market.

>> as a canadian i rather disagree in the fear of fleeing the revolution and canada has developed its economic institutions i think. that's my but my question is the stress common law legislative fiat as another thing. [inaudible] >> i have nothing to add to what you said. you're absolutely correct and by the way you are correct in what you said about the revolutionary theory and what was actuating.

the actors are referred to the grievance in the catholic power and it's an amazing thing that it's been so crossed over because the fact that early america overcame in no time at all as canada did and created the portal is on the that we might have is all the more remarkable when you bear in mind that which they passed and you're right. i bought for the first time, i would gladly swap my problems with yours. canada is with the united states. i would rather have your prime minister than mine. [laughter] of [applause]

the lady in the back. >> i was impressed by what you said growing up in peru and having to see your parents. why is north america and south america so different in the way that they settled, and they know that from my point of view i grew up in the midwest and we

served the four terms for many years in latin america. and i had the same questions that you had in i kept thinking that these could never happen in our country and now we see that changing. the ideas have consequences and you learn that lesson at a very early age, one of the happy expressions of the exceptionalism is that it's not a lesson that most people have to learn in the english-speaking societies.

south america if anything is the natural resources. why has one system worked better than the other. it's not because the food were disloyal or the sky. if you go from san diego. having grown up in south america i felt very at home there. it will create the same happy

results. they didn't think and once wrote to the european skies were always cloudy and virginia skies were never cloudy which one could put down either. the basic idea that anybody could copy i think has been borne out by the subsequent events. in fact canada would have been the thing that surprised most people. it was founded by the tories that wanted to re-create the aristocratic monarchical system that had been rejected. yet underlining that immediate impetus in some of the first founders was the deeper instinct

towards the freedom and self-government to spread out with plenty of space people involved the same 30 individuals to culture as anywhere else. the first time i went to canada as a politician, i had assumed that it was a touchy-feely version of the u.s.. with the healthcare system and the obsession doing everything the un wanted. when i got there, i realized that this is a very unusual twist in canadian history. this is really has really only happened really a plentiful that rather dire period in history, the canadiens the canadians have prided themselves on being more rugged and independent and on having a load of taxes. the canadian immigration policy has been based on having a more

attractive and fiscal climate in the u.s. in order to compensate for the rough climate. that is how they attracted them. now coming to know the canada that i thought was the natural state of affairs is what they think of as the state of affairs that kearns' at all which actually i think deep down all british people really knew because we have the full temerity of the canadians as allies on the battlefield and they were really tough people. they were the toughest people under his command commander they were never going to be the kind that i thought i growing up, so i'm delighted to see canada under convincingly rejoining them. we have wonderful leaders in most of the court in both countries within the last couple

of weeks you are the odd ones out. [laughter] we expect more of you. it is a little secular miracle how that happened it's something more powerful but you couldn't see or hear or touch or taste. but that something is the law. we take that for granted today at it takes a real wrench to the imagination to see how incredibly revolutionary the idea was eight years ago. i suspect they did more than they intended and more than they would have done had they been

able to foresee the consequences of it but the extraordinary thing about the magna carta is like with all steps in the english-speaking story it was partly based on the conviction that people were returning to a better past. a 200 200 years of separation from normandy and they had become increasingly interested in how they have imposed their wishes on kings so rather than saying here is the document we will do everything different from now on they said we are returning to the anglo-saxon ideals into the king is the subject of it. why the magna carta was different and why it became so special is that it contained an

enforcement mechanism and plenty who have taken the oath saying the law but up until then what to do about it if they didn't change their mind? they are rare creatures and it's more than humanity can take and the well-earned lesson and unfortunately for the whole history. when henry the third grew up like every other medieval he tried to shake off the constraint.

they are in the parliamentary in the same day that was the extraordinary thing about the magna carta and the mechanisms are working. if you read the old constitution of the ussr you would find all sorts of wonderful rights of the free speech and free expression and free religion as the people in the unhappy states learned if you don't have the mechanisms of the government to hold you to the account that's the real achievement.

they were still in the coal disloyal. it was there as a guarantor of the liberty and property and began on the bank's lifted in the form of the old courthouse. [applause] we have a $5,000 check that we like to award it to you and we congratulate you very much.

[applause] you may not want to cover this. [laughter] >> thank you again. daniel, thank you all for coming and there will be some time you can feel free to mingle and network after we are done here. and you can also purchase the book and he will be signing copies of the books and thank you again for coming tonight. we appreciate you being here. [applause]

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