Yet despite this, in modern times, many of the countries formerly colonised by Britain have since served as beacons of opportunity for millions. Led by the United States, the Anglosphere countries account for four of the 10 most attractive destinations for immigrants worldwide. However, this legacy of opportunity appears to be fading. Unless there is some revival of the old Anglo spirit, a new era, likely dominated by China, India and other resurgent countries, seems in the offing.

Much of this decline of the English-speaking world is self-inflicted. A kind of slow suicide is taking place in which once-proud nations seem determined to squander their economies, their self-reliance, their moral code and, most critically, their belief in law, due process and representative democracy. The Anglosphere is a civilisation increasingly focussed on creating a more ecologically ‘sustainable’ way of life, and far less willing to compete with more vibrant foreign cultures.

In this sense, the newly crowned Charlies III is a perfect sovereign for a culture primed for decline. Charles is the model of a modern plutocrat. He has inherited a huge and growing fortune, including nearly $10 billion in real-estate assets, and he holds the ‘correct’ eco-friendly views on how his subjects should live. Although many among the elites consider his green politics to be ‘enlightened’, Charles’s worldview is fundamentally backward-looking or, I would even suggest, neo-feudalist.

[Interesting argument, but the major flaw within it is the monarchy itself. Kotkin argues — with justification — that the Anglosphere has “turned its back on meritocracy, liberty, and economic progress.” True enough, but the monarchy has always been the antithesis to these; it’s not a meritocracy but a hereditary institution governed by strict adherence to primogeniture. Liberty in the UK exists *despite* the monarchy, for the most part, as Parliament fought for more than a century to end its despotic rule by divine fiat. And one can hardly credit the monarchy for economic progress when it gets paid to inherit wealth gained from centuries of monopolies, royal charters, land seizures, and *actual* feudalism.

Kotkin’s right about the Anglosphere’s abandonment of its Enlightenment heritage. But Charles and the British monarchy are a poor peg on which to hang that argument. — Ed]