Fletcher Tracks Ferguson

I wrote this in 2007.

In addition to being a regular Monday writer on the Op-Ed pages of the Los Angeles Times, Niall Ferguson is a Harvard history professor—which may explain the elevated diction and didactic tone he employs when writing his fact-dense columns about contemporary global politics.  His topics are diverse and surprising, yet he provides sufficient background information and context to enable a careful reader to consider circumstances, repercussions and consequences of our emerging global society that may have otherwise gone unnoticed.  Ferguson writes for an elite audience: thoughtful, well educated, political and cosmopolitan.  In two of the three columns I am working with, Ferguson challenges and ultimately eschews the usual Eurocentric, (Anglocentric?) point of view. He does not hesitate to criticize the powers-that-be and recent foreign policy decisions in both Great Britain and the United States, and yet he seems conservative and measured in his views.  When he writes about the war in Iraq, for example, he acknowledges and describes many tactical mistakes that the West has made in this disastrous war, and yet he is critical of Clinton’s withdrawal of troops from Somalia, calling the removal as “cut and run,” a phrase that evokes foolish cowardice.  Ferguson is a thinking man who resists easy classification.

In his January 1 column entitled, “Auld lang syne for English speakers”, he opens with a rhetorical question — “I was going to wish you a Happy New Year, but why bother?” — and immediately establishes a conversational tone, yet he asks a question that borders on rudeness.  After all, January 1 is a holiday, and readers have been bombarded by happy greetings for days, even weeks.  So why is this guy withholding his wish for my happiness?  He goes on to explain that for 40% of the world’s population, it is not a new year — not yet.  Muslims will celebrate the new year, 1428, on January 20.  And 1.3 Chinese people — and he’s only counting those folks who actually live in the People’s Republic of China — will usher in the Year of the Dog on February 18.  As he goes on to explain the traditional song sung at New Years celebrations by Anglos — and here he includes the UK, Australia, New Zealand, portions of Canada, and of course, the USA — he points out that irony of this nostalgic tune is that it was written in Olds Scots language.  We don’t even understand what the song says — auld lang syne? — but we think it bids a sentimental good-bye to the old year?  Old friends?  Something old.  This is precisely his point, and he goes on to lump Anglo dominance, including the English language, into the pile of old things we may as well sing our sentimental good-bye song to.  Here Ferguson carefully buttresses his point with statistics, facts, and descriptions that clearly describe the waning of what “the American writer James C. Bennett has called ‘the Anglosphere’.”  Ferguson goes on to explain that perhaps, with “three centuries of commerce, conquest, migration and missionary work,” it may be more accurate to describe the Anglo phenomenon as a “diaspora.”  and then asserts what many might consider an alarming viewpoint, and he does it with the lightest touch of humor:

The key point, however, is that this Anglo diaspora’s glory days lie precisely in ‘old long since.’…Demography isn’t always destiny.  For the English-speaking peoples, however, it looks a lot like doom…To me, the Anglosphere and Anglo diaspora resemble the ruins of Nineveh and Tyre exhibits in the great Museum of Defunct Empires.

Ferguson spends necessary time writing definitions of phrases such as “Anglosphere” and  “Anglo diaspora” — and freely utilizes statistics and facts to further explain and support his claims.  These are important moves rhetorically as they enable the reader to both follow and consider the veracity of his points. 

Further, Ferguson’s regular use of the balanced, well modulated sentence is sometimes punctuated with a short, punchy line, to indicate the writer’s surprise, or his own conviction:

It would be cheering to believe, with Bennett and Roberts, that there is still a future for [the Anglosphere’s] distinctive culture (as opposed to its conveniently easy language.)  But I doubt it.

The first sentence has a rhythmic, lulling quality that contrasts sharply with the abruptness of his line “But I doubt it.” This short sentence serves to wake the reader up — did we even realize we were asleep?  That we had been operating under the assumption that the 21^st century would look just like the 20^th,?  Just maybe more gadgety?  — to the idea that despite what we wish or hope for, and despite what we are comfortable with, we would be foolish to believe that Anglo culture will dominate the globe indefinitely.  Ferguson’s short little sentence smacks us alert