Britain vs. America: 1976 v. 2026

These two countries have gone in very different directions since 1976. What will become of them now?

John Perry | July 4, 2026

July 4, 1976, the American bicentennial.  Along with other American students at University College, Oxford, I attended a grand banquet celebrating the occasion.  In the high-vaulted dining hall, our familiar, plain wooden tables and benches were awash in linen, china, fresh flowers, silver, silver, and more silver: candlesticks, ewers, wine coolers, chargers, and items a young man from Spring Branch, Texas could not readily identify.  We feasted heartily, drank really good wine, heard speeches, and toasted President Gerald Ford.  It was a great night to be an American.

Looking back at that celebration fifty years on, it’s clear that the U.S. and Britain have gone in very different directions since then.  Britain in 1976 seemed to this novice traveler like a downtrodden older cousin, tired and worn around the edges yet with a sense of history and purpose, a proud past, a charming personality, and the notion that “there will always be an England.”

Unfortunately, immigration, lawlessness, blind obedience to the global warming hoax, and a fading confidence in their own brilliant history have rendered Great Britain a shadow of its former self.

Britain today seems to have lost its way, given up, and virtually turned itself over to third-world invaders.  Great Britain resolutely held off foreign invasion through two world wars.  But over the past fifty years, in an era of relative peace and prosperity, they have turned one of history’s truly great and accomplished cultures over to gate-crashers who have diluted it almost beyond recognition and possibly beyond saving.

Fortunately, history has shown America a different way, though millions of illegals flooded in before our leaders saw the light.  With its ruinous and indefensible open borders policy, the U.S. nearly went down the same dark path as our British friends.  Only a change of command and a resurgence of common sense saved us in the nick of time.  For now.

In another unfortunate misstep, Britain has spent years destroying itself before the false god of climate change.  Their people freeze and roast while vast and easily extracted stores of coal sit unused.  Their North Sea oil and gas riches wait offshore, largely ignored and untapped today........

© American Thinker