I honestly can’t keep up. The heap of upsetting phrases, imagined slurs, and other supposed dog-whistles is growing so rapidly, so haphazardly, that almost anyone can be caught out. One moment, a word is wholly unobjectionable, the next it makes the speaker a Nazi.
Consider these true and worthy – indeed, if anything, slightly bland – remarks by Jeff Sessions, the attorney general:
“Since our founding, the independently elected sheriff has been the people’s protector, who keeps law enforcement close to and accountable to people through the elected process. The office of sheriff is a critical part of the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement.”
Did you spot it? No? Then, check your privilege, reader!
The former senator from Alabama caused offense — or rather that ostentatious parody of offense that liberals like to affect — by using a white supremacist code word. That’s right, it turns out that the phrase “Anglo-American” is now racist.
At moments like this, I wonder whether it’s time for the U.S. to step aside and hand over to Tuvalu or somewhere. “Anglo-American” is an offensive phrase? Even in the context of a speech about the historic office of the sheriff? A speech to an audience of, you know, sheriffs?
Apparently so. The NAACP called the remarks “racially tinged.” Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King, quoted a letter her mother had written in 1986 opposing Sessions’ nomination to the bench on grounds that he would do “what the local sheriffs accomplished twenty years ago with clubs and cattle prods.”
Others were less polite. As usually happens these days, the outrage became competitive, each left-winger striving to be visibly angrier than the last. Sessions, we were told, was a bigot, a racist, a segregationist. In fact, let’s not beat about the bush, he was basically a Klansman. As the rapper Talib Kweli put it, Sessions “took his klan hood all the way off.”
Incredibly, the online anger-merchants were joined by a U.S. senator, Hawaii’s Brian Schatz. Here was his take: “Do you know anyone who says ‘Anglo-American heritage’ in a sentence? What could possibly be the purpose of saying that other than to pit Americans against each other? For the chief law enforcement officer to use a dog whistle like that is appalling.”
Hmm. Do you know anyone else who’d use that dog-whistle phrase? Here’s one. “I sincerely hope we can protect what has been called the ‘great writ’— a writ that has been in place in the Anglo-American legal system for over 700 years.”
The year was 2006, and the speaker was Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. In fact, as the excellent and, er, Anglo-American writer Charles Cooke noted, Obama uses the phrase habitually. So do most law graduates. It’s the standard way to describe the system of common law that was carried over from the colonies into the American Republic — a system which, in some senses, could be said to have made that republic possible.
Sheriffs ensure that, in the U.S., unlike in other places, law enforcement is anchored to public opinion. Eight years ago, after a long campaign, I succeeded in importing (or, rather, reimporting) elected police chiefs to the U.K., but with one important difference.
The new Conservative Government embraced my concept, but not my preferred name. “We’ve focus-group tested it,” the police minister told me, “and no one likes ‘sheriff.'”
“Why? What’s wrong with it?”
“Sounds too John Wayne — too American.”
Of course, the Americans got the word from us, but I lost that argument, I’m afraid. The name eventually chosen was “Police and Crime Commissioner,” an almost deliberately dull bit of Euro-speak. It doesn’t even make grammatical sense, implying as it does an official in charge of crime. Unsurprisingly, this office failed to capture the public’s imagination, and turnout at the elections for it in 2016 was a dismal 27 percent.
But the U.S. Attorney General was onto something. The Anglo-American legal tradition is what gives us habeas corpus and jury trials. It ensures that the law is the property of the people, not the government. It domesticates the criminal justice system. And the shrievalty (it’s not often I get to write that word) is its most direct expression, an institution that astounded Alexis de Tocqueville, who was used to law officers being appointed by central government.
The Anglo-American tradition survives more robustly in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world, serving to keep that country free. If you can’t hear it being invoked without being triggered, then you’re the one with issues.
Daniel Hannan, a Washington Examiner columnist, is a British member of the European Parliament.
