Where the Wild Roses Grow

" The national flower of Scotland is the thistle, the national flower of Wales is the leek and the national flower of Ireland is the shamrock.
I dunno why England has the rose as its national flower, but there was a famous, long civil war in the Middle Ages called the 'Wars of the Roses'. It was so called because the two aristocratic families who fought each other were in control of the neighbouring counties of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and the emblem of Lancashire was the red rose and the emblem of Yorkshire was the white rose. Marx believed it was the effects of the Wars of the Roses which led England to become the first nation in the world to create industrial capitalism, because the aristocracy were largely wiped out during the civil war leaving their lesser relatives to inherit their titles and estates. There lesser relatives of the aristocratic families were already involved in commerce and industry, whereas the aristocracy itself had been hostile to commerce and regarded it as demeaning and beneath them. This is why the British aristocracy were ready to forma class alliance with the bourgeoisie in the 18th and 19th centuries, whereas in most other nations (such as France) the bourgeoisie fought and destroyed the aristocratic class. It's why we still have a monarchy and aristocracy now, whereas most other developed nations are democratic republics."

Good point

"The British system is based on the medieval traditions rather than classical traditions. This is why classical architecture never really took off in Britain - it's Gothic all the way.
Even the 'Mother of Parliaments' is a Gothic building, a cathedral to bourgeois liberalism rather than a temple to republicanism.
Our political traditions are medieval rather than classical, enlightened despotism rather than classical republicanism.
We trace our liberties to the early medieval kings like Henry II or
King John rather than to Cicero or Demosthenes.
The problem was that medieval England was more liberal and more advanced than almost any other medieval European state (merrie olde England), so when feudalism was swept away everywhere else
in Europe during the 18th century, the archaic semi-feudal system
in Britain creaked and swayed a bit, but did not fall.
The Enlightenment failed to take hold in England, and our feudal system continued unbroken. We are now stuck with it.

The Founding Fathers were absolutely right to chuck out all that medieval rubbish and start again from first principles.
The Magna Carta was not a founding document of the American Republic, and it was deliberately excluded from the canon.
Rightly so. The Founding Fathers went back beyond the medieval feudal concept of rights and obligations and returned to the classical republican tradition. This is why public buildings in America all
look like classical temples. Public buildings in Britain look like Gothic cathedrals. That fact symbolises the political differences between our two countries."