While I'm much less of an Anglophile these days than I used to be, it's safe to say that England is infinitely more advanced than America in one area: creating a nationwide culture of victims:

The vast majority of people in Britain are officially oppressed, according to a report that claims we have become a “nation of victims”.

The study calculates that 73 per cent of Britons are members of officially recognised “victim groups”, including the disabled, women, ethnic minorities and homosexuals. Each group is given government support, including protective legislation.

The report, We’re (Nearly) All Victims Now, by the socially conservative think- tank Civitas, gives warning that the rise of a “victimocracy” undermines democracy because people are no longer considered equal under law.

“We have become a nation of victims,” it says. “Victimhood today is a political status that is sought after because of the advantages it brings, including preferential treatment in the workplace, the possibility of using police power to silence unwelcome critics, and financial compensation. To be classified as a victim is to be given a special political status, which has no necessary connection with real hardship or oppression.”

In October next year the Government is setting up the Commission for Equality and Human Rights, which merges the disability, race and equal opportunities commissions.

Many people, such as black women, are victims of so-called multiple discrimination. The report uses official figures to strip out the overlapping groups to calculate that nearly three quarters of people belong to one category or other. The biggest oppressed group is women, who constitute 51 per cent of the population and are protected by a range of legislation covering discrimination, equal pay and domestic violence. Ethnic minority men amount to 4 per cent; white disabled men 11 per cent; white male pensioners 5 per cent; and white, gay, able-bodied men, 2 per cent.

The report attacks the increasing tendency to judge crimes as more serious if they are committed against official victims — so-called hate crimes. Police have been encouraged to give priority to such cases, which the Civitas report says is undermining equality under the law.

On the other hand, here's one area that America's left already explored, six decades ago: UK Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair suggests that a sufficiently large act of terror could lead to the British government considering “internment”.