0 comment Sunday, September 28, 2014 | admin
I came across this discussion at a traditional music forum which is frequented by many people from the UK.
English culture -- what is it?
If you read through the thread, (scrolll down the linked page), you will find many exasperating responses which illustrate vividly how far the leftist/globalist/multicult agenda has penetrated into people's thoughts and feelings about their own country and heritage. It ain't pretty.
I have to say, sadly, that if you posed a similar question among a group of American 'folkie' or trad music types, that the responses would be just as dismal. Still, I suppose there is a case to be made, however weak and politically correct, that America has no native culture, but is merely a patchwork of various immigrant cultures. I disagree vehemently, of course, but still there's no denying that for the last 150+ years, America has absorbed a lot of immigrants from various places, and that some melding of cultures has occurred. But the UK, or Great Britain to use an older name, has not been a magnet for exotic immigrants until the latter half of the 20th century. I am aware that various smaller waves of immigrants have come to England, but their effect on the overall way of life there was negligible, unlike the present wave of Third World interlopers.
The media, the government, and the educational establishment in the UK are much more dominated by hard-core leftists and multiculturalists than even our institutions, and they seem to have accomplished their aim of mostly obliterating the sense of a national identity and culture.
The original poster on the thread simply asked a question, and was greeted with an incredibly hostile and venomous group of responses. What a plague on Western society leftism and ''liberalism'' are. They have truly left our Western countries sick unto death with their pernicious and malevolent ideas, and we have to work to find an anti-venom for this societal toxin or it will be the end of us.
A sampling of the comments, for those who don't want to wade through a very long and obnoxious thread:
If you want to "know" about "English" Culture I suggest you join the BNP...
****
What might be marvellous is England as the first culture free nation. Done with our reformation, civil wars, slavery, industrial revolution, class division we free ourseles [sic] of the burden of culture for a voyage of new discovery without a backward glance.
Heady stuff that.
*******
"My prob with the whole kulture game is it assumes there are shared resonances which elicit a unified response"
I'd disagree with that. I think we should celebrate the diversity and eclectic nature of our culture and fight against the uniformity that is creeping in - especialy [sic] the Americanisation and the threat to our wonderful family high street shops and small food-producers posed by the big supermarkets and ludicrous EU regulations.''
A question: why is everybody ready to see the threat from ''Americanisation'' and the EU (which is indeed a threat) but unable to see the threat posed by mass immigration and cultural Marxism? They have been schooled to believe that 'fascism and racism' are the only threats.
Back to the comments - beginning with a post by what seems to be a third-world immigrant:
Is it only English people who can comment on what English Culture is? I should think that, for people living in a sizeable proportion of the globe, "English Culture" is a mess of lies with which Public Schoolboy colonizers tried to replace numerous indigenous cultures.
[posted by a 'Guest with no English connexion']
Followed by a raving multicultist:
"Okay, let's put this in some sort or rational context. There is a vast difference in being interested in one's heritage and wanting to select through rose-tinted spectacles a romantic image of a Merrie Englande. The critical word here is 'select'!
I repeat my first post. In answer to the question the simplest and most accurate response is DIVERSE. In other words every bit of England (and everywhere else) has its own culture that is unique to that area, and the influences on those cultures are manifold and frequently not English in origin. For god's sake let's celebrate the diversity!
And a programmed lefty:
''The BNP are such a load of congenital idiots they can't even get the flag right. If it's British it should be the Union Flag and not the English Flag.
The whole lot are complete arseholes and - yes - I want my flag back please, and I want it to be looked on as a proud symbol for ALL who live in England.
Next, a dedicated multiculturalist:
"English culture as opposed to what other culture?
Do you mean something intrinsically English that doesn't occur anywhere else? You won't find anything, neither will you in any other culture.''
The original poster makes a valiant effort to counter the responses she gets, which are mostly hostile to her personally and to her question. And as you can see, the BNP are special targets of opprobrium. The leftists have done a bang-up job of marginalizing and (to use an obnoxious leftist word) 'demonizing" the BNP, and any kind of national feeling at all.
Sadly, though, she yields to the race-baiting and protests more than once that she is ''not a racist'' and that she, too, loves diversity. Bad mistake. Never give in to their game and never give any credibility to their name-calling and their 'racism' nonsense. That's letting them define the terms and create the rules of the game. They must be somehow put on the defensive. But why are we on our side so lost when it comes to doing this? Too often even the more politically incorrect at some point give in to PC and begin to protest that they are not ''racist'' or ''haters.'' Or worse, they start sniping at others farther to the right as a way of showing that they are not ''fascists'' or ''racists." This needs to stop.
There are a couple of common-sense responses that at least defend the existence of an 'English culture' which is identifiable. One such post seems to come from an American:
I think there is a definitive English folk music culture. I think this maybe the point of this
discussion. Certainly you could define the North Country Border rural music as "English" or areas such as Cornwall. There is an English ballad singing style. A.L. Lloyd or Ewan McColl has popularized it. Louis Killen as well. There seems to be a fiddling style that's unique to England.
I think Elizabethan Pro-Musica defines a tradition of Campion and Dowland which is
definitively English.
There is a Cockney music culture which as analogous to the city music halls of early America such as early Broadway or Second Avenue.
As in any country, there are regional styles that are a composite of the overall "culture".
As an outsider, I find that an English culture tends to be more subdued than the American one which is more bombastic like the German culture. These are gross generalizations, of course.
In the personalities on the stage, eccentricities of comics such as Monty Python,
the Goon Show, Spike Milligan, and even America's Danny Kaye seem to define a different emphasis on humor which tend toward the oddness of the characters. I think that English humor is different than in America which has more of a wise-cracking approach. The English appreciate the role of the clown in comedy. It's no accident that Stan Laurel and Charlie Chaplin instituted a brand of humor that is uniquely English in my opinion. I find the English Brit-coms equally reflective of British humor unlike the stuff from Stateside.
Ralph Vaughan Williams could not have originated in America, I believe. His music has
a distinctly English character as does Percy Grainger.
The tunes of Henry the Eighth typify an English musical approach. "Pastime with Good Company" could not have been written anywhere in the world except England.
Then there's the poets.
I think a strong case can be made for English culture citing these examples for a start.''
To me this is beyond obvious, and it is almost spooky how the British posters are so angry and aggressive in denying their own culture exists.
This behavior is groupthink at its most blatant, and is evidence of brainwashing. It really goes against all common-sense expectations for people to respond with hostility to the idea that their own people have a culture, that their ancestors created a distinct way of life. For people en masse to deny such things is just bizarre. It is not natural.
And lest anybody think I am criticizing British people too much, I can say we have more than our share of such brainwashed zombies in our country, sadly. If I am critical of the British in this context, it's only because I feel a strong affinity to them, based on common ancestry and history. All of us in America, even those who have no actual British ancestry, have partaken of a culture which has its origins in Great Britain, most specifically in England, so in a sense we are all a part of the extended family. So all of us should feel some distress over what is happening to Britain and to our cousins there, even though they seem not to want to own us as their kin.
I realize the commenters at that forum may be atypical; the 'folkies' I have known here and on the other side of the Atlantic are often, for some reason, rabid leftists. I posed a question before about why this is true, and I can't explain it fully. It makes no sense, on the face of it, to claim to love the traditional music of your people and country, and to care enough about preserving old songs, dances, and stories if you think that your country has in fact 'no culture of its own'. But leftists and liberals, it seems, are adept at holding many contradictory and nonsensical ideas at the same time.
The original poster is accused repeatedly of promoting a nostalgic view of 'Merrie England', which these cynics say never existed, or perhaps never should have existed. Why are leftists so cynical and hateful when it comes to the past? They seem to have declared all-out war on the past, and on memory, as I've said before. I am sometimes accused too of invoking an America that 'never was', a glamor-lensed view of old America. I realize the past is gone, and that no era or place is ever perfect. But by invoking the old America, I am not simply wallowing in teary nostalgia, but trying to awaken amnesiacs and try to bring them to their senses. Suppose an individual has amnesia (maybe it does happen outside movies sometimes) and has no recollection of who he is, where he comes from, where he belongs, and what he has accomplished? Our memory is a big part of who we are from moment to moment. Our memories define us to a great extent. We can't willfully forego our memories, erase our history, and still fully function as we are meant to be. So it is important to evoke the past in a warped world which denies and distorts that past.
I've quoted the following passage since the earliest days of this blog:
"The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history.
Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster. " - Milan Hubl, quoted by Milan Kundera in 'The Book of Laughter and Forgetting'
English culture -- what is it?
If you read through the thread, (scrolll down the linked page), you will find many exasperating responses which illustrate vividly how far the leftist/globalist/multicult agenda has penetrated into people's thoughts and feelings about their own country and heritage. It ain't pretty.
I have to say, sadly, that if you posed a similar question among a group of American 'folkie' or trad music types, that the responses would be just as dismal. Still, I suppose there is a case to be made, however weak and politically correct, that America has no native culture, but is merely a patchwork of various immigrant cultures. I disagree vehemently, of course, but still there's no denying that for the last 150+ years, America has absorbed a lot of immigrants from various places, and that some melding of cultures has occurred. But the UK, or Great Britain to use an older name, has not been a magnet for exotic immigrants until the latter half of the 20th century. I am aware that various smaller waves of immigrants have come to England, but their effect on the overall way of life there was negligible, unlike the present wave of Third World interlopers.
The media, the government, and the educational establishment in the UK are much more dominated by hard-core leftists and multiculturalists than even our institutions, and they seem to have accomplished their aim of mostly obliterating the sense of a national identity and culture.
The original poster on the thread simply asked a question, and was greeted with an incredibly hostile and venomous group of responses. What a plague on Western society leftism and ''liberalism'' are. They have truly left our Western countries sick unto death with their pernicious and malevolent ideas, and we have to work to find an anti-venom for this societal toxin or it will be the end of us.
A sampling of the comments, for those who don't want to wade through a very long and obnoxious thread:
If you want to "know" about "English" Culture I suggest you join the BNP...
****
What might be marvellous is England as the first culture free nation. Done with our reformation, civil wars, slavery, industrial revolution, class division we free ourseles [sic] of the burden of culture for a voyage of new discovery without a backward glance.
Heady stuff that.
*******
"My prob with the whole kulture game is it assumes there are shared resonances which elicit a unified response"
I'd disagree with that. I think we should celebrate the diversity and eclectic nature of our culture and fight against the uniformity that is creeping in - especialy [sic] the Americanisation and the threat to our wonderful family high street shops and small food-producers posed by the big supermarkets and ludicrous EU regulations.''
A question: why is everybody ready to see the threat from ''Americanisation'' and the EU (which is indeed a threat) but unable to see the threat posed by mass immigration and cultural Marxism? They have been schooled to believe that 'fascism and racism' are the only threats.
Back to the comments - beginning with a post by what seems to be a third-world immigrant:
Is it only English people who can comment on what English Culture is? I should think that, for people living in a sizeable proportion of the globe, "English Culture" is a mess of lies with which Public Schoolboy colonizers tried to replace numerous indigenous cultures.
[posted by a 'Guest with no English connexion']
Followed by a raving multicultist:
"Okay, let's put this in some sort or rational context. There is a vast difference in being interested in one's heritage and wanting to select through rose-tinted spectacles a romantic image of a Merrie Englande. The critical word here is 'select'!
I repeat my first post. In answer to the question the simplest and most accurate response is DIVERSE. In other words every bit of England (and everywhere else) has its own culture that is unique to that area, and the influences on those cultures are manifold and frequently not English in origin. For god's sake let's celebrate the diversity!
And a programmed lefty:
''The BNP are such a load of congenital idiots they can't even get the flag right. If it's British it should be the Union Flag and not the English Flag.
The whole lot are complete arseholes and - yes - I want my flag back please, and I want it to be looked on as a proud symbol for ALL who live in England.
Next, a dedicated multiculturalist:
"English culture as opposed to what other culture?
Do you mean something intrinsically English that doesn't occur anywhere else? You won't find anything, neither will you in any other culture.''
The original poster makes a valiant effort to counter the responses she gets, which are mostly hostile to her personally and to her question. And as you can see, the BNP are special targets of opprobrium. The leftists have done a bang-up job of marginalizing and (to use an obnoxious leftist word) 'demonizing" the BNP, and any kind of national feeling at all.
Sadly, though, she yields to the race-baiting and protests more than once that she is ''not a racist'' and that she, too, loves diversity. Bad mistake. Never give in to their game and never give any credibility to their name-calling and their 'racism' nonsense. That's letting them define the terms and create the rules of the game. They must be somehow put on the defensive. But why are we on our side so lost when it comes to doing this? Too often even the more politically incorrect at some point give in to PC and begin to protest that they are not ''racist'' or ''haters.'' Or worse, they start sniping at others farther to the right as a way of showing that they are not ''fascists'' or ''racists." This needs to stop.
There are a couple of common-sense responses that at least defend the existence of an 'English culture' which is identifiable. One such post seems to come from an American:
I think there is a definitive English folk music culture. I think this maybe the point of this
discussion. Certainly you could define the North Country Border rural music as "English" or areas such as Cornwall. There is an English ballad singing style. A.L. Lloyd or Ewan McColl has popularized it. Louis Killen as well. There seems to be a fiddling style that's unique to England.
I think Elizabethan Pro-Musica defines a tradition of Campion and Dowland which is
definitively English.
There is a Cockney music culture which as analogous to the city music halls of early America such as early Broadway or Second Avenue.
As in any country, there are regional styles that are a composite of the overall "culture".
As an outsider, I find that an English culture tends to be more subdued than the American one which is more bombastic like the German culture. These are gross generalizations, of course.
In the personalities on the stage, eccentricities of comics such as Monty Python,
the Goon Show, Spike Milligan, and even America's Danny Kaye seem to define a different emphasis on humor which tend toward the oddness of the characters. I think that English humor is different than in America which has more of a wise-cracking approach. The English appreciate the role of the clown in comedy. It's no accident that Stan Laurel and Charlie Chaplin instituted a brand of humor that is uniquely English in my opinion. I find the English Brit-coms equally reflective of British humor unlike the stuff from Stateside.
Ralph Vaughan Williams could not have originated in America, I believe. His music has
a distinctly English character as does Percy Grainger.
The tunes of Henry the Eighth typify an English musical approach. "Pastime with Good Company" could not have been written anywhere in the world except England.
Then there's the poets.
I think a strong case can be made for English culture citing these examples for a start.''
To me this is beyond obvious, and it is almost spooky how the British posters are so angry and aggressive in denying their own culture exists.
This behavior is groupthink at its most blatant, and is evidence of brainwashing. It really goes against all common-sense expectations for people to respond with hostility to the idea that their own people have a culture, that their ancestors created a distinct way of life. For people en masse to deny such things is just bizarre. It is not natural.
And lest anybody think I am criticizing British people too much, I can say we have more than our share of such brainwashed zombies in our country, sadly. If I am critical of the British in this context, it's only because I feel a strong affinity to them, based on common ancestry and history. All of us in America, even those who have no actual British ancestry, have partaken of a culture which has its origins in Great Britain, most specifically in England, so in a sense we are all a part of the extended family. So all of us should feel some distress over what is happening to Britain and to our cousins there, even though they seem not to want to own us as their kin.
I realize the commenters at that forum may be atypical; the 'folkies' I have known here and on the other side of the Atlantic are often, for some reason, rabid leftists. I posed a question before about why this is true, and I can't explain it fully. It makes no sense, on the face of it, to claim to love the traditional music of your people and country, and to care enough about preserving old songs, dances, and stories if you think that your country has in fact 'no culture of its own'. But leftists and liberals, it seems, are adept at holding many contradictory and nonsensical ideas at the same time.
The original poster is accused repeatedly of promoting a nostalgic view of 'Merrie England', which these cynics say never existed, or perhaps never should have existed. Why are leftists so cynical and hateful when it comes to the past? They seem to have declared all-out war on the past, and on memory, as I've said before. I am sometimes accused too of invoking an America that 'never was', a glamor-lensed view of old America. I realize the past is gone, and that no era or place is ever perfect. But by invoking the old America, I am not simply wallowing in teary nostalgia, but trying to awaken amnesiacs and try to bring them to their senses. Suppose an individual has amnesia (maybe it does happen outside movies sometimes) and has no recollection of who he is, where he comes from, where he belongs, and what he has accomplished? Our memory is a big part of who we are from moment to moment. Our memories define us to a great extent. We can't willfully forego our memories, erase our history, and still fully function as we are meant to be. So it is important to evoke the past in a warped world which denies and distorts that past.
I've quoted the following passage since the earliest days of this blog:
"The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history.
Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster. " - Milan Hubl, quoted by Milan Kundera in 'The Book of Laughter and Forgetting'
Labels: British Culture, Cultural Marxism, English Culture, Folkways, Gramscianism, Multiculturalism, National Identity, National Memory, Propaganda, Traditional Music
0 comment Sunday, August 17, 2014 | admin
England, Your England
From The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, 1941
George Orwell, it is true, was a leftist; but the leftists of his day were apparently not the same breed as the nihilistic, life-hating leftists of today -- or it may simply be that he was a much more clear-thinking and honest man than his fellow leftists.
But whichever is the case, it is true, without a doubt, that the England of his time bears scant resemblance to the England or the United Kingdom of our day.
In the above-linked essay, England, Your England, written during World War II, he discusses the English character. Now today, the epithet 'English' is rarely used, as it is considered too exclusive, too restricted. It makes all those diverse residents of today's UK feel left out, offended, and persecuted, so the adjective 'English' is used far less than it was in Orwell's day.
But Orwell makes some very interesting observations about the English character, and patriotism, and discussing, as we have been, the present sad state of the UK, it is instructive to look at what he says. As we read his words, we might ponder whether the character of the country still persists, or whether that mysterious force called patriotism can be summoned up to revive Orwell's country.
One cannot see the modern world as it is unless one recognizes the overwhelming strength of patriotism, national loyalty. In certain circumstances it can break down, at certain levels of civilization it does not exist, but as a positive force there is nothing to set beside it. Christianity and international Socialism are as weak as straw in comparison with it. Hitler and Mussolini rose to power in their own countries very largely because they could grasp this fact and their opponents could not.
Also, one must admit that the divisions between nation and nation are founded on real differences of outlook. Till recently it was thought proper to pretend that all human beings are very much alike, but in fact anyone able to use his eyes knows that the average of human behaviour differs enormously from country to country. Things that could happen in one country could not happen in another. Hitler's June purge, for instance, could not have happened in England. And, as western peoples go, the English are very highly differentiated. There is a sort of back-handed admission of this in the dislike which nearly all foreigners feel for our national way of life. Few Europeans can endure living in England, and even Americans often feel more at home in Europe.
When you come back to England from any foreign country, you have immediately the sensation of breathing a different air. Even in the first few minutes dozens of small things conspire to give you this feeling. The beer is bitterer, the coins are heavier, the grass is greener, the advertisements are more blatant. The crowds in the big towns, with their mild knobby faces, their bad teeth and gentle manners, are different from a European crowd. Then the vastness of England swallows you up, and you lose for a while your feeling that the whole nation has a single identifiable character. Are there really such things as nations? Are we not forty-six million individuals, all different? And the diversity of it, the chaos! The clatter of clogs in the Lancashire mill towns, the to-and-fro of the lorries on the Great North Road, the queues outside the Labour Exchanges, the rattle of pin-tables in the Soho pubs, the old maids hiking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning � all these are not only fragments, but characteristic fragments, of the English scene. How can one make a pattern out of this muddle?
But talk to foreigners, read foreign books or newspapers, and you are brought back to the same thought. Yes, there is something distinctive and recognizable in English civilization. It is a culture as individual as that of Spain. It is somehow bound up with solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillar-boxes. It has a flavour of its own. Moreover it is continuous, it stretches into the future and the past, there is something in it that persists, as in a living creature. What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person.
And above all, it is your civilization, it is you. However much you hate it or laugh at it, you will never be happy away from it for any length of time. The suet puddings and the red pillar-boxes have entered into your soul. Good or evil, it is yours, you belong to it, and this side the grave you will never get away from the marks that it has given you.
Meanwhile England, together with the rest of the world, is changing. And like everything else it can change only in certain directions, which up to a point can be foreseen. That is not to say that the future is fixed, merely that certain alternatives are possible and others not. A seed may grow or not grow, but at any rate a turnip seed never grows into a parsnip. It is therefore of the deepest importance to try and determine what England is, before guessing what part England can play in the huge events that are happening.''
If only Orwell could have known just how much England would change, and in how short a time. What would he have thought? Of course he foresaw the totalitarian trends which would develop in the years ahead; he was quite prescient in that regard. But I wonder if, as a leftist, he would have envisioned multiculturalism and the 'war against the people' by the Western elites?
Still, if we re-read the passages above, we see that Orwell clearly believed that there was an intrinsic national character, and that it persisted in spite of profound societal changes. He alludes to the changes between 1840 and 1940, and declares, that in spite of those changes, the people are still the same.
He clearly says that the whole nation has 'a single, identifiable character' and he seems to mean that the nation, through time, maintains that character.
He also says something quite important: that the divisions between nations are founded on real differences of outlook; the divisions from one nation to another reflect the innate differences. They are not simply a matter of geopolitical boundaries, or lines arbitrarily drawn on a map. Of course there have been and are 'nations' which are merely artificially-drawn nations, with no unifying genetic or cultural bonds. Iraq comes to mind, and increasingly, our own country -- and the UK. There are unfortunate consequences that follow in creating these unnatural 'nations' which are no nations. We are seeing those consequences playing out in the UK, in our country, and throughout the West.
To return to Orwell's description of the English character:
Here are a couple of generalizations about England that would be accepted by almost all observers. One is that the English are not gifted artistically. They are not as musical as the Germans or Italians, painting and sculpture have never flourished in England as they have in France. Another is that, as Europeans go, the English are not intellectual. They have a horror of abstract thought, they feel no need for any philosophy or systematic 'world-view�. Nor is this because they are 'practical�, as they are so fond of claiming for themselves. [...]
But they have a certain power of acting without taking thought. Their world-famed hypocrisy � their double-faced attitude towards the Empire, for instance � is bound up with this. Also, in moments of supreme crisis the whole nation can suddenly draw together and act upon a species of instinct, really a code of conduct which is understood by almost everyone, though never formulated. The phrase that Hitler coined for the Germans, 'a sleep-walking people�, would have been better applied to the English. Not that there is anything to be proud of in being called a sleep-walker.
But here it is worth noting a minor English trait which is extremely well marked though not often commented on, and that is a love of flowers. This is one of the first things that one notices when one reaches England from abroad, especially if one is coming from southern Europe. Does it not contradict the English indifference to the arts? Not really, because it is found in people who have no aesthetic feelings whatever. What it does link up with, however, is another English characteristic which is so much a part of us that we barely notice it, and that is the addiction to hobbies and spare-time occupations, the privateness of English life. We are a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans. All the culture that is most truly native centres round things which even when they are communal are not official � the pub, the football match, the back garden, the fireside and the 'nice cup of tea�. The liberty of the individual is still believed in, almost as in the nineteenth century. But this has nothing to do with economic liberty, the right to exploit others for profit. It is the liberty to have a home of your own, to do what you like in your spare time, to choose your own amusements instead of having them chosen for you from above. The most hateful of all names in an English ear is Nosey Parker. It is obvious, of course, that even this purely private liberty is a lost cause. Like all other modern people, the English are in process of being numbered, labelled, conscripted, 'co-ordinated�. But the pull of their impulses is in the other direction, and the kind of regimentation that can be imposed on them will be modified in consequence.'' [Emphasis mine]
First, I am struck by the extent to which much of what Orwell says about the English character can also be applied to Americans, most importantly the part about the belief in the liberty of the individual. Too often we here in America like to claim that we invented this love of liberty, or that it sprang full-grown here among our colonists, like Athena from the head of Zeus. No; it is part of our British heritage. And the more weakened our ties to our old colonial heritage, the more we lose that natural aptitude for freedom. I believe the 'melting pot' philosophy watered down our essential strengths and gifts, and the more 'diverse' our country becomes, the greater the distance between us and our founding ancestors. This is no less true in the UK as they dilute their indigenous heritage via mass immigration.
But here, we come to the part in which Orwell notes the essential gentleness of the English, and their natural aversion to martial pursuits:
One can learn a good deal about the spirit of England from the comic coloured postcards that you see in the windows of cheap stationers� shops. These things are a sort of diary upon which the English people have unconsciously recorded themselves. Their old-fashioned outlook, their graded snobberies, their mixture of bawdiness and hypocrisy, their extreme gentleness, their deeply moral attitude to life, are all mirrored there.
The gentleness of the English civilization is perhaps its most marked characteristic. You notice it the instant you set foot on English soil. It is a land where the bus conductors are good-tempered and the policemen carry no revolvers. In no country inhabited by white men is it easier to shove people off the pavement. And with this goes something that is always written off by European observers as 'decadence� or hypocrisy, the English hatred of war and militarism. It is rooted deep in history, and it is strong in the lower-middle class as well as the working class.
[...]
In peace time, even when there are two million unemployed, it is difficult to fill the ranks of the tiny standing army, which is officered by the country gentry and a specialized stratum of the middle class, and manned by farm labourers and slum proletarians. The mass of the people are without military knowledge or tradition, and their attitude towards war is invariably defensive. No politician could rise to power by promising them conquests or military 'glory�, no Hymn of Hate has ever made any appeal to them.''
As we saw in the O'Sullivan article which I blogged on, the gentleness of British society is their vulnerability, with the presence of so many hostile and violent outsiders, who have at best a sullen indifference toward the native British people and at worst, a burning hostility to them. We here in this country are probably made vulnerable by the same traits, although they may be less marked in America, because of our mixed heritage. We, too, are by nature more polite, more hospitable, and too welcoming and trusting for our own good. This is true to some extent of all Western European peoples, but especially so of the English and Anglo-derived peoples in the West. It is said that J.R.R. Tolkien modeled the Hobbits after the English; they were essentially a gentle, stay-at-home, family-and-hearth people.
Here again, Orwell describes the English regard for the law, and the idea of the Rule of Law, which we too have traditionally valued very highly in America:
And yet the gentleness of English civilization is mixed up with barbarities and anachronisms. Our criminal law is as out-of-date as the muskets in the Tower. Over against the Nazi Storm Trooper you have got to set that typically English figure, the hanging judge, some gouty old bully with his mind rooted in the nineteenth century, handing out savage sentences. In England people are still hanged by the neck and flogged with the cat o� nine tails. Both of these punishments are obscene as well as cruel, but there has never been any genuinely popular outcry against them. People accept them (and Dartmoor, and Borstal) almost as they accept the weather. They are part of 'the law�, which is assumed to be unalterable.
[Note - Orwell apparently didn't foresee that the British would abolish capital punishment, thanks to leftism, and become very lenient, too lenient, in their treatment of criminals.]
Here one comes upon an all-important English trait: the respect for constitutionalism and legality, the belief in 'the law� as something above the State and above the individual, something which is cruel and stupid, of course, but at any rate incorruptible.
It is not that anyone imagines the law to be just. Everyone knows that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. But no one accepts the implications of this, everyone takes it for granted that the law, such as it is, will be respected, and feels a sense of outrage when it is not. Remarks like 'They can't run me in; I haven't done anything wrong�, or 'They can't do that; it's against the law�, are part of the atmosphere of England. The professed enemies of society have this feeling as strongly as anyone else.
[...]
Everyone believes in his heart that the law can be, ought to be, and, on the whole, will be impartially administered. The totalitarian idea that there is no such thing as law, there is only power, has never taken root. Even the intelligentsia have only accepted it in theory.
[...]
In England such concepts as justice, liberty and objective truth are still believed in. They may be illusions, but they are very powerful illusions.''
I wonder to what extent that last is still true in Britain? Leftism and post-modernism, as taught by the left-controlled media and government, have seemingly weakened such beliefs. And here in America, the same is true, although I think we are a few steps behind the British on that path. We would do well to reverse our course before we reach the point where our British cousins seem to be.
Orwell talks about the sense of national unity, which seems to be very precarious in the UK at this time, with so many nationalities and races, each with their own 'communities' and allegiances, and with the indigenous British people so weakened in their national identity due to leftism and its anti-nationalistic jihad.
Up to a point, the sense of national unity is a substitute for a 'world-view�. Just because patriotism is all but universal and not even the rich are uninfluenced by it, there can be moments when the whole nation suddenly swings together and does the same thing, like a herd of cattle facing a wolf. There was such a moment, unmistakably, at the time of the disaster in France. After eight months of vaguely wondering what the war was about, the people suddenly knew what they had got to do: first, to get the army away from Dunkirk, and secondly to prevent invasion. It was like the awakening of a giant. Quick! Danger! The Philistines be upon thee, Samson! And then the swift unanimous action � and, then, alas, the prompt relapse into sleep. In a divided nation that would have been exactly the moment for a big peace movement to arise. But does this mean that the instinct of the English will always tell them to do the right thing? Not at all, merely that it will tell them to do the same thing. In the 1931 General Election, for instance, we all did the wrong thing in perfect unison. We were as single-minded as the Gadarene swine. But I honestly doubt whether we can say that we were shoved down the slope against our will.''
The sense of unity, the oneness in spirit and in national character, is what enabled Britain during the War to pull together and to survive. Without that sense of national unity, survival is doubtful.
One more little trivial note: Orwell, in that last passage, makes a couple of Biblical allusions: the reference to the Philistines and Samson, and the reference to the Gadarene swine. Do any leftists of today recognize such allusions, and would any leftist dare to refer to the Bible today, other than those leftists wearing backwards collars? I doubt it. And even among the general population, how many British people would recognize those Biblical references or names, or know the symbolism inherent therein? Precious few, and I am afraid that even in a more 'religious' country like America, not many are Biblically literate enough to get the allusions. My point is not just to lament that we in America are not the Biblically-conversant country we once were, or that Britain has lost its religion (though both are cause for lament) but also that we no longer have a common grounding in Western culture; we no longer have these common reference points and cultural bonds which enabled us to speak in shorthand amongst ourselves. We can no longer make such an allusion, whether Biblical or from the old classics, or from Shakespeare, and trust that our readers or hearers will understand. To that extent, we are weaker and less connected. Such is the fruit of multiculturalism. It eats away at the cultural connections and bonds.
But Orwell, later in the essay, concludes that
England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare's much-quoted message, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons. It has rich relations who have to be kow-towed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon, and there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income. It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts. Still, it is a family. It has its private language and its common memories, and at the approach of an enemy it closes its ranks. A family with the wrong members in control � that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.''
I've often used the family as the analogy for our American nation; at first, we were truly a kin group, a nation in the original sense, and later our family circle expanded to welcome in those who became ours by adoption. Now, the family analogy is being stretched to the breaking point. If the family's would-be new members are simply there to exploit and to plunder, and have no wish to join the family circle and conform to the family and its ways, then there is no more family; it's everybody for himself.
And I have no doubt that to use Orwell's analogy, the British family, or what still remains of it, has the wrong members in control -- as do we in America.
Will Britain recover this natural character of which Orwell writes, or will the corrosive influences, in John O'Sullivan's parlance, have destroyed the essential character and the strengths of the British family?
We will see, because it appears that Britain is being tested by very difficult circumstances, just as we are.
And as cousins, we and the British should try to restore the lost connections between us, so as to offer help and support, if only moral support, to each other -- as 'the Philistines are upon us' both.
From The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, 1941
George Orwell, it is true, was a leftist; but the leftists of his day were apparently not the same breed as the nihilistic, life-hating leftists of today -- or it may simply be that he was a much more clear-thinking and honest man than his fellow leftists.
But whichever is the case, it is true, without a doubt, that the England of his time bears scant resemblance to the England or the United Kingdom of our day.
In the above-linked essay, England, Your England, written during World War II, he discusses the English character. Now today, the epithet 'English' is rarely used, as it is considered too exclusive, too restricted. It makes all those diverse residents of today's UK feel left out, offended, and persecuted, so the adjective 'English' is used far less than it was in Orwell's day.
But Orwell makes some very interesting observations about the English character, and patriotism, and discussing, as we have been, the present sad state of the UK, it is instructive to look at what he says. As we read his words, we might ponder whether the character of the country still persists, or whether that mysterious force called patriotism can be summoned up to revive Orwell's country.
One cannot see the modern world as it is unless one recognizes the overwhelming strength of patriotism, national loyalty. In certain circumstances it can break down, at certain levels of civilization it does not exist, but as a positive force there is nothing to set beside it. Christianity and international Socialism are as weak as straw in comparison with it. Hitler and Mussolini rose to power in their own countries very largely because they could grasp this fact and their opponents could not.
Also, one must admit that the divisions between nation and nation are founded on real differences of outlook. Till recently it was thought proper to pretend that all human beings are very much alike, but in fact anyone able to use his eyes knows that the average of human behaviour differs enormously from country to country. Things that could happen in one country could not happen in another. Hitler's June purge, for instance, could not have happened in England. And, as western peoples go, the English are very highly differentiated. There is a sort of back-handed admission of this in the dislike which nearly all foreigners feel for our national way of life. Few Europeans can endure living in England, and even Americans often feel more at home in Europe.
When you come back to England from any foreign country, you have immediately the sensation of breathing a different air. Even in the first few minutes dozens of small things conspire to give you this feeling. The beer is bitterer, the coins are heavier, the grass is greener, the advertisements are more blatant. The crowds in the big towns, with their mild knobby faces, their bad teeth and gentle manners, are different from a European crowd. Then the vastness of England swallows you up, and you lose for a while your feeling that the whole nation has a single identifiable character. Are there really such things as nations? Are we not forty-six million individuals, all different? And the diversity of it, the chaos! The clatter of clogs in the Lancashire mill towns, the to-and-fro of the lorries on the Great North Road, the queues outside the Labour Exchanges, the rattle of pin-tables in the Soho pubs, the old maids hiking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning � all these are not only fragments, but characteristic fragments, of the English scene. How can one make a pattern out of this muddle?
But talk to foreigners, read foreign books or newspapers, and you are brought back to the same thought. Yes, there is something distinctive and recognizable in English civilization. It is a culture as individual as that of Spain. It is somehow bound up with solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillar-boxes. It has a flavour of its own. Moreover it is continuous, it stretches into the future and the past, there is something in it that persists, as in a living creature. What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person.
And above all, it is your civilization, it is you. However much you hate it or laugh at it, you will never be happy away from it for any length of time. The suet puddings and the red pillar-boxes have entered into your soul. Good or evil, it is yours, you belong to it, and this side the grave you will never get away from the marks that it has given you.
Meanwhile England, together with the rest of the world, is changing. And like everything else it can change only in certain directions, which up to a point can be foreseen. That is not to say that the future is fixed, merely that certain alternatives are possible and others not. A seed may grow or not grow, but at any rate a turnip seed never grows into a parsnip. It is therefore of the deepest importance to try and determine what England is, before guessing what part England can play in the huge events that are happening.''
If only Orwell could have known just how much England would change, and in how short a time. What would he have thought? Of course he foresaw the totalitarian trends which would develop in the years ahead; he was quite prescient in that regard. But I wonder if, as a leftist, he would have envisioned multiculturalism and the 'war against the people' by the Western elites?
Still, if we re-read the passages above, we see that Orwell clearly believed that there was an intrinsic national character, and that it persisted in spite of profound societal changes. He alludes to the changes between 1840 and 1940, and declares, that in spite of those changes, the people are still the same.
He clearly says that the whole nation has 'a single, identifiable character' and he seems to mean that the nation, through time, maintains that character.
He also says something quite important: that the divisions between nations are founded on real differences of outlook; the divisions from one nation to another reflect the innate differences. They are not simply a matter of geopolitical boundaries, or lines arbitrarily drawn on a map. Of course there have been and are 'nations' which are merely artificially-drawn nations, with no unifying genetic or cultural bonds. Iraq comes to mind, and increasingly, our own country -- and the UK. There are unfortunate consequences that follow in creating these unnatural 'nations' which are no nations. We are seeing those consequences playing out in the UK, in our country, and throughout the West.
To return to Orwell's description of the English character:
Here are a couple of generalizations about England that would be accepted by almost all observers. One is that the English are not gifted artistically. They are not as musical as the Germans or Italians, painting and sculpture have never flourished in England as they have in France. Another is that, as Europeans go, the English are not intellectual. They have a horror of abstract thought, they feel no need for any philosophy or systematic 'world-view�. Nor is this because they are 'practical�, as they are so fond of claiming for themselves. [...]
But they have a certain power of acting without taking thought. Their world-famed hypocrisy � their double-faced attitude towards the Empire, for instance � is bound up with this. Also, in moments of supreme crisis the whole nation can suddenly draw together and act upon a species of instinct, really a code of conduct which is understood by almost everyone, though never formulated. The phrase that Hitler coined for the Germans, 'a sleep-walking people�, would have been better applied to the English. Not that there is anything to be proud of in being called a sleep-walker.
But here it is worth noting a minor English trait which is extremely well marked though not often commented on, and that is a love of flowers. This is one of the first things that one notices when one reaches England from abroad, especially if one is coming from southern Europe. Does it not contradict the English indifference to the arts? Not really, because it is found in people who have no aesthetic feelings whatever. What it does link up with, however, is another English characteristic which is so much a part of us that we barely notice it, and that is the addiction to hobbies and spare-time occupations, the privateness of English life. We are a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans. All the culture that is most truly native centres round things which even when they are communal are not official � the pub, the football match, the back garden, the fireside and the 'nice cup of tea�. The liberty of the individual is still believed in, almost as in the nineteenth century. But this has nothing to do with economic liberty, the right to exploit others for profit. It is the liberty to have a home of your own, to do what you like in your spare time, to choose your own amusements instead of having them chosen for you from above. The most hateful of all names in an English ear is Nosey Parker. It is obvious, of course, that even this purely private liberty is a lost cause. Like all other modern people, the English are in process of being numbered, labelled, conscripted, 'co-ordinated�. But the pull of their impulses is in the other direction, and the kind of regimentation that can be imposed on them will be modified in consequence.'' [Emphasis mine]
First, I am struck by the extent to which much of what Orwell says about the English character can also be applied to Americans, most importantly the part about the belief in the liberty of the individual. Too often we here in America like to claim that we invented this love of liberty, or that it sprang full-grown here among our colonists, like Athena from the head of Zeus. No; it is part of our British heritage. And the more weakened our ties to our old colonial heritage, the more we lose that natural aptitude for freedom. I believe the 'melting pot' philosophy watered down our essential strengths and gifts, and the more 'diverse' our country becomes, the greater the distance between us and our founding ancestors. This is no less true in the UK as they dilute their indigenous heritage via mass immigration.
But here, we come to the part in which Orwell notes the essential gentleness of the English, and their natural aversion to martial pursuits:
One can learn a good deal about the spirit of England from the comic coloured postcards that you see in the windows of cheap stationers� shops. These things are a sort of diary upon which the English people have unconsciously recorded themselves. Their old-fashioned outlook, their graded snobberies, their mixture of bawdiness and hypocrisy, their extreme gentleness, their deeply moral attitude to life, are all mirrored there.
The gentleness of the English civilization is perhaps its most marked characteristic. You notice it the instant you set foot on English soil. It is a land where the bus conductors are good-tempered and the policemen carry no revolvers. In no country inhabited by white men is it easier to shove people off the pavement. And with this goes something that is always written off by European observers as 'decadence� or hypocrisy, the English hatred of war and militarism. It is rooted deep in history, and it is strong in the lower-middle class as well as the working class.
[...]
In peace time, even when there are two million unemployed, it is difficult to fill the ranks of the tiny standing army, which is officered by the country gentry and a specialized stratum of the middle class, and manned by farm labourers and slum proletarians. The mass of the people are without military knowledge or tradition, and their attitude towards war is invariably defensive. No politician could rise to power by promising them conquests or military 'glory�, no Hymn of Hate has ever made any appeal to them.''
As we saw in the O'Sullivan article which I blogged on, the gentleness of British society is their vulnerability, with the presence of so many hostile and violent outsiders, who have at best a sullen indifference toward the native British people and at worst, a burning hostility to them. We here in this country are probably made vulnerable by the same traits, although they may be less marked in America, because of our mixed heritage. We, too, are by nature more polite, more hospitable, and too welcoming and trusting for our own good. This is true to some extent of all Western European peoples, but especially so of the English and Anglo-derived peoples in the West. It is said that J.R.R. Tolkien modeled the Hobbits after the English; they were essentially a gentle, stay-at-home, family-and-hearth people.
Here again, Orwell describes the English regard for the law, and the idea of the Rule of Law, which we too have traditionally valued very highly in America:
And yet the gentleness of English civilization is mixed up with barbarities and anachronisms. Our criminal law is as out-of-date as the muskets in the Tower. Over against the Nazi Storm Trooper you have got to set that typically English figure, the hanging judge, some gouty old bully with his mind rooted in the nineteenth century, handing out savage sentences. In England people are still hanged by the neck and flogged with the cat o� nine tails. Both of these punishments are obscene as well as cruel, but there has never been any genuinely popular outcry against them. People accept them (and Dartmoor, and Borstal) almost as they accept the weather. They are part of 'the law�, which is assumed to be unalterable.
[Note - Orwell apparently didn't foresee that the British would abolish capital punishment, thanks to leftism, and become very lenient, too lenient, in their treatment of criminals.]
Here one comes upon an all-important English trait: the respect for constitutionalism and legality, the belief in 'the law� as something above the State and above the individual, something which is cruel and stupid, of course, but at any rate incorruptible.
It is not that anyone imagines the law to be just. Everyone knows that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. But no one accepts the implications of this, everyone takes it for granted that the law, such as it is, will be respected, and feels a sense of outrage when it is not. Remarks like 'They can't run me in; I haven't done anything wrong�, or 'They can't do that; it's against the law�, are part of the atmosphere of England. The professed enemies of society have this feeling as strongly as anyone else.
[...]
Everyone believes in his heart that the law can be, ought to be, and, on the whole, will be impartially administered. The totalitarian idea that there is no such thing as law, there is only power, has never taken root. Even the intelligentsia have only accepted it in theory.
[...]
In England such concepts as justice, liberty and objective truth are still believed in. They may be illusions, but they are very powerful illusions.''
I wonder to what extent that last is still true in Britain? Leftism and post-modernism, as taught by the left-controlled media and government, have seemingly weakened such beliefs. And here in America, the same is true, although I think we are a few steps behind the British on that path. We would do well to reverse our course before we reach the point where our British cousins seem to be.
Orwell talks about the sense of national unity, which seems to be very precarious in the UK at this time, with so many nationalities and races, each with their own 'communities' and allegiances, and with the indigenous British people so weakened in their national identity due to leftism and its anti-nationalistic jihad.
Up to a point, the sense of national unity is a substitute for a 'world-view�. Just because patriotism is all but universal and not even the rich are uninfluenced by it, there can be moments when the whole nation suddenly swings together and does the same thing, like a herd of cattle facing a wolf. There was such a moment, unmistakably, at the time of the disaster in France. After eight months of vaguely wondering what the war was about, the people suddenly knew what they had got to do: first, to get the army away from Dunkirk, and secondly to prevent invasion. It was like the awakening of a giant. Quick! Danger! The Philistines be upon thee, Samson! And then the swift unanimous action � and, then, alas, the prompt relapse into sleep. In a divided nation that would have been exactly the moment for a big peace movement to arise. But does this mean that the instinct of the English will always tell them to do the right thing? Not at all, merely that it will tell them to do the same thing. In the 1931 General Election, for instance, we all did the wrong thing in perfect unison. We were as single-minded as the Gadarene swine. But I honestly doubt whether we can say that we were shoved down the slope against our will.''
The sense of unity, the oneness in spirit and in national character, is what enabled Britain during the War to pull together and to survive. Without that sense of national unity, survival is doubtful.
One more little trivial note: Orwell, in that last passage, makes a couple of Biblical allusions: the reference to the Philistines and Samson, and the reference to the Gadarene swine. Do any leftists of today recognize such allusions, and would any leftist dare to refer to the Bible today, other than those leftists wearing backwards collars? I doubt it. And even among the general population, how many British people would recognize those Biblical references or names, or know the symbolism inherent therein? Precious few, and I am afraid that even in a more 'religious' country like America, not many are Biblically literate enough to get the allusions. My point is not just to lament that we in America are not the Biblically-conversant country we once were, or that Britain has lost its religion (though both are cause for lament) but also that we no longer have a common grounding in Western culture; we no longer have these common reference points and cultural bonds which enabled us to speak in shorthand amongst ourselves. We can no longer make such an allusion, whether Biblical or from the old classics, or from Shakespeare, and trust that our readers or hearers will understand. To that extent, we are weaker and less connected. Such is the fruit of multiculturalism. It eats away at the cultural connections and bonds.
But Orwell, later in the essay, concludes that
England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare's much-quoted message, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons. It has rich relations who have to be kow-towed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon, and there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income. It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts. Still, it is a family. It has its private language and its common memories, and at the approach of an enemy it closes its ranks. A family with the wrong members in control � that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.''
I've often used the family as the analogy for our American nation; at first, we were truly a kin group, a nation in the original sense, and later our family circle expanded to welcome in those who became ours by adoption. Now, the family analogy is being stretched to the breaking point. If the family's would-be new members are simply there to exploit and to plunder, and have no wish to join the family circle and conform to the family and its ways, then there is no more family; it's everybody for himself.
And I have no doubt that to use Orwell's analogy, the British family, or what still remains of it, has the wrong members in control -- as do we in America.
Will Britain recover this natural character of which Orwell writes, or will the corrosive influences, in John O'Sullivan's parlance, have destroyed the essential character and the strengths of the British family?
We will see, because it appears that Britain is being tested by very difficult circumstances, just as we are.
And as cousins, we and the British should try to restore the lost connections between us, so as to offer help and support, if only moral support, to each other -- as 'the Philistines are upon us' both.
Labels: American Identity, British Culture, Nationalism, Nationality, Patriotism, United Kingdom
0 comment Wednesday, August 13, 2014 | admin
Social acid has burnt the heart of Britain
by John O'Sullivan, The Daily Telegraph
...In 1955, the anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer described this tranquillity in his book Exploring English Character: "When we think of our faults, we put first, and by a long way, any lapse from our standards of non-aggression, bad temper, nagging, swearing and the like. Public life is more gentle than that reported for any society of comparable size and industrial complexity."
O'Sullivan's article begins with mention of the Rhys Jones murder, in which a young boy was killed by a drive-by shooter. He describes the various factors, the 'social acids' which have corroded the once-tranquil British society and turned it into a multicultural, atomized, violent society.
The first such acid was the cultural liberalism generally associated with the 1960s: the attempt to free people from irksome traditional moral customs and the laws that reflected them.
Anthony Jay has recently described how the "media liberalism" of the BBC - an institution founded in part to promote social virtues and British institutions - increasingly undermined them all: from military valour to the monarchy.
[...]
Combined with a welfare state that picked up the tab, however, cultural liberalism promoted social irresponsibility - more voluntary workless, more divorces, children with fewer opportunities because they live in homes without two parents, a growing underclass, a society that is cruder, more disordered, less gentle.
Less neighbourly, too, because of the second social acid: the ethnic and religious diversity introduced by mass immigration.
You may be surprised to learn that "diversity", which is usually discussed as an undeniable social good, has any drawbacks. But Robert Puttnam, an American social scientist, has established from a major survey (and to his own distress) that ethnic diversity makes people less trustful of each other.''
O'Sullivan mentions that immigration and 'diversity' need not be a corrosive to society provided there is a strong national identity and an impetus to assimilate immigrants. He notes, rather optimistically, in my opinion, that America possesses both these things, and this has insulated America from the worst effects of multiculturalism. He notes that the British government, by contrast, promoted the atomization of British society:
Instead government promoted the third acid: a "multiculturalism" that encourages minorities to retain their culture and identity. Thus, our rulers set out, eager and well-intentioned, to maximise the differences and therefore the tensions inherent in diversity.
[...]
The result is a fractured, distrustful and disorderly society. And because a diverse society lacks agreed values and standards, governments regulate the behaviour of all, including the law-abiding, to maintain social peace.
Thus, we have far more officials supervising us than in the 1950s, but they are anti-smoking social workers and ethnic diversity officers rather than park wardens.
The police have become little more than the paramilitary wing of The Guardian, sniffing out "racist" or "Islamophobic" attitudes rather than investigating serious crimes that have some "cultural" excuse. Society gradually becomes more governed and less self-governing.''
O'Sullivan notes that the Victorians managed to reclaim Britain from the rather degraded country it had become by the mid-19th century, and he calls for leaders 'in the Victorian mold' to help rescue Britain from its current distress.
Like O'Sullivan, I wish Britain's restoration, and it would be a Godsend for that country to again have the kind of stern, principled leaders who dominated in the Victorian era. However, hoping that the Victorian social reclamation project is repeatable now is rather a forlorn hope. What impelled the Victorian reform movement was, at least in part, a Christian revival, and the growth of 'muscular Christianity'.
Another factor which facilitated the reform of British society was the fact of its homogeneity, and a strong national identity.
None of these factors obtain in the UK now; on the contrary, few in Britain are active Christian believers. It's said that more people attend mosques in Britain nowadays than attend church; considering that most indigenous British people are unchurched, this seems plausible. And nowadays, with a Babelized population hailing from the four corners of the globe, and with the mutual distrust and outright hostility inherent in a mismatched population, there is not likely to be much to act as a social and cultural bond among the disparate peoples who inhabit the UK now.
Britain's leadership seems pathetically lacking now, and this is also a factor which militates against the healing of the nation. The two major parties, Labour and the Tories, seem as useless and corrupted as our two parties, and like our two major parties, both represent the same failed policies which have put the UK in this predicament. Both support mass immigration, multiculturalism, the oppressive European Union, and the eradication of the historic British identity -- whether they explicitly say so or not.
Just reading recent headlines, such as the spectacle of 'Red Ken' Livingstone, the mayor of London, crying and grovelling for forgiveness over slavery, and the new statue of Nelson Mandela (!) in London illustrates the sad state of leadership in the UK.
However, lest anybody think I am gloating about the state of the UK, I am not; I don't think we in America are in much better shape. We have leaders who are scarcely better, if at all, than those in the UK. And we, too, are being multiculturalized without the consent of the governed. And it positively infuriates me to hear many of the loudmouth neocon Americans gloating about the fate of European countries, including the UK. As someone else once said, if we disown our own British parentage, we are making ourselves bastard children -- but we are still children of Britain nonetheless, culturally if not genetically. And it's unseemly to gloat over the decline and the troubles of our own mother.
I would like to see Britain recover her identity and her pride and strength; it is sad to see such a great country, once the world's greatest empire, in such dire straits. I think it will take some sort of spiritual revitalization, a rejuvenation of the character of that country, in order for the needed change to come about. And I doubt whether such a revitalization can happen in any divided and fragmented country. National character is something that each group develops in their own territory; it cannot be created or sustained in a checkerboard country where everybody is different from the neighbor next door.
In the comments section following the article is this comment by 'Guessedworker':
Good article. But you can't just rebuild "a united democratic nation that governs itself with decency". In England that was the beautiful outcome of centuries of organic social expression of a single ethny. Putnam, whom you rightly mention, John, was only telling us what we already know: social pathologies attend the destruction of ethnic homogeneity.
There is one other important factor here, however, which you overlooked. All peoples that have been invaded and lose their living space also lose their cultural hegemony. The has huge implications for the social health of the natives, most visible in the chronic moral collapses that occurred with American Indians and Australian Aborigines in the 19th Century. Our society is not immune from this slippery slope.
There is a possibility of reprieve, but it is literally revolutionary - too hard for most Englishmen to imagine yet. We are not sufficiently aware. But we will be. Great peoples do not simply die without so much as a whimper.
Posted by Guessedworker on August 26, 2007 8:44 AM
I very much agree with those words, and they are apposite for us in America too.
by John O'Sullivan, The Daily Telegraph
...In 1955, the anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer described this tranquillity in his book Exploring English Character: "When we think of our faults, we put first, and by a long way, any lapse from our standards of non-aggression, bad temper, nagging, swearing and the like. Public life is more gentle than that reported for any society of comparable size and industrial complexity."
O'Sullivan's article begins with mention of the Rhys Jones murder, in which a young boy was killed by a drive-by shooter. He describes the various factors, the 'social acids' which have corroded the once-tranquil British society and turned it into a multicultural, atomized, violent society.
The first such acid was the cultural liberalism generally associated with the 1960s: the attempt to free people from irksome traditional moral customs and the laws that reflected them.
Anthony Jay has recently described how the "media liberalism" of the BBC - an institution founded in part to promote social virtues and British institutions - increasingly undermined them all: from military valour to the monarchy.
[...]
Combined with a welfare state that picked up the tab, however, cultural liberalism promoted social irresponsibility - more voluntary workless, more divorces, children with fewer opportunities because they live in homes without two parents, a growing underclass, a society that is cruder, more disordered, less gentle.
Less neighbourly, too, because of the second social acid: the ethnic and religious diversity introduced by mass immigration.
You may be surprised to learn that "diversity", which is usually discussed as an undeniable social good, has any drawbacks. But Robert Puttnam, an American social scientist, has established from a major survey (and to his own distress) that ethnic diversity makes people less trustful of each other.''
O'Sullivan mentions that immigration and 'diversity' need not be a corrosive to society provided there is a strong national identity and an impetus to assimilate immigrants. He notes, rather optimistically, in my opinion, that America possesses both these things, and this has insulated America from the worst effects of multiculturalism. He notes that the British government, by contrast, promoted the atomization of British society:
Instead government promoted the third acid: a "multiculturalism" that encourages minorities to retain their culture and identity. Thus, our rulers set out, eager and well-intentioned, to maximise the differences and therefore the tensions inherent in diversity.
[...]
The result is a fractured, distrustful and disorderly society. And because a diverse society lacks agreed values and standards, governments regulate the behaviour of all, including the law-abiding, to maintain social peace.
Thus, we have far more officials supervising us than in the 1950s, but they are anti-smoking social workers and ethnic diversity officers rather than park wardens.
The police have become little more than the paramilitary wing of The Guardian, sniffing out "racist" or "Islamophobic" attitudes rather than investigating serious crimes that have some "cultural" excuse. Society gradually becomes more governed and less self-governing.''
O'Sullivan notes that the Victorians managed to reclaim Britain from the rather degraded country it had become by the mid-19th century, and he calls for leaders 'in the Victorian mold' to help rescue Britain from its current distress.
Like O'Sullivan, I wish Britain's restoration, and it would be a Godsend for that country to again have the kind of stern, principled leaders who dominated in the Victorian era. However, hoping that the Victorian social reclamation project is repeatable now is rather a forlorn hope. What impelled the Victorian reform movement was, at least in part, a Christian revival, and the growth of 'muscular Christianity'.
Another factor which facilitated the reform of British society was the fact of its homogeneity, and a strong national identity.
None of these factors obtain in the UK now; on the contrary, few in Britain are active Christian believers. It's said that more people attend mosques in Britain nowadays than attend church; considering that most indigenous British people are unchurched, this seems plausible. And nowadays, with a Babelized population hailing from the four corners of the globe, and with the mutual distrust and outright hostility inherent in a mismatched population, there is not likely to be much to act as a social and cultural bond among the disparate peoples who inhabit the UK now.
Britain's leadership seems pathetically lacking now, and this is also a factor which militates against the healing of the nation. The two major parties, Labour and the Tories, seem as useless and corrupted as our two parties, and like our two major parties, both represent the same failed policies which have put the UK in this predicament. Both support mass immigration, multiculturalism, the oppressive European Union, and the eradication of the historic British identity -- whether they explicitly say so or not.
Just reading recent headlines, such as the spectacle of 'Red Ken' Livingstone, the mayor of London, crying and grovelling for forgiveness over slavery, and the new statue of Nelson Mandela (!) in London illustrates the sad state of leadership in the UK.
However, lest anybody think I am gloating about the state of the UK, I am not; I don't think we in America are in much better shape. We have leaders who are scarcely better, if at all, than those in the UK. And we, too, are being multiculturalized without the consent of the governed. And it positively infuriates me to hear many of the loudmouth neocon Americans gloating about the fate of European countries, including the UK. As someone else once said, if we disown our own British parentage, we are making ourselves bastard children -- but we are still children of Britain nonetheless, culturally if not genetically. And it's unseemly to gloat over the decline and the troubles of our own mother.
I would like to see Britain recover her identity and her pride and strength; it is sad to see such a great country, once the world's greatest empire, in such dire straits. I think it will take some sort of spiritual revitalization, a rejuvenation of the character of that country, in order for the needed change to come about. And I doubt whether such a revitalization can happen in any divided and fragmented country. National character is something that each group develops in their own territory; it cannot be created or sustained in a checkerboard country where everybody is different from the neighbor next door.
In the comments section following the article is this comment by 'Guessedworker':
Good article. But you can't just rebuild "a united democratic nation that governs itself with decency". In England that was the beautiful outcome of centuries of organic social expression of a single ethny. Putnam, whom you rightly mention, John, was only telling us what we already know: social pathologies attend the destruction of ethnic homogeneity.
There is one other important factor here, however, which you overlooked. All peoples that have been invaded and lose their living space also lose their cultural hegemony. The has huge implications for the social health of the natives, most visible in the chronic moral collapses that occurred with American Indians and Australian Aborigines in the 19th Century. Our society is not immune from this slippery slope.
There is a possibility of reprieve, but it is literally revolutionary - too hard for most Englishmen to imagine yet. We are not sufficiently aware. But we will be. Great peoples do not simply die without so much as a whimper.
Posted by Guessedworker on August 26, 2007 8:44 AM
I very much agree with those words, and they are apposite for us in America too.
Labels: British Culture, Diversity, Multiculturalism, Societal Decay, United Kingdom
0 comment Friday, June 13, 2014 | admin
Our heritage up for sale:
Only copy of Magna Carta in private hands to be sold in New York
by Arifa Akbar
The Magna Carta, which set out the most basic principles of English law, is recognised as one of the most important documents in existence. So rare are the surviving 17 versions of the manuscript, drawn up by King John in 1215, that all but two reside in Britain's most hallowed institutions, including the British Library and Salisbury Cathedral.
But yesterday, in an extraordinary announcement, Sotheby's revealed that the only copy of the Magna Carta in the world to remain in private hands will be auctioned in New York this December. It dates from 1297 � the year the final versions of the charter were ratified � and it is likely to be the only version ever to be sold.
As one of only two versions outside England � the other belongs to Australia � the sale, which even by conservative estimates is expected to fetch �15m, has been hailed as momentous. David Redden, vice-chairman of Sotheby's, said that, as "the most important charter in the world", it had become a worldwide phenomenon. "The document symbolises mankind's eternal quest for freedom," he said. "It is a vessel for everyone's hopes and fears; it tells us how the concept of freedom in law began. If we go back to find the seed from which it all comes back to, the Magna Carta has had a huge impact which resonates today."
There is something sad about the sale of so symbolic an article, to those of us in the Anglosphere. I hope that it will go to some reputable organization or group who will preserve it and keep it against the day when all of our heritage may be destroyed or effaced. It's happening. Those who could never in a million years have created our civilization are now having their revenge by seeking to rewrite history and obliterate that which can't be spun to favor themselves.
...Claire Breay, head of medieval and earlier manuscripts at the British Library, said it was of great national and international importance. "Its significance was international because of the impact it had in other countries, and it has echoes in the American Bill of Rights as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That's why it still gets cited by lawyers and quoted by politicians," she said.
I am sorry, but Ms Breay is wrong to suggest that it means as much to some third-worlder as it does to us in the Anglosphere. For us, it is a visible, tangible token of the greatness of our ancestors and of their ideas, the like of which the rest of the world has never been able to approach.
As for likening it to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is very different in spirit, although liberal scholars claim that the U.N. document is merely a logical next step in the evolution of 'freedom' and 'rights.'
Jeane Kirkpatrick may have been accurate in calling the United Nations' document as a 'letter to Santa Claus.'
But in our age, the ideas of the past are being pressed into service to justify today's radical left ideas such as multiculturalism, and the universal 'right to immigrate' which is found in the U.N. declaration.
' Article 14. (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.'
And ironically, the Runnymede Trust, named for the site of the signing of the Magna Carta, seems to be a leftist/globalist/multiculturalist organization.
The Runnymede Trust is an independent policy research organisation focusing on equality and justice through the promotion of a successful multi-ethnic society. Founded as a Charitable Educational Trust, Runnymede has a long track record in policy research, working in close collaboration with eminent thinkers and policy makers in the public, private and voluntary sectors. We believe that the way ahead lies in building effective partnerships, and we are continually developing these with the voluntary sector, the government, local authorities and companies in the UK and Europe. We stimulate debate and suggest forward-looking strategies in areas of public policy such as education, the criminal justice system, employment and citizenship justice system, employment and citizenship.''
Since 1968, the date of Runnymede's foundation, we have worked to establish and maintain a positive image of what it means to live affirmatively within a society that is both multi-ethnic and culturally diverse. Runnymede continues to speak with a thoughtful and independent public voice on these issues today.
How sad. What would the Magna Carta barons or King John think of what is being done to their country today?
Labels: Anglosphere, British Culture, History, Western Civilization