0 comment Monday, November 3, 2014 | admin
This was posted over at Western Voices World News.
I agree with the WVWN folks that the man in the video is brave and that he conducts himself very well, considering. All the same, it is a vexing thing to watch and to listen to. I don't know what TV program this is, but it seems to be on a par with 'Jerry Springer' (same type of audience and atmosphere) and the female hosting it is obnoxious and flagrantly biased -- which is usual for TV here and in the UK. The fact, though, that this one lone Englishman is having to stand his ground against an audience stacked with hooting and jeering ''Britons'' from various corners of the Third World hardly constitutes any kind of fair discussion. The few Whites in the audience (if indeed they were White) were acting as outraged by what the man said as the minorities were, with all their gesticulating, pointing (bad manners; hasn't anyone told them that?) and eye-rolling.
In fact, they actually made some of his points for him, but the brainwashed ex-Whites in the audience and their ''new Briton'' companions won't be able to see that.
However, I give the English guy enormous credit for speaking his mind amongst a hostile mob, and seeming to do so very calmly.
For the rest, shame on them. They don't know, or probably care, how badly they came off in that clip.
I agree with the WVWN folks that the man in the video is brave and that he conducts himself very well, considering. All the same, it is a vexing thing to watch and to listen to. I don't know what TV program this is, but it seems to be on a par with 'Jerry Springer' (same type of audience and atmosphere) and the female hosting it is obnoxious and flagrantly biased -- which is usual for TV here and in the UK. The fact, though, that this one lone Englishman is having to stand his ground against an audience stacked with hooting and jeering ''Britons'' from various corners of the Third World hardly constitutes any kind of fair discussion. The few Whites in the audience (if indeed they were White) were acting as outraged by what the man said as the minorities were, with all their gesticulating, pointing (bad manners; hasn't anyone told them that?) and eye-rolling.
In fact, they actually made some of his points for him, but the brainwashed ex-Whites in the audience and their ''new Briton'' companions won't be able to see that.
However, I give the English guy enormous credit for speaking his mind amongst a hostile mob, and seeming to do so very calmly.
For the rest, shame on them. They don't know, or probably care, how badly they came off in that clip.
Labels: Death Of The West, Mass Immigration, Multiculturalism, Race Renegades, Racial Division, United Kingdom
0 comment Thursday, October 30, 2014 | admin
This response from Dr. Frank Ellis, answering David Cameron's speech at the Munich Security Conference, has been making the rounds, and has provoked a lot of discussion and much approbation.
I first saw it at Sarah, Maid of Albion's blog but it has been posted in many places. It's very incisive, very well-written, and he makes points that very much need to be made.
I am doubtful about how much 'mainstream' coverage Ellis will receive from this, though if we had an honest and objective, or even a non-hostile media, it would be widely covered.
This is very apposite right now:
In all the discussions about rising food prices, metals, access to water and productive farm land no one wishes to identify the real problem: specifically the reckless and unsustainable breeding of Third World Populations either in the Third World itself or in the Third World estates that Third-Worlders have been allowed to create in the First World.
You cite what has happened on the streets of Tunis and Cairo as an example of the compatibility of Western values and Islam: 'hundreds of thousands of people demanding the universal right to free elections and democracy�. Middle-class, English-speaking protesters might well press the right buttons when interviewed by some BBC reporter but the underlying problem of Arab states and Sub-Saharan Africa is massive, out-of-control and unsustainable population growth. This is the Malthusian nightmare writ large and it is being played out all over the Third World. Egypt�s unemployed will remain unemployed (many of them are unemployable in any case). Hunger and hopelessness will gnaw at them. The results are predictable. Democracy and civil society are preposterous and irrelevant abstractions outside of Western Europe and will not feed people, certainly not in Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa. Where populations spiral out of control, as they are doing in so many parts of the world, violence, exacerbated by religious/ideological fanaticism, is inevitable.''
But the most important part, to my mind, is his answer to Cameron's nonsense about multiculturalism and assimilation. Ellis says:
''Concerning multiculturalism in the United Kingdom you state the following:
Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream. We�ve failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong. We�ve even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values.
For the avoidance of any doubt your repeated exculpatory use of "we" does not include me and, I suspect, millions of other Britons. Your use of 'we� refers to the last Labour government and the xenophiles who sought to impose the anti-white racist cult of multiculturalism on the indigenous population. It is emphatically not the responsibility of the indigenous population 'to provide a vision of a society to which they [immigrants] feel they want to belong�. If, according to you, the 'we� failed to provide this vision, then why did millions of Islamic immigrants join the first wave who could not find this 'vision�? If they have no 'vision of society to which they feel they want to belong� why do they stay? Why not go home to Somalia, Waziristan and Sub-Saharan Africa? That these millions of immigrants have no 'vision of society to which they feel they want to belong� yet still stay in the Christian-infidel-infested wasteland of Britain suggests to me that their continued presence in Britain has everything to do with the fantastically generous welfare provision they receive (all the wives included) and absolutely nothing at all to do with any lack of 'vision of society�.
You have been reported as saying that multiculturalism has failed. I see no clear statement of that in your speech at all. In fact, you claim that it is the indigenous population that has driven Muslims into their parallel societies. That you are still advocating some form of the cult is clear when you argue that 'instead of encouraging people to live apart, we need a clear sense of shared national identity that is open to everyone�. National identity by its very nature is exclusive, partial and narrow. A national identity that is 'open to everyone� is not a national identity. National identity is determined by a combination of genetic, racial, cultural, psychological, geographical, linguistic and mental factors, tempered by the blows of history, by shared suffering in war and peace, by humiliation and glory, by the memory of those gone before. How can my English national identity be open to everyone? The answer is that it cannot. National identity that is open to everyone ceases to be a national identity; national identity that is open to everyone is just another way of promoting multiculturalism without using the m-word. In other words, it is a deceit, a ploy to disarm the critics of multiculturalism who have instinctively and rationally apprehended the cult�s national-identity-hating agenda all along. As an Englishman who still values his national identity I have no desire at all to share it with others.''
Bravo.
He obviously perceives the dishonesty and the hypocrisy in the blather by Cameron. Not only Cameron, but all the other Western 'leaders' recite the ritual disavowals of multiculturalism, knowing full well that they plan to continue to push that fraudulent ideology on their subjects despite their pretenses at being concerned about their own people, and about the grave problems of multiculturalism.
Despite the transparency of Cameron's attempt to delude his listeners, there are, believe it or not, still people all over the Internet cheering Cameron's supposed conversion. What has happened to people's attention spans that they no longer remember that these empty statements about multiculturalism are now a regular event? They say the words, these ''leaders'' and yet things don't change. Mass immigration goes on unchecked, and the 'hate speech' laws persist, and dispossession proceeds apace. Shouldn't a few people, besides Dr. Ellis, begin to perceive the obvious? The obvious fact is that Western political leaders are not serving their own people, and are in fact serving alien interests, or those of unseen 'elites' who pull their strings.
In any case, Ellis is right on target with this response.
I have noticed that commenters here and there keep saying Ellis is wasting his time because Cameron et al will not listen. It's likely true that none of the political leaders will heed what Ellis says, given that they serve other masters. But the value of Ellis's words are that they are, as in open letters generally, meant to convey a message, or set an example, or to inspire a wider audience. It may be that Ellis is seeking to energize others, to exhort them and perhaps give them courage to speak out or otherwise assert themselves. He may want to encourage more discussion of the dire situation in his country. Those are all reasons that may be motivating him. And I think those motivations are in a sense more worthy than trying to awaken some sense of conscience among the elected officials, which I think is mostly a lost cause. So I hope this statement by Ellis continues to be read and discussed, and that it has a snowball effect. Sooner or later, something has to get through to the somnambulists in our Western countries.
I first saw it at Sarah, Maid of Albion's blog but it has been posted in many places. It's very incisive, very well-written, and he makes points that very much need to be made.
I am doubtful about how much 'mainstream' coverage Ellis will receive from this, though if we had an honest and objective, or even a non-hostile media, it would be widely covered.
This is very apposite right now:
In all the discussions about rising food prices, metals, access to water and productive farm land no one wishes to identify the real problem: specifically the reckless and unsustainable breeding of Third World Populations either in the Third World itself or in the Third World estates that Third-Worlders have been allowed to create in the First World.
You cite what has happened on the streets of Tunis and Cairo as an example of the compatibility of Western values and Islam: 'hundreds of thousands of people demanding the universal right to free elections and democracy�. Middle-class, English-speaking protesters might well press the right buttons when interviewed by some BBC reporter but the underlying problem of Arab states and Sub-Saharan Africa is massive, out-of-control and unsustainable population growth. This is the Malthusian nightmare writ large and it is being played out all over the Third World. Egypt�s unemployed will remain unemployed (many of them are unemployable in any case). Hunger and hopelessness will gnaw at them. The results are predictable. Democracy and civil society are preposterous and irrelevant abstractions outside of Western Europe and will not feed people, certainly not in Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa. Where populations spiral out of control, as they are doing in so many parts of the world, violence, exacerbated by religious/ideological fanaticism, is inevitable.''
But the most important part, to my mind, is his answer to Cameron's nonsense about multiculturalism and assimilation. Ellis says:
''Concerning multiculturalism in the United Kingdom you state the following:
Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream. We�ve failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong. We�ve even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values.
For the avoidance of any doubt your repeated exculpatory use of "we" does not include me and, I suspect, millions of other Britons. Your use of 'we� refers to the last Labour government and the xenophiles who sought to impose the anti-white racist cult of multiculturalism on the indigenous population. It is emphatically not the responsibility of the indigenous population 'to provide a vision of a society to which they [immigrants] feel they want to belong�. If, according to you, the 'we� failed to provide this vision, then why did millions of Islamic immigrants join the first wave who could not find this 'vision�? If they have no 'vision of society to which they feel they want to belong� why do they stay? Why not go home to Somalia, Waziristan and Sub-Saharan Africa? That these millions of immigrants have no 'vision of society to which they feel they want to belong� yet still stay in the Christian-infidel-infested wasteland of Britain suggests to me that their continued presence in Britain has everything to do with the fantastically generous welfare provision they receive (all the wives included) and absolutely nothing at all to do with any lack of 'vision of society�.
You have been reported as saying that multiculturalism has failed. I see no clear statement of that in your speech at all. In fact, you claim that it is the indigenous population that has driven Muslims into their parallel societies. That you are still advocating some form of the cult is clear when you argue that 'instead of encouraging people to live apart, we need a clear sense of shared national identity that is open to everyone�. National identity by its very nature is exclusive, partial and narrow. A national identity that is 'open to everyone� is not a national identity. National identity is determined by a combination of genetic, racial, cultural, psychological, geographical, linguistic and mental factors, tempered by the blows of history, by shared suffering in war and peace, by humiliation and glory, by the memory of those gone before. How can my English national identity be open to everyone? The answer is that it cannot. National identity that is open to everyone ceases to be a national identity; national identity that is open to everyone is just another way of promoting multiculturalism without using the m-word. In other words, it is a deceit, a ploy to disarm the critics of multiculturalism who have instinctively and rationally apprehended the cult�s national-identity-hating agenda all along. As an Englishman who still values his national identity I have no desire at all to share it with others.''
Bravo.
He obviously perceives the dishonesty and the hypocrisy in the blather by Cameron. Not only Cameron, but all the other Western 'leaders' recite the ritual disavowals of multiculturalism, knowing full well that they plan to continue to push that fraudulent ideology on their subjects despite their pretenses at being concerned about their own people, and about the grave problems of multiculturalism.
Despite the transparency of Cameron's attempt to delude his listeners, there are, believe it or not, still people all over the Internet cheering Cameron's supposed conversion. What has happened to people's attention spans that they no longer remember that these empty statements about multiculturalism are now a regular event? They say the words, these ''leaders'' and yet things don't change. Mass immigration goes on unchecked, and the 'hate speech' laws persist, and dispossession proceeds apace. Shouldn't a few people, besides Dr. Ellis, begin to perceive the obvious? The obvious fact is that Western political leaders are not serving their own people, and are in fact serving alien interests, or those of unseen 'elites' who pull their strings.
In any case, Ellis is right on target with this response.
I have noticed that commenters here and there keep saying Ellis is wasting his time because Cameron et al will not listen. It's likely true that none of the political leaders will heed what Ellis says, given that they serve other masters. But the value of Ellis's words are that they are, as in open letters generally, meant to convey a message, or set an example, or to inspire a wider audience. It may be that Ellis is seeking to energize others, to exhort them and perhaps give them courage to speak out or otherwise assert themselves. He may want to encourage more discussion of the dire situation in his country. Those are all reasons that may be motivating him. And I think those motivations are in a sense more worthy than trying to awaken some sense of conscience among the elected officials, which I think is mostly a lost cause. So I hope this statement by Ellis continues to be read and discussed, and that it has a snowball effect. Sooner or later, something has to get through to the somnambulists in our Western countries.
Labels: Cultural Marxism, Ethnonationalism, Mass Immigration, Multicult, United Kingdom
0 comment Sunday, September 7, 2014 | admin
For once, an encouraging story out of the UK. The people of one town are defending their own community as their leftist, PC authorities fail to do so.
In a landmark action to stop the blight that has hit so many communities, residents of a housing estate that now occupies the former RAF Locking have barricaded themselves into the 100-acre site and mounted a 24-hour guard. Every car coming in or out of the estate near Weston-super-Mare was checked.
Anyone lingering outside the perimeter fence was stopped and politely questioned. At random intervals, the unlikely figure of an elderly man in a high-visibility jacket patrolled the grounds in a four-wheel-drive vehicle, checking for breaches of security.
To anyone who has never experienced a traveller invasion, all this may seem a little over the top.
But last weekend, after 15 or 20 caravans were evicted from a nearby field, some of the 'gipsies� drove around the Locking site and took photographs.
One of them let it be known they had targeted the privately-owned estate and intended to set up camp on some of the open, grassy landscape where children play and people walk their dogs. He reportedly warned residents not to resist, adding: 'We�ve got guns.�''
As in this country and all Western countries, seemingly, the authorities side with the 'Others' and privilege them over the citizenry, refusing to carry out their primary duty to protect the townspeople. The 'Others', in this case Roma gypsies, have learned to work the system and claim their 'human rights' to camp where they please:
The local council � which has a legal duty anyway to provide formal sites for travellers � said it could not intervene at this stage.
That left only one option � people power. And so, the estate�s residents banded together to man the barricades and put RAF Locking back on active service again.''
A recent news story related how the Roma gypsies were given priority in health care services in the UK.
At least half of all Gypsies and Travellers in Britain are Romany in origin and are officially placed above indigenous British people in a range of National Health Services, according to an official guideline.
The shocking anti-British document emerged in the wake of anti-Gypsy violence in Belfast following months of criminal activity by the Romanian Gypsy community which drove local people to the breaking point.
The NHS Primary Care Service Framework: Gypsy and Traveller Communities document, a copy of which can be downloaded by clicking here, states that many of these "Roma Communities" are recent arrivals, and "possibly comprise half of all Gypsies and Travellers" in England.
According to the NHS, there are up to 300,000 Gypsies and Travellers in Britain in total, which means that there are possibly 150,000 Romany Gypsies living here.''
It seems the UN Refugee Agency has been meddling on behalf of the Roma who are considered a homeless people. And as a 'victim group' par excellence, they are now among the privileged groups whose 'rights' are placed above those of the rightful people of the host countries where they decide to settle. The UN's 'Human Rights' policies ensure this. One more reason why the UN is an organization that is disastrous for the people of Western countries.
With a biased and complicit media, who consistently write sob stories about the ''plight'' of these ''persecuted'' ones, nobody seems to take much notice of the rights of the people who are unwilling hosts to the gypsies.
The biased, leftist media are full of propaganda intended to provoke sympathy for the gypsies, and to vilify the peoples of Europe for objecting to the presence of gypsies in their midst.
There is considerable confusion about the origin of the Roma, perhaps caused by their name, 'Roma', and the traditional designation of them in Britain as 'Romany gypsies', when in fact they are not from Romania or Romany, but believed to have originated in the Indian subcontinent. Still, many of the news stories have them described as 'Romanian' or in some cases, as 'Albanian', if that is the country from which they arrive in the UK.
Why does their presence often precipitate conflict or trouble? The typical media story would have you believe it is 'prejudice' and 'racism' and (as always) 'hate'. However, if you juxtapose two or more unrelated and very disparate groups of people in the same space, there will be conflict -- especially when the 'outsider' group is prone to antisocial acts as a way of life.
Inevitably, the bleeding-heart champions of the downtrodden always deny that there is any basis in the popular stereotypes of gypsies as dishonest and troublesome. To believe this, however, requires dismissing generations of people in just about every Western country who report having had trouble as a result of an influx of Roma.
In the UK these people are euphemistically called 'travelers' in some cases. In Ireland there are also native Irish 'travelers' who live a similarly itinerant lifestyle, though they are not related by blood to the gypsies. Roma or gypsies are an identifiable people, with a distinct appearance, while Irish travelers (some of whom immigrated to America and settled in the Southeast) look Irish.
I've had some experience with Roma gypsies in various parts of the U.S., specifically in urban areas, and in general it seems they choose to live outside our society and to obtain their living by some kind of confidence game or other pursuits such as car 'dealing' or fortune-telling.
I understand that some gypsies send their children to schools now, though in the past, they did not educate their children, and the adults were generally illiterate. In several instances, I was pressed into service to read or explain some written material for Roma women who could not read or write. Still, somehow they manage to handle money despite being illiterate. Perhaps there is more of an effort to integrate them now, though I think they are an unassimilable people.
In a way, they illustrate the problems of multiculturalism and lax immigration policies. They seem to be a disruptive presence wherever they go, and yet political correctness places them off limits for criticism. They can do no wrong, officially, because they are a persecuted group, and the fact that just about every country has found them to be a problem is blamed on widespread 'racism'. The politically correct must convince themselves that the gypsies are always victims, and never catalysts or causes for the conflict that follows wherever they go. It must take some mental contortions to believe that. Common sense would indicate that the fact that they have been chased out of so many countries tells us something about their character. It stretches credulity to believe that they have been so universally unwelcome, through no fault of their own. If someone is, say, fired from every job they've had, or evicted from everyplace they've lived, would you believe all their employers and landlords were 'prejudiced' or that the 'victim' may in fact have been the cause of his own misfortunes?
And before somebody says it: yes, there are always exceptions to every rule -- but the exceptions are just that. That exceptions exist does not invalidate the rule, or disprove it.
There may be some well-behaved, law-abiding Roma people here and there, but if so they are renegades who've cut ties with their people.
Political correctness has decreed that there is no such thing as a dysfunctional group of people, or a culture that is at its core antisocial. But the fact is that some cultures and peoples are just that. I wish it were not so, but experience and history seem to indicate that it is so, and denying it does not change the reality.
Every community, every town, every country, has a right to determine who they wish to come to live among them. The influx of a group of disruptive and hostile, antisocial people is something every sane community wishes to avoid. When a community, or a country, refuses to enforce any kind of standards as to who enters and who stays in their home, that community is inflicting a potentially fatal wound to itself, as chaos will ensue sooner or later.
We are seeing that in this country, and throughout the West.
Maybe what will be necessary is for people to control things at the local level, absent any kind of state or federal willingness to enforce laws and standards to protect the integrity and safety of a community.
I wish these brave people in England the best in standing up for their right to live peacefully and unmolested in their own land.
In a landmark action to stop the blight that has hit so many communities, residents of a housing estate that now occupies the former RAF Locking have barricaded themselves into the 100-acre site and mounted a 24-hour guard. Every car coming in or out of the estate near Weston-super-Mare was checked.
Anyone lingering outside the perimeter fence was stopped and politely questioned. At random intervals, the unlikely figure of an elderly man in a high-visibility jacket patrolled the grounds in a four-wheel-drive vehicle, checking for breaches of security.
To anyone who has never experienced a traveller invasion, all this may seem a little over the top.
But last weekend, after 15 or 20 caravans were evicted from a nearby field, some of the 'gipsies� drove around the Locking site and took photographs.
One of them let it be known they had targeted the privately-owned estate and intended to set up camp on some of the open, grassy landscape where children play and people walk their dogs. He reportedly warned residents not to resist, adding: 'We�ve got guns.�''
As in this country and all Western countries, seemingly, the authorities side with the 'Others' and privilege them over the citizenry, refusing to carry out their primary duty to protect the townspeople. The 'Others', in this case Roma gypsies, have learned to work the system and claim their 'human rights' to camp where they please:
The local council � which has a legal duty anyway to provide formal sites for travellers � said it could not intervene at this stage.
That left only one option � people power. And so, the estate�s residents banded together to man the barricades and put RAF Locking back on active service again.''
A recent news story related how the Roma gypsies were given priority in health care services in the UK.
At least half of all Gypsies and Travellers in Britain are Romany in origin and are officially placed above indigenous British people in a range of National Health Services, according to an official guideline.
The shocking anti-British document emerged in the wake of anti-Gypsy violence in Belfast following months of criminal activity by the Romanian Gypsy community which drove local people to the breaking point.
The NHS Primary Care Service Framework: Gypsy and Traveller Communities document, a copy of which can be downloaded by clicking here, states that many of these "Roma Communities" are recent arrivals, and "possibly comprise half of all Gypsies and Travellers" in England.
According to the NHS, there are up to 300,000 Gypsies and Travellers in Britain in total, which means that there are possibly 150,000 Romany Gypsies living here.''
It seems the UN Refugee Agency has been meddling on behalf of the Roma who are considered a homeless people. And as a 'victim group' par excellence, they are now among the privileged groups whose 'rights' are placed above those of the rightful people of the host countries where they decide to settle. The UN's 'Human Rights' policies ensure this. One more reason why the UN is an organization that is disastrous for the people of Western countries.
With a biased and complicit media, who consistently write sob stories about the ''plight'' of these ''persecuted'' ones, nobody seems to take much notice of the rights of the people who are unwilling hosts to the gypsies.
The biased, leftist media are full of propaganda intended to provoke sympathy for the gypsies, and to vilify the peoples of Europe for objecting to the presence of gypsies in their midst.
There is considerable confusion about the origin of the Roma, perhaps caused by their name, 'Roma', and the traditional designation of them in Britain as 'Romany gypsies', when in fact they are not from Romania or Romany, but believed to have originated in the Indian subcontinent. Still, many of the news stories have them described as 'Romanian' or in some cases, as 'Albanian', if that is the country from which they arrive in the UK.
Why does their presence often precipitate conflict or trouble? The typical media story would have you believe it is 'prejudice' and 'racism' and (as always) 'hate'. However, if you juxtapose two or more unrelated and very disparate groups of people in the same space, there will be conflict -- especially when the 'outsider' group is prone to antisocial acts as a way of life.
Inevitably, the bleeding-heart champions of the downtrodden always deny that there is any basis in the popular stereotypes of gypsies as dishonest and troublesome. To believe this, however, requires dismissing generations of people in just about every Western country who report having had trouble as a result of an influx of Roma.
In the UK these people are euphemistically called 'travelers' in some cases. In Ireland there are also native Irish 'travelers' who live a similarly itinerant lifestyle, though they are not related by blood to the gypsies. Roma or gypsies are an identifiable people, with a distinct appearance, while Irish travelers (some of whom immigrated to America and settled in the Southeast) look Irish.
I've had some experience with Roma gypsies in various parts of the U.S., specifically in urban areas, and in general it seems they choose to live outside our society and to obtain their living by some kind of confidence game or other pursuits such as car 'dealing' or fortune-telling.
I understand that some gypsies send their children to schools now, though in the past, they did not educate their children, and the adults were generally illiterate. In several instances, I was pressed into service to read or explain some written material for Roma women who could not read or write. Still, somehow they manage to handle money despite being illiterate. Perhaps there is more of an effort to integrate them now, though I think they are an unassimilable people.
In a way, they illustrate the problems of multiculturalism and lax immigration policies. They seem to be a disruptive presence wherever they go, and yet political correctness places them off limits for criticism. They can do no wrong, officially, because they are a persecuted group, and the fact that just about every country has found them to be a problem is blamed on widespread 'racism'. The politically correct must convince themselves that the gypsies are always victims, and never catalysts or causes for the conflict that follows wherever they go. It must take some mental contortions to believe that. Common sense would indicate that the fact that they have been chased out of so many countries tells us something about their character. It stretches credulity to believe that they have been so universally unwelcome, through no fault of their own. If someone is, say, fired from every job they've had, or evicted from everyplace they've lived, would you believe all their employers and landlords were 'prejudiced' or that the 'victim' may in fact have been the cause of his own misfortunes?
And before somebody says it: yes, there are always exceptions to every rule -- but the exceptions are just that. That exceptions exist does not invalidate the rule, or disprove it.
There may be some well-behaved, law-abiding Roma people here and there, but if so they are renegades who've cut ties with their people.
Political correctness has decreed that there is no such thing as a dysfunctional group of people, or a culture that is at its core antisocial. But the fact is that some cultures and peoples are just that. I wish it were not so, but experience and history seem to indicate that it is so, and denying it does not change the reality.
Every community, every town, every country, has a right to determine who they wish to come to live among them. The influx of a group of disruptive and hostile, antisocial people is something every sane community wishes to avoid. When a community, or a country, refuses to enforce any kind of standards as to who enters and who stays in their home, that community is inflicting a potentially fatal wound to itself, as chaos will ensue sooner or later.
We are seeing that in this country, and throughout the West.
Maybe what will be necessary is for people to control things at the local level, absent any kind of state or federal willingness to enforce laws and standards to protect the integrity and safety of a community.
I wish these brave people in England the best in standing up for their right to live peacefully and unmolested in their own land.
Labels: Death Of The West, Globalism, Leftism, Localism, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Racial Dispossession, Refugee Industry, United Kingdom, United Nations
0 comment Thursday, September 4, 2014 | admin
Can any of us imagine an American equivalent of Hannan saying similar things to our president?
Hannan's blog is here, and I see from a quick perusal of it that he opposes multiculturalism but is also pro-Obama. Still, I have to admire his plain-spokenness and his forthright tone. Our politicians, by contrast, must be trained to be mealy-mouthed forked-tongue con men.
Labels: Britain, Europe, Government Spending, Politicians, United Kingdom
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 Thursday, July 31, 2014 | admin
Peter Hitchins blogs about 'Conservative liberty and left wing liberty' in Britain.
...What is the difference between conservative liberty and left-wing liberty? Does it matter? (Yes) Can they be reconciled? (Not for long.) I'm grateful to Lord Hoffmann for an interesting and clever speech last week, which made this much clearer than before. Leonard Hoffmann is no fool. He knows his stuff. A lot of the speech, which you can find on the web by Googling "Universality of Human Rights" and "Hoffmann" is perceptive and clever. I am specially grateful to him for quoting Jeremy Bentham's enjoyable savaging of the ghastly French 'Declaration of the Rights of Man', the founding scripture of several gory tyrannies.
This vicious document, a series of foggy statements of the obvious, qualified with sub-clauses making them useless when most needed, actually contained one rather clear section (article 27) which would eventually allow its own authors to have their heads sliced off by the Guillotine they had themselves set up. Should we be sorry about Robespierre and the rest of them being devoured by their own revolution? In my case, not very - though nobody ever seems to learn from these events, and the Russian Bolsheviks ended up in the same fix, devoured by their own revolution.
Otherwise the French declaration was more or less like all the other scrolls of atheistical, grandiose blethers about 'rights' which have been endorsed, acclaimed and adopted all over the world since then, culminating in the United Nations Universal Declaration and the European Convention - and now rivalled by the EU's own Charter of 'fundamental' rights, soon to be used to interfere still more in our lives. Some might also draw attention to the Soviet constitution of 1936, acclaimed by many Western leftists as the finest ever drawn up, just in time for the mass purges and the Moscow Show trials.
The problem with these declarations, with their 'rights' to private life and their 'rights' to a fair trial and their 'rights' to everything else is that it all depends what you mean by private, and fair, and so forth. And what if these 'rights' come into conflict with each other? Who decides which is supreme? ''
This ties in somewhat with my post of the other day about the different kinds of revolutions, the restorationist, the Lockean, and the Jacobin kind. What Hitchins is discussing under the heading of left wing liberty is of the Jacobin variety, which always ends in tears and bloodshed, as history has shown.
As for his questions above about the definitions of ''fair', and so on, in arbitrating these liberties, the answer, as he says, is that the answers are left intentionally vague and open -- so as to give the authors of these documents the power to interpret them.
"Human Rights" have in effect become a replacement for religion. Why is that? I think it is because their supporters see that the problem of deciding what they mean will give them power. The elite increases its power by keeping the right to interpret and enforce these vague laws. It becomes the replacement for God, which is what it has always wanted to be.
Just look at the bizarre constructions placed even on the relatively clear bits of the US Bill of Rights by the American Supreme Court, which manufactured an abortion right out of nothing, drove prayer out of the schools on spurious grounds and for a while abolished the death penalty on an equally feeble pretext, then decided the penalty was all right after all. It is really hard to see how the same document can be read to say that execution is right one year, and wrong the next. It's clear that the real power comes not from the document, but from the court - and of course from those who appoint it.
[...]
That is why left-wing rights increase the power of the state. Conservative rights, as expressed in the hard, cool, terse language of the 1689 Bill of Rights, and its Scottish Equivalent the Claim of Right, and in the grand simplicity of the 1628 Petition of Right, concentrate on saying quite clearly what government cannot do. And in the space that is left, when the ruler is restrained by such things, free men can live, write, speak and think.''
What Hitchins is saying in the above passage illustrates the difference between 'negative rights' and positive rights, which is a kind of dividing line between the left-wing and conservative views of liberty which I've touched on here before in the past.
Under the theory of positive and negative rights, a negative right is a right not to be subjected to an action of another human being, or group of people, such as a state, usually in the form of abuse or coercion. A positive right is a right to be provided with something through the action of another person or the state. In theory a negative right proscribes or forbids certain actions, while a positive right prescribes or requires certain actions.''
The idea of positive liberty is generally associated with the Jacobin-style political philosophies, and because the proponents of such thought always see themselves as being the champions of all that is good and right, and as having the blueprint for utopia, they feel constrained to impose measures on people 'for their own good' or in the service of their ideals. This is the situation we are in now in the West, wherein today's leftist ideologues believe that things like 'hate speech laws' or political correctness in general are justified, thus leading to a net loss of liberty among the population.
This piece which appeared in The Australian tells of the increase in 'thought police' activity in the UK.
''BRITAIN appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely.
There are no concentration camps or gulags but there are thought police with unprecedented powers to dictate ways of thinking and sniff out heresy, and there can be harsh punishments for dissent.
Nikolai Bukharin claimed one of the Bolshevik Revolution's principal tasks was "to alter people's actual psychology". Britain is not Bolshevik, but a campaign to alter people's psychology and create a new Homo britannicus is under way without even a fig leaf of disguise.
The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years' prison. The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out. It was Straw who previously called for a redefinition of Englishness and suggested the "global baggage of empire" was linked to soccer violence by "racist and xenophobic white males". He claimed the English "propensity for violence" was used to subjugate Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and that the English as a race were "potentially very aggressive".
In the past 10 years I have collected reports of many instances of draconian punishments, including the arrest and criminal prosecution of children, for thought-crimes and offences against political correctness.''
In this related piece by Ed West in the UK Telegraph, we read similar reports of how even private conversations are being reported to the 'thought police' by self-selected informers. This is an ominous twist to things: the government does not even have to do the monitoring; the populace have become so indoctrinated, in many cases, that they themselves will voluntarily tattle to the authorities.
On the Hitchens blog, there are some good comments, like this one:
...We must ask ourselves some searching questions about why we did this. Did we really want our country to turn into a free-loader's paradise, a place where drunks rule the streets and hospitals double up as abortion clinics? Did we want cameras on every corner, our most private details held on Government computers and to be forced to carry ID cards? Did we want to complicate our lives with regulations and red tape for everythng from selling houses to starting a business? Did we want to subsidise the pensions of millions of beaurocrats from our taxes? Did we want to take in a few million immigrants, many of whom hate our way of life and want us dead? Did we want to surrender our sovereignty to Brussels or remove Brittania from our devalued coinage?
Unfortunately, asking these questions is simple. Putting right the wrong is going to be much harder.''
We in America can ask ourselves similar questions.
Another comment from the Hitchens blog:
Contributor S. Deol writes:
"If you live in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, India or the U.S.A., consider yourself lucky that you live in a nation of English liberty." adding later that " All men can think, say, write and do whatever they please with reasonable restrictions."
Aye, there's the rub, as Shakespeare might have put it. I was waiting for that "with reasonable restrictions" or some such get-out expression. It is precisely the scope and definition of that adjective "reasonable" that is the crux of the whole matter.
People must have laws and laws are there to forbid things but when a nation comes under the control of rulers determined to solve all natural inequalities by piling laws upon laws - an enterprise doomed from the outset to failure in any case, that nation soon finds that it can do very little without requesting official permission or submitting to official supervision.
[...]
A modern Briton's freedom to say or write what he pleases is -as anyone knows - nowadays severely restricted by arbitrary rules of verbal expression sanctioned by no tribunal elected for the purpose and imposed on a law-abiding populace by now cowed into submission both by threat of threat of judicial punishment and by its own intellectual inability to discern the imposture by which one of its time-honoured liberties is being quietly removed.
The extent of our people's gullibility becomes plain when realises the incredible audacity of the imposition of the so-called 'political correction'. Its authors have pulled off a trick with which it would have been impossible to hoodwink our people even a couple of decades ago.
It is well known that bad language - in some cases even obscene language - eventually suffers the fate of all metaphor and loses its power to shock and what is unspeakable in one era can become only mildly distasteful or even totally anodyne in another. However, until someone decided that the British people were so habituated to buying their opinions along with their groceries that they were were ripe, so to speak, for being PC-swindled, the semantic traffic had, as far as I know, never gone in the opposite direction.
Bad words had sometimes become good but I can think of no good words which had before PC gone bad. And most of our gullible, tele-spoon-fed fellow-citizens have bought it hook, line and sinker.
And you talk about English liberty, sir! Don't make me laugh!''
English liberty is in fact the idea on which our American ideas of liberty are based; our Founding Fathers said that they desired 'only the rights of Englishmen.' We Americans too often imagine that we invented our idea of liberty from whole cloth, and that it is based on no antecedents, when in fact it draws from longstanding English traditions, going back at least to Magna Carta and English common law.
So it is especially sad to me to see that in Britain, the fount of many of our ideas and traditions, freedom and liberty and 'the rights of Englishmen' are under attack, if not moribund.
And as the first comment above says, 'putting right the wrong is going to be much harder', and that applies to us as well as to our cousins in the UK.
Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
William Wordsworth, 'London 1802'
...What is the difference between conservative liberty and left-wing liberty? Does it matter? (Yes) Can they be reconciled? (Not for long.) I'm grateful to Lord Hoffmann for an interesting and clever speech last week, which made this much clearer than before. Leonard Hoffmann is no fool. He knows his stuff. A lot of the speech, which you can find on the web by Googling "Universality of Human Rights" and "Hoffmann" is perceptive and clever. I am specially grateful to him for quoting Jeremy Bentham's enjoyable savaging of the ghastly French 'Declaration of the Rights of Man', the founding scripture of several gory tyrannies.
This vicious document, a series of foggy statements of the obvious, qualified with sub-clauses making them useless when most needed, actually contained one rather clear section (article 27) which would eventually allow its own authors to have their heads sliced off by the Guillotine they had themselves set up. Should we be sorry about Robespierre and the rest of them being devoured by their own revolution? In my case, not very - though nobody ever seems to learn from these events, and the Russian Bolsheviks ended up in the same fix, devoured by their own revolution.
Otherwise the French declaration was more or less like all the other scrolls of atheistical, grandiose blethers about 'rights' which have been endorsed, acclaimed and adopted all over the world since then, culminating in the United Nations Universal Declaration and the European Convention - and now rivalled by the EU's own Charter of 'fundamental' rights, soon to be used to interfere still more in our lives. Some might also draw attention to the Soviet constitution of 1936, acclaimed by many Western leftists as the finest ever drawn up, just in time for the mass purges and the Moscow Show trials.
The problem with these declarations, with their 'rights' to private life and their 'rights' to a fair trial and their 'rights' to everything else is that it all depends what you mean by private, and fair, and so forth. And what if these 'rights' come into conflict with each other? Who decides which is supreme? ''
This ties in somewhat with my post of the other day about the different kinds of revolutions, the restorationist, the Lockean, and the Jacobin kind. What Hitchins is discussing under the heading of left wing liberty is of the Jacobin variety, which always ends in tears and bloodshed, as history has shown.
As for his questions above about the definitions of ''fair', and so on, in arbitrating these liberties, the answer, as he says, is that the answers are left intentionally vague and open -- so as to give the authors of these documents the power to interpret them.
"Human Rights" have in effect become a replacement for religion. Why is that? I think it is because their supporters see that the problem of deciding what they mean will give them power. The elite increases its power by keeping the right to interpret and enforce these vague laws. It becomes the replacement for God, which is what it has always wanted to be.
Just look at the bizarre constructions placed even on the relatively clear bits of the US Bill of Rights by the American Supreme Court, which manufactured an abortion right out of nothing, drove prayer out of the schools on spurious grounds and for a while abolished the death penalty on an equally feeble pretext, then decided the penalty was all right after all. It is really hard to see how the same document can be read to say that execution is right one year, and wrong the next. It's clear that the real power comes not from the document, but from the court - and of course from those who appoint it.
[...]
That is why left-wing rights increase the power of the state. Conservative rights, as expressed in the hard, cool, terse language of the 1689 Bill of Rights, and its Scottish Equivalent the Claim of Right, and in the grand simplicity of the 1628 Petition of Right, concentrate on saying quite clearly what government cannot do. And in the space that is left, when the ruler is restrained by such things, free men can live, write, speak and think.''
What Hitchins is saying in the above passage illustrates the difference between 'negative rights' and positive rights, which is a kind of dividing line between the left-wing and conservative views of liberty which I've touched on here before in the past.
Under the theory of positive and negative rights, a negative right is a right not to be subjected to an action of another human being, or group of people, such as a state, usually in the form of abuse or coercion. A positive right is a right to be provided with something through the action of another person or the state. In theory a negative right proscribes or forbids certain actions, while a positive right prescribes or requires certain actions.''
The idea of positive liberty is generally associated with the Jacobin-style political philosophies, and because the proponents of such thought always see themselves as being the champions of all that is good and right, and as having the blueprint for utopia, they feel constrained to impose measures on people 'for their own good' or in the service of their ideals. This is the situation we are in now in the West, wherein today's leftist ideologues believe that things like 'hate speech laws' or political correctness in general are justified, thus leading to a net loss of liberty among the population.
This piece which appeared in The Australian tells of the increase in 'thought police' activity in the UK.
''BRITAIN appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely.
There are no concentration camps or gulags but there are thought police with unprecedented powers to dictate ways of thinking and sniff out heresy, and there can be harsh punishments for dissent.
Nikolai Bukharin claimed one of the Bolshevik Revolution's principal tasks was "to alter people's actual psychology". Britain is not Bolshevik, but a campaign to alter people's psychology and create a new Homo britannicus is under way without even a fig leaf of disguise.
The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years' prison. The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out. It was Straw who previously called for a redefinition of Englishness and suggested the "global baggage of empire" was linked to soccer violence by "racist and xenophobic white males". He claimed the English "propensity for violence" was used to subjugate Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and that the English as a race were "potentially very aggressive".
In the past 10 years I have collected reports of many instances of draconian punishments, including the arrest and criminal prosecution of children, for thought-crimes and offences against political correctness.''
In this related piece by Ed West in the UK Telegraph, we read similar reports of how even private conversations are being reported to the 'thought police' by self-selected informers. This is an ominous twist to things: the government does not even have to do the monitoring; the populace have become so indoctrinated, in many cases, that they themselves will voluntarily tattle to the authorities.
On the Hitchens blog, there are some good comments, like this one:
...We must ask ourselves some searching questions about why we did this. Did we really want our country to turn into a free-loader's paradise, a place where drunks rule the streets and hospitals double up as abortion clinics? Did we want cameras on every corner, our most private details held on Government computers and to be forced to carry ID cards? Did we want to complicate our lives with regulations and red tape for everythng from selling houses to starting a business? Did we want to subsidise the pensions of millions of beaurocrats from our taxes? Did we want to take in a few million immigrants, many of whom hate our way of life and want us dead? Did we want to surrender our sovereignty to Brussels or remove Brittania from our devalued coinage?
Unfortunately, asking these questions is simple. Putting right the wrong is going to be much harder.''
We in America can ask ourselves similar questions.
Another comment from the Hitchens blog:
Contributor S. Deol writes:
"If you live in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, India or the U.S.A., consider yourself lucky that you live in a nation of English liberty." adding later that " All men can think, say, write and do whatever they please with reasonable restrictions."
Aye, there's the rub, as Shakespeare might have put it. I was waiting for that "with reasonable restrictions" or some such get-out expression. It is precisely the scope and definition of that adjective "reasonable" that is the crux of the whole matter.
People must have laws and laws are there to forbid things but when a nation comes under the control of rulers determined to solve all natural inequalities by piling laws upon laws - an enterprise doomed from the outset to failure in any case, that nation soon finds that it can do very little without requesting official permission or submitting to official supervision.
[...]
A modern Briton's freedom to say or write what he pleases is -as anyone knows - nowadays severely restricted by arbitrary rules of verbal expression sanctioned by no tribunal elected for the purpose and imposed on a law-abiding populace by now cowed into submission both by threat of threat of judicial punishment and by its own intellectual inability to discern the imposture by which one of its time-honoured liberties is being quietly removed.
The extent of our people's gullibility becomes plain when realises the incredible audacity of the imposition of the so-called 'political correction'. Its authors have pulled off a trick with which it would have been impossible to hoodwink our people even a couple of decades ago.
It is well known that bad language - in some cases even obscene language - eventually suffers the fate of all metaphor and loses its power to shock and what is unspeakable in one era can become only mildly distasteful or even totally anodyne in another. However, until someone decided that the British people were so habituated to buying their opinions along with their groceries that they were were ripe, so to speak, for being PC-swindled, the semantic traffic had, as far as I know, never gone in the opposite direction.
Bad words had sometimes become good but I can think of no good words which had before PC gone bad. And most of our gullible, tele-spoon-fed fellow-citizens have bought it hook, line and sinker.
And you talk about English liberty, sir! Don't make me laugh!''
English liberty is in fact the idea on which our American ideas of liberty are based; our Founding Fathers said that they desired 'only the rights of Englishmen.' We Americans too often imagine that we invented our idea of liberty from whole cloth, and that it is based on no antecedents, when in fact it draws from longstanding English traditions, going back at least to Magna Carta and English common law.
So it is especially sad to me to see that in Britain, the fount of many of our ideas and traditions, freedom and liberty and 'the rights of Englishmen' are under attack, if not moribund.
And as the first comment above says, 'putting right the wrong is going to be much harder', and that applies to us as well as to our cousins in the UK.
Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
William Wordsworth, 'London 1802'
Labels: Free Speech, Freedom, Jacobinism, Leftism, Liberty, Political Correctness, Rights, Totalitarianism, United Kingdom
0 comment Tuesday, July 22, 2014 | admin
Over at An Englishman's Castle, blogger An Englishman lists his "50 reasons to love America." This makes a nice contrast to the usual anti-American sentiment one finds on the Internet, and it reminds us that not everybody on the other side of the pond loathes us, as so many American insist.
So go over and read the thread there; it's interesting to read what people value about America.
I'd like to see America draw closer to our cousins across the Pond; we are all in the same boat, and I wish them well in our common struggle. I don't take part in the Europe-bashing or UK-bashing that some in our country are too quick to engage in.
I may be inspired to write 50 reasons to love the British people.
So go over and read the thread there; it's interesting to read what people value about America.
I'd like to see America draw closer to our cousins across the Pond; we are all in the same boat, and I wish them well in our common struggle. I don't take part in the Europe-bashing or UK-bashing that some in our country are too quick to engage in.
I may be inspired to write 50 reasons to love the British people.
Labels: American Culture, Britain, United Kingdom, Western Culture
0 comment Wednesday, July 16, 2014 | admin
As if to illustrate what I was blogging about yesterday, from the Anglo-Saxon forum, a thread requesting ''More English ladies comments, please" -- from a forum participant who thinks too few women post on the nationalist forum.
And as if to confirm the idea that many women ''don't get it", see this response from a female commenter:
Okay, I'm English and female but having had an albeit brief look around the site my feelings are that there seems to be a lot of anger/agression around (although as I said I've only had a brief gander). I'd also like to add that there seem to be some friendly folk on here too though.
I realise this in an 'ethnic English site' (maybe it's me who is in the wrong place? ) and I'm interested in all things English...but I'm also interested in other places and people too and hope I'm tolerant of others. Maybe it's a male thing or maybe I just need to look around here more but could it be that first impressions could be a bit off putting?
I'm not planning to form an opinion that quickly but just thought I'd give you feedback on my first impressions...and seeing as you seem interested in possible reasons more females don't post.''
I know this is not ladylike of me, but it's lucky I cannot reach through the computer screen to this woman.
I would certainly love to have a talk with her, shall I say. Does she not see any reason to be angry? Does she live in some part of the UK which has been blissfully free from the ''enrichment'' that has been visited in other less fortunate areas? Or is she just one of those pathologically ''nice'' ladies who thinks we can all just get along if we try hard enough, and avoid playing rough?
The men who respond to her post, sadly, also show that they haven't eradicated political correctness from their minds, and feel compelled to half-apologize for their feelings of anger, and assure the lady with the delicate sensibilities that they really aren't bigoted:
You have to realise where the anger is aimed. Its not at all foreigners. Its at ALL those who would erase or undermine our identity and culture for the supposed reason of tolerance.
ALL nations have tolerant people so tolerance is no indication of identity national or ethnical.
I have several black and masses of Asian friends. All my asian friends talk English around me they dress in English clothing they appreciate that there is an ethnic English who have claim to be the indiginous folc of England.
Just as I accept their Pakistani or Bangladeshi ethnicity.''
This makes me sad. Please, stop protesting that you have nonwhite friends; nobody on the other side is the least bit impressed. Boast that you have friends from your own folk; that shows integrity, and takes more courage these days.
This man gives a good, honest response, not grammatically or orthographically correct, but most importantly, not politically correct, so I give him high marks:
We have been accused of being white sumpremists, nazi, ignorant, everything you can think. Well we come out fighting when this happens , ans we beive that patriotic ethnci englsin peopl should no longer havetput up with ths. Or idenity is being squeesed to death by multicult rubbish and pc liberal appeasemnt.
Its so not matter of being tolerant, we have been that for to long hence our current dire straights and troubles. I love thework reinactors and living hisrory doe, they do a huge amont to keep our culture al heritahe and ideniity going. BUT i do not want to see our idenity tobe eventually only be found in those places. All of England is my home. I taked pride in putting my ethnic englsh idenity, people and counrty first. This right not wrong. This is England so our people our culture and our idenity must be dominate and come first. (as other countries culureis and idenity should do in their own lands)
No one are fefending ethnnic english interests and our country so t is up for us to do this. We may at times coem across a angry and at time we are, but we have aims and one is not to roll over.''
Meanwhile, things are hotting up in Luton, Bedfordshire. The BBC offers the usual biased, servile, politically correct version of a protest march in Luton, in response to a recent clash when Islamic hecklers disrupted an event welcoming British troops home.
Here is blogger Lionheart's report of things, complete with video coverage.
From what I could see, the young English men protesting were mostly restrained, if a bit rough around the edges.
The police, however, seemed more ready to intimidate and confront these young men than they were in recent videos I saw, where they retreated from hostile Pakistanis running through the streets. What a disgraceful police force; politically correct to the core. Brave when confronting their own, but servile when facing Islamics. What a disgrace.
The discussion on Lionheart's blog is interesting; the first comment is critical of Lionheart and the protesters, but he answers quite adequately.
Meanwhile the BNP website apparently suffered a DOS attack over the weekend, the 'Largest Cyber-Attack in History'
The Green Arrow quotes Nick Griffin:
The size of the renewed assault is unparalleled and there is no doubt that whoever has organised this has had to pay out a serious amount of money to the criminal underworld.
On Friday the servers of Clear Channel, part of a huge conglomerate that provides billboard advertising to the BNP, suffered a similar attack. Their IT professionals tracked the criminal activity back to a notorious "anti-fascist" organisation openly aligned to the Labour Party and supported by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. This organisation was protesting at the decision by Clear Channel to allow the BNP to display advertising in support of our European Election Campaign.
[...]
The attack on the BNP website is an indication of the increasing desperation of our opponents, who, unable to defeat us in democratic debate, would rather just have us closed down. BUT THEY WILL NEVER WEAKEN OUR RESOLVE TO WIN BACK OUR COUNTRY!''
I hope he is correct, and I know that in the UK as in all of the West, the women will have to get on board and support the effort, or at least stop holding the men back with all that prissy, self-righteous niceness. Women of past generations knew that sometimes niceness and palaver is not enough; sometimes it's necessary to defend yourself, your people, and your way of life.
It appears as though things may come to the boil sooner in the UK than here in our country, and the way things play out there may influence events here; the converse will be true if things heat up here first. We can only guess and speculate, however; the situation is unpredictable. But I certainly wish our British and English cousins well.
And as if to confirm the idea that many women ''don't get it", see this response from a female commenter:
Okay, I'm English and female but having had an albeit brief look around the site my feelings are that there seems to be a lot of anger/agression around (although as I said I've only had a brief gander). I'd also like to add that there seem to be some friendly folk on here too though.
I realise this in an 'ethnic English site' (maybe it's me who is in the wrong place? ) and I'm interested in all things English...but I'm also interested in other places and people too and hope I'm tolerant of others. Maybe it's a male thing or maybe I just need to look around here more but could it be that first impressions could be a bit off putting?
I'm not planning to form an opinion that quickly but just thought I'd give you feedback on my first impressions...and seeing as you seem interested in possible reasons more females don't post.''
I know this is not ladylike of me, but it's lucky I cannot reach through the computer screen to this woman.
I would certainly love to have a talk with her, shall I say. Does she not see any reason to be angry? Does she live in some part of the UK which has been blissfully free from the ''enrichment'' that has been visited in other less fortunate areas? Or is she just one of those pathologically ''nice'' ladies who thinks we can all just get along if we try hard enough, and avoid playing rough?
The men who respond to her post, sadly, also show that they haven't eradicated political correctness from their minds, and feel compelled to half-apologize for their feelings of anger, and assure the lady with the delicate sensibilities that they really aren't bigoted:
You have to realise where the anger is aimed. Its not at all foreigners. Its at ALL those who would erase or undermine our identity and culture for the supposed reason of tolerance.
ALL nations have tolerant people so tolerance is no indication of identity national or ethnical.
I have several black and masses of Asian friends. All my asian friends talk English around me they dress in English clothing they appreciate that there is an ethnic English who have claim to be the indiginous folc of England.
Just as I accept their Pakistani or Bangladeshi ethnicity.''
This makes me sad. Please, stop protesting that you have nonwhite friends; nobody on the other side is the least bit impressed. Boast that you have friends from your own folk; that shows integrity, and takes more courage these days.
This man gives a good, honest response, not grammatically or orthographically correct, but most importantly, not politically correct, so I give him high marks:
We have been accused of being white sumpremists, nazi, ignorant, everything you can think. Well we come out fighting when this happens , ans we beive that patriotic ethnci englsin peopl should no longer havetput up with ths. Or idenity is being squeesed to death by multicult rubbish and pc liberal appeasemnt.
Its so not matter of being tolerant, we have been that for to long hence our current dire straights and troubles. I love thework reinactors and living hisrory doe, they do a huge amont to keep our culture al heritahe and ideniity going. BUT i do not want to see our idenity tobe eventually only be found in those places. All of England is my home. I taked pride in putting my ethnic englsh idenity, people and counrty first. This right not wrong. This is England so our people our culture and our idenity must be dominate and come first. (as other countries culureis and idenity should do in their own lands)
No one are fefending ethnnic english interests and our country so t is up for us to do this. We may at times coem across a angry and at time we are, but we have aims and one is not to roll over.''
Meanwhile, things are hotting up in Luton, Bedfordshire. The BBC offers the usual biased, servile, politically correct version of a protest march in Luton, in response to a recent clash when Islamic hecklers disrupted an event welcoming British troops home.
Here is blogger Lionheart's report of things, complete with video coverage.
From what I could see, the young English men protesting were mostly restrained, if a bit rough around the edges.
The police, however, seemed more ready to intimidate and confront these young men than they were in recent videos I saw, where they retreated from hostile Pakistanis running through the streets. What a disgraceful police force; politically correct to the core. Brave when confronting their own, but servile when facing Islamics. What a disgrace.
The discussion on Lionheart's blog is interesting; the first comment is critical of Lionheart and the protesters, but he answers quite adequately.
Meanwhile the BNP website apparently suffered a DOS attack over the weekend, the 'Largest Cyber-Attack in History'
The Green Arrow quotes Nick Griffin:
The size of the renewed assault is unparalleled and there is no doubt that whoever has organised this has had to pay out a serious amount of money to the criminal underworld.
On Friday the servers of Clear Channel, part of a huge conglomerate that provides billboard advertising to the BNP, suffered a similar attack. Their IT professionals tracked the criminal activity back to a notorious "anti-fascist" organisation openly aligned to the Labour Party and supported by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. This organisation was protesting at the decision by Clear Channel to allow the BNP to display advertising in support of our European Election Campaign.
[...]
The attack on the BNP website is an indication of the increasing desperation of our opponents, who, unable to defeat us in democratic debate, would rather just have us closed down. BUT THEY WILL NEVER WEAKEN OUR RESOLVE TO WIN BACK OUR COUNTRY!''
I hope he is correct, and I know that in the UK as in all of the West, the women will have to get on board and support the effort, or at least stop holding the men back with all that prissy, self-righteous niceness. Women of past generations knew that sometimes niceness and palaver is not enough; sometimes it's necessary to defend yourself, your people, and your way of life.
It appears as though things may come to the boil sooner in the UK than here in our country, and the way things play out there may influence events here; the converse will be true if things heat up here first. We can only guess and speculate, however; the situation is unpredictable. But I certainly wish our British and English cousins well.
Labels: Activists, England, Ethnonationalism, Feminism, Jihad, Nationalism, United Kingdom
0 comment Saturday, June 28, 2014 | admin
This story appeared a few days ago:
UK population must fall to 30m, says Porritt
JONATHON PORRITT, one of Gordon Brown�s leading green advisers, is to warn that Britain must drastically reduce its population if it is to build a sustainable society.
Porritt�s call will come at this week�s annual conference of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), of which he is patron.
The trust will release research suggesting UK population must be cut to 30m if the country wants to feed itself sustainably.
Porritt said: "Population growth, plus economic growth, is putting the world under terrible pressure.
"Each person in Britain has far more impact on the environment than those in developing countries so cutting our population is one way to reduce that impact."
Population growth is one of the most politically sensitive environmental problems. The issues it raises, including religion, culture and immigration policy, have proved too toxic for most green groups.
However, Porritt is winning scientific backing. Professor Chris Rapley, director of the Science Museum, will use the OPT conference, to be held at the Royal Statistical Society, to warn that population growth could help derail attempts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Rapley, who formerly ran the British Antarctic Survey, said humanity was emitting the equivalent of 50 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.
"We have to cut this by 80%, and population growth is going to make that much harder," he said.
Such views on population have split the green movement. George Monbiot, a prominent writer on green issues, has criticised population campaigners, arguing that "relentless" economic growth is a greater threat.
Many experts believe that, since Europeans and Americans have such a lopsided impact on the environment, the world would benefit more from reducing their populations than by making cuts in developing countries. ''
So why, if the world would benefit more by reducing the population of the most developed countries, are we being forced to import tens of millions of people into these countries, while we are supposedly already overpopulated?
At least the article acknowledges the fact that overpopulation is a 'politically sensitive' problem, although nobody seems willing to discuss just why it is so, or why it must be so. It's politically sensitive only because the environmentalist left has made multiculturalism and 'diversity' sacred cows. Multiculturalism and diversity as unquestioned values demand mass immigration from Third World countries, the overpopulated countries of the global South, because the 'rich world' as the globalists call us of the Western nations, are apparently too White and too 'sterile' without imported diversity.
So now most Western countries are madly importing millions of 'diverse' people from backward nations in order to attain some unspecified level of 'diversity' and the strength that is said to reside therein. How many immigrants are enough, Mr. Porrit, or Mr. Brown? How much 'diversity' is sufficient?
And why is there no mention of curtailing immigration as the most obvious way of stopping runaway population growth? The stark fact is that almost all population growth in Western countries is due to immigration and/or to American-born 'diversity.' Almost none of it is ascribable to irresponsible reproduction by White citizens of those countries.
So how does the multiculturalist left propose to 'cut the population by 80 percent' without repatriating millions of people who do not belong in the United Kingdom and without stopping the insane policy of importing immigrants at a furious pace?
There are hundreds of reader comments following the article, and very few even mention immigration, much less repatriation or deportation. Does it not make sense to stop digging when you are in a deep hole?
But one commenter makes a valid though unsettling point:
Does anyone else find this to be a rather disturbing statement to come from an officer of a government that controls your health care?''
That's similar to a point that I brought up a few weeks ago in connection with an article about the new health care proposals by the administration which would put our electronic medical records into a government database, and provide for a government bureaucracy which would oversee patient care, and could potentially dictate to doctors the care and treatment they administer to all their patients.
Of course in any nationalized health care system there would be a necessity for rationing care at least to some extent, and does anyone doubt that people with chronic illnesses and especially the elderly would be deemed liabilities to the system? I am convinced that we would eventually see at least passive euthanasia, with older and chronically ill patients being simply warehoused without the treatment they might expect to receive in our present system.
If Porritt and the other leftists in the United Kingdom think that the population must be reduced drastically, and if they have shown that they consider immigration sacred, where else can the population be cut? Western countries already have widespread abortion, but even with the greatly reduced native-born White birth rates, Western countries are becoming overcrowded. Yet immigration must continue. It's because of bizarre and irrational behaviors like this that I occasionally say our elites have gone mad. Their actions make no earthly sense.
And what makes even less sense is how few average citizens even think about the insanity of the situation, and the utter incompetence -- or is it simply malevolence -- of the judases who sit in positions of power.
It has never made sense to me that the environmentalist left refuses to even question or mention the role played by mass immigration by high-birth-rate peoples into Western countries. I've posted pictures before of the mountains of trash left by illegals traipsing across the former borders in the Southwestern states.
There are so many environmental issues that are exacerbated by mass immigration of all varieties, but all these things go unexamined and unmentioned because the left does not want to criticize their protected minority groups. And yes, I have heard of the Sierra Club payoff made by a certain wealthy individual who stipulated that immigration not be opposed -- but the Sierra Club is just one such organization; what is keeping all the others from speaking out against mass immigration and the overpopulation it brings?
Are they all so enamored of immigration and multiculturalism that they are willing to sacrifice the environment they profess to love and protect? Or are they all so indoctrinated to believe that Whitey is the cause of all evil in the world, while minorities are poor lambs who can do no wrong? It would certainly seem so, but again, I can't find a way to understand their way of thinking.
It may be that Mother Nature or divine intervention will have to provide a way out of this dilemma; our so-called leaders obviously have no acceptable and morally sound answers to our problems. Their incompetence or willful malfeasance should, in a just world, see them removed from power, but that will not happen unless the populace comes to their collective senses.
UK population must fall to 30m, says Porritt
JONATHON PORRITT, one of Gordon Brown�s leading green advisers, is to warn that Britain must drastically reduce its population if it is to build a sustainable society.
Porritt�s call will come at this week�s annual conference of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), of which he is patron.
The trust will release research suggesting UK population must be cut to 30m if the country wants to feed itself sustainably.
Porritt said: "Population growth, plus economic growth, is putting the world under terrible pressure.
"Each person in Britain has far more impact on the environment than those in developing countries so cutting our population is one way to reduce that impact."
Population growth is one of the most politically sensitive environmental problems. The issues it raises, including religion, culture and immigration policy, have proved too toxic for most green groups.
However, Porritt is winning scientific backing. Professor Chris Rapley, director of the Science Museum, will use the OPT conference, to be held at the Royal Statistical Society, to warn that population growth could help derail attempts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Rapley, who formerly ran the British Antarctic Survey, said humanity was emitting the equivalent of 50 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.
"We have to cut this by 80%, and population growth is going to make that much harder," he said.
Such views on population have split the green movement. George Monbiot, a prominent writer on green issues, has criticised population campaigners, arguing that "relentless" economic growth is a greater threat.
Many experts believe that, since Europeans and Americans have such a lopsided impact on the environment, the world would benefit more from reducing their populations than by making cuts in developing countries. ''
So why, if the world would benefit more by reducing the population of the most developed countries, are we being forced to import tens of millions of people into these countries, while we are supposedly already overpopulated?
At least the article acknowledges the fact that overpopulation is a 'politically sensitive' problem, although nobody seems willing to discuss just why it is so, or why it must be so. It's politically sensitive only because the environmentalist left has made multiculturalism and 'diversity' sacred cows. Multiculturalism and diversity as unquestioned values demand mass immigration from Third World countries, the overpopulated countries of the global South, because the 'rich world' as the globalists call us of the Western nations, are apparently too White and too 'sterile' without imported diversity.
So now most Western countries are madly importing millions of 'diverse' people from backward nations in order to attain some unspecified level of 'diversity' and the strength that is said to reside therein. How many immigrants are enough, Mr. Porrit, or Mr. Brown? How much 'diversity' is sufficient?
And why is there no mention of curtailing immigration as the most obvious way of stopping runaway population growth? The stark fact is that almost all population growth in Western countries is due to immigration and/or to American-born 'diversity.' Almost none of it is ascribable to irresponsible reproduction by White citizens of those countries.
So how does the multiculturalist left propose to 'cut the population by 80 percent' without repatriating millions of people who do not belong in the United Kingdom and without stopping the insane policy of importing immigrants at a furious pace?
There are hundreds of reader comments following the article, and very few even mention immigration, much less repatriation or deportation. Does it not make sense to stop digging when you are in a deep hole?
But one commenter makes a valid though unsettling point:
Does anyone else find this to be a rather disturbing statement to come from an officer of a government that controls your health care?''
That's similar to a point that I brought up a few weeks ago in connection with an article about the new health care proposals by the administration which would put our electronic medical records into a government database, and provide for a government bureaucracy which would oversee patient care, and could potentially dictate to doctors the care and treatment they administer to all their patients.
Of course in any nationalized health care system there would be a necessity for rationing care at least to some extent, and does anyone doubt that people with chronic illnesses and especially the elderly would be deemed liabilities to the system? I am convinced that we would eventually see at least passive euthanasia, with older and chronically ill patients being simply warehoused without the treatment they might expect to receive in our present system.
If Porritt and the other leftists in the United Kingdom think that the population must be reduced drastically, and if they have shown that they consider immigration sacred, where else can the population be cut? Western countries already have widespread abortion, but even with the greatly reduced native-born White birth rates, Western countries are becoming overcrowded. Yet immigration must continue. It's because of bizarre and irrational behaviors like this that I occasionally say our elites have gone mad. Their actions make no earthly sense.
And what makes even less sense is how few average citizens even think about the insanity of the situation, and the utter incompetence -- or is it simply malevolence -- of the judases who sit in positions of power.
It has never made sense to me that the environmentalist left refuses to even question or mention the role played by mass immigration by high-birth-rate peoples into Western countries. I've posted pictures before of the mountains of trash left by illegals traipsing across the former borders in the Southwestern states.
There are so many environmental issues that are exacerbated by mass immigration of all varieties, but all these things go unexamined and unmentioned because the left does not want to criticize their protected minority groups. And yes, I have heard of the Sierra Club payoff made by a certain wealthy individual who stipulated that immigration not be opposed -- but the Sierra Club is just one such organization; what is keeping all the others from speaking out against mass immigration and the overpopulation it brings?
Are they all so enamored of immigration and multiculturalism that they are willing to sacrifice the environment they profess to love and protect? Or are they all so indoctrinated to believe that Whitey is the cause of all evil in the world, while minorities are poor lambs who can do no wrong? It would certainly seem so, but again, I can't find a way to understand their way of thinking.
It may be that Mother Nature or divine intervention will have to provide a way out of this dilemma; our so-called leaders obviously have no acceptable and morally sound answers to our problems. Their incompetence or willful malfeasance should, in a just world, see them removed from power, but that will not happen unless the populace comes to their collective senses.
Labels: Demographics, Diversity, Environmentalism, Leftism, Multiculturalism, Overpopulation, Race Replacement, United Kingdom