Thursday, June 14, 2007

Britain Falling

American commentator Cal Thomas opines this morning that the end result of 60 years of hard left multiculturalism, social experimentation, socialist government policy and EU / British immigration policy is now culminating in the suicide of Britain. I can't say that I disagree. Britain's domestic policies and politics have become particularly indefensible as it has become more and more obvious that there is an existential threat posed to the UK by its immigration policy and its infestation by Wahhabi / Salafi Islamists. While no one is more appreciative then I of Tony Blair as a true ally of the U.S., from this side of the pond at least, looking at British domestic politics, it seems that he has done nothing to stem the suicidal tide set in motion by the UK's leaders early in the past century. To the contrary, he appears to have hastened it:

There are two ways to destroy a nation. One is from without by an invading military force. The other is from within when the people of the nation no longer embrace and promote the history, language and culture that brought it to prominence and power. Britain has chosen the second option, which is national suicide.

In addition to its indefensible immigration policy, which is rapidly diluting British culture, the nation's public schools are giving up classical teaching in history, science and English literature in favor of trendy things to make the subject matter more "popular." It isn't working. Students increasingly find the new curriculum as unpalatable as school lunches.

According to the British think tank, Civitas, no major subject area has escaped the blight of political interference. The Civitas report is called "The Corruption of the Curriculum." It says history classes teach from speeches by Osama bin Laden and what Arab media say about Sept. 11 with no balancing material from American sources. "History has become so divorced from facts and chronology that pupils might learn the new Œskills and perspectives' through a work of fiction, such as ŒLord of the Rings,'" says the report.

Science classes are dominated by debates over abortion, teaching about genetic engineering and the use of nuclear power, rather than emphasizing laboratory work. In English, the pursuit of gender and racial equality has led an exam board to produce a list of modern poems from everywhere but England and Wales, where many of the greatest writers were born. The English literature exam features 32 contemporary poems and only 16 poems written prior to 1914. Exam candidates must choose two about which to write, being careful to select one from each gender (what no gay or transgender writers?).

The Civitas report says, "The traditional subject areas have been hijacked to promote fashionable causes; teachers are expected to help to achieve the government's social goals instead of imparting a body of academic knowledge to their students."

The Daily Telegraph reports on another study which shows that attempts to make science more popular with the culturally trendy has had the opposite effect, "with pupils less interested in the subject and less keen to pursue it than they were under the previous, more fact-based lessons."

Private schools continue to teach the old subjects in the traditional manner and that is why what some are calling "educational apartheid" is becoming more obvious and a major concern. The study of science classes concludes that future scientists will be even more likely to come from these independent, or private schools, because the public school courses will leave state school students ill-equipped for further study.

A nation that lacks sufficient confidence to teach the next generation its own history, culture and even science is a nation that is unlikely to mobilize the national will to resist an invading enemy.

My own theory is that prosperity has a lot to do with this jettisoning of the past. When a nation focuses on profits, instead of prophets, and sexual pleasure instead of fidelity and virtue, it dooms itself to eventual extinction. . . .
Read the entire story here. I am an anglophile with a tremendous appreciation for the rich history of Britain and all of the good that it has done throughout the world. Britain is the mother of modern capitalism and democracy. Everywhere that Britain left its footprint the deepest during the age of empire, what the Brits left in their wake were the foundations of capitalism, a solid educational system, an equally solid legal system, and democracy. Were you find nations today that are the most free and who enjoy the highest standard of living, you will often find the footprint of Britain. The small island nation of Britain has been the great engine of historical development over the past millenium, really.

To my own thinking, it is the praetorian and avant garde left encapsulated by the BBC, that has led this charge to the cliff. But Britain's end is far from writ in stone. I still believe that, in its darkest hour, the sons and daughters of Chruchill, Nelson, Wellington, Adam Smith, William of Normandy and countless other legends of history will take back their country.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's a very interesting view of Britain, but you missed out British Socialism and how the great post-war advances in British life were brought about by Socialist governments. There hasn't been a "praetorian and avant garde left encapsulated by the BBC" since 79, and the last tax and spend Labour government. What we have in Britain is a right wing 18th century aristocratic liberal dictatorship. It's theoretical, and it's totally out of touch.

Anonymous said...

One interesting view for the decline of England you skipped over is the decline of Christianity in England. Heres a short article you might want to check out. http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=10533

scott said...

Thanks both. Bill, what are your thoughts, including on what Ian says?

billm99uk said...

Me? Well I'd say TB was a centerist leader, leading a soft left party with some harder left elements still involved (the Labour Party is still a fairly broad church even after purging itself of its far left infiltrators in the '80's). But it all depends where you're looking from really - American politics looks right-wing from a European perspective and Europe seems leftist from the US.
That said, Ian's right that there's certainly no nostalgia for the class-ridden, social welfare net free society that existed pre-WWII, though.
I'll let you have some thoughts on the original article later, though. I've got some work I have to do now, propping up that ol' "aristocratic liberal dictatorship". See ya!

scott said...

lol . . . .I like that turn of phrase. I will look forward to your thoughts once you finish serving your praetorian masters.

Anonymous said...

I agree with everything you said. The left did however help drag a lot of people up from the bottom in Britain. The poverty my parents and grandparents endured is heartbreaking to hear about. I wish we could have gained our freedoms through capitalism, but that is not what happened and the entrenched class system would have stopped that anyway.

You seem most concerned with the change in the public face of Britain. However, most British people still brought up by their family and that is from where most of them take their influence. I am not sure things have changed that much. I think us Brits still have some fight left in us. It is just going to take something to wake us from our slumber. When we had petrol protest a few years back it was easy to see how people could influence events and make the existing multicultural-left-political correct elite quake a little.

The history of rioting is long and glorious in Britain. My personal prediction is that some mad Jihadis are going to do something very silly and kill a lot of Brits. After that I think we Brits will have one big riot.

scott said...

Fascinating comments all. Chairman, that is a fascinating article and I do concur. Thanks.

To both Ian and Anonymous Bill, I will tell you that I know far more about Britain from the period between the Venerable Bede and the Anglo Saxon Chronicles to Churchill then I do about the period 1946 to 2000, when the social change you are discussing took place. While their are some aspects of the latter period I know well, the economic changes and class equalization are not among them. It is a failure in knowledge I will try and find some resources to correct.

Anonymous Bill, I have heard several other Brits express precisely the same sentiment, that all it will take to wake the Anglo Saxons beasties and send them marching with torches towards Londonistan and Manchester will be the next big terrorist act. I am inclined to occur that both acts will occur.

billm99uk said...

Two different people Scott - see you have got more than two readers after all ;)

That said, Mr. Anonymous didn't say anything I disagreed with, anyway.

My problems with Google appear to be fixed now, so any comments by myself should hopefully be labelled as such.

Anonymous said...

"that all it will take to wake the Anglo Saxons beasties and send them marching with torches towards Londonistan and Manchester will be the next big terrorist act." Well, Anglo Saxons are actually united with Muslims against the government’s policy in Iraq. One of Blair’s great successes was to unite Britain.

billm99uk said...

Yup! He united Britain and made us so mad we went and, err... re-elected him for a third term.

That said, TB did rather squander the public trust over the whole WMD fiasco. The ridiculous thing being, of course, that he didn't need to - he already had the (marginal) support of the public and was guaranteed to win the Commons vote anyway, thanks to opposition support. Personally I've always taken that as coming under the heading of "seeing what one wants to see" rather than outright lying, but I understand when people see it otherwise.

You have to remember too, that British Muslims were utterly opposed to the war in Afghanistan too, although that was very well supported by the rest of the British public. In fact British Muslims as a whole tend to interpret any attack on a Muslim nation as an attack on Islam and the "ummah". The fact that they still obviously see their first loyalty is to other Muslims over the non-Muslim British population is going to cost them at some stage.

billm99uk said...

Hmmm... "60 years of hard left multiculturalism"? God knows, Maggie Thatcher was accused of all sorts of things but never that!

Seriously though, I think our basic problem is with the intelligensia who are actually running the country at the moment. I don't mean Blair, or even his government particularly, but the people they have to rule through - professionals such as teachers, doctors, union administrators, social workers, local politicians and charity workers. These seem to have gotten infected with the with this very specific PC "Guardian-reader" multi-culti/eco-friendly type world view and are trying to impose it on the rest of the country, with varying degrees of success. Now this does play into some aspects of the British character, of course, for example the tendency not to want to offend anyone out of basic politeness, not even vicious Islamists who want to kill us! And a reluctance to intrude on other people's lives unless they specifically ask for it - which makes the process of assimilating immigrants more difficult. However, I don't think this is particularly deep and would be easily changed by a change of government, or even by a wholescale change in attitude by the existing government, for that matter. And let's be perfectly clear, our problems are with the behaviour of quite a specific subset of immigrants (i.e. devout Muslims) - I don't think the country is going to come to an end because a bunch of ten-year olds learn what Diwali is. You just need a strong sense of British history as well. This is rather difficult to impart when you believe, as one commentator on the BBC said recently, when given a chance to describe what she thought was the biggest problem in the country at the moment was, said "Colonialism". If you were talking in 1907 that may have made some sense and we could have an interesting discussion. In 2007? Forget it.

The really interesting question is what it's going to take to get us want to change the situation - My guess is that Anonymous above is right and we're probably looking at another jihadi atrocity down the line before we take it seriously. I'm just hoping too many people don't have to die first.

 

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