Happy St. George's Day

April 23 is the national holiday of England. Historically, it is a day for ex-pats celebrate their beloved home, for anglophiles to reflect on the great history of England and the many gifts the small island country has given to the world, and a day for people in England to . . . stay subdued. A celebration of country and patriotism is frowned upon by the multiculturalists that are in control and mired in self-hatred. It is a good sign that this may be changing. This from the Guardian:

St George's Day, which used to pass unnoticed, is this year being celebrated as never before. In Norfolk, schoolchildren are filling the skies with red-and-white balloons; from Manchester to Dorset, giant dragons have been parading; in Lancashire, special St George's sausages are being consumed; in Kent, an insulation firm is giving its workers the day off.

The festivities are, however, characterised by an element of bitterness absent on St Andrew's, St David's or St Patrick's days. Every April, official reluctance to fly the flag of St George on public buildings, the rejection of applications for pub opening-hours extensions and bans on various kinds of patriotic expression provoke angry complaints.

In England's capital, Mayor Ken Livingstone refused for years to allow any acknowledgement of the country's national day, while happily funding extravagant celebrations for St Patrick's Day, Diwali and the Chinese New Year. He has now bowed to protests, but some English patriots consider London's principal event today, the screening of a Monty Python film in Trafalgar Square, to be something of an insult.

Behind all this sulky animosity to St George seems to lurk a peculiar repugnance for English national sentiment on the part of the British establishment. . . .

It was not some scowling ministerial crony of Gordon Brown who refused a publican a St George's Day extension but allowed one for the Chinese New Year: it was Norwich magistrates. It was Liverpool councillors who ordered a shopkeeper to remove St George's Day flags from around his premises, without apparently objecting to Irish tricolours on St Patrick's Day. . . .

In fact, authority figures from all parts of the Kingdom have long discouraged expressions of Englishness at any time of the year. During last year's World Cup, employers banned workers from displaying the English flag, even though similar treatment of the Saltire would have been unthinkable. Police warned that England flags on vehicles might frighten horses. Schools forbade children from wearing England badges.

British luminaries who applaud expressions of Celtic, African or Catalan nationalism treat its English equivalent with disdain. According to them, England is not really a nation at all. They consider any of their fellow citizens who embrace English identity to be Morris-dancing nincompoops. The Tories oppose the creation of an English parliament even though they would be likely to dominate such an institution.

. . . [T]he adoption of a robust national consciousness might infuse [the people of England] with a new-found assertiveness. Our rulers know that if this happens, their own rootless values and dogmas will be unlikely to survive, and their own days may be numbered. Hence, the very possibility of an English identity must be denied.

Read the entire article here.

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Red Ken Goes Mutlicultural on Slavery

Ken Livingstone, or as he is more commonly known, Red Ken, the Mayor of London, has authored a commentary in today’s Guardian wherein he, in his capacity as Mayor, has apologized for “London’s role in [the] monstrous crime” of slavery – and more specifically - transatlantic slavery. The tranatlantic slavery that Britain ended 200 years ago. It is just Britain’s most visible far left multiculturalist doing what comes natural. No need to applaud. Its all in a days work for a good leftist like Red Ken.

There are obvious disconnects in what Red Ken is doing in his apology. The most glaringly obvious of which is that there is no one alive in Britain today who took part in the transatlantic slave trade. So why is Red Ken apologizing?

To understand the answer is to understand the guiding philosophy of the left in Britain today – multiculturalism. (see my post here). The dogma of that philosophy is that Britain’s past is sinful – indeed, it is stained with an original sin that cannot be wiped clean. But by acknowledging the sinful past, and never forgiving his country – or western civilization as a whole, depending on the particular sin - the multiculturalist is at least able to absolve him or herself personally of the sin and assume the moral high ground. Ahhhh, it must be such a wonderful holier then thou feeling for Red Ken.

The next question is, to whom is Red Ken apologizing. He does not even name the recipients of the apology in his piece – which I think is quite telling. While superficially, one might assume that this apology for the slave trade is aimed at the slaves so transported (or at least their progeny), I think the failure to direct the apology is likely much more Freudian in aspect. The apology, to the extent ostensibly directed to the deceased slaves and their progeny is equally directed to the evil occidentals of London and the U.K., It is to remind them that their culture is inherently evil and stained with sin.

The third question if one of historical interpretation. Red Ken argues that the British involvement in slavery was ended by “black resistance and economic development . . ., not white philanthropy.” That is more then just a bit of revisionist history - it is actually the prototypical multiculturalist approach to history. All history is taken out of context and then viewed through a modern moral prism, ultimately to be redefined to either fit the belief system of the multiculturalist, or to be demonized. In this instance, it is clear that Red Ken simply does not wish to interpret any event by the British in abolishing slavery as being an act that would remove their sin. As an aside, I would add that, as to slavery in America, which Red Ken also touches on, the number of American’s who died to see slavery’s end in the States constitutes a bit more then mere philanthropy on the part of occidentals.

And lastly is the question most flummoxing. I do not know why Red Ken does not take this golden opportunity, two centuries after Britain succumbed to slave revolts and were forced thereby to stop engaging in slavery, ahem, to denounce slavery throughout the world today. That would be much more meaningful then this ridiculous act of meaningless self-castigation.

There are many countries today - several of them championed by Red Ken in running his own foreign policy - who still practice both sexual and economic slavery. Both forms are not uncommon in the Middle East, portions of Pakistan and India. And in Africa, UNICEF estimates that 200,000 children are sold into slavery each year.
"Many of these children are from Benin and Togo, and are sold into the domestic, agricultural, and sex industries of wealthier, neighboring countries such as Nigeria and Gabon" And human trafficking in children for the sex trade is a problem in several Asian countries today. See here.

Ahhh, but therein lies the rub. That would mean making a value judgment about other cultures - an act abhorrent to a multiculturalist such as Red Ken. To Red Ken, it is capitalism, democracy, and western culture that are the evils in this world. All other cultures are given a non-judgmental free pass. And you wonder why Britain has such a problem with radical Islamists in their midst? You need look no further then the poster boy for the suicidal philosophy of multiculturalism, Red Ken.

To the Londoner alive to day, you owe no apology to anyone for acts that you had no part in two centuries ago, and I would urge you to view them in the true historical context of the time. And also to the Londoners alive today, you do own an apology to the world for voting Ken Livingstone to be Mayor of your great city. Are you completely insane?

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IN THE U.K., THE LIBERAL WORLD ON ITS HEAD

The WSJ shines a spotlight on the radicalized left of the U.K., and there curious acceptance and promotion of radical Islam. The author begins with Red Ken, the Mayor of London, who seems to run his own foreign policy in support of a revolving door of dictators and radical islamists.

The other day Ken Livingstone, the mayor of my hometown of London, organized a conference on Islam and the West. It was a carefully rigged affair in which handpicked speaker after handpicked speaker stood up and announced that the democracies were to blame for the tidal wave of murder sweeping the world.
. . . .
. . . [C]ommentators for the BBC and nearly every newspaper here describe Mr. Livingstone as one of the most left-wing politicians in British public life. Hardly any of them notice the weirdness of an apparent socialist pandering to a reactionary strain of Islam, pushing its arguments and accepting its dictates.

Mr. Livingstone's not alone. After suicide bombers massacred Londoners on July 7, 2005, leftish rather than conservative papers held British foreign policy responsible for the slaughters on the transport network. ("Blair's Bombs," ran the headline in my own leftish New Statesman.) In any university, you are more likely to hear campaigns for the rights of Muslim women derided by postmodernists than by crusty conservative dons. Our Stop the War coalition is an alliance of the white far left and the Islamist far right, and George Galloway, its leader, and the first allegedly "far left" member to be elected to the British Parliament in 50 years, is an admirer of Saddam Hussein and Hezbollah.

I could go on with specific examples, but the crucial point is the pervasive European attitude to the Iraq catastrophe. As al Qaeda, the Baathists and Shiite Islamists slaughter thousands, there is virtually no sense that their successes are our defeats. Iraqi socialists and trade unionists I know are close to despair. They turn for support to Europe, the home of liberalism, feminism and socialism, and find that rich democrats, liberals and feminists won't help them or even acknowledge their existence.

And as the author goes onto point, at the root of this suicidal rush of leftist lemmings is multiculturalism and moral equivalency.

In Europe and North America extreme versions of multiculturalism and identity politics have left a poisonous legacy. Far too many liberal-minded people think that is somehow culturally imperialist to criticize reactionary movements and ideas--as long as they aren't European or American reactionary movements. This delusion is everywhere. Until very recently our Labour government was allowing its dealings with Britain's Muslim minority to be controlled by an unelected group, the Muslim Council of Britain, which stood for everything social democrats were against. In their desperate attempts to ingratiate themselves, ministers gave its leader a knighthood--even though he had said that "death was too good" for Salman Rushdie, who happens to be a British citizen as well as a great novelist.

I could not concur more with this author's assessment. If you want to see this suicidal mindset in action, please see my post here. And it also dovetails with Niall Ferguson's article today as to why the world hates America.

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RED KEN. A good post at Fausta's Blog on Ken Livingstone, the beyond far left Mayor of London. It seems that the conservatives across the pond, led by 18Doughty Street, are finally taking concentrated aim at him.

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