What Happened To England?

The Empire Strikes Out:


"Somewhere along the way a quintessentially British sense of self-deprecation curdled into a psychologically unhealthy self-loathing. A typical foot-of-the-page news item from The Daily Telegraph:

A leading college at Cambridge University has renamed its controversial colonial-themed Empire Ball after accusations that it was “distasteful.” The £136-a-head Emmanuel College ball was advertised as a celebration of “the Victorian commonwealth and all of its decadences.
Students were urged to “party like it’s 1899” and organisers promised a trip through the Indian Raj, Australia, the West Indies, and 19th century Hong Kong.

But anti-fascist groups said the theme was “distasteful and insensitive” because of the British Empire’s historical association with slavery, repression and exploitation.

The Empire Ball Committee, led by presidents Richard Hilton and Jenny Unwin, has announced the word “empire” will be removed from all promotional material.

The way things are going in Britain, it would make more sense to remove the word “balls.”

It’s interesting to learn that “anti-fascism” now means attacking the British Empire, which stood alone against fascism in that critical year between the fall of France and Germany’s invasion of Russia. And it’s even sadder to have to point out the most obvious fatuity in those “anti-fascist groups” litany of evil—“the British Empire’s association with slavery.” The British Empire’s principal association with slavery is that it abolished it. Before William Wilberforce, the British Parliament, and the brave men of the Royal Navy took up the issue, slavery was an institution regarded by all cultures around the planet as as permanent a feature of life as the earth and sky. Britain expunged it from most of the globe.

It is pathetic but unsurprising how ignorant all these brave “anti-fascists” are. But there is a lesson here not just for Britain but for the rest of us, too: When a society loses its memory, it descends inevitably into dementia. As I always try to tell my American neighbors, national decline is at least partly psychological—and therefore what matters is accepting the psychology of decline. Thus, Hayek’s greatest insight in The Road to Serfdom, which he wrote with an immigrant’s eye on the Britain of 1944:

There is one aspect of the change in moral values brought about by the advance of collectivism which at the present time provides special food for thought. It is that the virtues which are held less and less in esteem and which consequently become rarer are precisely those on which the British people justly prided themselves and in which they were generally agreed to excel.
The virtues possessed by Anglo-Saxons in a higher degree than most other people, excepting only a few of the smaller nations, like the Swiss and the Dutch, were independence and self-reliance, individual initiative and local responsibility, the successful reliance on voluntary activity, noninterference with one’s neighbor and tolerance of the different and queer, respect for custom and tradition, and a healthy suspicion of power and authority.

Within little more than half a century, almost every item on the list had been abandoned, from “independence and self-reliance” (some 40 percent of Britons receive state handouts) to “a healthy suspicion of power and
authority”—the reflex response now to almost any passing inconvenience is to demand the government “do something.”

Continue at: Dependence Day by Mark Steyn - The New Criterion

Funny how the 'anti-fash', as the not so great unwashed of the crank Left call themselves, also vehemently defend Islam and defend Communism. This despite their own 'historical association with slavery, repression and exploitation'; still ongoing in a strength infinitely greater than any claimed for the Empire it has to be said.




To quote PeteEU, 'Freaks'.

You guys have a real witches' brew in Britain. I almost feel like many Englishman have given up the fight. It's disheartening.

I've seen what the British Left has done to your country. It's like Britain is being hollowed out so it can become something else.

One way I deal with American leftists is to discourage and depress them by showing them the truth, viz., that there are forces loose in the world that will ensure their failure. Psychological warfare is important. It is crucial that the Left understand they will never be allowed to win regardless of what happens.

British Muslims are lower caliber people compared to American Muslims. The AMs are generally well educated and productive. This doesn't seem to be the case to the same extent in Britain.

You can't fight the British Left and British Muslims at the same time. Focus on British Leftists. Remind them every day that they have failed. That's the only way to deal with Leftists...in their face every day without mercy. Best wishes.