HERE’S SOMETHING TO CHEER YOU UP. This country, as well as the West generally, is in terminal decline. It is an axiom that nothing lasts forever; but I have long believed that the values that have governed the West’s function would have shown far greater resistance to the adjustments of time than now seem likely.
In the past great Empires have come and gone, and left their mark on the generations that were to follow. Greece and Rome laid the foundations of modern Western culture through philosophy and language, as well as numerous other intellectual and artistic accomplishments that have all been adopted, studied, and referred to by copious academics during the creation of Western civilisation.
If men are born free (and we begin with this premise), then the greatest system under which to live should embellish this self-evident truth by seeking out and finding the best organisation under which free men can live. After thousands of years of struggle, involving much spilling of blood, Western man found democracy. It was never to be a perfect system; but compared to all of the alternatives, hugely preferable. No other system of governance allows such freedom of thought and expression among its people as does a truly democratic state.
Democracy cannot be imposed but must evolve and mature if it is to stay the distance. British and American history demonstrates the hurdles that have had to be jumped; especially when the franchise is restricted according to wealth, class, and gender. It has taken a whole history of social reform scaling many injustices over many decades, in order to accomplish a mature democracy, especially within the UK.
Other countries took different turns via revolution (as in France) to arrive at the same position. Social reform and revolution have represented the levers of change in Europe: ancient regimes have come and gone. The hangman’s noose and the guillotine have often disgraced the march toward the democratic ideal. But we in Northern and Southern Europe have finally settled, along with America, into a better fitting glove than what had been on offer before and ever since.
BUT NOW CHANGE IS imminent and the Western democracies, who believed that man was free and deserved to live a free life, are coming to an end. This end however, was never inevitable - as could have been argued regarding the finale of Empire; whether it were British, Spanish, French, German, Dutch, or Belgian.
What orchestrated the West’s decline? Well, for a start, after relinquishing their empires, Europe felt a duty of liberal conscience toward its colonies, and allowed citizenship to those inhabitants of whatever country any particular member of the European continent once governed - and despite all of the kerfuffle about colonial oppressors, there was no shortage of people ready and willing to come and live among their tormenters.
With the influx of ex-colonial peoples (which were much resented by the indigenous community), especially within the UK, a new ideology was born from the minds of liberal thinkers within the UK. Instead of requiring that those who chose to live among us, must do so in accordance with the laws and cultural standards of the host nation, these liberal thinkers declaimed the new ideology of Multiculturalism whereby cultural separation, would be actively tolerated on the principle that our, that is the UK’s culture, would be regarded as just another culture instead of the all embracing mother culture.
Instead of racial integration, these liberal idealists, headed, by the way, by Roy Jenkins, encouraged separation of all the multifarious cultures that were to find a home in this country, and allow them to flourish separated from the host culture out of respect for their individual customs and traditions.
This project of Multiculturalism gave birth to the plethora of what we today describe as acts of Political Correctness (PC). The host culture has been invaded by people from other cultures and a somewhat acerbic British people have had to be restrained in what they say about these events by the criminal law. PC has become the legal auxiliary of Multiculturalism that threatens free expression and, were it to prove possible, free thought.
MULTICULTURALISM BECAME THE FIRST NAIL in the coffin of the UK’s continued existence as a monocultural nation state. The second nail was hammered in by the European Union - a concept that the late Roy Jenkins was also involved in promoting.
A European Union has been the ideal of many of our politicians from within all the main parties, irrespective of the democratic wishes of the people they serve. Anti-European rhetoric and bluster have been used with varying degrees of subtlety by politicians from all our main parties when fighting a general election. But the mood music changes when power has been won.
The European nail was driven into the coffin of our nationhood by our own liberal political class, as was the immigrant one. Despite the rhetoric of opposition, each and every politician reneges upon what they tell themselves and uses such ploys as mere tools of the job.
We as a nation, have had layer upon layer of our identity stripped from us by the main political parties, who it seems, are all too ready to apologise for being representatives of a nation state. Some 80%/90% of English members sitting in the House of Commons care very little about the continuance of this island’s status of nationhood. This is mere conjecture, but I challenge any pollster to scientifically contradict it. If they manage to do so, then I ask what on earth are those politicians who believe in the continuance of a nation state doing by allowing its disappearance via the European Union and their nation’s leaders promotion of its departure?
Our politicians from all the main parties are manoeuvring us toward a Federal Europe where one time great nations become transformed into mere cantons of a greater Europe – in other words, a United States of Europe.
I do not believe that the British people agree for one moment with such an conclusion. The mainstream politicians however have a different perspective. The main parties believe, not only in the inevitability of a United Stated of Europe, but also see themselves as pioneers helping to bring such a phenomenon about.
AT THE MOMENT our parliament, whose law makers we elect to make the laws that govern our lives, are being overridden by EU law. EU law takes precedence over our own, and leads one to ask a very important question regarding the value to us of our politicians, if they are no longer answerable to those who elected them; but rather to 27 unelected European Commissioners and their army of bureaucrats who rubber stamp and finesse policy, then why should they represent us and be paid for the privilege of doing so.
There is not day go by when the press pick up on an example of how EU law wrecks any attempt by our parliament to frame laws that are supported by the majority of the British people.
When it comes to a prisoners right to vote, we have to defer to EU human rights legislation; when it comes to getting rid of unwanted illegal asylum seekers, we have defer to EU human rights legislation; and when it comes to all sorts of crazy, stupid, irrational and hypertension inducing examples of rewarding the criminal; we have to defer to the European Court of Human Rights, rather than seek justice for the victims in our own courts.
TAXATION IS SECOND only to Lawmaking; but as far as the lives of our people are concerned it is probably more important. For if the people are taxed, they want to have some control over the way in which their money is spent as well as how much of it is taken from them. They also need a mechanism by which they can remove any politician or party that overtaxes them and seek to take their financial contribution for granted, by regarding such taxation as their own to do with as they please.
The most important mechanism we use for preventing such liberties is the ballot box. But consider this: what if the taxes of the British people were to be levied and spent not by the elected government, but by an external body which is accountable to no democratic authority save by appointment.
This unhappy state of affairs for the British people is under consideration by Europe. The European Central Bank will, they hope, render our own Treasury meaningless, and we will have a European Chancellor to decide upon taxation. It will not happen overnight of course. It is a question of slowly, slowly, catch the monkey. However politicians and Commissioners in Europe are discussing the possibility/eventuality of Euro wide taxation and spending among themselves and no doubt believe in its eventuality.
Remember before the last budget when Europe wanted our chancellor to present his budget to them for inspection before he delivered it to our own sovereign parliament? The Coalition refused. But was such a refusal based upon the need to protect our sovereignty, or just bad timing for a government facing a Euro-sceptic people?
If we are no longer in control of our laws, then our lawmakers and our nationhood become irrelevant over time as our nation slips quietly from its people’s grasp. But when we lose the ability to govern our economic destiny as a people, then the game is finally up for our, as well as all of Europe’s, nation states who have subscribed to the folly.
OF COURSE THE arm of the West extends further than Europe. The United States has been the effective guardian of the West since the end of the Second World War. She has poured billions into defending our continent and laid down the lives of many thousands of her young men to help save our continent twice in the last century.
She effectively provided Europe’s military protection during the Cold War. Her presence allowed the European nations to spend less on defence and more on the welfare state. America has never been appreciated for her endeavours on the European continent. She did not mind, however, because she believed rightly that her own interests were also well served by her presence in Europe.
But even America, the bulwark of the West since 1945, is facing economic decline. Like 5th century Rome, will America tell a United States of Europe to look toward the self-protection its own cantons. The fall of a civilisation rather than an Empire takes many more hundreds of years. So while America will remain a dominant force in the world, its influence will be replaced gradually over time. But by who?
The last great economic crash in the West may prove to be decisive in terms of its economic hegemony. The trillions of dollars of debt built up by America may prove to be too much for a country that could once lay claim to world dominance both economically and culturally.
America will continue, but economically, is deeply (or even fatally?) wounded. She will have to do what we all have to do in difficult times. She will have to cut back on her spending or be forever in debt to countries she would rather not rely upon.
America’s fall will be a trend rather than cataclysmic. This great country which has, for good or bad, given so much to the world, will, like Western Europe, have to face its destiny.
BUT ABOVE ALL ELSE, the determining factor that will ultimately render Western Europe helpless will be the change in attitude by its political and military leaders. The West has become weak; not militarily (not yet at least), but weak in purpose. The West has become conditioned by the ‘cruelties’ of its antecedents. Which as far as Europe is concerned, means Empire. Liberal guilt has moulded Europe’s decline as much as any other economic or multicultural factor.
The tempo of development in Europe since the end of the Second world war, has been that of a political rumba, whose rhythm has been monopolised by the Left in politics. Since 1945 the continent of Europe has evolved democratically into a social democratic entity where even conservatives (Christian Democrats) have joined the Left of centre in trying to achieve a United States of Europe.
Because of, I suggest, our past, and the modern craving of political correctness that has been its corollary, we no longer have the strength to beat our enemies. We no longer have (as we did in the Second World War) the ability morally to conduct Total War against our enemies – who, let us remember, have no such reserve. If we cannot meet our enemies on their own terms then we deserve our fate. During the Second world war hundreds of thousands of German citizens were killed by allied bombing, and as an example of just how far we have come, there are some voices who wish to declare that such missions over Germany should now become considered as war crimes, and ‘Bomber’ Harris a war criminal. At the moment such voices are rare but will become more prevalent , no doubt, in the years to come.
Britain’s, as well as Europe’s decline will be as much to do with liberal guilt, as it will be due to any economic balls-ups. The West’s politicians have become soft because of their country’s past and will not do what is necessary to protect their nation and their people when confronted by an enemy. Example: in Afghanistan, a British sniper who looks through his scope and sees some Taliban planting explosives that are meant to for his comrades, has to find and inform his senior officer before opening fire. This is not a military decision (although it has been handed over to them) but has become a political one.
In Iraq, Afghanistan, and now in Libya, Western politicians have conducted events on the ground that were meant to be the preserve of the armed services. Which is why today Gaddafi still remains in existence. Our politicians are either enfeebled by guilt or ambition to do what is required of them for the sake of the country and her armed forces.
If we are to be so inhibited in the way in which we dispose of our enemies, then surely this is the final factor in our decline as a nation.
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