EARLY THIS MORNING I watched a documentary on Sky
News about preppies; those families in America who believe we live in troubled
times and are preparing to survive all sorts of calamities that could threaten
their families: calamities comprising of natural disasters, diseases like
Ebola, terrorism (such as a dirty bomb); or even their own government if it
were to stray from the American constitution and turn away from democracy –
which was after all, what the right to bear arms was written into the
constitution to help prevent. Which is why the ownership of guns remains legal
in America; with the exclusion of course of those with a criminal conviction.
At
the affluent end of the preppie spectrum[1] we
witnessed in the programme an entrepreneur who bought an old nuclear silo from
the government, and transformed it into luxury survivalist apartments converted
from the actual launch site of the IBMs; that went 10 stories underground and contains
several $3 million apartments for the wealthy. The facilities in other parts of
the silo included a cinema, large swimming pool, and an armoury. It even
contained a large area for growing the residents own food, and a cell built
with exactly the same dimensions and contains the same furniture found in an
ordinary police cell in any American police jail…for anyone of gets cabin fever
and punches a fellow resident; the cell gives them time to calm down.
At
the other end of the spectrum we have many communities who have come together
to defend their families and neighbours. These preppies comprise hard working,
in many cases professional middle class Americans who wear no ideological
badge: indeed, they would see themselves purely as American patriots who believe
in its constitution. From those I saw in the documentary, they were not red-necks
in any understanding of the term; and neither were they paranoid (a label they
are all too aware will be pinned to them).
The
head of one such family was seen teaching his teenage children how to handle an
intrusion by a stranger into their home when the emergency they expect occurs.
The father taught his 15-year-old daughter how to use a hand gun; and he insists
that at least two warnings be given before his daughter draws the gun; and if
the intruder ignores the third, only then will he or she be shot.
What
is being taught by the father to his children, is how to handle themselves and
keep themselves alive if any such event occurs that may threaten them if they
lose their father and mother. They are not red-neck anti-communists as many, by now, antiquated Western
liberals may still believe them to be. They have only their families survival
at heart. They are not driven by political ideology, but by the unexpected;
whether from a political cause, or from a natural disaster.
I BELIEVE THAT multiculturalism will, along with
mass migration, in time, bring great social instability to the UK. But we in
the UK have no culture of preppies as have the United States. Perhaps being the
small island that we are, such social tensions are a far more likely threat to
the social fabric of this country, than whatever the American preppies see as a
threat to their own.
So
before we use such terms as loons, and paranoid, to describe our cousins across
the pond; I suggest we think carefully about our own situation, instead of
smugly and self-righteously pooh-poohing their fears as paranoid delusions.
Time
will ultimately tell. But I think that the way those American preppies think is
wholly laudable. They are, small 'c' conservative men and women, as are the
vast majority of the white indigenous English population. This does not mean
that they all vote Tory, or in America's case republican. They believe in the
family as the mitochondria of society that keeps it functioning, as it does
biologically as a part of the human cell. And in this country all the main
parties have small 'c' conservatives branding their backbone – that comprise
the core vote of the two main parties.
WE IN THE UK are no longer allowed to own guns,
unless we are part of small group of certain individuals like farmers…nothing,
in fact, comparable with the USA. But there was a time when UK citizens did
have that right. But it was abandoned following the end of the First World War,
when parts of Europe were threatened by Bolshevik revolution in light of the
Russian experience in 1917.
Our
returning soldiers had to hand in their weapons, and from then on the ownership
of guns (with a few exceptions) were banned. But before the First World War, we
had a similar arrangement to that of America. I have read of one account
involving a London bobby in pursuit of and armed villain who stopped a citizen
in the street and asked if he had a gun.
A gun was produced and immediately handed to him – the police remained unarmed.
So
gun ownership has a long history among citizens, even within Great Britain. The
American founding fathers had the good sense to protect their citizens by
giving them the right to bear arms. It was a wholly sane addition to the
American constitution: one which does not leave the American citizen
defenceless, but gives them the right to protect themselves and their families
from all sorts interlopers… even aliens.
Those
preppies in the SKY documentary have made the right choice. Not because either
today or tomorrow anarchy, driven either by nature, politics, or terrorism will
come upon them. But because by doing what they are doing is eminently sensible…and
if their fears come to nothing; what harm are they doing? I would sooner we, in the UK, were given the
same blessing by our unwritten constitution to bear arms as the American
written one has given the American citizen.
IN THE UK TODAY the citizen's faith in justice has
almost evaporated. The liberal concept of justice has abandoned the victim in
favour of the perpetrator who needs to be put upon the road of reform. The
victim of criminality invariably becomes the victim of the justice system. Once
a crime has been committed; it seems that the liberal consensus decrees that
the true victim is the perpetrator.
Sentencing
goes against the victim; as the perpetrator is often given a sentence by a
judge which will often seem fair, but will be cut in half by the behaviour of
parole boards, usually comprising faint-hearted liberals who would have
believed Hitler to have come from a broken background and deserved a second and
third chance.
Under
such a pitiful arrangement the citizen's
only hope is to allowed to be armed. But it will never come to pass in the UK -
but in America, the constitution still guarantees such a right to it citizens,
despite liberal president Obama's attempts at seeking to un-arm his citizens. As
for the UK it will have to do the best it can. At 64-years-old, I will in all in probably
be dead before what I believe will happen, occurs.
