The profound difference between Britain and America

A correspondent writes from England:

The one fundamental difference between 9-11 and the London attacks (aside from scale and the extent of the carnage) is anger.

I was frequenting conservative American blogs at the time of 9/11 and could sense the anger. Many made no bones about the fact that the anger was directed at Islam. Whatever else we may say of conservatives, it is a fact that you can still get sufficient anger at Islam on sites like Free Republic. That anger does not translate into American policy (even in the crudest sense), but that�s a slightly different point.

I see no sense of real anger among the British. It doesn�t exist. Those commuters may well have died in a natural disaster like an earthquake or a tornado.

My reply:

Yes. The last week has made it clear, if it wasn’t already, that Britain is morally and spiritually far more far gone than America. It’s in very, very dreadful shape—indescribable. How could the English, one of the great nations of history, have undone themselves so quickly, and all in the name of “our British values of tolerance and pluralism”? America also has that stuff, but it’s not nearly as thorough and all-encompassing as in England. There are deep forces in America that don’t like these trends and resist them, even if not effectively so far. Such forces seem virtually non-existent in Britain, especially in the so-called Conservative party, the most pathetic collection of wimps and poltroons I’ve ever seen. Why? I understand the insane and suicidal religion of tolerance and where it comes from. What I don’t understand is how the English, such a distinctive, particular, and intelligent people, could have offered no serious opposition to it.

After I wrote the above, a reader sent me a collection of letters about the London bombings from members of the public to the BBC News website that perfectly demonstrate what my correspondent and I were talking about. It’s all, “This shows that evil is in everyone,” and, “This terrible event teaches us that all the people of Britain have to pull together.” In other words, we’re all equally bad and we’re all equally good. In my sampling of the letters, I saw no indication that anyone sees Islam as an enemy and a danger. The BBC editors say the letters represent a fair sampling of the opinions offered.

An English reader writes:

The BBC does not publish a selection of viewers� letters as it claims to do. It is highly biased towards the Government and the cult of multiculturalism which it will go to extraordinary lengths to defend. Any letters or comments sent to the BBC which are critical of Islam, immigration or multiculturalism are almost never published. I would not be surprised if the BBC makes up many of the comments itself in order to manipulate public opinion. The Government is known to plant letters in newspapers as well.

The Telegraph debates, and to a lesser extent the Times, have published a more varied selection of comments and some of these, especially in the Telegraph, are critical of Islam and comment upon the incompatibility of Islam and the West. This is bold indeed for an English newspaper.

In order to assess the current situation one must first understand the English people. The English are, in general, a passive people who have been manipulated by their elites. When the elites lose the plot (just look at the Royal Family) the rest tend to follow. The majority of the ordinary people lack the ability to think for themselves. They tend to believe what they are told, and what they are told to believe. They also have a tendency to dislike not only each other, but those whom they perceive as better than them or in some way as competitors e.g. Scots, Jews, Germans, French. They adore people they can look down upon and yet at the same time indulge them like small children. That explains their love of Third Worlders, whom they often promote over whites, and their tolerance of the Irish and policies of appeasement to the IRA. They blame their problems on a �Scottish Raj� and �Jewish cabal� instead of looking for their problems within themselves. [LA note: The writer informs me that the �Scottish Raj� refers to the common complaint by English that many of the people running the country including the Prime minister are Scottish and that the English are the victims of a system that favors Scotland in various ways.] They will continue like this until their elites change course or they themselves experience a severe shock.

The original correspondent writes back:

Why is there no anger among the English whereas there was anger among Americans?

The English ceased to be proud of their real heritage a long time ago. The only thing the English are now proud of (which their Prime Minister assures them is their true “way of life”) is their tolerance. But other than that, there isn�t any real pride left in being English or being British other than the most superficial sort (expressed in support of their football teams).

Americans (with or without justification) feel immense pride in being Americans. This may be totally misplaced given the dangers we often speak about, but the pride does exist. Americans see America as a force for good in the world and most Americans still have memories (at least the Conservatives do) of victory in the Cold War. That immense pride was wounded at 9-11. And it was that wounded pride that produced anger.

Anger hasn�t materialised here because the English have nothing to believe in any more. The only thing that they believe is distinctively English is the belief that there is nothing distinctive about the English that needs to be preserved.

In that last sentence, the correspondent perfectly expresses the VFR understanding of liberalism.

In a continuation of this discussion, Bat Ye’or, author of The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, offers her explanation of Britain’s cowardly lack of resistance to the Islamic threat.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 16, 2005 12:18 AM | Send