A lament for England … and for Europe

Jeff, a native American (that means born in America, folks!) who has lived in England most of his life, writes:

I’ve got to stay away from those old historical English films, they bring me to tears. Just watched THE SEAHAWK with the great Errol Flynn as the pirate Captain Thorpe. I’ve seen it at least a dozen times and it never fails to inspire me. ENGLAND … romanticised and exaggerated I’m sure but still ENGLAND. What a country, what a culture, what a people in 1587.

Now I have to go outside where I will see numerous other peoples inhabit this land where once it was all Englishmen: Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Indians, Somalians, Nigerians, Arabs, Poles, Russians, Chinese, and of course Irish and Scottish too. How and why, I ask myself for the millionth time. For the millionth there is no adequete answer. Watching THE SEAHAWK one is struck by the characters’ bravery, dignity, intelligence, cunning, compassion, humility, and, last but not least, humour. Flynn’s Captain Thorpe has all of those qualities and more. As does Queen Elizabeth.

Qualities that made England what it was and to a decreasing extent what it is today. Qualities far too often sorely lacking in the peoples I’ve listed.

Especially humour! Which culture who has come here brings a sense of humour?

After fighting and defeating the cruel Spanish and their Armada, who would have dreamt that the English would one day just give away their heritage, their culture and their country as they have done. Without a hint of a fight.

- end of initial entry -

LA writes:

I recently saw the Errol Flynn movie, “They Died with Their Boots On,” in which he plays Gen. George Custer. Flynn was wonderful in it, with a kind of wistful quality that no other actor could have conveyed, especially in the scene where he is walking along a street and hears coming from inside a saloon a song being played that attracts him. He goes inside, and asks the men to sing it again, and he’s captivated by it, learns it by heart, and later makes it the song of his regiment. Flynn captures some inner essence of the traditional Western hero.

KE writes from Turkey:

Like Jeff, I too cannot watch those movies without being brought to tears.

In fact—and this confession should be significant to your readers—I grew up with movies like that all over the place on TV. And books like those in literature and history classes. And vinyl LPs with music glorifying all that old old stuff.

Just think of the power of that vigorous, burning old culture. It managed to assimilate an entire outsider/alien like myself without my even being there.

Whereas now, what remains of the West is… what? Rap music?

Karen writes from England:

Jeff seems to have a romanticised view of England—Errol Flynn was not English. He was an Australian of Irish immigrant stock and led a debauched life of drinking, drugs and womanising. Queen Elizabeth is half Scottish (her mother was Scottish) and her father was of German descent. The English have always been a fairly passive peace loving people who have fought Third World peoples, including the Spanish, but have always been terrified of fighting real battles with the serious fighters like the Germans, whom they tried to appease in the last war and only started to fight when it was almost too late. Likewise with the aggressive Moslems and Russians (another potential source of problems), appeasement is shown to them as the Russian mafia buy up London and bump each other off and the Moslems blow up the Tube. The problem with the English is liberalism. And this has been the problem for the most part of the last 100 years.

LA replies:

What does it matter that Flynn was an Australian or that he had a scandalous sex life? We’re not talking about Errol Flynn the man. We’re talking about the movies that Flynn the actor appeared in. Whatever Flynn’s flaws, he had it in him to play a George Custer, to play a Robin Hood, in the unique and affecting way he played them.

Unless Karen is saying that we overestimate the historic virtues of the English because the “real” English were not heroic, rather the heroic qualities we associate with them came from elsewhere, from Scotland, or Germany, or France. Is that what Karen means? If so, I can’t get my head around that. All national peoples are a mixture, but the English, even given their mixed origins, have been as homogenous a people over the last thousand years as any people on earth. If the presence of any ethnic mixture in a people means that they are not a real people, then there is no real people anywhere.

Or let’s put it this way. If the heroic, or romantic, or doughty, or sensible, or fairminded, or whatever good qualities people see in the English, really don’t come from the English but from some other ethnic source, and if (I’m guessing at Karen’s meaning here) we are therefore overestimating the English of today because we attribute to them qualities that are actually not English, the fact would remain that that same non-English admixture (French, Irish, Scottish, etc.) is still present in today’s English, and therefore today’s English should still have those good qualities.

But let me take the argument one step further. Suppose that there never was a historic English people like the people portrayed in the Hollywood movies and British-made movies of the Golden Age. The fact remains that the British and American people of the 20th century (with the added talents of many European immigrants particularly Jewish immigrants) had it in them to create movies like that. So, even if Errol Flynn does not resemble the actual Robin Hood, he does represent and embody the qualities of our culture, the broader Anglo-American-European-Jewish culture of the twentieth century. To repeat, those movies, with their “higher” qualities, could not have been produced, if those higher qualities had not been present in the individuals and the culture that created them.

The upshot is, even if Jeff’s and KE’s lament is for the lost 20th century culture that created Hollywood, rather than for some more genuine culture lying further in the past that the Hollywood culture claimed to represent, the things that Jeff and KE are lamenting are nevertheless real.

Tom S. writes:

“The English have always been a fairly passive peace loving people who have fought Third World peoples, including the Spanish, but have always been terrified of fighting real battles with the serious fighters like the Germans.”

Passchendaele: 300,000 British dead

Somme: 57,000 dead the first day

Total U.K dead in World War I: 703,000

I’ll say no more…

David G. writes:

Jeff writes: “I’ve got to stay away from those old historical English films, they bring me to tears.” I like Jeff’s frank honesty. Maybe if folks could break away from the latest special effects block-buster once in a while they would see (literally) what we are culturally losing. I would like to expand upon Jeff’s theme and include a few more recent entries in the film catalogue. I just finished watching an eight hour English drama, The Forsyte Saga, set in early 20th century London and based upon the novels of John Galsworthy. The film shows that life was tough then, dominated by class, money and privilege. Nonetheless, the background of cultural strength and social possibility resounds throughout the epic. And, one can’t watch Pride and Prejudice, with Colin Firth, without some envy for the English, class system and all. There is a sense of beauty in these films; beauty in the countryside, the women, the customs and manners as well as in the elegance of dress. These films are edifying to watch.

A few years ago I came upon a Scottish television series on DVD entitled, Doctor Finlay, based upon the stories of A.J.Cronin. It depicts a physician who returns home from WWII to practice in a small Scottish village. The character of Dr. Finlay, played by David Rintoul, is a man made unsentimental by war yet he is both humane and resourceful. He’s also realistic enough to know that the bills have to paid.The towns physicians serve as both healers and counselors. In one episode, Dr. Finlay is introduced to a young boy who refuses to believe that his father has been killed in the war. In another, he has to deal with an elderly couple who have hidden their son on their farm so that he would not have to return to his army unit. One also really gets a sense of the benefits and the limitations of the medical field at that time—a woman is cured of a life-long malady but a child is misdiagnosed and dies. The to wns retiring physician, played by Ian Bannen, is so great as to be nearly iconic. He’s full of wisdom and humor yet he knows his shortcomings and they are revealed slowly. There are no buffoons or cartoonish characters in these programs, rather they are earthy and believable. Overall, the stories are compelling, the musical theme is memorable and the plain decency of the people depicted is remarkable.

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, these are the stories of the Western world and I agree with Jeff that viewing such stuff , especially in light of Londonistan and Eurabia, makes one feel that we have tragically wandered too far from home ever to find our way back.

Henry A. writes:

So the Spanish are/were “cruel” and also “Third World” people, and it seems Poles and Russians are/were not better … If these guys still think that today after Londonstian, then I am afraid I cannot cry for them. Such a mentality is what has kept and keeps European people divided instead of facing together a common enemy.

Going back to the Spanish, is good to remember that Europe (including England) would not had been what it was had the Spanish not defeated the Muslim invaders first in Covadonga, Granada, and other places in the Iberia peninsula fighting during seven centuries until completely expelling the Muslims from Spain, and then in Lepanto saving Italy and other parts of Europe from falling into Ottoman control.

In Lepanto in particular both the French and the English were miserable expecting a Turkish victory to get the spoils of Spain. That is the sad true. For some of the comments above it seems some people still don’t get it.

Also, the “Third World” Poles lead by Jon Sobieki, saved Central Europe from becoming part of the Turkish empire at the gates of Vienna.

The Russian Tzars were a stronghold against Islam for centuries, stopping the Turkish and other Asiatic invaders out of Europe.

Jeff and Karen, grow up my friends, learn real history of the past if you want to understand the present. England, and any other country in Europe, has not existed and will not exist alone outside the community of Christian nations that are/were once Europe. Let’s not forget that it was not England, Germany, or even France (apart from Charles Martel at Tours) the countries that once and again saved Europe from the Muslims. And it will not be surprising that once again Europe is saved, if it is indeed saved, from countries other than the “sense of humor” English and the “fashionable” French.Sorry for the rant mode, but these are the kind of ignorant and arrogant comments that upset me.

LA replies:

I think Henry is somewhat misconstruing the context of Jeff’s and Karen’s remarks. They are speaking here not about a European or Christian distinctiveness, but about an English distinctiveness. For England to remain England, it must distinguish itself both from other European peoples and from non-Europeans. Of course, in the larger civilizational/religious struggle against Islam, the English must band with other Europeans. But Europe cannot remain Europe, without its contituent nations maintaining their particular existence, as is suggested by Henry’s own comments about the role played by the Spanish and Poles in saving Christendom from the Moslems. For Christian Europe to hold steady against Islam, the respective nations of Europe must also hold steady, preserving their identity and being. Each level of particularity—family, region, ethnic group, nation, race, religion, civilization—has its place in the scheme of things. There might even be a planetary level of particularity. If earth were invaded by extraterrestrial aliens, perhaps all the civilizations and races of the earth would join together in common self-defense, as in the movie Independence Day.

Henry A. replies:

I don’t deny the English distinctiveness. I have been to England and loved it. I also enjoy English literature. Arthur Connan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, even the lefty George Orwell, to name just a few. One thing is to ponder this distinctiveness; another is to trash the distinctiveness of other European peoples in a gratuitous, ignorant, and arrogant way.

Don’t they know that the Russians have Soljenitsin, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky… the Spanish have Cervantes, Quevedo, Lope de Vega, Unamuno… etc, etc.

I agree with you but some people have to learn to see the big picture, especially in the current darkness. If there is something the Muslims have always encouraged and enjoyed was the divide and conquer strategy the Turks applied so successfully in the Balkans making the Valachians fight against the Serbs, the Serbs against the Hungarians, etc, etc. Spain itself was not able to expel the Muslims until Isabel and Aragon pull all the Iberian peninsula together uniting Castilla, Aragon and the rest of the Spanish kingdoms. It is really disturbing that people who pretend to defend Christendom, or what is left of it, do not get these basic facts right. I imagine some Muslim Turk reading these posts today and laughing about our lack of vision. Unfortunately for us he has the right to laugh.

LA replies:

I agree with Henry that the larger Western unity is indispensable. As I wrote recently, it seems that every time Christendom and the West have lost to the Muslims, it was because of disunity within the ranks of Christendom and the West.

Jeff in England shares his unexpurgated views of his fellow Europeans:

Thanks and, as you said, Henry A. missed the essence of what I was saying. I agree with everything you said. I wasn’t concerned with attacking Spaniards even though in the context of the Sea Hawk film they were almost all bad guys except the ambassador’s niece who loved Captain Thorpe (Erroll Flynn) and the Queen (Flora Robson).

However, if I were to do so, I could begin by saying that the Spanish were characterised by their extreme cruelty both at home and as colonisers. Cruelty seemed to have been a Spanish trait. Sorry to go all animal rightsy but their cruelty to individual animals is shocking to a English visitor. Donkeys/goats being thrown off steeples (now illegal but still being done) strikes me as top of the league barbaric. Ditto for bullfighting despite the supposed “religious” connection.

The Poles were and are (despite the current absence of Jews) among the greatest anti-Semites in Europe. Their inferiority complex as a people and a culture is second to none. The Russians were top rate anti-Semites too plus they loved to kill and imprison their own people in huge numbers. Oh well, nobody’s perfect.

Then there is the French. Forget their anti-Semitism though it has been a feature of French history despite Napoleon.. Forget their legendary lack of generosity, which I experienced while waiting nearly three days to get a ride while hitchhiking (sound trivial but not if you are hitching all over Europe without a problem). Forget their pseudo-intellectualism which is summed up by Sartre’s and many other intellectuals’ support of Communism/Maoism and its barbarities. Basically, the French are selfish cowards as their capitulation to Hitler at the beginning of WWII showed. And as their refusal to crack down on the current Muslim carburner rioters proves. Instead they clamp down on headscarves. So now the rioters can’t wear headscarves. Great.

The Italians make corruption look like a national sport. That modern Fascism developed there is no surprise. I haven’t mentioned the Germans…. they are too easy to criticise and I will leave them to the readers.

Now England was not and is not heaven on earth. But it certainly has come closer to it than any other European country. By far. Ask the black Africans who are literally dying to get here so they can play their rap music without flies buzzing around their heads. Ask any Muslim protesting about Rushdie or cartoons or the Pope. Ask the 750,000 Eastern Europeans who have come here in the past two years after the visa restrictions lifted. Ask any indigenous Englishman though they may tell you England’s tolerance and generosity are leading to its self-destruction.

Now, I am not saying England is not part of the European group of nations. Those nations sometimes fought together as in WWII. One could argue that the Russians saved England’s arse in that war (that they then imprisoned Eastern Europe for many years is a small detail we won’t go into). Certainly those nations now need to help each other thwart the current Islamic invasion. But ask any Englishman what he/she thinks of the the European Union and you will get a huge amount of extremely negative reaction. The formal union with Europe has been a disaster. I don’t feel very much in common with Germans or the French or the Poles or the Russinans, yet I must put up with them coming to live here in huge numbers. That any European can come to live in England without permission irritates the hell out of me.

The basic problem is that the EU wants to eliminate the distinctiveness of England. No one is saying that England stands completely alone from Europe but it must remain a distinctive country to actually be strong enough to actually bring something positive to Europe. It is bad enough that non-European immigrants want to destroy traditional England. But to have Europe trying to do so as well bodes badly for England. Plus the Scots and the Irish! The reality is that I have grown up, and having been in most European countries, I realise that England is tops by far. Europe is not a group of “equal” nations I assure you. Living in liberal Western society has convinced you (Henry A.) that you must believe so. It is not arrogant to state that some cultures and countries are superior to others. You are happy to do that regarding Islamic culture in relation to Europe. Why not see that within Europe there are clear distinctions as well and I’m throwing my hat in with England. Then and now …

Jeff continues:

I’ve only just read Karen’s comment after writing a sort of reply to Henry A. Karen’s deconstruction is clinical and in typical Karen fashion she misses the bigger picture while dissecting the smaller. Wagner was a Jew hater, does that mean Jews shouldn’t listen to his great music? Conrad was born in Poland yet wrote the greatest English novels ever. Should we not read them as English novels? Calling Queen Elizabeth Scottish is like calling Tony Blair (born in Scotland) Scottish…. it’s fantasyland.

The English stood firm in 1939-40 while the French capitulated and the Americans were putting their feet up and the Russians were making love with Hitler. The English armed forces are still the best fighters in the world…. go ask the Americans.

Yes certain aspects of liberalism are helping to destroy England. Ironically, certain aspects of it also helped make England what it was.

Karen’s simplistic black and white condemnation of liberalism is characteristic of many conservatives. Ditto the reverse. Both miss out on how certain aspects of both conservatism and liberalism both (not necessarily in equal amounts) helped make England and the United States the great countries (despite all their problems) they are today. If any reader wants to follow that important topic up in more detail, please do, but I’ve got to go watch Henry the Fifth (oh yes, Olivier was French).

LA intrudes with question:

By the way, how was Queen Elizabeth I half-Scottish? Her father was Henry VIII, who was the son of Henry VII, Henry Tudor, who was Welsh, sort of. Her mother was Anne Boleyn who was English. This is from The Life of Queen Elizabeth I, Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Ed., 1910:

She had only to bide her time while Mary made straight her successor’s path by uprooting whatever affection the English people had for the Catholic faith, Roman jurisdiction and Spanish control. The Protestant martyrs and Calais between them removed all the alternatives to an insular national English policy in church and in state; and no sovereign was better qualified to lead such a cause than the queen who ascended the throne amid universal, and the Spaniards thought indecent, rejoicings at Mary’s death on the 17th of November 1558. “Mere English” she boasted of being, and after Englishmen’s recent experience there was no surer title to popular favour. No sovereign since Harold had been so purely English in blood; her nearest foreign ancestor was Catherine of France, the widow of Henry V, and no English king or queen was more superbly insular in character or in policy.

It strikes me that Mary was to Elizabeth as Carter was to Reagan, or as Hoover was to FDR: the failed predecessor whose very failings helped legitimize her or his successor.

Jeff continues:

Am in a hurry but I just glanced at Henry A’s latest reply. Again I emphasise that the cultures of Europe are distinctly UMEQUAL and to try and make them into some sort of great egalitarian team is insulting to the intelligence. The barbaric Germans were our great enemies for a dozen years. They are still looked at with scorn. The cowardly French are hated more than the Germans by many English people. The Spanish are detested by most English for their treatment of animals. Need I say that Albania and Kosovo and Estonia and Romania and Poland and many other countries in Eastern Europe have little connection to England let alone any sort of cultural equivalence. They are mostly dyfunctional cultures. Let alone Russia who besides their monstrously oppressive governments over the years were a real threat to our survival until recently.

There is some level of connection for England with “Europe” but far less than many Americans (if Henry A. is an American) think. Most English people certainly feel closer to the United Staes than to Europe. Some might even feel closer to India than to Europe. I’m sorry to break up the European team, Henry A. but it never assembled in the first place. For most English, Europe is still as foreign as cherry pie. And inferior to England and its culture too. Sorry about that!

Tom S. writes:

Re the passive British: Very good—I agree completely. I must say, I laughed out loud reading Jeff from England’s put-downs of other Europeans—such a classical expression of English attitudes toward “foreigners.” To borrow a line from Ian Fleming, he ought to type that up, sign it “Octagenerian” and send it to the Times (although in today’s ultra-PC climate, they probably wouldn’t print it). It’s the right of every Westerner to love his culture best—that’s part of what made the West great. The question today, though, isn’t whether English culture is superior to German culture or Russian culture or Romanian culture—it’s whether any or all of these historic cultures are superior to the nullity of the Left-liberal EU style welfare state, or the cultural desert of Islam. I personally would rather live under the American version of Western culture than any other, but I’d rather live in Russia or Germany or Romania or Ireland or any Western culture than be a dhimmi in an Islamic society, and that’s really the issue.

Great discussion. You can’t find stuff like this anywhere but VFR.

Henry A. replies:

In his last post Jeff seems to pick some events that back his position but selectively avoids others than do not.

1) He calls the French cowards but they lost many more men than England in WWI. In WWII they did not withstand the Germans because the German Army was the BEST in the world, they just could not do it. The Germans let the British flee at Dunquerque as a sign of good will trying to avoid a larger conflict. Paraphrasing Fred Reed, it seems that Jeff cannot distinguish between military prowess and the English Channel. Dear Jeff, had England had a land border with Germany, the Wehrmacht would have been parading in London sooner than they paraded in Paris.

2) So you are angry because other Europeans go and live in England. Well, go and ask the French and the Spanish, that have 750,000 and 200,000+ expats English living in they countries respectively. It seems that you don’t speak for all Englishmen, and many of your compatriots like the rest of Europe very much. It is true that many Englishmen dislike the European Union, but that is also true of many Frenchmen, Spaniards, Germans, etc, etc. They see the EU as a liberal, anti-Christian and secular organization trying to erase each singular European culture and blending them all together in the New World Order. They are right. However this does not mean that all (not even most) English dislike France and vice versa, that all Germans dislike Italy and vice versa, that all Spaniards dislike Russians, etc, etc.

3) So Spanish are cruel to animals and that is bad. Well, they were not as cruel to people when they got to the Americas, at least they were not as cruel as the English were. Here in the USA there are no Indians left, while Mexico is mostly a Mestizo country. Maybe this lack of cruelty was in the long term bad for the Spaniards as they were demographically overwhelmed in many countries in Latin America. On the other hand there was a real massacre of Indians in the USA by the English and then by the American government. From a cold point of view (and I don’t gloat about killing people) this may have helped to develop a homogeneous and consistent country, but they were much more cruel to the Indians than the Spaniards. Jeff, you cannot have a cake and eat it.

I have traveled extensively in Latin America, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and I find some characteristics of those societies remarkable. The European-derived people there of Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, British, Irish, Slavonic, and even American stock (there is a significant American community in Sao Paulo going back to the Civil War when many Southerners fled the U.S. toward Brazil) are indeed part of the West and in many cases they live lives much more “Western” than here in the USA.

4) The best argument Jeff has to back his point against Slavs and French is that they are/were anti-Semites. You have to do better than that. Especially because the English are not the exception, they also expelled the Jews from England back in the XIII century and kept them out for 350 years, but probably Jeff never read that. Moreover, the Jews first arrived in England in 1066 when the French speaking Normans defeated the Saxons and created a new, different country. The relations between Christians and Jews in Europe are far from being the best, but this is not the main topic of this discussion and the fact that Jeff has to use this cheap shot shows he really lacks historic perspective to understand the present dangerous situation for all European countries.

5) Jeff says “The Italians make corruption look like a national sport. That modern Fascism developed there is no surprise.” Regarding corruption at national scale I would look closer at Blair (and Bush) and the fake invasion of Iraq whose cost will be paid in not a minor part by British and American citizens and their sons and grandsons. And for Fascism you should read a little bit about the very good rapport between Churchill and Mussolini. Talking about completed events is easy, but history is more complex and interesting that it seems. To sum up, Churchill wanted Mussolini to side with France and England, against Germany. He was close to getting that, and in that case Jeff you would be today praising Mussolini (or maybe not because you don’t like anyone except yourself, even the Scots and Irish get trashed).

6) Indeed there was no European “team” starting from the XVI century when European countries started to go and conquer foreign lands and compete against each other because nobody else was in conditions to compete against them. And maybe that was the seed of European disunion, greed. But before that there was indeed a union. It was called Christendom. Jeff, history does not start at the XVI century. And more important, history does not end now. This takes me to the next point.

7) Better the English start studying seriously Spanish and Slavonic (yes, those backward and retrograde people, “third word” and “dysfunctional” as we are now informed by Jeff) history to LEARN how they fought the Muslims. As Londonistan gets bigger and bigger threatening to engulf all England, how do you think you are going to get rid of that? There are different scales of times: water in rivers changes very fast, sediment in rivers takes more time, continents move very slow, and Muslims take many centuries to be removed. Namely about 700 years in Spain and about 400 years in the Balkans. How long is Londonstian going to last? There is a big disadvantage for the English now that Spaniards and Slavs did not face with the current force: racial blending. The Spaniards and Slavs, mainly due to religious motives (but not only to that), did not mate with the Muslim invaders (except when they were forced to after being kidnapped). Now English women are happily having babies with Muslims and people from Asia and Africa in a way that is changing radically the racial composition of the people living in England. So in a much shorter time than seven centuries there may be another kind of population there. Why should they not mate if liberalism is telling them to do so? Unlike the Muslims who have faith in something, many Europeans (but especially the English) have lost their religious faith long ago. They are unarmed.

8) The sad present state of England is due to the English elites who sold the country after WWII (or even early than that), much early than the UN or the bureaucrats in Brussels even tried to do anything. Responsibility always starts at home.

9) I am not saying all cultures (even European cultures) are the same. In my previous post I was clear about it using the word distinctiveness, and I am talking about European derived cultures (e.g. not Islam, Budhism, or Umbanda). It is one thing to say that cultures are not the same (true); it is another to try to make some ranking of cultures (like they do with the universities in the USA), especially about cultures that have been so related to each other. Going back to my literature example: is Dostoyevsk better than Chesterton? Is Quevedo better than Dante? Is Shaw better than Zola? Is the Song of Roland better than the saga of the Cid Campeador? Is Beowulf better than the Divine Comedy? To try to answer quantitatively any of these questions is foolish. Only a neocon might have ignorance and hubris enough to try it, and indeed I find in Jeff many neocon traces.

LA replies:

Well, this is certainly a strong statement by Henry, but I’m no longer sure what his point is, other than to criticize Jeff for being too harsh on non-British Europeans.

Henry A. replies:

My point is to criticize not just Jeff, but the anti-European vision he and most neocon have. They are in the best case ignorants shooting themselves in the foot, and in the worst case they have bad faith and even wish evil to other European people. If you read National Review, or The New Republic these days you know what I am talking about.

LA replies:

You think Jeff is an anti-European neocon? My gosh. Jeff is insistent that all Muslim immigration must stop. He has repeatedly gone after such writers as Melanie Phillips and even Robert Spencer for not addressing Muslim immigration directly. I simply do not see the neocon, universalist-democratist element in Jeff, though he does have some left or liberal elements in his thought and frequently defends them.

Henry replies:

Probably I am wrong about Jeff (I am a new reader to your blog), but I see in him the neocon spirit. The same spirit you find in the “creative-destruction” of Michael Ledeen. I consider myself a traditionalist, a word that you seem to identify with too. But I give Jeff the benefit of the doubt. My point is that we must defend all Christian and European derived cultures in the world. That simple.

LA replies:

It’s interesting that Henry would think that about Jeff. I see Jeff’s views here, not as an expression of the typical neocon bias against Europe, but (as someone else has also mentioned) as an expression of an almost traditional English bias against anyone, uh, south of Calais, which, given that Jeff is from the U.S. originally, is pretty funny.

(Note added later: Looking again at Jeff’s attack on the countries of continental Europe, I have to agree with Henry and others that it is excessive. Jeff does sound, well, anti-European, and in a manner that one might almost associate with, say, a real Europe-hater like Ralph Peters.)

Alan Levine writes:

A few comments on the exchanges prompted by Jeff’s seeing “The Sea Hawk.” Contrary to Henry A., the Turks did not need to follow a “divide and rule” strategy in SE Europe. The Balkan rulers did it for them, not only once, but twice! After practically conquering the Balkans in the 14th century thanks to the local rulers fighting each other, the Turks, almost destroyed by Tamerlane, quickly retook the area after the Europeans regained their independence. As for Jeff, I do not understand the claim that the Poles have been the most anti-Semitic people in Eastern Europe. My ancestors lived in relative safety in Poland for centuries when Jews were thrown out of the rest of Catholic Europe. Despite their faults, the modern Poles have been far less hostile to Jews than Romanians or Ukrainians, and probably other groups.

I too love “The Sea Hawk.” Fantastic as it may sound, it is not all that romanticized! The story is squarely based on real incidents in the careers of Francis Drake, his less fortunate lieutenant John Oxenham, and the escape of some English and other European slaves from the Turks in a hijacked ship. The real historical inaccuracy of the story is that it is set a bit too late. By 1585, when the movie starts, England and Spain were clearly at war. The story should have been set in the 1570s, as were the incidents which inspired the screenwriters.

Alan Levin writes:

A few comments on Henry A.s’ last post: 1) While his cracks about the abuse of non-British Europeans by Jeff and others are sometimes well taken, in this last post he seems to fall into abusing the English-speakers himself.

2) The French in 1940, and on later occasions, fought hard; they were simply beaten.True. But the idea that Hitler deliberately let the BEF escape at Dunkirk has long been exploded. As Albert Speer once dryly pointed out, anybody who thought that did not understandt the Fuehrer very well!

3) The idea that the Spaniards and their successors, Mexicans etc, didn’t exterminate the Amerinds but the English-speakers did so is wild nonsense. With a few local exceptions, NEITHER deliberately wiped out the natives. The reduction of the Amerind population almost everywhere was primarily due to disease, not war or extermination. There is, however, no doubt that the Spaniards were far more engaged in enslaving the natives than the English, while some Mexican governments followed a policy of deliberately driving tribal Amerinds into the US to get rid of them. Mexico, Peru, etc have far more remaining Amerinds because those areas were civilized regions with relatively dense populations, unlike North America north of the Rio Grande. In those areas of Latin America where the natives were as thin on the ground as they were in the US and Canada—e.g Argentina—the Amerind presence is just as small.

I stress small, because there are plenty of Amerinds still here!

I’d be interested to find evidence that either the English or US governments ever followed a policy of exterminating the Amerinds.

I am surprised to see this sort of far-left guff posted at VFR.

LA says:

I’m not directing this at Henry, but the remark could just as easily come from the right as from the left, as many people on the right want to do away with the more benign traditional picture of American history and assert that America is based on nothing but power, because that’s what they believe in themselves.

There was never a U.S. policy to exterminate Indians, though surely there were people who would have liked to do so. It was an ad hoc policy of gradually pushing them back and confining them in reservations.

Clark Coleman writes:

The nonsense from Jeff about the French “capitulation” to the Germans in World War II is getting tiresome. I have been hearing this business constantly since the falling out with Chirac over the current Iraq War. Yes, the French wanted to do business with Hussein and make money rather than worry about the geopolitical situation. Yes, they opposed us at the U.N. for such selfish motives. But, in the long run, we really do need to develop some sense of solidarity with continental Europe in order to fight the spread of Islam.

The French lost 120,000 men in three weeks of German invasion in World War II. The USA lost about 54,000 and 58,000 in the Korean and Vietnam wars. Think how hugely controversial those wars were in the states. Imagine losing more men in three weeks than we lost in thirteen years. Picture that fighting on another week means that you lose another 40-50 thousand men without changing the ultimate outcome. All of this with a population substantially less than that of the USA.

It really is time to give this a rest and try to unite the Christian West.

Paul K. writes:

We shouldn’t underestimate Christendom’s debt to Spain, and not only for driving the Muslims from the Iberian peninsula. When they colonized the Philippines in the mid-16th century, the Spanish battled the highly aggressive Muslim inhabitants of the southern islands whom they dubbed “Moros” for their similarity to Moors. As Peter Gowing wrote in “Mandate in Moroland,” “The Spaniards drove Islam out of Luzon and the Visayas, and for over three centuries contained it in Mindanao and Sulu. It is conceivable that Islam would have spread to Taiwan, Okinawa, Japan and possibly to southern China (where there where already small Muslim trading communities) and Korea, had not Spain gained control of the Philippines.”

Yes, the Spanish were often cruel, but we may have to become less squeamish about some of the things we now think of as cruel if we wish to survive.

Henry again:

I am following the discussion. I agree with Paul. K and Clark Coleman. Here are my answers to Alan Levine.

1) My intention was to abuse nobody. If I did I apologize but I re-read my post and do not find anything abusive. True, my tone is that of a person a little bit upset, but making gratuitous and ignorant comments about people you don’t know is upsetting to me.

2) Regarding your points about the Turks in the Balkans and the Germans at Dunquerque I mention what I have read. Of course there may be other points of view, history is not a hard science. But without denying what you are saying I hold my ground. At least we could have a coherent conversation about that.

3) Regarding the treatment given to Indians by Spaniards and English, there was a difference. Spaniards were never afraid of mixing. In the long term, and form the Spanish point of view, that may have been not a good idea as I posted above. On the other hand the English did not want to mix with the Indians, and mostly they didn’t. The Spanish did not have any problem in marrying Indians. Some encouraged that especially with high ranked Indian ladies to get to the high spheres in Indian circles to get political control, and convert them to Christianity. At the Denver Art Museum you can see the pictures showing these new dynasties. A priori that sounds like a well-intentioned purpose, they tried to assimilate the Indians to Spanish culture and religion, but in the long time it is not clear who assimilated who. You don’t find anything like these with the English in North America.

There were of course abuses but it was the action of the Church and the Spanish state trying to give the Indians a fair treatment that leveled the game. In fact as Thomas Woods argues it was the encounter of Spanish and Indian civilization that gave birth to the concept of equal treatment for all peoples within Christian societies. Spanish scholars set the legal frame for it while Spanish philosophers set the background. This is now something that in western countries is given for granted, but an alien concept not centuries ago, and still alien in other cultures in Africa and Asia today. A good author to read about these topics is Jean Dumont, a French historian (in French) or many other people if you read Spanish.

A policy to push the Indians to the West every day a little bit is a way of ethnic cleansing, and eventually extermination because the Indians did not like that, resisted, and there were battles, with the Indians having the worst part. Call it whatever you want. This is a fact rather than an ideological malady from the left or the right. The only thing similar to that you find in Latin America is in Argentina in the so called generation of the 80s, when president Roca pushed the Indians in Patagonia every day a little bit more to the South eventually getting almost all Patagonia into Argentina. The rest of Patagonia was caught by Chile. This happened in the 1880-1900 when the Spanish were gone long ago and other ideas closer to the French revolution had impregnated Argentinean intellectual circles. As for “here are plenty of Amerinds still here!” I have traveled all over the US and have seen very few (apart from the people with Indian blood coming form Mexico and Central America), mainly in some zoo-like reservations, nothing like you see in Latin America. If all this is good or bad for societies in the Americas is another discussion.

Rob H. writes:

Paul said: “Yes, the Spanish were often cruel, but we may have to become less squeamish about some of the things we now think of as cruel if we wish to survive.”

I couldn’t agree more. Our current philosophy is to show leniency and tolerance wherever possible to show our moral superiority. This philosophy is resulting in our being slowly conquered. The fact is that Western civilization will always have a need for butchers.

As I’ve said before, all life is Us vs Them. Be glad when our side wins. We are in the debt of the conquistadors.

Mark A. writes:

Great discussion here from all parties. All make great points. But we must not lose sight of the most important point: Islam requires conversion or death. I am a Christian. I will never convert. Despite my cynicism, I truly believe most Europeans and Americans won’t convert either. Using simple logic, and please correct me if I’m wrong, this means that we are facing death if we allow significant numbers of Muslims to live in the West. They must be repelled. America and Europe must unite against them.

Jeff responds to my amended comment above in which I said he was being anti-Europe:

There are different levels of what you are calling “anti-Europe.” The level of being against affiliation within the context of the European Union is one level. Probably the majority of Western Europeans now belong to that group. The EU is so liberal, so corrupt, so incompetent and so generally stifling that it has lost all credibility among a huge amount of Europeans as well as the English. So maybe in an inverse sense I am actually pro-Europe as I am with the majority of Europeans (Western) regarding the EU.

Now, a second level of being anti-Europe is my lack of affiliation with various European countries and their cultures (which admittedly are in the midst of great change due to immigration). I’ve already mentioned several countries and their indigenous cultures and why I don’t feel a strong sense of affiliation with them. I didn’t mention more liberal countries like Holland (the Netherlands) in my previous blog comments but they are a good example of why I am anti-Europe on this particular level. Why should I feel affiliated with a culture (Dutch in this case) which up until recently was so extremely liberal as to be literally on the verge of destroying itself through Islamic immigration. It’s bad enough that England is doing the same though not nearly (yet) to the extent of Holland. Why should I feel any sort of connection to this particular ultra-liberal indigenous culture? Ditto for Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia. Countries which pride themselves on their ultra-liberal tolerant secularism which as we know is leading to an Islamic takeover. Am I anti-European to reject links with them? Then so be it.

I’ve already said why I reject affiliation with some of the relatively less liberal Western European countries whose cultures are often very foreign to English people. But if Western Europe is “foreign.” Eastern Europe is like a different planet for the English. I’ve previously mentioned their anti-Semitism, economic incompetence, savage tribalism (witness the Balkans) and reactionary governments. They may have whiter skin than the English but so what. It is common sense to NOT want an affiliation with the Eastern European countries. Am I “over the top” and “excessive” for not feeling feelings of affiliation with countries and cultures who have so little in common with England other than a white skin colour. I don’t think so. So much for the second level of being anti-Europe. I happily plead guilty. Of using common sense.

The final level of being “anti-Europe” is a tricky one and harder to define. Many of the people involved on this level don’t feel connected to either national affiliations or European affiliations. For example my friend who runs a rave club is originally from Germany, lives in England but identifies with neither. He travels around the globe going from rave party to rave party and says he belongs to a “planetary culture.” Many young people (usually white) from various developed countries in Europe are like him and are moving beyond identification with any particular national affiliation. In the age of the internet, this phenomenon is becoming more and more common. Countries and nationalistic affiliations are becoming part of the past for many people.

Am I “anti” these people wherever in Europe they come from? Hardly. Most are very nice people on an individual level. Again, these people do not go around identifying themselves as German or Italian or French or even European . Often they are very critical of the countries which they come from. So on this third level of being anti-Europe I plead not guilty. I like many of these non-affiliated people. They have rejected many of the negative qualities which their more traditional countrymen have. So on this level I would be pro-Europe in the sense that I feel a connection on a human level to most of these people who are based in the land mass known as Europe but who don’t necessarily identify with it.

LA replies:

Jeff’s remarks are interesting, but what is missing from his analysis of Europe is a loyalty to a “good Europe” that is being destroyed by the several “bad” Europes he dislikes, a good Europe that he wants to restore and protect. For example, he despises the Dutch for their hyperliberalism and openness to Muslim immigration. But where is his concern for the older Netherlands that liberal Netherland is destroying? Where is his concern for the older Europe that modern Europe is destroying? Jeff regrets how today’s Britain is wiping out the older Britain he loves. He seems to lack a corresponding solicitude for the rest of Europe.

David B. writes:

Allow me to make a belated comment on Jeff’s criticism of Europe as compared to England and America. The anti-Europe remarks by Jeff in his earlier post could have come straight from a Rush Limbaugh monologue. As I wrote you a few days ago, America is not in much better shape regarding invaders in our midst than Europe. Those who sneer at the valor of the French military over the centuries is ignoring history and again, sounds like Limbaugh and Jonah Goldberg. I repeat, the political and business ruling class in America is as eager to submit as their counterparts in “Old Europe.”

Jeff writes:

I just reread the recent Daily Mail Sue Reid investigative article I sent you about Eastern European immigration. Are the English (and me) supposed to welcome these people as fellow white European allies? That’s a good joke.

These invaders are our Hispanics and they are flocking in daily. The Bulgarians and Romanians are next in line. The Muslims may be more dangerous in the long run but right now the Eastern European numbers are staggering enough to make them the number one enemy. So much for European solidarity. I don’t care if they are white or even if they are Jewish!. They are invading this country and I want them out.

EG writes:

Is this Europe-bashing Jeff from England the same fellow who, in the past, critiqued VFR for being too harsh with respect to blacks and black Americans? The same fellow who considers radical black militant Dick Gregory and Oprah “I have Zulu DNA” Winfrey as examples of wonderful African assimilation to the West? Why was Henry’s criticism of Jeff as a “neocon” wrong? All the signs are there—the “main enemy” being Eastern Europeans, not South Asian Muslims or West Indian blacks, his contempt for “Old Europe,” while defending colored minorities and promoting the idea that these colored minorities, and not “Old Europeans,” are capable of assimilation.

The major problem with Jeff’s analysis is that he—like so many people allergic to the idea of pan-Western cooperation—mistakenly seem to believe that such cooperation means that:

- specific nations such as England must give up their distinctiveness;

- members of one (European) nation must identify with, and affiliate with, the distinctive characteristics of other such nations, instead of simply identifying with an overarching Western identity as part of European Christendom and the white race;

- there must be a borderless EU and there must be cross-European immigration;

- one must love all aspects of all European cultures;

That is absolute nonsense. No one tells Jeff (an American, by the way) or any real Englishman that he must dress like a matador and fight a bull, that he must support Eastern European immigration into England, support the EU (which nationalists throughout Europe all oppose), give his first daughter to a Romanian, or any other strawman arguments. No one tells him that he cannot consider England superior to all other nations, if that is what he believes.

However, an Englishman should look at Europe and say: “Despite our differences, which are significant, we are ALL Men of the West. We are all Europeans. We are all part of an intertwined history and we share the same civilizational destiny. We all are threatened by the same extra-civilizational forces. We cannot win this battle alone, but must act in concert. This does not mean giving up our distinctive natures. No, we embrace our differences, and strive to preserve them, BUT we also recognize our similarities as well. One does not have to live in the same house as one’s brother or cousin—separate houses indeed lead to better inter-family relations. But one should not forget family solidarity even though one needs to live one’s own life. The same with the West—each people for their own nation, and each with their own culture—but they are of the same family, and the days when the family could fight amongst themselves and still prosper, are long over. The white race no longer “rules the world”; the world is “smaller” and instead of the greatest enemy being your neighboring nation, in today’s globalism, hostility is now across broad civilizational lines. United we stand, divided we fall.”

That does not mean that continental Europeans should have the run of England. England should be for the English, but neither should England stand alone and aloof while the entire West, England, included, goes down the tubes.

If Jeff really believes that Eastern Europeans are England’s greatest enemy, then that says it all. But, perhaps he should not despair too much. Many of the “Romanians” and “Bulgarians” coming to England will be nice brown Gypsies, of South Asian Roma ancestry, and, hence, wonderfully assimilable to English society and culture. Just like Dick Gregory.

Behavior that perhaps was reasonable and adaptive in the past—when England’s greatest enemies were, in order, Spain, France, and Germany—such as an inflated sense of English distinctiveness from, and contempt toward, continental Europe may no longer be adaptive and reasonable in a globalist age where non-Western movements and nations (eg. Islam, China, or the overall migratory flow from South to North) have emerged as major players on the world scene. England need not worry about a second Spanish Armada or a new Napoleon threatening her shores. But England does indeed need to worry, as does every European nation, of being part of a Eurabian Caliphate that would flush thousands of years of Western civilization down the toilet.

Welcome to the 21st century. Stop living in the past.

LA replies to EG:

(1) I amended my earlier defense of Jeff and said that some of his attacks make him sound anti-European almost in the manner of Ralph Peters. (2) It is not correct to say that Jeff is pro colored minorities and anti white: he has been calling insistently for a total end of Muslim immigration into Britain; he has strongly attacked Melanie Phillips, whom he otherwise admires, for her failure to address immigration. 3. Jeff is currently even more passionately concerned about the European immigration pouring into Britain, which is numerically the largest immigration in Britain’s history, hundreds of thousands per year, apparently not restricted by number because it’s simply the free migration of EU members. This subject is in the British papers a lot, Americans are not aware of it. Jeff has been calling my attention to it.

LA continues:

To get an idea of the scale of the immigration catastrophe in Britain, see this article in the Times:

Immigration sparks white exodus from UK

White Britons, alarmed at immigration, are fleeing the capital and even the country in record numbers in a “white flight” that mirrors South Africa’s exodus.

And this week a controversial new book which seeks to explain their flight, encouraged young British-born families to leave in the face of unchecked immigration .

A report by Britain’s chief immigration think-tank, Migrationwatch, said more than 100000 British-born Londoners have left the UK capital this year as immigrants stream into the city.

Meanwhile, another report by private analysts predicts that the white exodus is set to accelerate further, and that London’s immigrant population will jump from 40% to 60% i n just 12 years.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said the departing whites were being replaced by other ethnic minorities in their neighbourhoods, leading to a “very unfortunate” apartheid-style segregation of the capital.

The report said it was a potential disaster for integration and race relations in Britain. “The effect is a rapid increase in the ethnic minority composition of some boroughs, resulting from an outflow of the white population and an inflow of African and Asian international migrants.” [cont.]

And let’s remember the incredible fact that this problem, the size of the immigration inflow, has been vastly worsening. I wrote an article in spring 2001 called “American No Longer Exists,” meaning not that America literally no longer existed but that it was like an organism that had lost the instinct to respond to an external threat. Britain is far worse. It is as though it were literally dead.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 30, 2006 03:39 PM | Send