What is the real cause of Britain’s national decline?
(Several comments have been added to this thread since Monday night.)
A non-British reader who resides in Britain writes:
Your postings on the state of the British raise a lot of questions. But I don’t think they get to the heart of the matter. And they don’t really get to real causes.
The British today are a rich wealthy society in which the vast majority wants to live in peace and security. They are also sexually debauched and all decency and morality has really been destroyed. The only morality left is that of non-discrimination. I believe many liberals are mostly cowards who are deluded about the nature of the threat facing the country and therefore they see any “Islamophobia” as dangerous because that way lies conflict.
So the fundamental problem is that they think conflict can be totally averted. These are a private pleasure and comfort loving people who like having some money, enjoy their sex and alcohol, their television and all the pleasures of a comfortable early 21st century bourgeoisie life. They have no will or desire to fight anyone or anything.
That is what lies at the heart of it.
LA replies:
How is your explanation so different from mine, which you say doesn’t get to the heart of the matter and doesn’t get to the real causes?
Reader replies:
Well I don’t think you have ever discussed the prosperity of the British or their utter sexual debauchery (other than in passing).
As an insight into their mind, you should regularly read their tabloids. It tells us of their taste and their entertainments. As a people the British have become much more frivolous than, say, the French.
Also, the programs they watch, such as “Big Brother.” It is a reflection of their taste and the complete destruction of any decency.
LA replies:
Well, I do regularly read articles in the Daily Mail, as it has so many articles on immigration and Islam and so on, and on every page of the Mail website there is a prominent set of highlighted articles, running down the whole page, called Femail, every one of which is about, basically, extra marital sexual affairs of celebrities and their attendant phenomena. And what’s in the Mail is probably quite sedate compared to the News of the World. It is as though triumphant sleaze had become the common culture of Britain.
As I’ve written before, it’s not just sexual freedom that indicates the downfall of society, but, even more, the normalization of sexual freedom, the removal of any disapproval regarding it. Since sex is such a basic aspect of life, and since sexual morality is so fundamental to society, to approve of all sexual behavior (except for the behavior of the woman who went to bed with her sperm donor!) is to make it impossible to have negative judgments about anything. Think about today’s college students with their super-promiscuity and their corresponding lack of respect for anything, except politically correct authority. Such a way of life cauterizes people, makes it impossible for them to believe in anything higher, except for some imagined unity of all the liberated human selves in the whole world.
Is prosperity the cause of this, or liberalism? Or are prosperity and liberalism inseparable? If the latter, then all successful civilizations are doomed to destroy themselves, because as soon as they become successful and wealthy they must become decadent. While that pattern has been seen over and over in history (and philosophers were writing about it thousands of years ago), I don’t think it has to be that way. But to avoid going that way, a society must consciously avoid democracy with its equality and liberty for all and its destruction of any moral authrority over individuals. But wide-spread prosperity creates a strong movement toward democracy….
Is there any way for a society to escape this cycle, other than remaining unsuccessful and poor?
What about the Japanese way, the deliberate policy of reducing individual consumption and increasing savings and investment? But there are news stories indicating the ills of prosperity in Japan, too, including increasing sexual promiscuity.
Simon N. writes from England:
Your reader writes:
“They are also sexually debauched and all decency and morality has really been destroyed”
This is an important point which I think is rarely appreciated. I grew up in conservative Northern Ireland but I’ve lived in England 16 years now. The sexual debauchery of the southern English middle and (especially) upper-middle classes is really quite astounding. It still amazes me, and my Tennessean wife. She recently told me a southern-English work colleague looked exhausted—she asked why—he said he couldn’t sleep because the sound of his teenage son (16, AIR) having sex with his girlfriend all night was so loud it was keeping him awake! That kind of thing is completely routine.
Bill writes from England:
What is the real cause of Britain’s national decline?
Since 1997 when Phoney Blair swept into power with New Labour and his gang, Britain has been subjected to the relentless attack of the USSR replacement communism—cultural Marxism.
Cultural Marxism is a many headed hydra, it is: Political Correctness, Diversity, Mass Immigration, Sexual Promiscuity (vital to the cause), Non Discrimination, Democratic majority rule in favour of minorities and much more (think of your own.) What is not generally acknowledged is (it appears) that this regime is accompanied by a mountain of oppressive legislation directed against the indigenous people, so much so, any dissension is crushed to the point where you can be jailed for up to seven years. It is not surprising therefore that resistance is little in evidence.
I would venture that there is a seething loathing of what is going on in Britain to-day, cultural Marxism is the antithesis of everything British values stand for, how much more they will take is anyone’s guess.
From what I can deduce, England is a mirror image of America—it should be, for years America has been exporting this stuff all over the world (especially Europe and Britain) I find it puzzling you cannot (or do not appear to) see this sameness in our two countries. The only difference I can see is that America is vastly bigger country than Britain and so the effects of mass migration are not so “in your face” add to that (in Britain) the now “just beginning to dawn” colossal requirements of infrastructure to accommodate the added millions is now daunting even the liberal middle class.
I am reading on the Internet that cultural Marxism is in alliance with Islam and the Corporate Right, and that the whole shooting match is to do with preparation for globalisation.
In essence, it is not just about initial nation states—it’s about the survival of Western civilisation.
LA replies:
Of course I see the same things happening here. I talk about this frequently. And I agree with you that America played a huge role in exporting liberal attitudes to Europe and imposing them on Europe after the war.
At the same time, there are obvious and important differences between the liberalism of the two countries.
In America there was both a history and an ideology of assimilation to an American national identity, i.e., right-liberalism. Multiculturalism, which is a form of left-liberalism runs up against that, is seen as a violation of it, and there has been significant resistance to the multiculturalism, though I think it has been fading. By contrast, in Britain, which I did not really take in until I saw the response of the British to the July 2005 London bombings, the dominant ideology for decades has been, quite simply, pure tolerance, the automatic acceptance of the cultural Other and of the moral transgressor. Thus Britain has accepted Muslims clerics openly and publicly calling for the destruction of Britain; The kneejerk response of British people to any outrage is, “We believe in tolerance.”
There is, in “respectable” Britain, NO MEANINGFUL CONSERVATIVE RESISTANCE to this dominant left-liberalism. NONE. I have documented this at length. For example, no one, not even the critics of it, have called for numerical limits to the unbelievable uncontrolled immigration from eastern Europe (a million Poles entering into Britain in three years!). Because the British think it’s “racist” to speak of actual limits. I’ve seen no one, not even the critics of the evil Sexual Orientation Regulations, call for their repeal. The most that even your most outspoken conservative commentators do about these things is moan and gripe.
In addition to which, the celebration and normalization of sexual debauchery in the British media is far beyond what you see in America. And public expressions of atheism in Britain are far beyond what you see in America.
It’s been said a million times, both our countries are on the same path to destruction, but Britain is more advanced in key respects.
The kind of popular movement in the U.S. last spring that stopped the open-borders bill last spring is inconceivable in present-day Britain.
In sum, the dominant ideology in today’s Britain is the ideology of undiluted national suicide, and even critics of it have great difficulty articulating any alternative to it.
And by the way, if people don’t like the tyrannical anti-hate laws, why isn’t there a movement to overturn them? I repeat that while I see frequent gripes about the anti-hate laws, I can’t remember ever seeing a British writer or politician call for their repeal. The British of today cannot even imagine a non-left-liberal, non-PC, non-tyrannical, non-suicidal form of society.
Karen writes from England:
Your British correspondent states that Britain is a “rich, wealthy society” But is it? This is an illusion. The British economy manufactures virtually nothing and imports almost everything. The economy is based upon credit, rising house prices from mass immigration, and mass consumerism. Last month saw two significant events which suggest that the foundations of the myth are somewhat shaky.
Bank runs stated on the Northern Rock bank amid news that it was on the verge of collapse. It would have collapsed had the Bank of England not bailed it out with a massive financial package worth £15 billion. People, afraid their savings would be lost, queued outside the bank to withdraw their money. The queue grew very long and the bank did not have the cash to pay their customers. Had the Central Bank not intervened, the majority of customers would have lost their entire deposits.
Barclays Bank which failed to buy the ABN Amro Bank had not one but two emergency bail outs from the Bank of England late at night when it realised that it had no cash to pay out the direct debits, standing orders and payrolls overnight. The bail outs were of the order of £1.24 billion.
Should the B of E have refused these loans (as it could have done), a lot of people would have lost their money or had payments delayed. This is not a picture of a “rich wealthy society.” Bank runs and bank inability to make payments on time is a characteristic of Third World economies. (I haven’t seen a bank run since the Thai and Philippine banks crashed in Hong Kong.) And where does the Bank of England get its money? Most of the City of London banks are foreign and hence paying tax abroad and many British companies are foreign owned and also paying zilch to the treasury. The majority of workers are white collar and paying little tax. The number of professional occupations is less per head than other European countries.
Britain is living in a fantasy. The British want to be a wealthy society but are not prepared to do the work to become one. Educational standards are falling, teenage pregnancies are the highest in Europe and living in debt is the norm. It is a society on the possible verge of collapse. Atheism is the norm and churches are empty except the ones which are full of Africans and Chinese. The problem with the Church of England is that there is no separation of Church and State. The Queen is head of the Church and the State and the Church hierarchy are appointed by the Government. Therefore atheism is almost a requirement of becoming a Bishop. Evangelical pastors do not get promoted. Thus successive Governments have killed the church from within and this has made the Church irrelevant to the population.
The North Asians and even the Indians don’t have the same tendency to decadence. They hold on to their traditions more.
Bill in England replies:
Thank you for taking your valuable time to reply to my email.
Having read your comments to my email on VR, I find I’m in agreement with almost everything you say, which leads me to your charge of a total lack of signs of resistance in Britain.
So, here’s the rub. Why can I sense resistance where you can see none? (sorry if I did not make this clear) Yes, I agree the elites of all colours are holding the appeasement line, yes, I can see that there is no orchestrated resistance to the mountain of hate laws, but the story down below decks among the masses is of a different hue, I do sense a seething and loathing that can only manifest itself in future resistance. Come the next election, the British National Party will be the rallying standard of this loathing and seething,
There is a huge disconnect between the views of the appeasing managerial elites and the views of the people of Britain, it is a grave error to think otherwise, which for me, raises the question, do you make a distinction between the views of the ruling elite and the views of the ordinary people of Britain? I think the answer might lie in our respective viewing platforms; you as an intellectual commentator and me as an ordinary chap living here in Britain. Is it valid for me to say that I can sense where you can(not) see?—(Or should that be the other way round?)
As I write, at this very moment I hear on the BBC news, (this spluttering debate has bust wide open—again) the endless blunders by various government departments ensure the question of mass immigration will continue to surface, and each time this occurs the elite’s position worsens, every time they regroup with egg on their face. Their position is becoming untenable, they are seen by many to be stark naked, they are perceived as a bunch of complete no hopers—utterly useless and not fit for purpose.
Trouble is, from now on they will confuse and muddy the waters even more, they will vie with each other in a sham-scam Dutch auction of who will admit into the country the least number of migrants. Should either party be returned to government (which one will) then they will conveniently forget every thing they ever promised as they hear the ship’s captain orders, “Resume course No One—steady as she goes.” Thereafter things will get even worse.
The BBC now uses little guile in openly lying and manipulating the minds of its viewers—each time, the BBC’s efforts to stem the tide and limit the damage is heroic but hopeless, to those viewers with a fine tuned radar—the attempts to deceive are risible. It is very doubtful whether the programme for mass immigration into Britain could be sustained without the BBC’s enthusiastic support 24/7.
May I conclude by saying, that I am of a generation who have every reason to be ever grateful to the generosity and commitment of the people of America, it grieves me when I think of the sacrifices they made for Britain (Europe)—What an earth was it all for? The people of Britain must not let them down.
Your personal contribution to this aim is staggering, both in volume and in excellence, here’s wishing you the very best of luck in all your efforts.
LA replies:
Thank you very much for that kind statement.
I’m heartened to hear that there is this seething resentment in Britain against the leftist anti-British elites. But in politics, the only thing that counts is what people say and do publicly. As long as it’s a private feeling, it doesn’t count. In the same way, conservatives in America frequently point to polls showing that a majority of the American people are against this or that liberal policy, for example, the present large scale immigration. I always reply that what people tell a pollster in a telephone interview is not public opinion. Public opinion is what manifests itself in public.
So let’s hope and pray that the “under the radar” phenomenon you’re describing soon rises to the surface. A similar thing happened here this past spring, when the long-standing “opinion-poll” opposition to illegal immigration rose to the surface in reaction to the Bush-Kennedy Comprehensivie Black Death Act. When millions of people across the country telephoned their senators over and over for weeks in an unprecedented outpouring of opposition to a horrible bill, THAT was public opinion. And it shook the elites, from Bush on down, who had thought they could do what they liked.
Karen writes from England:
You say that the USA had a tradition of assimilation for immigrants. But how could non European immigrants ever assimilate into a northern European Protestant culture? The blacks have never truly assimilated and the other immigrant groups are too disparate ever to assimilate. I think the principal difference between USA and Britain is space. In the USA people can spread out and live quite separately whilst superficially subscribing to American values and there is less obvious tension. Britain has the densest population in Europe and people who are forced to live on top of each other tend to manifest conflict more quickly. Different ethnic groups have formed separate enclaves and this has been tolerated. The passivity of the English people to mass immigration has also been a major factor in its acceleration. However the majority of the English are pre-occupied with money , celebrity and sex and so long as these continue a plenty, they will not act to save their country.
(Simon N’s story is quite common. I heard a student recently say that his parents offered him and his girlfriend their double bed when she came to stay at his home. Accordingly the rate of abortions, sexually transmitted diseases and infertility is very high).
LA replies:
I don’t mean that the U.S. is successfully assimilating non-Western immigrants in any real way. We are not. What I mean is that we started out from a position of believing in the right-liberal ideal of assimilation into a common culture or at least assimilation into subscription to a common idea, but then as the non-assimilability of the mass non-Western population has become evident, we have moved in the direction of multiculturalism, i.e., “openness liberalism,” acceptance of everything, non-judgmental tolerance of everything. Britain by contrast never had a U.S.-type assimilationist, right-liberal ideal; Britain’s idea from the start was openness liberalism, acceptance of everything, non-judgmental tolerance of everything.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 29, 2007 09:45 PM | Send