Can a country be reborn?

James P. from England writes:

As an Englishman born and raised in the city of Bradford, I can’t stop thinking about your frequent references to “the Dead Isle.”

You said in March 2007 that “The British, the great people from which our own country was born, are dead, they are finished, they are kaput.” As you are someone who takes great care with words, I suppose this is not some flippant outburst of spleen but that you probably have some idea about a nation possessing a kind of spiritual essence.

You add that “Before there is any possibility that they can become a decent and strong people again, they must first be melted down and destroyed as they now exist.” Whilst a metal can be purified and strengthened by applying heat, and I believe that something similar can occur on the level of an individual physical or spiritual body, do you really think that this can happen to a whole country? If so, what might the result look like? Is there an example in history that resembles this process? I would be interested to know. A vision of a better future is perhaps necessary to sustain hope.

Many thanks for your time, and your constantly illuminating blog.

LA replies:

As you know, about two years ago I wrote a series of entries on the theme that Britain is “dead.” Then I dropped it, as I felt I shouldn’t keep saying the same thing over and over and I had made my point, especially as it is a highly unpleasant point, though recently I’ve again been referencing the idea briefly in titles of blog entries.

If it can happen individually, as you acknowledge, why can’t it happen with a people? Britain is very decadent. What if the decadence—and the disorder, crime, misbehavior, chaos, national humiliation, and suffering resulting from that decadence—reaches a point where people say, “We can’t endure this any more, we’ve reached bottom, we have brought this on ourselves, we must change”? And then both on the leadership level and the ordinary level, people began to renounce, privately and publicly, the entire belief system of Britain that has led to this.

In brief: great suffering, brought on by sin (and let us remembert that leftism is the political form of evil), can lead to repentance and reformation. That’s the “melting down” I’m talking about.

Again, since we know this can happen for an individual, couldn’t it happen for a people? It seems to me that it’s not impossible.

Nothing remains the same. No development continues in the same direction forever. Yes, Britain could truly die without a resurrection. But I can also see Britain coming back. The more horrible the decadence, the stronger the recoil from it, when it occurs, as well as the recoil from the intellectual and political leadership class that has led Britain to this.

Also, because I was seeing Britain as “dead” (maybe I’m like the boy in The Sixth Sense, except that instead of seeing dead people I see dead countries), I never wanted to leave it at that. It’s wrong to end an article on a purely negative or despairing note. So I have always added that it’s not dead in the sense that a biological organism is dead, but it’s spiritually dead, and therefore it could revive.

I don’t know of any precise historical parallels. But there are examples of countries returning from moral chaos. It happened under Augustus, who saved Rome after it had been riven by a hundred years of civil war and its traditional morality had been destroyed. It happened in Victorian England, when a revival of Christian and family morality brought the country back from a long period of culturally dominant secularism and immorality.

The much tougher problem today is, of course, the presence in Britain of millions of non-Westerners, and also of far too many European immigrants allowed into the country under its essentially open borders policy of the last few years. If anything like historical Britain is to survive and be revived, that immigration must be stopped and reversed. This is especially true with regard to Muslims. People say it’s impossible, out of the question, to get Muslims to leave. But it’s also impossible, out of the question, for Britain to survive in recognizable form with millions of Muslims in its midst. So, between these two “impossibles,” I choose the first.

James P. (from the U.S.) writes:

The tough problem is not the millions of non-Westerners but the much larger number of liberals in Britain who will fight any “rebirth” or return to decency. The presence of immigrants is a symptom, not the cause, of the problem that is killing Britain (and also, of course, America). Liberalism is the engine of national death, not immigration. The prerequisite for national survival is the defeat of liberalism. If liberals did not rule Britain, then the problems associated with the presence of non-Westerners would be much more easily addressed, if not solved.

LA replies:

This type of exchange occurs repeatedly at VFR. It goes without saying that the condition of achieving any of the substantive goals traditionalists believe in is the defeat of liberalism. But to say, “We must defeat liberalism in order to solve the immigration problem,” or, similarly, to say, “We must defeat political correctness and regain our national confidence in order to solve the Islam problem,” is also insufficient. The question is, once liberalism is defeated, once political correctness is defeated, once we regain our confidence, what would we do about immigration and Islam? Fighting liberalism by itself does not solve those problems. Furthermore, it seems to me that the way to defeat liberalism is to fight for the non-liberal positions we believe in. So it’s not as though we defeat liberalism, and then we solve immigration. Defeating both problems is part of one process.

Of course, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t argue against liberalism itself, meaning against the premises of liberalism, as Alan Roebuck does in his articles.

My point is that it should not be either-or, and it should not “first this, then that.” We need to do both.

LA adds, August 13, 2011:

In my above reply to James P., I did not give sufficient weight to his point that “The tough problem is not the millions of non-Westerners but the much larger number of liberals in Britain who will fight any ‘rebirth’ or return to decency…. Liberalism is the engine of national death, not immigration.” While I still don’t agree that immigration is not also part of the engine of national death, I do agree that liberalism is the bigger problem. It is the ruling liberalism that precludes any defense of the historic British nation and people, that precludes any truthful statements about race and race differences and their effect on society, that makes it impossible to discuss reductions of immigration, ending welfare without work requirements, ending the official siding with criminals and terrorist supporters, and all the rest of it.

Tim W. writes:

Britain has a long road ahead of her if she is to be reborn. Alan Duncan, a Tory (yes, Tory) shadow minister who is a “married” homosexual, referred to Miss California Carrie Prejean as a “silly bitch” on a BBC talk show and joked that if she turns up murdered he might be the guilty one (see link below). One positive note is that some of the other guests were disturbed by his comment, at least the one joking about killing her.

Some Christian groups protested and the homosexual Tory (it’s amazing to be writing that) backed down, assuring all that he was only kidding and that he made the comments on an unserious, often satirical show. That’s good that he retreated a tad, though I suspect a politician joking about killing a homosexual after calling him a silly (insert F word here) would be forced from office and likely prosecuted.

BTW, the references to the Miss America pageant in the Telegraph article are erroneous, it was the Miss USA pageant where Miss California was sandbagged by the homosexual judge.

LA replies:

I’m astonished. A conservative shadow minister saying such a thing?

Don’t people know how many murders (and mass murders) are preceded by the murderer making “jokes” about doing it?

And he was not dismissed from his post for saying this?

They’re lost, they’re gone.

But maybe there’s something in the wings we don’t yet see…

Keith Jacka writes from England:

I will merely assert, without justificatory evidence. I am not trying to convince, merely suggesting that people should be cautious.

1) The rebirth is already occurring, and proceeding apace. You would have to live here to realize this, since the MSM in Britain is many times more effective than in the USA at suppression and distortion.

2) We are in a Revolutionary Situation. You are not. There is now a sufficiently large number of people here who have made up their minds. They are gradually beginning to act. This was not true ten years ago. It’s possible we may be able to weather the coming storms without too much overt violence.

3) I grew up in Australia. I lived for a year in the USA. The second half of my life has been spent in Britain. Of these three countries, I would bet on Britain as the most likely to be a flourishing Culture and Nation in the year 2030 AD.

LA replies:

It gives me hope for the future when you say this. I think you made a similar point at VFR a few weeks ago.

I understand that you don’t want to lay out evidence, but can you tell me a bit more about the things that are happening that give you this view?

Also, why do you say that Britain has a better chance to be a flourishing nation in 30 years than the U.S. and Australia?

Are you perhaps talking about a movement in Britain to initiate a reverse immigration policy, which you don’t think the U.S. and Australia will do?

Keith Jacka replies:

Quite reasonably, you ask for a little more than pure assertion. Here are some snippets.

1) Access the BNP “Language and Concepts Discipline Manual.” Easiest via Google. (28th April). This is high qualilty political organizing. Practical, simple, intelligent. Way beyond anything in the USA or Australia. (I know something of these matters, both practically and theoretically). There are 13 Rules. Note particularly Rule No 10.

2) English girls were, once upon a time, very beautiful. Then there was an appalling dive. They are starting to come good again.

3) Some Englishmen are also beginning to stand up straight, and no longer feel it mecessary to apologize for their existence.

4) Reverse Immigration. Certainly. But this is a derivative from self-confidence.

The above, I know, is inadequate. But to do much better I would have to write a book.

LA writes:

Apparently the Language and Concepts manual, which has just been revised in light of the recent controversy over Nick Griffin’s statement about “racial foreigners,” is in pdf at the BNP site. But a conservative Anglican blog has helpfully posted an html version of it. Here is Rule Number 10, which Mr. Jacka recommended:

Rule #10: A political party cannot succeed, or even attract new members, if it takes as its premise the hopelessness of its cause. Therefore, BNP activists and writers must, though they should strongly condemn the rotten character of the present British regime and the society it has produced, never speak of the situation in Britain as hopeless or of British society as corrupt to the point of worthlessness. They must always remember that politics, at the end of the day, is an act of will, and our creative vision of what Britain ought to be must always be alive in our hearts and projected with confidence to the public.

This is an excellent principle. I suppose Mr. Jacka sees it as in indirect criticism of my “Britain is dead” theme. My answer is that every time I have said that, it has been as a preface to the statement that Britain can revive itself. Indeed, according to Christianity, we are all dead, and need to be reborn. And Christianity is the religion of hope and eternal life. My articles saying that “Britain is dead” could be seen in that light. Also, how can a country be reborn, unless it realizes it’s dead?

However, as I noted before, I no longer write blog entries specifically saying that “Britain is dead,” as I was doing some time ago, because I felt I had made the point.

Here is Rule #13, which is related to Nick Griffin’s concept of civic Britishness as compared with ethnic Britishness that became a controversy recently (and we discussed it here):

Rule #13: The BNP defines British people in both civic and ethnic terms. Immigrants, and descendants of immigrants who have settled here from non-European countries, are British in the fullest civic sense of the word, and entitled to the rights of all British subjects. This includes all rights and duties (such as full protection under the law) and all other aspects of participatory society, such as national sports teams, military service, civic associations and the like.

The BNP also defines British people in an ethnic sense, in that we are the descendants of the traditional peoples of England, Scotland, Wales and the island of Ireland. In the same way, an English person might be born in China of English parents and might have a Chinese passport, but would never be ethnically described as Chinese.

This ethnic understanding of Britishness does not impinge upon the civic rights of British passport holders. It is merely an expression of the rights of an indigenous people to be recognised as such, and to have the right to remain as the majority population in their own nation.

This right is accepted as normal by almost every other nation on earth, who also define their indigenous populations ethnically. Pakistan, for example, has a law of return which guarantees children of Pakistani immigrants the right to a Pakistani passport, no matter where in the world they may have been born.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 29, 2009 10:41 AM | Send