People have a tendency to believe that change happens smoothly, that current conditions will only change incrementally, with occasional great events causing seismic shifts. In part, that is related to biological conservatism; ie biological systems always tend towards maintaining homeostasis, dynamic change within certain narrow boundaries. Our minds tend to be conservative as well; once we have established a workable template for viewing events, we tend to fit new data into our pre-existing models. This is why it is so difficult for people to change their minds. However, paradigm shifts do often occur imperceptibly. The familiar type of paradigm shift is the type that so many of those who are often disparagingly referred to as Neocons experienced after 9/11. In that case, a cataclysmic event shook loose the foundations of a particular world view that had been a stable construct for many years and the effects of the reorganization continue to reverberate throughout our culture. The other type of paradigm shift is more subtle and more ubiquitous, and rarely is demarcated as clearly as the post-9/11 shift. In this more common paradigm shift, a slow accretion of evidence builds up that supports a new and often revolutionary way of seeing the world; at some point, a broad consensus of people emerges with the new view, often without being able to describe when and how the shift took place.
An example might be the shift in societal attitudes toward illegal immigration that has taken place in our country. Until fairly recently, illegal immigration was broadly ignored or seen as an inevitability that was best tolerated in the shadows. The idea of trying to secure our borders was generally depicted as racially motivated and beneath American ideals, and thus, not a fit subject for serious discussion. Under the surface, and out of sight of the MSM, the slow accretion of public opinion was accelerating, until the topic emerged into the spotlight. Even in retrospect, I would defy anyone to identify the moment when the underground shift took place.
I fear we are seeing a paradigm shift taking place in England which will have profound repercussions on our place in the world and only a great deal of good fortune can forestall the loss of England as a member in good standing of Western Civilization.
Most of our attention has been on Europe and especially France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, as front line states in the European drama with Islamic fascism. However, England is showing an extremely troubling combination of avoidance, politically correct willful blindness, and cultural insecurity that raises serious questions about our good friends across the pond.
Helen Szamuely at EU Referendum wrote a thought provoking post yesterday, Wanted: set of British values, which described the new initiative by the British government to define British values; unfortunately, their description includes a caricature of the concept:
Now that a definition would be useful the co-ordinates are missing. Nothing daunted the government has announced that
“All secondary school pupils could be taught about "core British values" such as freedom, fairness and respect under new plans unveiled today.
A six-month government review will look at whether learning about how values such as freedom of speech are embedded in British history could help social inclusiveness.
The aim is to give children what officials called a 'strong sense of British identity and an understanding of British culture and traditions', beyond the citizenship classes which already form part of their curriculum.”
The very language used in the announcement tells us why this is a doomed project. Social inclusiveness? British culture and traditions? What are all those things?
A core culture of any society has to be exclusive; it is the distillation of what it means to be British. If you muddle the definition of British to include Caribbean, Pakistani, Indian, etc, you are no longer defining what British means.
[In the same way defining American as including Mexican or Israeli or Russian is an oxymoronic concept. This does not mean that there is no such thing as a Mexican-, Israeli-, or Russian-American, but you cannot be a Mexican/Israeli/Russian and an American; take your pick, you can't be both. What has always worked for America is the melting pot which allowed everyone to retain roots and connections to their heritage while adopting the essential core of what it means to be an American.]
But back to England, Helen would like the English to all speak English and know their history; this would not be remarkable except that the English seem to be surrendering on all counts.
The real problem is that at the heart of the European project lies a desire to do away with the national identities of European nations on the slightly insane base that wars and massacres have been caused uniquely by European nationalism. But national identities were real, if poorly defined; European identity remains a chimaera. So, at a time when we in the West are being challenged by determined groups whose aim is to undermine and destroy our values, we can present only a weakened version of what we might or might not be fighting for.
While the English seem to be rushing to surrender their values, a sub-group has no difficulty insisting on theirs, if Bruce Bawer is correct:
If there's anything in Europe today that's more alarming than the number of European Muslims who hold radically undemocratic views (40 percent of British Muslims would like to see Britain under sharia law), it's the feckless way in which government officials tend to respond to those views. Particularly if they include explosions of public complaints and protests.
Tony Blair has been one of the most clear headed and clear spoken bulwarks of the War on Islamic Fascism and the War in Iraq, yet at home, he leads a Parliamentary majority that is willing to surrender everything of importance to the whims of a capricious Utopian fantasy promulgated by unelected, faceless bureaucrats and judges. The British people have lost the right to defend themselves in their own homes, and now, it appears that criminal behavior is de facto legal if the criminals are minorities or members of a designated victim group. Here are some excerpts from Melanie Philips frightening article, A culture of legalised lunacy, which should be read in full. Her starting point was the use of the EU human rights law to prevent the expulsion of Afghan hijackers from England, even though the Taliban no longer runs Afghanistan:
The judge in last week’s Afghan ruling has been roundly pilloried. But common sense in this case was trounced in 2004, when an immigration tribunal ruled on human rights grounds that it was too dangerous to send the hijackers back to Afghanistan – even though the Taleban, from whom they had fled, had been replaced by a western-backed government.
The root of the problem here is not the wretched judge but the Government itself, which dragged its feet over this case for years. This was because it was paralysed by the fact that human rights law – described only last week by the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, as the Government’s ‘greatest achievement’ – has created in this country a culture of legalised lunacy.
To reverse the accelerating death of England as an idea and a people will be extremely difficult, and gets more difficult each day.
Abolishing the Human Rights Act would certainly help to put a brake on that process. But the problem would remain that Britain is signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights, which would still have supremacy over our laws.
Look, for example, at the Chahal judgment by the European Court of Human Rights, the key ruling preventing Britain from deporting foreign undesirables. This held that, if a person faced torture or inhuman treatment abroad, the risk to that individual from deporting him could not even be balanced against the risk he might pose to the country which allowed him to stay.
In other words, this ruling was a specific attack on the right of a country to decide what was in its citizens’ own best interests. Well, it’s quite clear that it is in now in this country’s best interests either to derogate from bits of this Convention – as every other signatory but Britain has in fact done – or leave it altogether.
Yesterday, Lord Falconer gave the game away when he acknowledged that -- although the Human Rights Convention has separate origins from the European Union – no country can be a member of the EU unless it is also a Convention signatory.
To some of us, of course, that is precisely why we should leave the EU, in order to restore our powers of self-government and democracy. But the fact that we are the human rights prisoner of the EU is why this Government will never address the deformities of human rights law.
The usual suspects scream that it would be unthinkable to abolish ‘human rights’. How absurd. Real human rights are very different. Indeed, before ‘human rights’ law took hold we were rather more free, not less. Instead, we would be abolishing the arbitrary and undemocratic power of judges to impose upon us a particular agenda that is far from universal.
In the remarkable words last year of the senior Law Lord, Lord Bingham, human rights law existed to protect vulnerable minorities - who were sometimes disliked, resented or despised -- against the howls of ‘majority opinion’.
It would seem to follow that -- for the judiciary -- Afghan hijackers, murderers and other criminals are ‘vulnerable minorities’, while the majority who are their potential victims have no human rights at all.
Extricating our nation from this mess would undoubtedly be complicated and difficult. But unless we do so, we are unlikely much longer to have a nation worthy of the name.
Doug Collins wrote a prescient piece in July 2001 which is uncanny at describing the undercurrents of the paradigm shift that threatens to upend the world if it continues:
Like God, England is dead. And it is unlikely that there will be a resurrection. The forces of liberalism and socialism are too strong. There is a sliding scale of free speech, the country is inundated with aliens, and it has handed over its sovereignty to a bunch of socialists in Brussels who call themselves the European Union.
Sovereignty? What's that? The British pound will soon be subsumed into the Euro, although Tony Blair is waiting for reelection before completing the dirty deed. Meanwhile, an English greengrocer has become a cause celebre for selling a pound of bananas instead of half a kilo, as directed by the people in Brussels.
He has massive support from the public, it is true. Even today's British worms will sometimes turn. But that didn't prevent him from being prosecuted. As the judge in the case stated, he had broken the law and "Parliament had surrendered its sovereignty to the primacy of European law" when the U.K. joined the European Union in 1972.
Free speech? Not in England. The immigrants who dominate the race relations tribe are not too keen on it. So be careful if you are in a British pub in some areas and are inclined to making remarks deemed as racist. You may be overheard by police who have been sent in plain clothes to listen in and catch the offenders. I am not making this up.
There will always be an England? I don't think so.
England has never been successfully invaded and conquered, yet today the enemy is not only within but inhabit positions of great power.
As a concerned friend, I look on with sadness and not a little horror at what is happening in England; it will be a very dark day, and a great surprise to most, if England falls. We must hope it has not yet reached the tipping point.
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