England and the Islamic Threat

Keep the Wonder, Lose the Faith

What's so great about England?

I see absolutely no reason why I should feel any special warmth inside for the royal family. Why should I? The whole concept of monarchy is barbaric and belongs in an earlier and nastier age. The idea that there are special people marked out by God destined to be my ruler is absurd and insulting.

Elizabeth is a reasonable enough person, inoffensive in the main, unlike her husband, but a woman of no obvious talent. In the war she trained to be an ambulance driver and I would expect she would not stand out as above average in intelligence, general knowledge, wit or charisma in a reunion of wartime ambulance drivers.

Charles in contrast would make a terrible king. He has his father's bloody-mindedness but without his drive and charisma. Philip is at least a first class arse, possibly an upper second, Charles is barely a pass, even on the arse scale.

What are they for? The idea that Britain's balance of payments is only kept in shape by millions of tourists who who fly in from America and Japan solely to see the queen is simply farcical, but it is a myth that the British tabloid newspapers have been selling for decades. How many British tourists go to Spain to see Juan Carlos? How many tourists go to MADRID to see Juan Carlos? I can guarantee you that more people have been to see Gracelands this year alone now that Elvis is not there than ever went there in the whole time he was alive. I suspect the same would be true of Buckingham Palace. We should get rid of the monarchy but keep the palace and the guards and the crown and the parades and all the horses. We should keep it all except for the people who spoil it all, the Windsors. The pomp and ceremony is a spectacle, the royal family themselves are a liability. We could employ actors to play kings and queens of the past to take the salutes and thereby ensure that every tourist actually gets something to see while we get back our self respect as citizens of a free republic and not subjects of a partially moderated despotism.

You may think it's all symbolic and not really important but symbols matter, especially when people expect you to bow to them. I will not bow or submit to any monarch or god. Especially not to him.

The British Empire

What is there to be proud of in the British Empire? Mankind has lost its enthusiasm for classic empires since the second world war. Once we were faced up to the grim reality of what might-makes-right empires can do when we saw what Germany and Japan did with their empires we have rightly rejected the idea that there is any glory in keeping people subjugated and ruling their lands for them.

We can argue whether Britain lost its taste for empire or whether we simply didn't have the money any longer, I strongly suspect that both factors came into play. It is more difficult to argue for something you can't afford to do when you doubt that it is a reasonable thing to be doing, and vice versa. Just think of all those people who gave up smoking for the good of their children's health when the price of cigarettes went up.

In a way the greatest good thing we can say has come from that closed chapter is the way we let the empire go, in the main we did it peacefully and like gentlemen. Now that is what makes me most proud of being English, the values of liberal gentlemen.

There is nothing to be proud of in the noble ways and manners of the old aristocracy. That stuck-up way of behaving, of looking down on other people because of their “breeding” or their poverty is simply disgusting. Real gentlemen don't do that. There are real virtues which people can aspire to. Respecting other people is a major one, so is resisting corruption, valuing freedom, fairness and justice. These are great virtues which it is quite reasonable to say are British values.

I am English. That makes me British and European, I am happy to continue in both mutually consensual alliances as long as these unions bring benefits and do not create bitter enmities. I have a liberal view on the marriages of nations as well as the marriages of people. I have no belief in indissoluble unions and gods have no votes or vetoes. There is no sense of glorying in a union as in the old days of empire. The idea of fighting a war to preserve a union does not appeal to me. If anybody tries to manipulate me and my loyalties to suit their own purposes they will have me for an enemy. So, Rupert Murdoch is not a big player in Europe. I don't care. He's not going to tell me to look at the stage he dances on. My people did not become British when the aristocracies of England and Scotland threw their lots in together and I will not allow anybody to tell me who and what I am. That is my decision. If a man can't own his own identity what does he own?

English is not a Race.

England is a nation. People can be English if they live here, they used to live here or if they CARE to be English. Colour, race and ancient family history has nothing to do with it.

These islands have been invaded many times over the centuries, in small ways and in big ways. We are a nation of mongrels and that is a great thing to be. We are not united by tribalism or genetic self interest, which is a concept that has no validity at all on the level of modern war and conflict, we are a nation united by values.

Anybody who tells you to fight for the race is an exploitative bastard with no concept of how biology actually works. Genetic self interest works instinctively, if you are forcing it you are doing it wrong or doing wrong in its name.

Religion isn't important in the definition of what makes a person English, unless it is one of those jealous religions which claim such a central position in a person's life that they crowd out everything else. You can be English and Muslim or Catholic but it is possible to be too Muslim to be anything else. A couple of centuries ago it was quite common for people to be too Catholic for anybody's good. That kind of religious fundamentalism, the kind that makes religion political and every action either a religious action or a political action, and therefore a religious action too — that kind of fundamentalism — is simply not English.

too Catholic for anybody's good

We English find religion to be a private matter, rather like sneezing, coughing and farting, doing it loudly in public is considered rude.

Being overtly and aggressively religious, being sectarian, that isn't English. It's not done. Most English people would not be able to tell you what the religions of half of their friends were. It certainly isn't something that people ask or volunteer on first meeting. You are far more likely to be asked what your starsign is or what football team you support than what church you go to.

This cosy Englishness is under threat from Islam. Muslims don't respect the rules. They don't appreciate that we don't bring God into every conversation and every decision, even people who believe in him. This is the twenty first century. To the Muslim it's the fifteenth, and they are just as full of bile and hatred as the religious bigots of our fifteenth century.

Nobody told us that allowing in immigrants from the empire would mean setting up a permanent syphon in which a constant stream of dependants and spouses are channelled in as if there was a pipe running from one village in the Punjab to one small part of a northern town in perpetuity sucking in another cousin every time one of the nominally British children reaches a legal age to marry. Nobody told us that these people had no intention of ever fitting in with our culture and instead wanted to import their culture into our country and change our country to fit in with their religion. Why should this be acceptable to anybody? It seems many liberal people in Britain find it perfectly understandable that Palestinians would feel aggrieved when faced with religiously motivated immigrants coming into their lands and displacing them, one slice of land at a time, those sentiments are to be accepted as perfectly reasonable and understandable. However, when it is white working class people from our own country who are expressing exactly the same fears this is somehow unacceptable and racist. Not fair! Nobody is obliged to be tolerant of arrogant usurpers. Nobody is obliged to be tolerant of immigrants who see themselves as morally superior and who resist being “contaminated” by what they regard as our corrupt decadent and immoral culture.

If Muslims think they are so superior to the infidels they should go and live in a Muslim country. Of course the reason that they don't do that is because Muslim countries are either economic basket cases or they don't allow in immigrants, even their Muslim brothers.

There is nothing racist in resisting the Islamization of our country. Islam is not a race, it is an illiberal way of living. Resisting Islam is simply a matter of defending what we value because Islam is not just a flavour of religion, it is an entire way of life and for some it is a political cause they will cheerfully kill for. There is no concept in Islam of separating church and state or rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. Islam has instructions on everything from which hand to wipe your backside with (and yes I do mean hand) to how much tax Christians and Jews should pay to the Muslim government to be protected from Muslims. That's called Jizya in Arabic. In English the word is extortion.

England has lived under religious tyrannies in the past and we have no appetite for a return to such barbarities. We had a civil war between two different kinds of despotism, each thought they were following the will of God. We have no need of a new foreign religious despotism. We have learnt that the less people ask what God wants us to do and the more we ask ourselves what we think is the moral decision the more moral our lives become. It was not religion which taught that slavery was wrong, scripture clearly supported slavery and considered it normal. It was not religion which led us to stop persecuting homosexuals or to allow unhappy couples to divorce – these advances in civilization came in spite of the content of the Bible and not because of it. Nothing is clearer in the Bible than the call of Jesus that divorce is wrong (unless the wife has been unfaithful) and yet secular society has worked its magic on nominal Christians of many different sects and they have seen the light of reason. Democracy is infinitely more civilized and progressive than theocracy. We do not want to go back to the Dark Ages when men lived in fear of God and the men of God who made their lives a living hell.

There is no reason why any modern civilized state should accept the barbaric laws invented by a seventh century illiterate merchant and bandit. English law does not regard the cult of Rastafarianism to be a legitimate reason for a person to possess cannabis or a professed interest in Satanism to be a sound religious reason to allow child or animal sacrifices. If your religion tells you something which is incompatible with English law then the English law stands firm and will be put into effect. Anglicanism has lead many people to think that somehow it is natural for religion and the state to agree on all the important issues. The reason for that is that Anglicanism has been the state religion and has never been stupid enough to ask its adherents to go against the law of the land. There is no special mechanism which ensures that everything any religion expects of its adherents will work out just fine for any regime in any country at any time. For people who want to live in England the first concept to grasp is that you can engage in any activity which is compatible with English law, but English Law will not bend over backwards just because you say your religion disagrees and speaks with a higher authority. If you need the law to listen to that authority you should go and live somewhere which recognizes it.

This is England. If Jesus came back with Elijah and parked his fiery chariot in the Mall I guarantee you that he would be given a parking ticket. That's how we do things here. And I won't have it any other way.

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