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At Large
Cultural Suicide
Another symbolic milestone for England’s Gramscian stormtroopers.
The collapse of England’s traditions and values had been marked by a series of increasingly grotesque milestones: the MBEs for the Beatles back in Harold Wilson’s day (John Lennon being both a supporter of the IRA and probably the English-speaking world’s premier icon for the drug culture), the Knighthood for Mick Jagger of notably dissolute and selfish life (something Shakespeare never received), the ad 2000 military tattoo dissolving into the pacifist slop “Where have all the flowers gone,” the final ceremony of “Beating Retreat” boycotted by the Queen in a typically ineffectual or possibly imaginary Royal Protest, the official announcement that Britain can no longer defend itself and is likely to lose another 20,000 men from its already desperately overstretched armed forces, as well as one or both of its projected new aircraft-carriers (although billions have been spent on them already) are a few others. A bishop offers homosexuals counseling and in interviewed by the police for having thereby both committed a hate crime and failing to celebrate diversity. Basil Brush, a cartoon fox-puppet on children’s television, is similarly interviewed and cautioned for having made a joke about gypsies.
The phrase “the lunatics are in charge of the asylum” has been said so many times that it has virtually lost all its force. So has the phrase “political correctness gone mad,” which, by attributing what has happened to madness, falsely invests it with a kind of innocence (madmen, after all, know not what they do). It fact, when we are seeing is the massive working out of a Gramscian project to alter the entire national character (the British are quite good at the sort of thing. Ever wonder when happened to the Picts?) and create, following Bukharin’s prescription to the Bolsheviks, a type of man and women — a Homo Britannicus — whose psychology is actually moulded by the State into different.
David Cameron’s and William Clegg’s card-house Conservative-Liberal-Democrat government seems little different in this respect from the years of New Labour wrecking which proceeded it. Cameron has a prettier wife than his predecessor Gordon Brown, and gives some indication of being at least dimly aware that in the long run you can’t spend money you don’t have — thus leaving the country more and more undefended every day — but the improvement, if improvement it is, seems to stop there.
The latest milestone in Britain’s government-sponsored deliquium is a service at St. Paul’s Cathedral to celebrate the life of Alexander McQueen, a frock designer who committed suicide by hanging himself. He had made a great deal of money and like many degenerates, he was fascinated by skulls.
St. Paul Cathedral! This, where a procession of fashion-freaks and coke-snorters trooped, had previously seen the funerals of, among others, Nelson, the Duke of Wellington and Sir Winston Churchill. It was the site of the Jubliee celebrations for Queen Victoria and services marking the end of the first and second world wars. At its building it had both shown Britain’s architectural genius to the world and shown its recovery from the great fire which had just burnt the heart out of London and nearly ended the British Empire before it properly started.
In the bombing of London in 1940 its dome, even more than Westminster Abbey, photographed apparently standing alone in a sea of fire as the bombs fell, was a tangible reminder that what the Poles called “last hope island” was the last hope in Europe of not merely civilization but what Churchill called “Christian civilization,” and that though it was standing alone, it stood yet.
Some of those buried there had their share of human failings, but almost all had a virtual tangible quality of greatness. With the possible exception of Westminster Abbey it is the most numinous church in Britain. We have certainly come a long way since suicides were buried in unconsecrated ground, at night, with a stake in them. Suicide is still however, officially regarded in the Christian church as a great sin and an insult to God, throwing His gift of life back in His face.
Even the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, in whose case one is generally very hard put to find any definite belief in anything at all, said a couple of years ago that there could be no compromise on the matter. Yes, believe it or not, Williams actually went as far as to make a definite pronouncement, stating “Do I have a right to die? Religious believers answer for themselves that they do not. For a believer to say: ‘The time could come when I find myself in a situation that has no meaning, and I reserve the right to end my life in such a situation,’ would be to say that there is some aspect of human life where God cannot break through. It would be to say that when I as an individual can no longer give meaning to my life, it has no value, and human dignity is best served by ending it.”
Presumably, however, money in an effective lubricant.
The choice of St. Paul’s for this occasion seems to have been made to show the voting proletariat that the Cameron-Clegg Government can match the Blair-Brown Government in dumbing down Britain into a swamp of dimness, superficiality and triviality of thought and feeling, in which rubbish, or at best ephemeral entertainment, is exalted to the status of a great spiritual event.
It is hard to see the great institutions of a state with a proud history and culture, at present engaged in two difficult wars, perverted to such an end without thinking of last things. I don’t believe societies have souls, but if they did, this would be an indication of the need for a new one.
About the Author
Hal G.P. Colebatch’s “Immram,” Counterstrike, is being published by Australian publisher Imaginites.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (64) | Leave a comment
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Louis Jenkins| 9.22.10 @ 8:37AM
The nation of shop keepers is now "programed" to be polite. Even in death they are so. England has gone over board, and burying a suicide victim with the honors of such a great church is astounding. Oh well, better get used to it. England has become a nation on a path to suicide. What can be expected?
Occam's Tool| 9.22.10 @ 1:20PM
British culture is not polite; it is quite rude and drunken. What it is instead is stripped of a higher law and purpose; it is dying for that reason.
In short, Louis, I agree with your conclusion, just not the path to that conclusion.
MoeBlotz| 9.22.10 @ 8:38AM
Kewl Brittania,What?
Petronius| 9.22.10 @ 8:51AM
The debasement of knighthood and peerage at the hands of Labourite yobs has rendered all but the two principal Orders, the Garter, and the Bath, of no value. The only untouchable Peerages are those allied directly to the Crown. All others are turfed out of the House of Lords. As to HRM holding the Title Defender of the Faith: What is there to defend? After the Papal visit we are waiting to see how many C of E Clerics decide to chuck it and seek Communion with the Holy See.
But that implies the Vatican intends to clean up it's former unnatural acts which remains to be seen. The sisters of Loretto were busted for breaking their vows of obedience, but when will the other orders and regular clergy be brought to heel? It is not just perfidious Albion that has a death wish. And Mr. Colebatch risks winding up like Michael Savage: Banned in Britain.
Tim| 9.22.10 @ 9:11AM
""For the White Horse knew England
When there was none to know;
He saw the first oar break or bend,
He saw heaven fall and the world end,
O God, how long ago.
For the end of the world was long ago,
And all we dwell to-day
As children of some second birth,
Like a strange people left on earth
After a judgment day."
"
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Ballad_of_the_White_Horse
Richard| 9.22.10 @ 12:00PM
God of our fathers known of old
Lord of our far-flung battle line
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine
Lord God of Hosts be with us yet
Lest we forget, lest we forget
The tumult and shouting dies
The captain and the kings depart
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice
An humble and contrite heart...
Far called our navies melt away
On dune and headland sinks the fire
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the nations, spare us yet
Lest we forget, lest we forget
Kipling
Senor Mick| 9.22.10 @ 12:38PM
What poem is this from?
Dios mio, I hate it when folks don't cite.
Occam's Tool| 9.22.10 @ 1:25PM
The poem is "Recessional," written by Rudyard Kipling for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. It is one of the most famous poems in the English language, and quite appropriate for this article.
Petronius| 9.22.10 @ 9:19PM
And now reread Gods of the Copybook Headings and Cold Iron.
Andrew B| 9.22.10 @ 9:18AM
My family have always been strong Anglophiles, but that began to change as they became a nation of head-cases. Viewing the coverage of Princess Diana's death, my father sighed and said "I'm glad Christ already died, because nobody would make this kind of fuss over His death."
The real death we were seeing, of course, was that of Britain.
Impeach Don't Wait| 9.22.10 @ 9:33PM
"I'm glad Christ already died, because nobody would make this kind of fuss over His death."
So many people mention Christ's death as if it were the end of His story.... So forgive me, I can't help adding:
Don't make the mistake of leaving it there...
He rose again--physically whole--stayed many days with friends. Then after ascending, is even yet, and always, quite alive and well.
He is not a martyr figure. Let's not think of Him as such.
Sophia Bertolucci| 9.22.10 @ 9:26AM
Colebatch dismisses Alexander McQueen as "a frock designer." McQueen, however, was a visionary artist whose talent has not yet been fully appreciated, even by the fashion industry.
I had the pleasure of working with McQueen at a fashion shoot in London a couple of years back, and I found him to be a sensitive, dignified gentleman who treated all of us with the upmost respect and decorum.
Colebatch does not criticize the boys of the Royal Family, who often behave like a pack of monkeys.
Prince Harry, for example, is a nightclub crawler and heavy drinker celebrated by the tabloid press for his stupid and vulgar antics.
Obviously taking after his mother, Lady Diana (dumber than a doughnut), he is a spoiled, vapid
publicity-seeking playboy.
Time for you to focus on the Royal Family, Mr. Colebatch. The "collapse of England's traditions and values" is reflected in the behavior of the Windsors.
As for class, I expect Alexander McQueen had far more than Prince Harry. And I, for one, have more respect for McQueen than I do for any of the Windsor boys.
Tim| 9.22.10 @ 10:25AM
Too bad Mr. McQueen didn't have respect for himself, or he might still be here. May God have mercy on him.
Barney| 9.22.10 @ 10:55AM
Ever heard of deep depression causing someone to take their life, Tim?
Your comment is simple-minded, to say the least.
John II| 9.22.10 @ 12:26PM
Is the presumptive use of a pop-psychological buzz-term like "deep depression" supposed to be a sign of complex-mindedness? I don't see your point.
Barney| 9.22.10 @ 1:03PM
Deep depression is a "pop-psychological buzz-term"? Really? You're serious?
Deep depression? Deep depression is often chemically triggered and suffered by untold numbers, and it can lead to suicide--a lonely, desperate, tragic act.
Good God, man, are you just trying to be hateful--just trying to be vicious like so many of the posters on here?
Ever heard of Chrisian compassion? You need a lesson on it, but you're likely one of those fanatical religous fundies who know it all already.
Occam's Tool| 9.22.10 @ 1:32PM
"Buzz term." John, ever work with anyone (in a clinical sense ofr a collegial sense) with DSM-IV TR diagnosis 296.33 or 296.34? It kills people, pal. It's as real as a punch to the face.
It always mystifies me when idiots opine that the single most complex structure in G-d's universe, a carefully maintained structure requiring optimum oxygen, glucose, and a complex mixture of neurotransmitters and hormones to function appropriately, is thought to be totally under conscious control at all times.
I'm sorry the guy killed himself. I don't believe suicides should get formal services at St. Paul's cathedral, because we wish to discourage that type of behavior if we can. But I'm sure he was suffering deeply, and I sympathize with his pain.
Conservatives are supposed to be class acts, John II. Try.
Occam's Tool| 9.22.10 @ 1:34PM
Sorry, John II---"ofr" should read "or."
John II| 9.22.10 @ 5:26PM
Oh. Thanks. I was wondering about the typo--I thought it was part of the jargon.
Anyhow, I prefer the old term "melancholy" to "depression." It's much less scientifically pretentious and hints at a deeper moral dimension to psychological trouble. I have some reason to suppose that the human person cannot be reduced (simplistically, by the way) to a congeries of biochemical reactions.
To my (rather long) list of buzz-terms, I would add "complex mixture of neurotransmitters and hormones." What is conspicuously missing from the insouciant use of such language is a sense of intellectual modesty, and I feel very confident indeed that no reductive analysis of such a "complex mixture" will ever yield a clue about the source or nature of the pique you're communicating in your equally mysterious choice to use such language as a bludgeon.
I could never lay claim to being a "class act," if I understand THAT buzz-term correctly, but I know for sure that reductivism and determinism are philosophical poses uncongenial to the conservative mind.
And now back to "The Lost Weekend" (1945), in which Ray Milland dramatizes a struggle with sure-enough human complexity.
ooo9| 9.22.10 @ 10:27PM
John II
Pompous Ass
Radegunda| 9.22.10 @ 10:47PM
Do you know anything at all about bipolar (manic-depressive) syndrome? If you did, you would not make the callous and arrogant and quite ridiculous insinuation that some kind of moral choice is at the root of a person's going into mania, followed by a deep, crushing depression in which the person may have the experience of being confronted by demonic beasts.
Do you have any experience at all with infants and young children? It's well known that certain personality traits manifest very early, before an individual can be making conscious moral choices. Parents will describe one young child as happy all the time, and another as fussy and fearful. Is the latter morally guilty for being fearful?
I'm not dismissing moral choice. One can try to be a happier in all circumstances. But some kinds of depression have essentially nothing to do with circumstances or choices. And it is really not rational to suppose that everything that goes on in our minds can be consciously controlled by our minds.
John II| 9.23.10 @ 11:45AM
We probably agree much more than you suppose, Raddie, especially given parts of your last paragraph. (I'm the father of five, by the way, although I have no idea what my 34 years of experience as a parent has to do with the drift of your indignant response.)
You may therefore want to think about the moral dimensions of, for example, drugging up kids (boys, generally) who exhibit what is called ADHD by icy folks in lab coats. Among many other such designations, the alphabet-terminology is not merely pompous (to borrow one of the terms directed to me in a string of abusive responses to my shameful reservations about the therapeutic ethos); it's amoral, dangerous, destructive, and downright creepy.
The best response by far in this whole mini-exchange is Christopher Holland's below--and notice how HE was trashed. Is there a merely psychological explanation for the anger, recrimination, and religious-like anti-religious fervor displayed in some of these responses? (There IS a moral explanation.)
In my opinion, the best antidote to the therapeutic ethos is a steady diet of great literature, clean living, and good example. But you might want to try a few shortcuts for the strictly intellectual aspect of it all: "Psychology as Religion," by Paul Vitz, and "The Triumph of the Therapeutic," by Philip Rieff. These are insider accounts of the fraudulent premises of psychologism--as against serious and therefore modest psychology.
UtterDismay| 9.23.10 @ 2:11PM
John II, I
I think Coquette has you sized up rather accurately. Nothing more hateful and close-minded than a fundamentalist Christian when it comes to science and psychology and genetics and . . . world without end, Amen.
Why am I wasting my breath!
Radegunda| 9.23.10 @ 2:51PM
Nowhere did I attempt to make a case for drugging everybody up. But if you really believe that "great literature, clean living, and good example" will cure the devastating affliction of (e.g.) manic-depression, you have bought into a cruel lie.
That particular condition tends to strike people who are ambitious and intelligent. It brings them down when they are just tasting success. It strikes them when they are most earnestly practicing "clean living." It strikes people who are familiar with the theories that attempt to moralize every psychiatric affliction.
I know because I have seen it in people I care about. The strange activity in their brains is indifferent to any effort on their part to tell themselves that they are beyond its reach.
I'm indignant because it's terribly cruel to look at people who are controlled and destroyed by brain afflictions that they did not choose--and accuse them of making bad moral choices. It's a smug and shallow and ultimately not very rational viewpoint.
John II| 9.23.10 @ 4:36PM
And nowhere did I make a case, Raddie, for an exclusively moral interpretation of psychological trouble--or even for a blanket dismissal of all drug therapy for mental illness.
What is the matter with you? Can any of you read? If so, read again what I've written: I am arguing for modesty in the face of mystery, and for sustained wonder as the appropriate drive to understand.
Anyhow, I'd much rather be called cruel, smug, shallow, and pompous than to be called, say, neurotic or paranoid or delusional. As it happens, I am none of the forgoing, but if I am called cruel, smug, shallow, hateful, close-minded, or pompous (the list keeps growing), at least I have the comfort of knowing that the jackass hurling the abuse at me is still a moral agent who disapproves of cruelty, smugness, shallowness, gratuitous hate, close-mindedness, and pomposity.
It is gratifying to me as well that you refer to brain activity as "strange"--except that your acknowledgment of the strangeness is inconsistent with your lofty tone of certitude about the strictly physical nature of it all, as if you KNOW somehow that the mind is no more than an epiphenomenon of "brain activity."
Where on earth does that faux-certitude come from? There's no scientific warrant for it. Does your moral imagination (perhaps the single most mysterious of the faculties we come into this world hardwired with--so mysterious as to prompt many to deny it as illusory) suggest anything to you about the source and probable consequences of that faux-certitude?
The "great literature, clean living, and good example" encased in your contempt-quotation was not identified by me as a "cure" for anything, but as "an antidote to the therapeutic ethos." I thought my "diet" metaphor sufficient to make the point that, in my opinion (and certainly in my experience), good habits deflate the fat-headed assumption in our aggressively secularized culture that the human person can be reduced to brain activity ultimately explanable in terms of biochemical reactions and electrical impulses.
Look, these are deep waters, and neither one of us can possibly know precisely what he's talking about when the topic is the human person. Except for this: I know for certain that the day will never come when the neurophysiologists can read the human heart like a gas meter. And I have enough sense to fear the day when they start supposing they can.
So do you, I reckon. Exercise it. And stop shouting at me.
MAX| 9.23.10 @ 10:32PM
Obfuscation is John II's forte. He's an irritant that shows up rather frequently on this blog.
Ignore him.
John II | 9.24.10 @ 1:01AM
Oh. I missed that one. Okay: to cruel, smug, shallow, hateful, close-minded, and pompous, please add obfuscatory and ignorable. Can't complain. At least the abuse is getting more interesting, and revealing.
And now back to the Marx Brothers in "Go West" (1940). In one scene Harpo is honking his portable horn in response to an Indian chief talking gibberish, and Groucho looks into the camera and says, "You know, it's stimulating when two giant intellects get together."
Radegunda| 9.24.10 @ 1:28AM
You call me a "jackass" and yet you accuse me of "shouting" at you? Wow.
Then you have the presumption to accuse me of "a lofty tone of certitude" and "faux certitude" regarding something I did not assert: the "strictly physical nature" of the "strange brain activity" that signals an oncoming bout of mania. I did not even use the term "physical" much less "strictly." I used the term "strange brain activity" because that's exactly how it was described to me by a sufferer of manic depression.
What I know with certitude is that the "strange brain activity" was not chosen by the individual, and was not brought on by a stretch of bad behavior. In fact, it tends to follow a long stretch of extra-clean and industrious living. It's kept away be certain chemical substances (including alcohol). That suggests some chemical component, does it not? But I didn't say "strictly physical." You did.
That isn't to say that neurophysiologists can always "read the human heart." (I didn't say it can.) But pretending that neurophysiology is not involved in something like severe depression leads to insupportable and sometimes callous conclusions.
Other kinds of "strange brain activity," such as anorexia nervosa, are similarly not the acts of stubborn willfulness or moral decadence that some people imagine. They are mysterious forces that skew the mind's decision-making capabilities.
What I'm "shouting" at is the smugness of those who have never experienced this kind of force or don't know someone who has, but get on their high horses and say, "Oh, what stupid choices. How immoral that he/she didn't love herself as God demanded."
John II| 9.24.10 @ 9:35AM
Hi Raddie. I didn't call YOU a jackass. If you reread the sentence, you may discern its generic reference. And I'm not sure how you can shout and not shout at the same time--but I agree that "shout" belongs in the quotation marks. The quality of your posts strikes me as somewhat less reflective than you obviously have the capacity to make them.
If it's any consolation, there's a fair incidence of "this kind of force" on both sides of my extended family (i.e., my wife's side and mine both), and there are at least two very serious cases of it among our friends. I won't go into how often I've encountered it among the 7,000 or so students I've taught over the past 40 years.
Like all issues of this sort, when two apparently opposite sides appear to be at loggerheads, the truth is almost certainly a matter of "both-and" rather than "either-or." But the emphasis given to the physiological side of it is, to my way of thinking, yet another symptom (more medical metaphors) of a culture in serious decline.
Perhaps the real problem, for me, is that you keep drifting into a contemptuous caricature (as in your last sentence) of what folks like me think. I've never met anyone of the sort. But I've known quite a few whom Christopher Holland reminds me of, and I notice too that you didn't direct any of your pique at him.
Cultural decline, by the way, was the topic of the original piece to which this exchange has been appended.
Barney| 9.23.10 @ 4:39PM
Thank you, Radegunda, for your intelligent and insightful rebuke to John II.
The vehemence of some of these posters is disturbing.
John II| 9.23.10 @ 5:24PM
You're disturbed by your own posts?
Vern Crisler | 9.22.10 @ 2:06PM
Jesus tells us we are to love one another as ourselves. IOW, in the golden rule, self-preservation is regarded as instinctive, and the moral is that our love for others should be just as instinctive.
Thus, self-love is a natural endowment, not something we have to strive for or obtain. It is inborn. Therefore, for someone to commit suicide is to overturn the natural order, not just divine law.
Psychological b.s. should not blind anyone to the great sin involved in self-killing.
Radegunda| 9.23.10 @ 3:28PM
Did God give people the serious psychiatric afflictions (which you ignorantly call "psychological b.s.") that sometimes result in crushing depression? It's really very glib to say that ALL suicides are just violating a divine law of self-love, and evade the question of why the creator afflicted some people with depression so severe that they think ending their lives is the only way to escape it.
It's easy to be self-righteous about it when you have not experienced that kind of depression and do not know someone who has. But doesn't Christian charity require you at least to attempt to understand the suffering of others?
Christopher Holland| 9.22.10 @ 8:06PM
I suffer from depression, like a lot of people, but I am a Christian and I know that suicide is not on the agenda. The basis of Christianity is faith, which means hope in the future and respect for the dignity of life, including your own. A Christian would never believe that the game is up and the only way out is to end it yourself. Faith in Jesus and God is essential, in my experience, for anybody suffering from a disease such as depression.
Tim is quite right - McQueen did not respect himself, and his comment is far from simple-minded.
hft| 9.22.10 @ 8:58PM
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tell it to Jimmy Swaggart and his ilk. They would concur.
Emma| 9.22.10 @ 9:47PM
Bet you love using that Jimmy Swaggart line. Do you get to use it often?
Silly. And irrelevant.
Coquette| 9.22.10 @ 10:24PM
Looks to me like hft made a pretty good point.
John II, Vern, and Christopher sound like mean-spirited Xtian funadmentalists--the hateful Jimmy Swaggart type. So many on this site.
Jammin'| 9.22.10 @ 11:19AM
Miss Bertolucci handbag,
Don't you mean "utmost"?
Coyote| 9.22.10 @ 12:55PM
What matters here is not the simple critisism extended to an individual or family, or even a royal lineage. All are at risk and all are at fault in a wholesale decline, a slide down slope ever toward the edge - falling from which there is no rescue and no return -
what part does each citizen play in bearing a responsibility for the reality and the societal life that we agree apon and share?
where is civic responsibility? and at what point does the posturing and fingerpointing that obscures the truth cease? And who has the courage to speak truthfully and take action- action certain to merit disdain and self- interested attack?
Ramon 51| 9.22.10 @ 3:08PM
Where are Victoria and Albert when you need them?
Petronius| 9.22.10 @ 9:21PM
This situation calls for Oliver Cromwell.
Dai Alanye | 9.22.10 @ 3:11PM
For starters, England needs another Glorious Revolution, throwing out the Windsor/Battenbergs as it did the Stuarts, though preferably not replacing them with a succession of Hessians.
I suggest some energetic and opinionated Aussie bloke be invited to rule, preferably one with a bit of Abbo descent.
Charles Martel| 9.22.10 @ 10:55PM
George V had two more sons who lived to adulthood, both of whom have living Protestant descendants. The next in line (at the moment, 19th), if you bar all the descendants of HM the Queen and her late sister, is the Duke of Gloucester, who -- admirers of Shakespeare would love this -- would be Richard IV.
+++
cvl| 9.22.10 @ 10:19AM
The problem is that these cleric are non-governmental actors. The best solution would be for shadowy groups of private citizens to take matters into their own hands and embark in muslim style terroism against clerics who declare fatwas. This would provide the nation with complete deniability. However, this would also cause problems for a nation purporting to be based on laws.
Kylie Estwick| 9.22.10 @ 10:32AM
I read this and I read that from every neo-con blogger who whines about their rights and freedom of speech. Let's see, who has actually gone and invaded another country recently? Hmm? Was it maybe our bombs that hit all those schools over in Iraq? Wasnt it basically Bush and his mis-guided war that resulted in the death of thousands of civilians? Id say thats a pretty big loss of rights.
Quit complaining. Im so sick of hearing neo-cons whine. Like your darling Christine ODonnell said, time to put the big boy pants on. If your house isnt getting bombed, stop crying.
Kenneth E. MacAlister Jr.| 9.22.10 @ 10:57AM
Pot, meet kettle. A whining leftist scolding others. Hypocrisy, thy name is leftist!
John II| 9.22.10 @ 12:31PM
Well, if I were stuck with a moniker like "Kylie Estwick," I'd be in a depressed frame of mind too. We of the right must show forebearance towards our emotion-challenged sisters on the left.
TR| 9.22.10 @ 12:31PM
And I'm so sick of hearing revisionist history from neo-marxists. Time to see who actually voted for the wars. Oh wait, it was republicans and democrats both, almost unanimous.
Quit lying, KyLIE.
Ignorance is bliss. Liberal ignorance is dangerous.
Senor Mick| 9.22.10 @ 12:44PM
Si, si, si. Bush , Bush. Bush.
Boring, boring, boring. What the devil does bombing someone's house (a practice I do not support in general) have to do with whether St. Paul's is an appropriate venue for memorializing Alexander McQueen?
I mean, WHAT?
Radgunda| 9.22.10 @ 11:00PM
You must be one of those who are getting really worn out from trying to keep defending your boy Obama while he shreds the country. All you can do is revert to Bush, neocons, blah blah.
JP| 9.22.10 @ 12:53PM
It has become a cottage industry to pinpoint the Beginning of the End. Most point to the First World War (the slaughter of of an entire generation of young men cannot be ignored); others say that the rumblings go back further (Chesterton and Tolkien believed the decay of the Rural England began the downfall). Both, I believe are correct.
But, after World War One one over-looked event did take place: The 1930 Anglican Conference at Lambreth. During that session, artificial birth control was declared no longer to be sinfull. With a generation and a half, almost all Christian confessions jumped on the birth control bandwagon save the Catholic Church. But, the 1968 encyclical Humana Vitae, which reaffirmed the RCC's 2000 prohibition against artificial birth control started a firestorm.
A vibrant culture cannot survive long without children. And the relegation of procreation as a "life choice" puts a price on children. This of course begins the rather nasty business of affixing prices to all human life.
Dickens spent the better part of his career writing about the degradation of children -especially in the urban areas of England. The Victorian Era, was in many respects a reform of the family in England.
Redstateboy| 9.22.10 @ 3:44PM
to think.. the "Sun Never set on the British Empire" and to see it reduced to this pathetic island of weenie-socialist lemmings.. Is there anyone.. Even Socialist Lemmings - who still cannot SEE what Socialism does.. it's like a Cancer! It took one of the Worlds Greatest Empires and it turned it in to a Society of snivelling Bananaheads.
John II| 9.22.10 @ 10:06PM
And when their movies and endless TV series based on page-by-page recreations of their formerly great literature start declining, we'll know they've passed the point of no return.
"The Martians will probably make their first move at dawn." (Fade-out line in the 1953 George Pal version of "War of the Worlds.")
Jay| 9.22.10 @ 4:53PM
err....not all of us are 'snivelling bananaheads' A few of us here in Britain look on with disbelief and a heavy sadness. Our only recourse out of desperation is to vote for a fringe party called the BNP. The politically correct obsessed mainstream parties fiddle while Rome burns. The BNP are slowly, slowly growing, as is the far right in many pockets of the rest of Europe. I don't know if this is a good sign, but it is evidence of a growing backlash against our spineless politicians and disgust at the result of decades of Marxist, pseudo-intellectual claptrap dictating dumbed -down social policy .
jrjr| 9.22.10 @ 5:13PM
History is full of Great Britain's contribution to the world of invention, rules and laws, and other magnificent achievements, including WWI and II. Slowly it got to the point where it became thrilling to knight singers and rock stars. In the near future the achievements at Dunkirk will be bested by the aliens/foreigners tossing the English over the White Cliffs of Dover into the North Sea. And surely the USA is not far behind, being invaded by Mehico, el al.
Radegunda| 9.22.10 @ 11:06PM
Whenever I hear the music of the great English classical composers, with their characteristically humane sound (sorry I can't describe it better, but you know what I mean), I feel sadness from over here in America, wondering, will there really always be an England?
It's a great tragedy that so much of the ruling elites of the British Isles and other Western nations have been so blind to the greatness of the legacy entrusted to them, and so heedless of the posterity that should be inheriting that legacy.
Petronius| 9.22.10 @ 9:27PM
I take exception to that. Unlike the UK we are armed. And like the UK, we must first dispatch the traitors among our own.
james| 9.23.10 @ 9:02AM
Hey, don't be so mean spirited. The first Head of the Church of England was a wife murderer and they gave him a decent funeral.
D. Singh| 9.24.10 @ 3:53AM
Sir
Mr Colebatch’s narrative as to what has happened to Britain is fair as far as it goes (although the Deputy Prime Minister’s name is Mr Nicholas Clegg and not William Clegg).
In my opinion, the chief reason for the decline of Britain was the doubt the English clergy raised about the truths of the Christian religion after World War II. These doubts led to the collapse of intellectual confidence which in turn was replaced by the idea that man is at the centre of the universe. That is why celebrity status is worshipped by the young. Indeed, the young of Britain do not understand the idea of a hero.
Judaeo-Christian values have fled from the public square under the onslaught of laws that project intolerant left-liberal values. For example, Christians in many professions have had to resign from their jobs for the sake of their consciences (although they are still permitted to exercise their conscience by refusing to perform abortions).
There is a growing lobby calling for ‘assisted suicide’ to be supported by legislation. This is unsurprising: if the State approves of killing children in the womb what possible argument can there be to defend the weak, the frail, the vulnerable and the old at the other end of the spectrum of life?
Britain’s classrooms are full of violence where teachers are abused and assaulted and false accusations are levelled at them pushing some to take their own lives. The children are taught that they have rights against their teachers and parents. The State’s executive agencies supports that view, despite children not being emotionally, intellectually and morally equipped to take responsibility: the tail wags the dog. This is a recipe for social chaos.
The thousands of Christians who attend church regularly every week do not know and therefore cannot understand why this country is sliding into hostility against them. The bishops remain largely silent whilst their flocks are sheared by the jeering left-liberal bureaucrat. Very few voices are heard or read in the mainstream press analysing what has gone wrong let alone presenting remedies: all that is left is the yelling street.
If that were not enough our politicians have contributed to the creation of a vast imperial power, constructed on the continental scale, whose claws stretch from Dublin (Ireland) in the west to Bucharest (Bulgaria) in the east, from Helsinki (Finland) in the north to Athens (Greece) in the south: its purpose (‘ever closer union’) is to destroy the nation-state (to ‘unpeople’ entire peoples).
My great fear is that this is ‘the Beast’ that arises from the Mediterranean Sea predicted long ago, in a land far away, by another Deputy Prime Minister: Daniel.
Raymond Peringer| 11.10.10 @ 10:12AM
As an outsider with no British connections whatsoever, I have difficulty believing that present-day Brits are descendants of people who once ruled the world militarily, technologically and culturally. To great consternation, the centre has become a sinkhole.
Erik Hengest| 4.10.12 @ 11:27AM
A very good artical, but fear not the flag of the White Horse still flies in the heart many
SAXON