Ghost of a flea: Et Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno

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September 27, 2006

Et Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno

Enoch Powell has become a name synonymous with an intolerant past and an alarmist vision of the future. This due to the speech which ended his career. Reaction to his fall from grace played a central part in shaping the limits of public debate in the United Kingdom for decades to come. It is only in light of recent atrocity that his warnings haved received a second hearing.

Roger Scruton writes of Powell's imagined England as a Platonic "noble lie"; a call for "his countrymen to live up to something."

... Powell’s fantasy vision of Britain was absolutely necessary to him. The truths that he wished to put across were uttered in defense of Old England, and it was unthinkable to him that he might be speaking into the void. Powell’s England was a place made sacred by Chaucer and Shakespeare, by the Anglican settlement and the anointed monarch, by the common law and the Great Offices of State. It was the very same England that Churchill had invoked in his wartime speeches: a country whose past was lost in Arthurian mists, whose title was as God-given as that of the Israelites and whose patriotism outshone that of Rome. Those who silenced Powell therefore believed that it was not he but they who were on the side of truth. They were introducing realism and sobriety in the place of dangerous romantic dreams. Not for nothing, they said, did Powell refer to authorities who wrote in dead languages and believed forgotten myths; not for nothing did he choose, when invited onto BBC radio’s “Desert Island Discs,” only episodes from the Ring of the Nibelung of Richard Wagner. The man was clearly living in Cloud Cuckoo Land. And Powell accepted the expression with a wry smile: After all, it comes from Aristophanes.

Powell himself claimed to be opposed to racism even as his name has become a rallying cry for neo-Nazis amongst us. It is difficult to fault the racists their belief Powell spoke for them when he said "in this country in fifteen or twenty years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man". There is no white-wash to cover that ugly sentiment. But to hear Powell only through the filter of race and racism is to misunderstand the lesson we can learn from his words: It is not a race but an ideology which bedevils us now. And as much as I hold the Lamest Generation responsible for many of the world's ills, it is a mistake to reduce our current problems simply or solely to the Boomers' liberal and multicultural vision of the future.

It might just as easily be said the problem is an insufficient and inconsistent demand for liberalism and multiculturalism. Tolerance for everyone but no demand for tolerance on the part of designated victims. Equality of opportunity for everyone but special grants and restricted jobs and promotion for this or that privileged victim class. Equality before the law for everyone but reduced or suspended sentences and "participatory justice" for the privileged, victimized few. The gruesome irony, of course, is the continuing victimization this thinking foists upon people who might otherwise come to think of themselves as human beings; as free men and women. There is nothing more enervating, more soul-destroying, than an immortal entitlement. This is not liberalism; it is apartheid. This ideology is not progressive; it stands progress on its head. Yet these ideas of reaction and ressentiment have come to dominate the establishment left.

Nietzsche warned us of the entitlement of the slave. He warned us too of the aesthetic priests; leaders whose victimhood absolved them of all bonds of honour or decency. These are the men we now face. We technocrats who have advanced liberal and progressive ideas have steadfastly refused to demand the same values of the most racist, most sexist, most bigoted, most hateful men among us. This for fear of being tarred with the brush of racism and prejudice. After all, stand up to the new Nazis and you might lose your job. You might not get a date. Heaven forbid, you might offend somebody.

It is an absurd situation. It may only be with luck that we come through to the other side of it with our heads still attached to our shoulders. We must remember the values for which we once fought. We must insist upon them now or have to fight for them again in earnest. There is a dragon loose in the land. It is time to wake Arthur.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at September 27, 2006 08:57 AM

Comments

This is an interesting statement from Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf:

"When a soldier puts on a uniform and he joins the army, is this for fighting or for peacekeeping? What has he joined the army for? He's joined to fight, and when you fight, there are casualties. The nation must be prepared to suffer casualties. So if you're not prepared to suffer casualties as an army, then don't participate in any operation," he said. "We are fighting the Taliban. We will have casualties, because we confront them, we have bullets, they are fighting and you are killing them. They are killing you, this is how the game is, and if you are not prepared to do this, why are we there?"

Who becomes the global Arthur?

Posted by: Alan McLeod at September 27, 2006 12:35 PM

I vote for China. It will be a nice change of pace from all the wailing and kvetching about evil American imperialism.

Posted by: Chris Taylor at September 27, 2006 12:52 PM

Having just signed over North Waziristan to the men killing Canadians in Afghanistan, I do not put much stock in any Musharraf has to say. But then the Pakistani secret service created, armed and financed the Taliban in the first place so I cannot say that I ever did.

I have some tangetial thoughts on China percolating but they are not ready yet...

Posted by: Ghost of a flea at September 27, 2006 01:30 PM

There are those in the UK, and I am not talking BNP/NF types, who believe that his predictions are near enough true. Whether it be the fact that whites tend to find themselves on the bottom of the council house lists in many areas or the fact that homegrown/educated Muslim young men are killing their fellow Britons in the Underground and on the Buses. Make of that what you will.

Posted by: Andrew Ian Dodge at September 27, 2006 04:09 PM

My family are immigrants to Canada (and, thanks, by the way) and unless I am mistaken, Andrew, you are an American living in Blighty. The problem is not that people move around the place so much as what they expect to find, and how they expect to behave, once they get there. I find it difficult to imagine an England without balti houses and it is my impression there would be precious little carpentry getting done minus the Poles. The trouble, it seems to me, arises when European governments decide to open the doors to twenty-million people in the space of a generation whose ideology calls for the destruction both of Europe's Christian past and its secular present. Considering Europe's all too recent murderous history the combination is likely to prove calamitous.

Posted by: Ghost of a flea at September 27, 2006 04:36 PM

Yeah Ghost that is exactly my point. It is not the problem of immigration its the problem of who can come into the country. There are plenty of people over the generations who have moved to the US, the UK and Canada who are perfectly happy to call themselves American, British or Canadian. Yet because of policies of letting lots of people in not really looking at what they want to achieve all three countries have people who hold passports to that country who want to destroy that country.

If we drop the PC crap and actually manage immigration properly then these problems might not get any worse.

Posted by: Andrew Ian Dodge at September 28, 2006 01:22 PM