Weep for Britain

"..But of course it’s not just New Labour that’s the cause of the rot. New Labour, after all, is itself but the product of a culture that has long lost its way. I have been reading Andrew Roberts’s masterly new book, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900. It is written very much with the intention of drawing the sharpest possible parallels with the present day — and it is hard to imagine a more poignant and painful analysis, and one which leads inescapably to a terrifying conclusion. The central argument of the book is that in these last hundred years the English-speaking peoples have not merely formed the most successful, powerful, creative, inventive and dynamic societies on the planet but have embodied uplifting moral virtues, subscribing to notions of collective altruism, decency, courage, gallantry, stoicism and self-sacrifice which derived at root from the profound belief that what they stood for was right.

Almost every page of this book is painful to read, because to be invited to admire these virtues of the English-speaking world is to recognise the sheer magnitude and irreplaceability of what we have lost. These virtues, which enabled the English-speaking world to triumph over the despotisms of German nationalism, fascism, and communism and brought down tyrannies over four continents, belong to a culture that has now simply vanished. What Roberts drives home over and over again is that, far from being the monstrous neo-con warmongering invention that it is currently made out to be, liberating foreign lands from tyranny was an instinct programmed into the English-speaking peoples because it arose out of the nobility of the human spirit embodied in their cultures."

Melanie Phillips on the UK sailor hostage debacle.
Go and read what she has to say--especially this part of her post:

"....Terence Edward Waters was awarded the George Cross posthumously for fortitude as a PoW. Now read again what the Royal Navy 15 did and said, and what their superior officers did and said; and weep for Britain."
(bold mine)

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