[Cronos]

I posted this not to mock our friends across the pond but to note that what has happened to them is something that is happening to us. We must learn from their pitfalls and try to claw out of this slippery slope to perdition

[Lazlo in PA]

This is where the Brits are now.

Hot but drunk off their asses.

[Cronos]

I found this piece compelling and interesting --> The German poet Heinrich Heine, among others, detested them as violent and vulgar. It was only during the reign of William IV—“Silly Billy,” the king before Victoria—that they transformed into something approaching the restrained people whom I encountered as a child and sometimes as a doctor. The main difference between the vulgar people whom Heine detested and the people loathed and feared throughout Europe (and beyond) today is that the earlier Britons often possessed talent and genius, and in some sense stood in the forefront of human endeavor; we cannot say that of the British now.

Before living in England I was a complete Anglophile (my wife insists I still am) - but an Anglophile for a lost, Edwardian England. To me it is a tragedy that England has changed, and not for the better.

This piece by Dalrymple gives a reason why -- and mitch you are correct about increasing socialism

[BenKenobi]

Too true, too true.

“That wasn’t too bad” = Absolutely amazing.

Anybody considering marrying someone of British extraction needs to read this guide.

Thanks for posting this, Cronos!

I found a very delightful friend comment on knowing me for several years, that she wondered if I found her pretty. I remarked that I had always thought she was quite so. She said she did not understand this at all. That I would have just sat there and worked with her and not comment on it ever for all that time!

Since that comment I’ve tried to be a bit more forthcoming, but it’s not my natural habit.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

“The English must have been the only people in the world for whom a typical response to someone who accidentally stepped on one’s toes was to apologize oneself.”

It's still like that here in Canada (although, sometimes we utter “Excuuuse me”, like Steve Martin).

[ransomnote]

I think there is cross pollination going on. Why, when I go to read the UK newspapers, are there so many US celebrity culture articles (Desperate Housewives, Reality Stars, Kardashian sisters etc.) posted on a UK website? Is it just US visitors who get trash articles on trash US culture? They seem to be written in the UK style and not just hot links to US papers but I could be wrong.
I admit I still harbor a false impression of current Britain and didn’t realize the depth of it’s decline outside of it’s obvious struggles with alcohol and ‘ladism’.

[dfwgator]

The two World Wars took the best of British manhood, they never recovered.

[afraidfortherepublic]

So I say to Americans: if you want your young people to develop character, have the courage of your inconsistencies! Excoriate sin, especially in public places, but turn a blind eye to it when necessary—as it often is.

Well, that is highly inconsistent!

[ransomnote]

In 2000, I stayed at a country farmhouse belonging to a member of the landed gentry in Britain (the horsey set). I had rented a room there on short notice. A young man, approximately 20 years old greeted me with flawless civility (how adorable). He said his mother would handle my room arrangements and lamented that she was not present when she was supposed to have met me.
That woman soon arrived. They had one of the most polite arguments I’ve ever heard between mother and son with him protesting politely that she should consider his plans with his friends and how her careless delay would offset plans he’d put in motion a month ago. She was equally well spoken in her rebuff of his objection. All perfectly polite. As far as I could tell, they were keenly aware that someone of vastly lower social significance (that would be me) was present and they would not claw at each other publicly because their class (superior) was above such displays even if my opinion of them could not matter given my lower status. I don’t think I am imagining this - I caught a whiff of this when I read an interesting account written by an American who was describing how reading Jane Austen (my favorite author) affects his speech and thought processes for a short while afterward until he moves on to other material. His wife said of him something like “Reading Austen makes you much more polite and much less sincere.”
He went on to regretfully concede that she was right - in order to say just the right thing at just the right time to maximize consideration and discretion, he felt he had to be a bit insincere.
But still, I am a closet Anglophile. I can’t help myself.

[GeronL]

At this rate, how long before not molesting your kids is seen as abnormal?

[brityank]

The same is happening here, and to my mind for the same reasons -- one of which is:

... not the product of a lack of self-esteem, that psychological notion used to justify rampant egotism ...

From Dr. Spock and his acolytes on, health care and teaching 'professionals' tell us mere parents that chastisement, punishment, and shame is damaging to the child's self esteem. Take a look at the mobs in the OWS crews and tell me when any of them ever felt shame.

Thanks for the thread. Theodore Dalyrmple is a good essayist.

[advance_copy]

Are they taking craps on police cars in the old country too?

[Malesherbes]

Thanks for posting, Chronos. I hadn’t seen this and I do try to read everything by “Dalrymple” (real name: Anthony Daniels) that I can find.

All my DNA is British and I grew up in America thinking “Upstairs, Downstairs.” When I went to live there for a couple of years I found, to my dismay, that “Clockwork Orange” (or even worse) was the norm.

One point that Dalrymple-Daniels fails to note is that in addition to the yob culture that has taken hold, immigration has also changed Britain. As John Cleese (Basil Fawlty) recently pointed out, London is no longer an English city.

A few years ago I got off a wrong “tube” stop in London and I thought I was in Nairobi - not a single person in view whose DNA was remotely connected with the British isles.

[Tijeras_Slim]

This one gets a bookmark, excellent find.

[sergeantdave]

I enjoy reading Dalyrmple. He’s a great expository writer. If the no-talent hacks at our American newspapers wrote half as well as Dalyrmple, they might stand a chance of being taken seriously.

[roamer_1]

Isn’t it strange that the continent has always looked at England in much the same way that England looks at us? Cowboys, hicks, barbarians... uncouth... while generically speaking, the opposite is more likely to be true.

And as another thought, if one takes the analogy that nations are often thought of as female, and in applying human characteristics (which is fair, as an aggregate of it’s citizens), perhaps there is something to be said for the ‘catholic girls’, and ‘preacher’s daughter’ thing. Perhaps those who are righteous have further to fall, so they often attain a greater speed before the resulting (and more spectacular) crater. Just sayin’

[RichInOC]

“Sorry, love, but I can’t deposit your bewbs at the bank.”