Posted on 07/13/2005 7:24:07 PM PDT by saquin
I have already had enough about how perfectly normal these young men were, and what charming fellows they were, and how there was nothing they loved more than serving in dad's chip shop or helping an old lady across the street or a good game of cricket in the park.
"All he wanted to do was have a laugh," said one of the neighbours last night, about one of the sick quartet responsible for killing themselves and at least 52 others in London. "He was sound as a pound." Yeah, right. If these four young men were perfectly normal Yorkshiremen, then what the hell is happening to this country? Of all the shattering revelations of the past few days, the worst has been that these suicide bombers were British.
They were our very own. They were as British as a wet bank holiday. They were as British as Tizer, and queues and Y-fronts and the Changing of the Guard, and the chips that made them what they were. They were born in British maternity wards, and attended by every comfort that the state could give.
They went to British primary schools and learnt about Britain from British teachers, and when they murdered so many of their fellow Britons it was the British emergency services who tried to save what lives they could.
That shocking fact of their Britishness tells us something frightening about them and about us, because, as suicide bombers go, they are unusual. When the Palestinian bombers attack Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, they usually come from miserable lives in Nablus or Hebron. When the 19 suicide bombers destroyed the Twin Towers they originated, without exception, from the Arab world, mainly Saudi Arabia.
We seem to have pulled off the rare feat of breeding suicide bombers determined to attack the very society that incubated them; and the question is why. Why does America import its suicide bombers, while we produce our own? Last summer we had a magnificent holiday driving around America, and for a cynical Brit it was astonishing to see the way the Americans fly that flag of theirs.
On every porch, on every flagpole, on every bumper: there were the stars and stripes, unabashed, exuberant, proud. Contrast our treatment of the Union Flag, which is endlessly being cited in racial harassment cases, on the ground that it is provocative merely - for instance - to stick it on your locker. Remember Bob Ayling, the Labour-supporting businessman who succeeded the late, great Lord King at British Airways, and decided that the Union Flag was so too embarrassing that he stripped it from the tailfins of his planes.
The Americans would be mystified by our approach to a national symbol. For them the flag is a vital agent of integration, a way of asserting that, in that vast immigrant country, each person is not only American but equally American, and has an equal stake in society. That is why American children still begin their day at school by pledging allegiance to the flag, and that is why the Americans show a patriotism and a simple enthusiasm for their own country that our jaded British sensibilities find childish.
Well, if you consider what is taught in British schools - and when you think that one of the killers was actually a primary school teacher - it is hard to deny that in their assessment of what a nation needs to stick together, the Americans are right, and we are tragically wrong. It is not just that most British children no longer know much about British history (13 per cent of 16- to 24-year- olds think the Armada was defeated by Hornblower, and six per cent ascribe the great naval victory to Gandalf).
The disaster is that we no longer make any real demands of loyalty upon those who are immigrants or the children of immigrants. There are many culprits, and foremost among them is Enoch Powell. As Bill Deedes has pointed out over the years, the problem was not so much his catastrophic 1968 tirade against immigration, but the way he made it impossible for any serious politician to discuss the consequences of immigration, and how a multiracial society ought to work.
In the wake of Powell's racist foray, no one had the guts to talk about Britishness, or whether it was a good thing to insist - as the Americans do so successfully - on the basic loyalty of immigrants to the country of immigration.
So we have drifted on over the intervening decades, and created a multi-cultural society that has many beauties and attractions, but in which too many Britons have absolutely no sense of allegiance to this country or its institutions. It is a cultural calamity that will take decades to reverse, and we must begin now with what I call in this morning's Spectator the re-Britannification of Britain.
That means insisting, in a way that is cheery and polite, on certain values that we identify as British. If that means the end of spouting hate in mosques, and treating women as second-class citizens, then so be it. We need to acculturate the second-generation Muslim communities to our way of life, and end the obvious alienation that they feel.
That means the imams will have to change their tune, and it is no use the Muslim Council of Great Britain endlessly saying that "the problem is not Islam", when it is blindingly obvious that in far too many mosques you can find sermons of hate, and literature glorifying 9/11 and vilifying Jews.
We have reached a turning-point in the relations between the Muslim community and the rest of us, and it is time for the moderates to show real leadership. That is why I want to end with the words of my Labour colleague Shahid Malik, MP for Dewsbury, who said yesterday: "The challenge is straightforward - that those voices that we have tolerated will no longer be tolerated, whether they be on the streets, in the schools, in the youth clubs, in the mosque, in a corner, in a house.
We need to go beyond condemning. We need to confront." Well said, Shahid; and it is time for the imams to follow.
Now THAT'S going to leave a mark.
Why are they trying to humanize these monsters????
When even the right in the UK blasts Enoch Powell, you know they are in trouble. GRRRR!
The PROBLEM is that Britain is not multicultural enough! More cultures, more ethnic groups, more races, more religions and eventually it will all just fit into place as naturally as a boy and his backpack bomb.
What they especially need are MORE moose-limbs. Then, and only then, will the Empire achieve the greatness that she sees in her future!
That was a great line.
He didn't quite get to the very heart of it. It isn't just a simple matter of flying the American flag or being patriotic. At the very hear it has to do with loving America. We know how special this nation is and we are not afraid to show our love for America and our freedoms.
RULE BRITANNIA!
But the first jihadi that is tempted to light off his sneakers will know that he takes the risk of dying in contact with pig fat. Sure it sounds cynical, but it will work.
As far as that goes, somebody could start a business marketing such pig fat ampules that non-Muslims could carry about with them. Once you reach a critical mass of carriers, randomly and invisibly spread around in all public places, the jihadis will find some other line of work.
(This post brought to you by a thorough-going sense of "fed up with P.C.ness". Do not attempt at home.)
"As Bill Deedes has pointed out over the years, the problem was not so much his catastrophic 1968 tirade against immigration, but the way he made it impossible for any serious politician to discuss the consequences of immigration, and how a multiracial society ought to work."
Why should Britain be a "multi-racial society"?
Last time I checked, Celts, Picts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Vikings, and Normans are all one race. They built britain. Everyone else is a newcommer taking advantage of the work of others' ancestors. They have a responsibility to honor the past, not try to destroy it.
It's cheaper.
Well, there was John Walker Lindh...
In seriousness, there is a very good number of Americans who feel the Stars and Stripes and the patriotic feelings it evokes are an embarrassment. They hold ideals that transcend the warts of nationalism, or at least they feel that they do. One wonders why they do not see the warts of internationalism - they're pretty difficult to ignore these days.
That means the imams will have to change their tune, and it is no use the Muslim Council of Great Britain endlessly saying that "the problem is not Islam", when it is blindingly obvious that in far too many mosques you can find sermons of hate...
It's so obvious I cannot understand why people still refuse to see it. Where did these young men learn that which motivated them to murder? Was it in British state schools? No, whatever complaint one may make about the multicultural nonsense that is taught there (and in the U.S.) that isn't where. In the newspapers? On the television? No. It was in the mosques. And the problem must be addressed in the mosques, or nowhere.
I remember a time when the U.S. was in a malaise, expectations were being lowered, and we were told that we were unremittingly evil. In that time flying a flag was an act of defiance. Anyone remember the flags at the hockey game in Lake Placid? Defiance.
What was being defied then and now by that act was a smug, smothering, treacly assurance from those on the left who had declared themselves the enlightened and their programs the only possible means of bettering a humanity that was never bettered by them. That still needs to be defied, both here and in Great Britain. If it takes a little flag-waving to do it then wave the flag, baby.
Yes, we're proud that we're American, and what's even funnier, we're proud that the Brits are British, even if they aren't.
That's the truth. I love the Brits, their stoicness (sp) in the face of all this, their unwavering resolve. I keep remembering Tony Blair after 911.
I am proud of the Brits, indeed. I do think that its time to face reality, though. Things are getting pretty darn dicey lately.
NIck Griffin is a disgusting racist.
"Last time I checked, Celts, Picts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Vikings, and Normans are all one race"
And that's not true. Celts are very different from Picts, and they waged a genocidal war against them, nearly exterminating the Picts. Romans aren't like any of the others. Angles and Saxons and Jutes were all fairly similar, but very different than Vikings. Normans were half Viking and half French, with a splash of originalist inbred celt from Brittany mixed in.
Plus, you are forgetting the proto-Britons who were there before the Celts. And the welsh, etc. its a fasincating histoyr actually. Sorry for rambling. Real anglophile.
The last major upheaval in the UK was during the Cromwell times. Another one is coming. Rest assured.
Oh Boris, loverly stuff. Played cricket did they? 'Elped old ladies out did they?. Ex pat meself. Boris, you bloomin' suspect- fancy being called Boris. Bit of an old fellow traveller yerself, maybe.
Multiculture is the death of culture- mine. It does not work. Just tell your readers that it does. Chances are that the people of Yorkshire, scared of politically correct police, dare not opine. Chances are they wished they never 'eard of Islam.
You're right of course, but for all that there is something different here. The attitude here is much more assimilation, there much more multicultural fossilization - every immigrant culture on equal grounds with the native, no one daring to insist on a need to merge with the mainstream. In my view the still solid ideology of assimilation here has less to do with anything the government is doing and more to do with the fact that we still reward ambition. Work hard, obey the law and you're pretty much one of us. That anyone of any hue here can pretty much not only work for someone else if he's got what the employer needs but start his own business and sell to anyone, native-born or not, is an amazing asset. It gives everyone an immediate stake in America.
We shouldn't fail to appreciate what we have here, and we should defend it to the death from the multiculturalist wrecking ball, which threatens to turn us all into aggrieved suppliants, kneeling before the state for a bean-counting tribal "justice" that by design never comes.
They are our ancestors, their history our own in a sense. I'd love to see the majority of Brits waving that flag high, I have a soft spot for it. They certainly have a history that is worth proudly claiming. I want to see them re-discover it.
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