Muslims 'right about decadent UK'
In a letter to The Spectator, six newly-elected (Conservative) MPs support criticism of the UK's "lawlessness, family breakdown ... binge drinking" and "brutishness"., responding to comments by John Hayes MP (I used to know him years ago...).
My response is, Well, yes and no.
This is part of Boris's Britishness debate. It seems to have three elements: one, that the current pariah community holds values similar to 'decent Britons', that there is a cancer at the heart of British Society, and that is was never like that in the 'Old Days'.
The last is the easiest to address because it's so clearly untrue. In one of those moments where I wished I'd bookmarked or linked the article, I read something a few months ago where a journalist was relating a story from the memoirs of Robert Mark, ex Met Commissioner. As a young PC in Nottingham - in the Thirties? - there was a rumpus after Closing Time, where some young man was kicking off, so he was manhandled by a police officer and thrown through a plateglass window, later appearing on charges of assault and criminal damage. Mark's comment was that back in those days, men were men, and it would be very unusual for such a man ever to appear in court, because a Closing Time kick-off was normal, men fought each other and then went home to lick their wounds. Anyone who believes that Binge Drinking is a modern invention has clearly never read Sons & Lovers, and has a partial view of history - I think Hogarth's 'Gin Lane' or the Temperance Movement of the late 19th/early 20th Century as just two examples.
Is Britain brutish now? Of course. Hobbes said, in the 17th Century, the life of man is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". We have come a long way from then. Yet we are regaled daily by media reports of people behaving against the public good. Violence, self-centredness, lack of self-discipline, greed, self-gratification. Not good. Of course most Moslems are concerned about this. Most people are.
But is it a result of woolly Liberal thinking?
I reject that. I am of the instant-gratification generation. My parents were always trying to dissuade me from that. That was not how they grew up. But I am Thatcher's Child. Instant Credit. Consumerism. Commodification. There is no such thing as Society. Acquisitiveness. Each man is an island. For me, this is the legacy of the Eighties.
We are currently exercising our thoughts and efforts about Islam, because Islam, along with Evangelical Pentecostal Christianity, is doing what the traditional organised religions of Western Europe are not doing - growing, and attracting young people into their grasp. The Organised Religions - at their best - do what most individuals are afraid or unable to do - articulate a clear difference between Right and Wrong. If we were all able to take responsibility for own actions and their consequences, we would have no need of Organised Religion. If we had courage to say "That is wrong," without fear of derision, we would not need out-of-touch men proclaiming that Sexual Behaviour is the root of all Immorality and Morality.
And make no mistake, when six Male Tory MPs (8 if you include Johnson and Hayes) proclaim on 'Liberal Thinking', and are agreeing with Organised Religious people, you can bet that the actual sub-text is "It's the fault of Feminism".
If women hadn't got uppity, families would never have broken down. There would not be disposable income for the lower orders to get drunk on. There wouldn't be teenage pregnancies. Or not visibly anyway - the products of such liaisons would be put up for adoption, the mothers locked away in Mental Asylums.
They condemn the licentiousness resulting from years of woolly-minded liberal thinking. Ask Oxford defines licentious as promiscuous and unprincipled in sexual matters - ORIGIN Latin licentiosus, from licentia freedom.
So, it's about sex, isn't it? It's nothing to do with the fact that all around we are bombarded with Capitalism's Brainwashing. Adverts are everywhere, selling a 'lifestyle', an image. The most offensive I have seen recently was one for Selfridges, which basically said "Spend money on something overpriced and unnecessary and you will find the key to happiness." No one I work with is prepared to accept that I do not watch TV ads. I think they think I'm weird. Except for the couple of extremely weird people who don't watch TV...!
We see Billboards advertising programmes; we read articles in newspapers previewing the programmes, usually written by so-called 'journalists' producing their 500 words, the quid pro quo for that ligging junket they attended complete with goody bag. We are fooled into thinking that 'there's a buzz' about this TV programme - Desperate Housewives, Lost. Who gives a shit? I won't watch them, because I'm being told to do so, in order that I can be brainwashed by the Capitalist propaganda. Parasites feed parasites.
But, according to Organised Religion and the Conservative Party, the cancer at the heart of Society is Women's Sexual Autonomy. Quite different from the 'Old Days' when no one had sex ouside of a Christian marriage.
Perhaps less Religion, and more History, Social Anthropology, Literature would better inform our wannabe leaders and moral guardians...
