Dalrymple

Det konsekvensløse samfund har taget endnu et skridt tilbage i forhold til den individuelle moral og det personlige ansvar ved at gøre det sværere at udvise kriminelle udlændinge. Læs mere om det på Den Korte Avis:

Generelt bevæger vi os mod et samfund, hvor folk kan gøre som de har lyst til pakket ind i blødt vat.

Det er kun overspisning, rygning og anden sund levevis, man egentlig mærker konsekvensen af, dog kun så langt, som et massivt sundhedsvæsen ikke kan hjælpe en.

Anthony Daniels, også kendt under pseudonymet "Theodore Dalrymple", vender på skarpeste intellektuelle manér med klassisk tør engelsk humor dette fænomen, "Choice without consequences," i følgende glimrende foredrag:



Anthony Daniels, "The Ultimate Freedom, Choice Without Consequences", PFS 2012 from Property & Freedom Society on Vimeo.

Dalrymple: EU har skabt en kæmpeversion af Titos Jugoslavien

Theodore Dalrymple. når han er bedst:

A Belgian journalist who interviewed me recently about the European debt crisis asked me whether I believed in the European Project. I replied that I would answer her question—if she would tell me what the European Project actually was. By revealing my doubts, I proved to her that I suffered from the strange kind of mental debility known as Euroskepticism, a condition supposedly compounded of low intelligence and aggressive xenophobia. The low intelligence manifests itself in the patient’s view of European institutions as a gravy train for a transnational nomenklatura, rather than as the beginning of a new, generous, and free-spirited type of postnational identity. The xenophobia manifests itself as a secret desire for conflict and war, the European Union and its predecessors supposedly having been responsible for the avoidance of war on the Continent over the last 65 years.

Det er godt set fordi, personer som denne journalist, og de som deler hendes synspunkt, kan simpelthen ikke se, at deres syn på verden er mere firkantet, mere sort og hvidt, end verdensanskuelsen hos mange af de EU-modstandere og skeptikere, som de gerne tænker det værste om.

Hvis man ikke ligefrem har et hemmeligt ønske om krig og konflikt, så er man som EU-skeptiker i det mindste ligeglad med, at det kan være konsekvensen af at ende EU-samarbejdet. Sådan er der desværre mennesker, der tænker.

The journalist then asked whether I thought that nationalism was dangerous. The question implied that the choice before Europe was between the European Union and fascism: that all that stood between us and the ascension to power of new Mussolinis, Francos, and Hitlers were the free lunches of senior Eurocrats. I replied that dangerous forms of nationalism existed, of course, but that in the present circumstances, supranationalism represented by far the greater danger. Not only was such supranationalism undemocratic, for it reflected no widespread demand or sentiment among the population; it also risked provoking the very kind of nationalism against which it was to stand as the bulwark. Further, the breakup of supranational polities in Europe tends to be messy, as history demonstrates.

Alternativet til EU er ikke nationalisme. Alternativet er de stater, man så efter anden verdenskrig og før EU kom på banen. Stater med selvbestemmelse og nærdemokrati. Stater, hvor alene de folkevalgte bestemmer. Stater, hvor man i mange tilfælde kunne råbe de folkevalgte op. Hvor politisk apati var langt mindre end i dag. Nationalisme var i disse stater et lille problem, og den form for nationalisme, vi ønsker så lidt af som muligt, den vil jeg give Dalrymple ret i, at det er meget muligt, at netop EU vil styrke nærmere end ende. Men den mulighed overvejes slet ikke, selv om da det brød løs i Eks-Jugoslavien var der mange, der tænkte at det samme kunne ske andre steder i Europa.
Dalrymple fortsætter med causerier over Belgien, der netop er et land, hvor store modsætninger lurer under overfladen:

Belgium has not had a central government for more than 500 days. While I must admit, as an occasional visitor to that country, that the difference between Belgium with and Belgium without a central government is not apparent on casual inspection, this interregnum may take the theory of limited government too far. (...)

Historical and economic factors deepen the division between the two regions. Wallonia, though it contained a minority of Belgium’s population, long dominated its culture and economy. Even the Flemish upper class spoke French at home, while Dutch was the language of the peasantry; until recently, Belgian schools forbade children from speaking Dutch in class. With the decline of Wallonia’s coal and steel industries and the economic rise of Flanders, however, the pattern of dominance changed. Flanders went from being the poor relation to being the rich one, albeit with something of an inferiority complex. In the process, it started to make large transfer payments to Wallonia, which suffered from comparatively high unemployment. (...)

It is no surprise, therefore, that the largest political parties in Flanders are either nationalist or free-market; both philosophies lead to reducing or stopping the transfer payments. It is equally unsurprising that the largest political party in Wallonia is socialist and wants the payments to continue or increase. The Wallonian socialist party’s patronage powers in its territory are almost feudal in nature and extent; the last thing that the party of social change wants is actual change. But neither the Flemish parties nor the Wallonian socialists are strong enough to impose a government on the whole country. (...)

Den manglende regering ville, som Dalrymple fortsætter ikke være et problem, hvis det ikke lige det var fordi, at Belgiens økonomiske situation er en af de værste i EU med gæld på omkring 100 procent af BNP og et årligt underskud på over 5 pct. af BNP. Og de to parter kan ikke finde en fællesløsning:

The Walloons want higher taxes to maintain the current arrangements; the Flemish want lower taxes and reduced spending to promote long-term growth. The result is a stalemate. Wallonia and Flanders are like a married couple who no longer can live together but find divorce impossible because of difficulties over the settlement.

Så påpeger han det ironiske i, at EU administrationen er placeret i Bruxelles i Belgien:

It happens that the central offices of the E.U. are located in Brussels. Yet the political difficulties of Belgium do not give the European unionists pause for thought—or, if they do pause, they reach a peculiar conclusion: that what has not worked in two centuries in a small area with only two populations will work in a few years in a much larger area with a multitude of populations. It does not occur to the unionists that different countries really are different: not a little bit, but radically, in culture, language, history, traditions, and economies.

Han skifter nu til eksemplet med Irland og Grækenland, to ekstremer i Europa. Irerne roser han, fordi han er af den opfattelse, at de er det eneste folk i Europa, der i udpræget grad har forstået deres egen medskyld i den økonomiske krise. Selv om de også har skudt mod bankerne og politikerne:

Most people seemed to understand that the seven fat—indeed, grossly obese—years simply had to be followed by the seven lean. The relation of the previous excess to the present hardship was obvious to everyone, and the population sought no scapegoats, even if, correctly, it blamed the politicians and bankers more than it blamed itself.

Irerne har til gengæld holdt fast i deres lave selskabsskat, og en absurd kritik er blevet rettet mod landet af den grund - lige så absurd, som den der blev rettet mod Tyskland for et par år siden.


Men Dalrymple er naturligvis selv den bedste til at udstille absurditeten i EUs holdning til Irland lave selskabsskat:

Since the crash, successive Irish governments have had the determination to fight to retain their low corporate tax, called “predatory” by the other Europeans. (It is symptomatic of Europe’s sickness that refraining from government seizure of money is now deemed by its political class to be predation.) The Irish economy may thus be poised for a quicker recovery.

Men den samme fordel, som Tyskland har af en fællesmønt kombineret med en utrolig stærk konkurrenceevne, kan være den bagdel, der vælter hele EU-læsset, som Dalrymple skriver:

For a time, the euro did seem to serve German interests, allowing countries to buy German goods that they might not otherwise have been able to buy. Meanwhile, Germany, with a determination not shown by other European countries, reduced payroll taxes and barely increased wages, having previously established a powerful manufacturing base. Savings rose, and Germany became the China of Europe. Now it has the problem of what to do with its trade surplus, larger than the trade deficits of France, Italy, and Spain combined.
Europeans have painted themselves into a corner. If the debts of European countries are mutualized, there can be only one country that lays down the rules of mutualization, and it won’t be France, struggling with a large deficit, large debts, and a large trade imbalance. The historian John Robert Seeley famously wrote that the British Empire had been formed “in a fit of absence of mind”; so could it be with German hegemony in Europe.

Den tyske model med tæring før næring og opbygningen af en stærk økonomi, stram styring og stærke krav til at skære i velfærden bliver heller ikke velmodtaget i de lande, der har problemer med gæld. 

Sat på spidsen, så skal resten af EU acceptere en ideologisk kolonisering af tysk økonomisk og politisk mentalitet, blive kolonier i et tysk imperie, eller hele EU-projektet falder fra hinanden, fordi resten af landene ikke formår at være konkurrencedygtige under en stærk euro, eller styre deres offentlige forbrug.

Her skal man også skelne imellem, at der er forskel på den tyske politiske elite, og den tyske befolkning, hvor modstanden mod EU og det at betale for andre landes manglende evne til at konkurrere og styre deres offentlige udgifter slår hårdt i gennem. I det tyske folkedyb forstår man næppe helt fordelen i, at de øvrige EU-lande tvinges til en kunstig høj valuta og, hvad det betyder for den tyske konkurrenceevne. 

Det er med andre ord en nærmest umulig situation, som Dalrymple også berører:

The alternative to sharing the debts seems to be the breakup of the euro. This might turn recession into prolonged slump, with the countries expelled from the eurozone forced into a default catastrophic for the banking system. I get dizzy just thinking about the bank account in which I hold euros: in the event of a breakup, will it be denominated in drachmas or deutschmarks, and who will decide? Like everyone else, I would prefer deutschmarks, a preference that will drive up the price of the currency to the point that German exports, no matter how high their quality, will be too expensive to buy.
No wonder German chancellor Angela Merkel appears indecisive: like every politician, she wants a painless solution to a problem. She does not want to throw Germany’s weight about, demanding every country’s Papieren, bitte. Yet she does not want to be responsible for rampant inflation or for the breakup of the euro, either. Whatever she decides, love of Germany in Europe will not grow.

Han slutter sit essay af med at konstantere, at de frygtelige tanker, som EU skulle afskaffe, har EU nu i stedet genoplivet. Og jeg er fuldstændig enig i den analyse, men håber det ender noget bedre, end man kan frygte:

In short, the incontinent spending of many European governments, which awarded whole populations unearned benefits at the expense of generations to come, has—along with a megalomaniacal currency union—produced a crisis not merely economic but social, political, and even civilizational. The European Union that was supposed to put an end to war on the continent has resuscitated antagonisms that might end in bellicosity, if not in outright war. And the European Project stands revealed as what any sensible person could have seen it always was: something akin to the construction of a massive, post-Tito Yugoslavia.

Læs hele Dalrymples artikel her på City Journal: 

In memoriam - Ray Honeyford

Ray Honeyford døde forleden 77 år gammel. Han er blevet symbolet på,den problemematik, som Leo Mckinstry beskriver glimrende i Daily Mail:

In the name of promoting tolerance, race-fixated zealots exercise the most extreme intolerance, suppressing free debate and indulging in witch-hunts against anyone who dissents from their creed of multi-cultural diversity. 

Artiklen fra Daily Mail er glimrende, men bedre er den artikel, som Theodore Dalrymple skrev for år tilbage. Der er allerede fuld gang i mytedannelsen omkring Ray Honeyford, for eksempel her på BBC. hvor opfattelsen er - eller mikronfonen holdes for en, der mener - at Honeyford kun var ude i et ærinde for at kritisere religion og kultur og ikke talte for praktiske løsninger, såsom at sprede indvandrerbørnene på flere skoler, så de ikke dannede deres helt egen ghettoskole. Det passer bare ikke, såvel som det heller ikke passer, at Ray Honeyford ønskede at fjerne den oprindelige kultur hos indvandrerne- Han var ovre i at se den melting-pot integration med succes, som de jødiske indvandrere stod for, som det forbillede, de muslimske indvandrere burde følge.

Her er udpluk fra Theodore Dalrymples glimrende artikel om Ray Honeyford:

The informal ghetto that separates the races almost as effectively as South Africa’s formal ones nevertheless makes interracial rioting much easier. And in July last year, only a few weeks before September 11, serious riots (the worst in Britain for 20 years) did in fact break out in Bradford and other similar northern English cities, such as Blackburn and Oldham. White gangs clashed with Pakistani ones, indulging for several days in the pleasures of looting and arson, under the comforting illusion that they were fighting for a cause. The young whites believed themselves to have been dispossessed of something by the young Muslims, without the young Muslims believing that they had inherited anything from the young whites. Both groups were united in—though not, of course, by—their resentment.

One man was not at all surprised at this outbreak of inchoate racial fury. He was Ray Honeyford, the headmaster of a middle school in an immigrant area of Bradford in the early 1980s. He knew that the official multiculturalist educational policies that he was expected to implement would sooner or later lead to social disaster such as these riots: and when he repeatedly exposed the folly of these policies in print, the advocates of “diversity”—who maintain that all cultures are equal but that opinions other than their own are forbidden—mounted a vicious and vituperative campaign against him. For at least two years, the Honeyford Affair, as it was known, was a national preoccupation, calling forth endless newspaper and broadcast commentary, the man himself often branded a near-murderous racist and ultimately drummed out of his job. Hell, it seems, hath no fury like a multiculturalist contradicted.

Honeyford’s fundamental ideas were as logical, sensible, and coherent as they were unfashionable. He argued that the 20 percent of Bradford’s population who were Islamic immigrants were in Britain to stay, with no intention of returning home; and that both for their own sake and for Britain’s, they needed to be integrated fully into British society. The children of immigrants needed to feel that they were truly British, if they were to participate fully in the nation’s life; and they could acquire a British identity only if their education stressed the primacy of the English language, along with British culture, history, and traditions.

Honeyford did not believe that the cultural identity necessary to prevent the balkanization of our cities into warring ethnic and religious factions implied a deadening cultural or religious uniformity. On the contrary, he used the example of the Jews (who emigrated to Britain, including to Bradford and nearby Manchester, in substantial numbers at the end of the nineteenth century) as an example of what he meant. Within a generation of arrival, Jews succeeded, despite the initial prejudice against them, in making a hugely disproportionate contribution to the upper reaches of national life as academics, cabinet ministers, entrepreneurs, doctors and lawyers, writers and artists. The upkeep of their own traditions was entirely their own affair, and they relied not at all on official patronage or the doctrines of multiculturalism. This was Honeyford’s ideal, and he saw no reason why the formula should not work again, given a chance. (...)

  After his departure as headmaster, Drummond Middle School quickly received a new Urdu name and then was burned down beyond repair by an arsonist, as also happened to a similar, neighboring school, now completely boarded up. All children in the area now go to school in the preternaturally hideous buildings of modern British architecture, whose combination of Le Corbusian functionalism, financial stringency, and bad taste are a complete visual education in brutality. (...)

That the article appeared in The Salisbury Review gave almost as much offense as its content: for in the new, officially diverse Britain, the Review’s brand of cultural conservatism is beyond the pale. The Review’s name hardly ever appears without the qualification that it is rabidly right-wing, thereby implying that no intellectual engagement with the ideas expressed in it is ever necessary—only the kind of opposition appropriate to dealing with brown- and blackshirts. All opinion is free, of course, but some opinions are freer than others. (...)

Honeyford’s article also called into question the unwarranted but widespread assumption that differences in educational achievement between groups reflect unfair discrimination and nothing else. In the Times Educational Supplement, Honeyford had already mentioned the great and growing educational success of some subgroups of Indian immigrants, which he linked to their system of values—with the obvious corollary that the educational failure of other groups was not attributable to British racial prejudice. As a result, a black pressure group in London branded him a “blatant racist” and demanded his dismissal if he did not accept “massive in-service training courses to purge [him] of [his] racist ideology and outlook.”


Finally, and even less forgivably, Honeyford made mention of the plight of another ethnic minority in his school: the white children, who, when the article appeared, made up a mere 5 percent of the pupils. Their education suffered in a school dominated by pupils from non-English-speaking homes, he said, and he suggested that officials disregarded their plight because their parents, ill-educated and inarticulate, had formed no pressure group, and no political capital could be made of them. (Once, in the 1960s, the city council had tried to disperse the children of non-English-speaking immigrants to schools throughout the city, precisely to prevent the development of ghetto schools such as Drummond, but race-relations experts and bureaucrats declared this practice to be discriminatory and therefore stopped it—to Honeyford’s regret.)

He received several death threats, which the police took seriously enough to connect his home by alarm directly to the local police station. (I repeat: he had proposed only that Muslim children should be fully integrated into British society—the very opposite of suggesting that they should be discriminated against or in any way maltreated.) For months, he had to enter his own school under police protection from the small but militant group of pickets that formed outside and grew in size and volume whenever a television camera appeared. A few small children, too young to understand what was at issue, learned from their parents to chant “Ray-cist! Ray-cist!” at him and to hold up denunciatory placards, some with a skull and crossbones above his name. The Bradford Education Authority considered the possibility of a court order against the demonstrators, since children who continued to attend the school were likewise insulted as stooges and sell-outs, but it decided that such an order would only inflame passions further. Thus political extremists learned a valuable lesson: intimidation pays.

 No insult was deemed too scurrilous to hurl at Honeyford. A press release issued by an extremist group calling itself the Bradford Drummond Parents’ Support Group is a case in point: “One wonders,” it read, “whether Mr. Honeyford will be the next person to be advocating bird shots [sic] fired at the black children at the school.” Several months into the affair, Honeyford’s employer, the Bradford Education Authority, ordered him to attend a kind of public trial in a local college on the charge of disloyalty. Fortunately, the eminent lawyer representing him argued so vigorously that those intending to convict him had to acquit him.

The campaign against Honeyford disregarded entirely the fact that no complaint had ever been received about his competence as a teacher, or the fact that there were always far more applications to his school (mainly by Muslim parents) than there were places.

 But it is impossible to meet Honeyford for long without realizing that he is a passionate believer in the redemptive power of education and in the duty of schools to give the children of immigrants the same educational opportunities as everyone else. His only regret about the affair was that it drastically shortened his teaching career. It is a tribute to the power of Orwellian language that a man who believes these things should successfully have been labeled a racist.

Totalitær vision

Som Theodore Dalrymple nævner som i en lille detalje i sit Essay, the barbarians at the gate of Paris, ville arkitekten Le Corbusier jævne det "gammeldags" Paris for at bygge noget nyt - rationelt og moderne, med lige linjer og skarp opdeling af byen i forskellige funktioner, Velhavere for sig, middelklasse for sig, arbejdere for sig, erhverv for sig.

Le Corbusier tilhørte første generation af en skole, som kaldte sig "internationalisterne" og var tilhænger af funktionalismen og naturligvis beton og atter beton.

Men det som gjorde mest indtryk på mig, var citatet han bringer af Le Corbusier, et citat der virkeligt skærer ind gennem øjnene og ind i hukommelsen:

"The despot is not a man. It is the ... correct, realistic, exact plan...that will provide your solution once the problem has been posed clearly.... This plan has been drawn up well away from ... the cries of the electorate or the laments of society's victims. It has been drawn up by serene and lucid minds."

Det er nemlig sandt. Totalitarisme kræver ingen diktator, ingen despot.

Alt det kræver er en absolut plan og vision, lysende klar, rationel, som helst skal holdes så langt fra indflydelse som overhovedet muligt, som modstandere af, helst skal henrettes åndeligt, hvis man ikke kan henrette dem fysisk.

Denne tankegang er bestemt ikke død. Og her mener jeg inden for Europa grænser, som Peter Mandelsons ord om den post demokratiske tidsalder vidner om.

Under de store visioners magt, forventes mennesker at bøje sig i støvet og lade vejen mod "fremskridt" stå fri og åben.

Stalins betonkasser til Le corbusiers. Det er det som ligger bag vores golde ghettoørkener i dagens verden.

Vi er ikke glade for at bygge disse arkitektoniske monstre af beton, glas og stål længere.

Men på det politiske plan er de rene, rette linjer, de skystræbende betonklodser stadig normen i EU samarbejdet, det er Le Corbusier omsat til politik.

Kan man trives som mennesker i et miljø som dette, er det noget befordrer at mennesket føler sig respekteret og lyttet til?



For at citere Dalrymple i en anden artikel:

Hvis de magtfulde ikke bekymrer sig om verden, hvorfor skulle de magtesløse så gøre det?

Nej. Det er ikke Danmark vi skal havde tilbage. Det er demokratiet som udvandes af både EU og elitær arrogance.


Update bonus info fra Enclopædia Britannica:

New Brutalism

one aspect of the International Style of architecture that was created by Le Corbusier and his leading fellow architects Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright and that demanded a functional approach toward architectural design. The name was first applied in 1954 by the English architects Peter and Alison Smithson to the post-1930 style of the major French architect Le Corbusier.

Le Corbusier's expressionist interpretation of the International Style involved the use of monumental sculptural shapes and of raw, unfinished molded concrete, an approach that, in contrast to Mies van der Rohe's use of glass and steel, represented a New Brutalism to the English architects. Brutalism, as a reform movement, advocated the return to functionalist principles—in services, materials, and structure. The Smithsons, Sir Denys Lasdun, and other New Brutalist architects displayed a willful avoidance of polish and elegance in their buildings, in which such structural elements as steel beams and precast concrete slabs are exposed to view and convey a stark, austere rectilinearity.

Brutalisme som arkitektonisk ideal, velkommen til den fagre nye verden af golde byørkner i glas og stål, beton.

En beretning fra et fanatisk multikultursamfund

Jeg var egentlig ved at læse en bog om EU, men så kom den kyndige og velskrivende Engelske psykiaters, Theodore Dalrymple (Pseudonym), bog, "Our culture, what´s left of it, the mandarins and the masses". Siden den kom har jeg af uransagelige årsager haft svært ved at lægge mig til at sove om natten.

Endnu et glimrende essay fra bogen, "The man who predicted the raceriots", at læse denne her herre kan simpelthen ikke anbefales nok! Jeg startede i ung alder med essaygenren, ved at læse klassikeren, over alle klassikere er jeg tilbøjelig til at mene, selv om andre angiveligt vil pege på andre, men jeg valgte Francis Bacons essays.

Jeg vil ikke sige, jeg er updated med hensyn til moderne essaykunst, men Dalrymples er under alle omstændigheder glimrende skrevet, og berører emner som kultur og ondskab, med en dybde og indsigt som er sjælden.

Om dette essay kan der siges, at det handler om England i 1984, hvor et hysteri spredte sig omkring om engelsk skoleforstander, som påpegede at den nuværende politik på det multikulturelle, ledte til manglende assimilation, segregering og ville eventuelt lede til raceuroligheder, hvilket han jo fik ret i, og det er kun begyndelsen.
Hvad Ray Honeyford anbefalede, var at man sætte læring og engelsk i centrum, spredte immigrant elever så de ikke dannede parallelsamfund.
Det ramaskrig som spredte sig var at uden sidestykke, det røg i medierne med orkanstyrke og demonstrationer blev en del af hverdagen uden for skolen. Dødstrusler væltede ind, som var så alvorlige at Honeyford fik tildelt politibeskyttelse. Ydermere blev han tilbudt $ 30.000, for at love at ikke skrive i en årrække, da man jo ikke kunne få lov til at fyre ham, eller få ham dømt i retten.
Honeyford var slet ikke nogen ond racist, han kom selv fra en fattig baggrund og vidste personligt hvad god dannelse betød, at man fik muligheden for læring uden skelnen til baggrund.

Altså en surrealistisk historie fra et fanatisk multikulturelt samfund, skrevet med skarphed og vid, læs den endelig helt, men her følger uddrag:

One man was not at all surprised at this outbreak of inchoate racial fury. He was Ray Honeyford, the headmaster of a middle school in an immigrant area of Bradford in the early 1980s. He knew that the official multiculturalist educational policies that he was expected to implement would sooner or later lead to social disaster such as these riots: and when he repeatedly exposed the folly of these policies in print, the advocates of “diversity”—who maintain that all cultures are equal but that opinions other than their own are forbidden—mounted a vicious and vituperative campaign against him. For at least two years, the Honeyford Affair, as it was known, was a national preoccupation, calling forth endless newspaper and broadcast commentary, the man himself often branded a near-murderous racist and ultimately drummed out of his job. Hell, it seems, hath no fury like a multiculturalist contradicted...

Honeyford’s fundamental ideas were as logical, sensible, and coherent as they were unfashionable. He argued that the 20 percent of Bradford’s population who were Islamic immigrants were in Britain to stay, with no intention of returning home; and that both for their own sake and for Britain’s, they needed to be integrated fully into British society. The children of immigrants needed to feel that they were truly British, if they were to participate fully in the nation’s life; and they could acquire a British identity only if their education stressed the primacy of the English language, along with British culture, history, and traditions.

Honeyford did not believe that the cultural identity necessary to prevent the balkanization of our cities into warring ethnic and religious factions implied a deadening cultural or religious uniformity. On the contrary, he used the example of the Jews (who emigrated to Britain, including to Bradford and nearby Manchester, in substantial numbers at the end of the nineteenth century) as an example of what he meant. Within a generation of arrival, Jews succeeded, despite the initial prejudice against them, in making a hugely disproportionate contribution to the upper reaches of national life as academics, cabinet ministers, entrepreneurs, doctors and lawyers, writers and artists. The upkeep of their own traditions was entirely their own affair, and they relied not at all on official patronage or the doctrines of multiculturalism. This was Honeyford’s ideal, and he saw no reason why the formula should not work again, given a chance...

In his article, Honeyford enumerated some of multiculturalism’s problems and contradictions. The debasement of language that multiculturalist and anti-racist bureaucrats have brought about, he argued, has made it extremely difficult to talk honestly or clearly about racial and cultural matters. By lumping together all ethnic minorities as “black” in order to create a false dichotomy between white oppressors on the one hand and all minorities on the other, for example, these bureaucrats could obscure such complex and unpleasant realities as the continued hostility between Sikhs and Muslims, or the Muslim ill-treatment of women. Only by means of such deliberate blindness can the tenets of multiculturalism, feminism, and universal human rights be reconciled. Honeyford quoted Orwell to the effect that politicized language “is designed to make lies sound truthful” and “to give an impression of solidity to pure wind.”

He held up a very concrete example of how the multiculturalist mindset was damaging education. Immigrant parents, he observed, frequently sent their children back to Pakistan and Bangladesh for months or even years at a time, often precisely to keep them from acquiring any British cultural characteristics. Though this practice had obvious social and educational disadvantages for people destined to spend their adult lives in Britain—and though it was entirely illegal, as well—the authorities turned a blind eye to it.

British law obliges a parent, once his child is registered at a school, to ensure that he attends regularly; any white parent who kept his child away for so long would undoubtedly be prosecuted and punished. In the case of the children of immigrants, however, school authorities never pressed charges but instead directed teachers to keep absentees’ places open indefinitely and to regard their absence as a culturally, and therefore educationally, enriching experience. As Honeyford summed up: “I am left with the ethically indefensible task of complying with a school attendance policy which is determined not, as the law requires, on the basis of individual parental responsibility, but by the parent’s country of origin—a blatant and officially sanctioned policy of racial discrimination.” Seventeen years after he described the problem, it remains unsolved...

Finally, and even less forgivably, Honeyford made mention of the plight of another ethnic minority in his school: the white children, who, when the article appeared, made up a mere 5 percent of the pupils. Their education suffered in a school dominated by pupils from non-English-speaking homes, he said, and he suggested that officials disregarded their plight because their parents, ill-educated and inarticulate, had formed no pressure group, and no political capital could be made of them. (Once, in the 1960s, the city council had tried to disperse the children of non-English-speaking immigrants to schools throughout the city, precisely to prevent the development of ghetto schools such as Drummond, but race-relations experts and bureaucrats declared this practice to be discriminatory and therefore stopped it—to Honeyford’s regret.)...

(I repeat: he had proposed only that Muslim children should be fully integrated into British society—the very opposite of suggesting that they should be discriminated against or in any way maltreated.) For months, he had to enter his own school under police protection from the small but militant group of pickets that formed outside and grew in size and volume whenever a television camera appeared. A few small children, too young to understand what was at issue, learned from their parents to chant “Ray-cist! Ray-cist!” at him and to hold up denunciatory placards, some with a skull and crossbones above his name. The Bradford Education Authority considered the possibility of a court order against the demonstrators, since children who continued to attend the school were likewise insulted as stooges and sell-outs, but it decided that such an order would only inflame passions further. Thus political extremists learned a valuable lesson: intimidation pays...

The affair took its toll on him: after all, he was not a career politician but merely a schoolmaster who had spoken out against what he thought was wrong. His health, and his wife’s, began to suffer; and when his employer arranged to meet him secretly and offered him $30,000 in cash to agree to publish no further articles for three years, he was tempted to accept. His wife dissuaded him, however, telling him that he would never be able to live with himself if he concluded so sordid a deal...

The campaign against Honeyford disregarded entirely the fact that no complaint had ever been received about his competence as a teacher, or the fact that there were always far more applications to his school (mainly by Muslim parents) than there were places. Several attempts by political zealots on the city council to have him dismissed failed for lack of legal cause. Eventually, however, he accepted early retirement: constant abuse, however unjustified, is wearing—and he wanted to spare his pupils, who, like him, had to enter the school through a daily gauntlet of 40 vituperative pickets. Although teaching was his vocation, Honeyford never returned to it. Instead, he wrote several books about race relations and education, and became a freelance journalist...

But it is impossible to meet Honeyford for long without realizing that he is a passionate believer in the redemptive power of education and in the duty of schools to give the children of immigrants the same educational opportunities as everyone else. His only regret about the affair was that it drastically shortened his teaching career. It is a tribute to the power of Orwellian language that a man who believes these things should successfully have been labeled a racist...

The scene is set for a battle of competing resentments. If we had only listened to Ray Honeyford, we should not have sown what we are now reaping and what we (and others) shall reap for many years to come.

Essayet i fuld længde:

Privatlivets ret til at slå

Jeg mindes stadig min tid i Børnepasningsbranchen, hvordan man oplever børn, man ved bliver misrøgtet og mishandlet fysisk. Jeg havde en leder som kontaktede de sociale myndigheder, og argumenterede for at de skulle fjernes. Men lige lidt hjalp det, hvad man ikke må på gaden over for fremmede, må man halv-de facto godt bag hjemmets fire vægge over for ens kone og børn.

Endnu en lille artikel og et opråb blandt mange her om udbredelsen af vold blandt helt unge. For at slet ikke at glemme JP store kampagne om kvindevold og dens yderste konsekvens, mordet, for noget tid tilbage. Når kærlighed dræber.

Holdningen er lige som, jamen kvinden kan jo bare gå, hvorfor finder hun sig i det? Og børnene, ja, de kunne vel bare være født et andet sted, for i vores kommune har vi altså ikke råd til at tage os af den slags, før det er helt riv rask rusende rivende galt.

Der var 21.025 voldstilfælde på skadestuerne i 2006, næsten 30 procent af disse var kvinder. Hvor mange der aldrig går der på skadestuen, ved man ikke, men et gæt på det samlede antal kvinder som oplever vold svinger mellem 28.000 (som kun gælder husvold) og 70.000, som gælder alt, på et år. Det er altså ikke noget lille problem. 25 procent af disse tilfælde er indvandrerkvinder, selv om de udgør en langt mindre andel af befolkningen. Jeg tror faktisk, tallet kan vise sig at være højere.
Det er altså heller ikke kun et større problem, det er et problem som vokser sig større.

Hvad angår de unge, så er det åbenbart blevet mere in, at slå sin kæreste, antallet af unge piger, der har tre gange større hyppighed for at blive udsat for vold, som søger hjælp på skadestuen, er vokset med 77 procent på bare 10 år.

Volden mod kvinder, er en stor del af grunden til at volden stiger. Går vi tilbage i tiden, fandtes der nok vold bag de lukkede døre, men at tyve procent af sygeplejerskerne blev udsat for vold, og unge piger vænnet til bank fra næsten barnsben af, var nær utænkeligt.

Som Theodore Dalrymple, en engelsk Psykiater, skriver i sit glimrende og anbefalelsesværdige essay, "The frivolity of Evil", som kan findes i hans essay samling, "Our culture, what´s left of it - The mandarins and the masses":

"Yet the scale of a man's evil is not entirely to be measured by its practical consequences. Men commit evil within the scope available to them. Some evil geniuses, of course, devote their lives to increasing that scope as widely as possible, but no such character has yet arisen in Britain, and most evildoers merely make the most of their opportunities. They do what they can get away with.

In any case, the extent of the evil that I found, though far more modest than the disasters of modern history, is nonetheless impressive. From the vantage point of one six-bedded hospital ward, I have met at least 5,000 perpetrators of the kind of violence I have just described and 5,000 victims of it: nearly 1 percent of the population of my city—or a higher percentage, if one considers the age-specificity of the behavior. And when you take the life histories of these people, as I have, you soon realize that their existence is as saturated with arbitrary violence as that of the inhabitants of many a dictatorship. Instead of one dictator, though, there are thousands, each the absolute ruler of his own little sphere, his power circumscribed by the proximity of another such as he."

...

In 1921, the year of my mother's birth, there was one crime recorded for every 370 inhabitants of England and Wales; 80 years later, it was one for every ten inhabitants. There has been a 12-fold increase since 1941 and an even greater increase in crimes of violence. So while personal experience is hardly a complete guide to social reality, the historical data certainly back up my impressions.

Ugens Citat

Det er ofte en fornøjelse at læse Theodore Dalrymple, en engelsk psykiater som er en fantastisk skribent med en meget sofistikeret essaystil.

Her nogle interessante oplysninger og betragtninger fra hans seneste artikel, oversat:

Jeg fandt det interessant at læse i den lokale avis, hvordan butiksejere i nogle butikker nu forhindrer hooligans i at samles uden for deres butikker for at intimidere og røve deres kunder. De spiller Bach over højtalere, og dette spreder effektivt de unge efter kort tid. De flygter på samme måde som grev Dracula flygtede helligt vievand, hvidløg og krucifikser...

Der er afgjort noget emblematisk over det at bruge en af de største glorværdige præstationer af den vestlige civilisation, til at afholde de unge arvtagere af selvsamme fra kriminalitet...

Den belgiske Sinologist, Simon Leys, i hans nylige samling af udsøgte korte essays, Le bonheur des petits poisons, fortæller han sad i en café, hvor de andre kunder snakkede, spillede kort, eller tog sig en drink. Radioen var tændt, tunet ind på en station med tom snak og banal, populær musik (Du er heldig i disse tider, hvis popmusik kun er banal). Men pludselig, uden nogen tydelig årsag spillede radioen den første bevægelse af Mozarts klarinet kvintet, hvilket forandrede caféen til, hvad Leys kalder, "himmelrigets forkammer". Kunderne standsede, med den aktivitet de nu var i gang med, som var de blevet chokerede. Så rejste en af dem sig op, gik hen til radioen, og tunede den ind på en anden station, genoprettede normaltilstanden med snik snak og banal musik. Der var en kollektiv lettelse. Det var som at den raffinerede skønhed af Mozart var en anklage mod deres liv, som de udelukkende kunne respondere på ved at undertrykke Mozart.

Jeg sympatiserer med de kriminelle unge fra Rotherham fordi de reagerer på Bach på en lignede måde. En hvilken som helst anden respons ville indbefatte ubærlig smerte for dem. Rotherham kan prale af en meget fornem arkitektur fra det tidlige 19 århundrede (Og endda en meget fornem kirke fra 15 århundrede). men det hele er blevet overmandet, overskygget og ødelagt af motorveje og brutale betonbygninger med en surrealistisk afskyelighed, mange af dem bygget af kommunen og alle af dem godkendt af kommunen. Hvis de magtfulde ikke bekymrer sig om verden, hvorfor skulle de magtesløse så gøre det?

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Jeg har altid fundet, at disse betonkonstruktioner er et overgreb mod den menneskelige sjæl, omend der heldigvis er ved at ske nyorientering inden for den urbane artitektur som er mere æstetisk, trods stål, glas og beton.
Jeg boede selv tre år på Fjældevænget i Århus, omend det var før det blev et så slemt kvarter som i dag, så var det blotte syn af disse betonklodser nedbrydende af ens velvære, jeg vil aldrig bo i beton igen.
Jeg har det som regel fint med klassisk, men ikke altid. Med klassisk musik mærker man sig selv og det dybere menneskelige i en forstærket og mere rendyrket form.

Men i denne verden ligger vi som vi har redt. At fortiden i alle afskygninger knapt eksisterer, og kun det beskidte betonagtige øjeblik, det er vel knap dette som Zen Buddhister mener med at være i nuet.
Vores arvtagere skal medskabe en ny verden, men de bygger den på det grundlag, som vi efterlader. Hvis den er bygget på forringelse, bygger de videre på forringelse.