Month: November 2010

  • The Abolition of Britain

     


    But I think it is important that Anglophiles, especially those
    in North America, begin to understand that the imagined,
    ideal Britain which they have treasured for so long has
    been swept away and is being replaced by an entirely
    different country-a place of shrinking liberties, of
    increasingly arbitrary authority, of bad manners and
    violence, of illiteracy and ignorance, of cringing conformism.
    As the culture disintegrates, the physical, political,
    diplomatic and military entity formerly known as
    Britain is also breaking up, and is likely to be
    incorporated into a new European superstate.

    Any Anglophile will say his or her love began with British literature: Austen, Tolkien, Trollope, Pym; Thackeray, Herriot, Chesterton, Milne; Lewis, Eliot, Stevenson, Read; Bronte, Wodehouse, MacDonald, Grahame.  Page by page we are drawn to the customs and manners and mores of Britain.  We take trips to find the Britain of our literature. We search for pockets of preservation, places that match the geography of our imagination. 

    If you want to hold on to that Britain, if a look at modern reality will dispel your dreams, stay away from this book.    

    A nation is the sum of its memories,
    and when those memories are allowed to die,
    it is less of a nation.

    What Morris Berman does in The Twilight of American Culture–describes what he calls a cultural massacre in America–Peter Hitchens does in The Abolition of Britain.  Hitchens outlines the changes that have taken place within one generation, between the death of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965 to the death of Princess Diana in 1997.  Morris’ view is from the left; Hitchens’ is from the right.

    The face of Britain has undergone radical plastic surgery
    so that it can no longer recognize itself in the mirror.

    Hitchens recapitulates themes from Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death; the decline in literacy, curiosity, imagination, and the ability to think for oneself. He examines the effects of television and computers, the decline in education, the rise in divorce and single parenting, the ignorance of history, the rejection of great literature, the loss in one generation of religious sensibilities.  

    Anyone trained from his earliest years in the television
    habit is likely to become extremely passive,
    because his ability to imagine, to hold conversations,
    to think without prompting, has already been
    weakened and withered.  He does not need them.

    We welcome into our homes the machines that
    vacuum the thoughts out of our heads
    and pump in someone else’s.

    Blunt as his brother Christopher, but conservative and unrepentant of his politically-incorrectness, Hitchens exposes the inconsistencies and unintended consequences of present policies.  One weakness I see in this book is that Hitchens ignores the failures of the British Empire; there is a reason that it came down. While he decries the direction England is going, he doesn’t delineate a solution.  As a journalist, Peter Hitchens’ thoughts are accessible at his blog.  A few random quotes from the book:

    The universal conscription of women
     into paid work has emptied the suburbs…

    Home death is becoming as rare as home birth.

    …fewer and fewer children have two parents,
    and where more and more women are
    married to the State.

    The most significant change for the majority
    is that life is no longer so safe, so polite or
    so gentle as it once was.

  • Autumn Song

         
    Autumn clouds are flying, flying,
    O’er the waste of blue.
    Summer flowers are dying, dying,
    Late so lovely new.
    Laboring trains are slowly rolling
    Home with winter grain;
    Holy bells are slowly toiling
    Over buried men.

    Goldener lights set noon asleeping
    Like an afternoon;
    Colder airs come stealing, creeping
    After sun and moon;
    And the leaves all tired of blowing,
    Cloud-like o’er the sun,
    Change to sunset colors, knowing
    That their day is done.

    Autumn’s sun is sinking, sinking
    Into winter’s night;
    And our hearts are thinking, thinking
    Of the cold and blight.
    Our life’s sun is slowly going.
    Down the hill of night;
    Will our clouds shine golden-glowing
    On the slope of night.

    But the vanished corn is lying
    In rich golden glooms.
    In the churchyard all the sighing
    Is above the tombs.
    Spring will come, slow-lingering
    Opening buds of faith.
    Man goes forth to meet his spring
    Through the door of death.

      

    So we love with no less loving,
    Hair that turns to gray ;
    Or a step less lightly moving,
    In life’s autumn day.
    And if thought, still-brooding, lingers
    O’er each bygone thing,
    ‘Tis because old autumn’s fingers
    Paint in hues of spring.

    ~  Autumn Song by George MacDonald
    : : from the archives, first published October 24, 2009