Wednesday 5 October 2016

Why do we care more about preserving lions than indigenous cultures?

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What will our children say after we let all the lions die?

That was the Guardian headline. 

I asked myself, 'What will they say after we let all the European nations die?'

But I know the Guardian wouldn't publish an article under such a headline. In fact, a conservative paper like the Daily Telegraph or the Daily Mail wouldn't.

The modern world and the liberalism that has ruled it since 1991 has given us unprecedented prosperity and peace for many, an amazing reduction in Third World poverty, huge medical advances, technological miracles, the internet, loss of rural life, secularism, the financial crash, unjust wars, abortion, sexual equality, non-judgmental sexual morals, many more democratic countries but grave restrictions on freedom in established democracies, and, most significant of all, waves of migration unprecedented for a thousand years.

If you think I exaggerate, figures for my own country show that almost a third of primary school children in England and Wales have 'an ethnic minority background'. More than a quarter of children born in England and Wales in 2015 were born to women born outside the UK. A third had at least one immigrant parent.


Similar things are happening in most European countries, except the ones in the former Communist bloc.

Mass immigration into Europe is powered by low birth rates in the developed world, but it would be happening without them. 

It began during the baby boom. Its deeper causes are huge pressures from the poor world and lack of will to refuse immigrants.

The people who run Europe think the end of predominantly ethnic states is inevitable, though they do not say so. People who don’t think so are silenced.

European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said in October last year, 

“Diversity is now in some parts of Europe seen as a threat. Diversity comes with challenges. But diversity is humanity's destiny. There is not going to be, even in the remotest places of this planet, a nation that will not see diversity in its future. That’s where humanity is heading. And those politicians trying to sell to their electorates a society that is exclusively composed of people from one culture, are trying to portray a future based on a past that never existed, therefore that future will never be.”

By 'diversity', which already exists in trumps in Western Europe, he meant the end of (ethnic) nation states. Europe as a collection of immigrant countries, like the USA.

Japan however takes another view. Shinzo Abe, the Japanese Prime Minister, said at the weekend, 

“As an issue of demography, I would say that before accepting immigrants or refugees, we need to have more activities by women, by elderly people and we must raise (the) birthrate. There are many things that we should do before accepting immigrants.”

Liberalism is by far the most influential stream of thought favouring immigration in modern Western Europe. Insofar as democratic socialists do so, it is partly because they are liberals too.

But the far left (and in the UK that includes Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition, and the ‘Corbynistas’) have another aim, revolution. A revolution to get rid of their two enemies, conservatism and national pride, which they call false consciousness.

Every crisis presents the hard left with the opportunity for revolution and though the economic crisis of 2008 failed to be the crisis of capitalism to which they have looked forward since Stalin, they see mass migration of people from war zones in the Middle East and Asia as another chance.

The masses in the European colonies were identified by Lenin as the victims of capitalism and non-whites remain so in the left-wing imagination. Now immigrant masses can be the troops that overturn the system without bloodshed.

The soft left, the moderates and the Blairites don’t want revolution but they share this desire to use immigration to weaken small 'c' conservatism, which has the happy effect of adding millions of left-wing voters and clients to the electorate.

They don't see that immigrants are like salt. A reasonable amount is necessary for flavour. Too much spoils the soup.

Clearly, Theresa May has many strong reasons, philosophical and partisan, for wanting to reduce immigration sharply, and she wants to do so very badly, but she has failed to do so and will continue to fail. She will at most slow down the transformation of her country.

Please click on this wonderful article by Niall McCrae, The real hate crime is the Left’s loathing of Britain, in The Conservative Woman, about a Socialist Workers' Party (Trotskyite) meeting he attended. This is a quotation.
To the far Left, every crisis is an opportunity to bring down the established order. It did not happen after the global economic shock of 2008, but the migrant crisis presents much greater prospects of destruction. Immigrant masses are the storm-troopers, and no bullets need be fired for the system to be overturned. Meanwhile, the danger of terrorism is cast as a racist trope. 
Niall McCrae asked the speaker if there were an upper limit on the number of immigrants Britain should absorb and received no reply, from which he understood, rightly, that for Trotskyites there is not. 

Nor is there for Jeremy Corbyn. Nor for Greens, despite their concern for pressure on open spaces, nor for a lot of people who are not far left.

23 comments:

  1. What about Wolfgang Schäuble? Isn't he lovely?

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/closing-eu-borders-immigration-will-lead-to-incest-german-finance-minister-warns-a7077696.html

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  2. They will look at the ruins of a once great civilization as our ancestors once did to the roman civilization and wonder what once was.

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  3. Their children will probably say the 'Shahada' unfortunately.

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  4. The problem is the moronic pro-Americanism among many on the right. The corollary of economic freedom is that anyone can become an American and hence ethno nationalism is wrong. Canada chose the mosaic rather than the melting pot and has been far more successful in keeping its European roots. Obviously the Monarchy & Westminster system have greatly helped.
    Richard Wernick

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  5. In Europe we live in a sort of "inducted blindness".

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  6. The Emirates preserves its culture very strongly (too strongly sometimes), despite local Gulf Arabs making up less than 20% of the population. They have a very smart guest worker program, where "the immigration issue" is de facto privatized, and the hosts are responsible for the guest workers' behavior. Guest workers do not receive any political power, and must behave impeccably or they are sent home. Even cursing out somebody in public can lead to deportation. Thus, foreign workers are on their best behavior, lead productive lives, the locals benefit from having a larger, mostly problem-free workforce, and everyone is happy. (There is even a small safety net - contrary to media spin, guest workers are not left to die on the street if they collapse; on the other hand, it is not a welfare state encouraging foreigners to come in just to take advantage of the benefits).

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    1. Except the foreign workers, whom are mistreated, have passports confiscated, and are virtual prisoners.

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    2. That is very true. I have been there and spoken to people. Still, most of those poorly paid workers prefer working in the UAE to their home countries because of better wages. They send home remittances.

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    3. Prefer is the wrong word, as you know. But this is your mental* right wing blog which appeals to selfish credulous folk.
      * deranged.

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    4. Alan, I lived there for a couple of years, and actually befriended many of those workers. I ate with them, listened to their stories, and treated them like my equals (even if they were taken aback at first). They are not as oppressed as you'd think, and are often quite cheerful. They do work a lot, and I mean a whole lot, and live in crowded (but clean) conditions. On the other hand, they save money and send a lot of money home, and I haven't met a single one who regretted the decision to work in the UAE. Virtually all of them dream of going back home with enough money to buy a property and start a small business. It seems that in about 20 years they save enough to do that. Again, this is from my own experience and I cannot possibly generalize about every guest worker, but I probably have more first hand knowledge than propagandists who need to paint a one-dimensional story. As far as immigration goes, this seems to be one of the best models.

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    5. Getting back to the point, the UK (and all European countries) should not copy the lack of employment protection in the UAE but should copy the UAE's system of letting in immigrants to work without giving them the right to stay after contracts end, become citizens and vote. This is fair and urgently needed.

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    6. If that didn't change search & contracts, I wouldn't mind on account of the pervasive wish of immigrants to go back. That 'free movement' comes down to free choice of where and for whom to work... No small thing.

      I can easily imagine many would trade the right to stay - which they never thought they had, for some legal protection against the worst possibilities of work in another country. Keeping the gate ever so slightly open for that unhoped for permanent relocation would likely win the rest. Time of residence conditions seem to work along a reasonable perception that whoever hangs in for long enough is almost of the land...

      I am seeing that Europe has already has a way to direct emigrants back to the base, without even trying: much of migration is temporary because earnings are worth that much more at home.

      All, a tangle of things already known as trivia of life by Europe's temporary emigrants. Then again, politics does not look for wisdom in life...

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  7. On a tangent (not sure if I can post links here) - Europe really cares about Romania's large carnivores, possibly more so than the human cost to living side by side with these creatures: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/05/romania-bans-trophy-hunting-of-brown-bears-wolves-lynx-and-wild-cats.

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  8. I dont think the children will care, as long as they keep getting their iphones.

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  9. The same thing they said 20 years after the Holocaust, "couldn't they see it coming"?

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  10. very good piece
    liberals care for lions, but not for foetuses

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    1. I'm not a liberal but some foetuses are better unborn.

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  11. Good piece, Corbynites really look down on notions of patriotism in their own country- other countries are no problem, strangely.

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  12. Paul, if a culture needs protection does it deserve it ?

    Since you're in Bucharest you might want to look into how immigration to Romania looked around 1900 :-)

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  13. Japan's relentlessly aging populations is the main driver behind their focus on robotics and e.g. remarkably sophisticated toilets (I did consider the words bog, loo etc. but as these ahem bathroom facilities will even give you a blow dry the word toilet in the fuller, older meaning of the word seemed appropriate).
    Dominic Johnson

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  14. Our grandchildren will be saying “what the hell were they thinking”. David Pileggi

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