Month: December 2022

Don’t mention the war

Billy/ / Australia; Frontier Nation, Cultural Marxism, Free Speech, Gender Politics, General, Hashtag Diversity, Identity Politics, Jihad, Too much government, Transgender Regret Industry (c), Whither Government?

I have memories. They may be, as Clive James suggests, unreliable, but I can’t erase them.

One memory is of people often saying “it’s a free country” in response to either a suggestion that they’ve said something offensive or that someone was doing something not illegal but outside of the norm.

It must be two decades since I last heard that retort, TV re-runs and YouTube videos of Hancock’s Half Hour notwithstanding.

What I mean is, “it’s a free country”, was said all the time, by people in the pub, the local market, outside church, in the newsagents.

You pulled a face when they said “Paki” when referring to the cornershop owner Mr Patel, originally from Bombay, India? “It’s a free country”.

Someone raised an eyebrow at a risqué joke? “It’s a free country”.

What about the girl who has moved in with her boyfriend, or the teenage lad down the road who’s just confirmed what everyone had known since he was in Primary School; that he’s gay? “It’s a free country”.

If I were to speculate on the reason it was such a common catchphrase, I’d guess it was a reaction to our opponents in the Cold War. The things we said weren’t policed by government in the way the Russians were. it was a point of pride.

We don’t hear it so often, if at all now.

Perhaps there’s a reason for that.

Here’s a few news items to contemplate:

Woman arrested for silently praying in public.

Pregnant woman arrested for Facebook post.

Comedian can’t perform to a sold out theatre.

Film not allowed to be shown in UK cinemas.

This trend is self-sustaining. The political theory of the Spiral of Silence suggests people increasingly self-censor when they perceive their views are outside the Overton Window.

So what topics can we no longer express that perhaps we might have done in the recent past? Let’s call this test the LinkedIn filter; i.e. would I be prepared to hit the 👍 button on an article on this topic for my professional network to see? If the answer is no, it would seem we can no longer discuss this in public.

Here’s a list to get us started:

  • Asylum seekers waiting to cross the English Channel have passed through at least three safe countries already. Why did they not claim asylum in one of those?
  • Openly funding the Ukraine response to Russia is a highly risky tactic for the west and has likely delayed the inevitable diplomatic solution.
  • Some cultures are inferior to those originating in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Islam, in particular, is still desperately needing its version of the Renaissance to arrive.
  • Most of the world’s governments wet the bed over Covid and then failed to admit it when the data was clear in April 2020 and carried on self-harming for over a year.
  • Trans women, particularly the most vocal in the media and social media, are nearly always acting out a sexual fetish, autogynophobia. Their human rights do not trump those of actual women.
  • Stereotypes are often rooted in truth. There’s a reason the Lebanese in Sydney have a reputation for corruption, for example, or Nigerians in London are wildly more successful than Afro-Caribbeans.
  • The gender pay gap has multiple causes, duh patriarchy is unlikely to be a significant one. In fact, we never talk about it when I attend the local Patriarchy Chapter secret meetings.
  • The best way to equalise the gap between Australian aboriginals and the rest of the population is to treat them equally – equal laws, no subsidies to live in remote locations, removal of at risk children, etc.
  • Polyamory is yet another con trick, like third wave feminism, resulting in unhappy and regretful humans.

Bill’s Opinion

There’s loads more verboten topics to go on that list. I may pin this post on the main menu and keep updating it. Feel free to suggest a few in the comments.

Merry Christmas to all my readers!

Fear and self-loathing in Oz Vegas

Billy/ / Australia; Frontier Nation, Cultural Marxism

Apologies for both the interval between posts and the thematic repetition today. I tried to write about something else but the idea that the west hates itself just keeps popping up everywhere.

Let’s forget the self-saucing outrage pudding that is the Whinger and Ginger royal schism; it has an element of western self-loathing but, frankly, a plague on both their houses.

Australia is more amusing however, as it prepares for its traditional festive fun of convincing itself it doesn’t deserve to exist.

One of the half dozen legacy media organisations, TV channel Ten, has publicly announced its new policy of not making reference to Australia’s national holiday, the imaginatively named Australia Day (January 26th).

Imagine RTÉ boycotting St Patrick’s Day, Canal Plus giving Bastille Day a miss or an American TV channel ignoring July 4th. Their boycott announcement would be a virtual suicide letter.

For those who previously hadn’t given enough of a damn about Australia’s national day to find out what it celebrates, here’s the cliff notes; it marks the 1788 landing of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove. So, not the first arrival of Europeans on the continent, nor the “discovery” of Australia by Captain Cook, but the start of the first European settlement.

Ok, the settlement was a penal colony so, regardless of how the incumbent residents felt about it, not the most auspicious of starts for a nascent nation. History doesn’t care about your feelings though, to misquote Ben Shapiro. That’s yer actual history, Australians, own it.

Those who would boycott Australia Day refer to it as “Invasion Day”. They have a fair point, of course. Things definitely went rapidly downhill for the locals when the British and Irish arrived.

At this point, we could spend a few hundred words describing the historic and ongoing injustices against the aboriginal population, including the modern trend of people fraudulently claiming an aboriginal identity for the kudos and financial rewards available to them in (particularly) eastern city metro areas.

It’s not really the point though, is it? January 26th, 1788 wasn’t the day that started; that was probably more likely to be 19th April, 1770, when James Cook made Australian landfall on a mission specifically to find new lands for Britain. That’s when the Aboriginal people’s future was set.

Bill’s Opinion

The raison d’être of the boycott is a rejection of the Australian history. The date of the national day doesn’t matter at this point; it might as well be Christmas Day or a randomly-selected date from the calendar.

The people who don’t like Australia’s history don’t like a national day that celebrates a significant date in Australia’s history. It probably wouldn’t matter to them what that date was.

Ultimately, they will get their way; the Australian national day will move from January 26th.

How do I know this? Because they are fighting against people who value a feeling of national unity, nationhood. Eventually those people will realise, like the mother of the baby presented to King Solomon, a national day that divides a nation can’t continue forever.

The only real question is, will those boycotting January 26th get behind the new day and come together to celebrate Australia the nation at that point?

I don’t think so. I don’t believe that’s how this ends. See the previous post for reasons why.

Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.

Billy/ / Australia; Frontier Nation, Cultural Marxism, Economics, Free Speech, General, Jihad, Religion

Eventually, our decline becomes difficult to wilfully ignore. On a personal level, the inability to fit into a favourite pair of trousers is a harsh and obvious indicator of change.

At a national level, articles such as this are a sign we’ve lost our confidence and have done a deal with those who wish us harm.

There is an undercurrent of racism about the negative coverage of Qatar during the World Cup, the first to be held in a Muslim nation.

Western sensitivities around banning alcohol, homosexuality and demands around worker’s rights have a ring of moral colonialism.

Does it? Sensitivities?

That second sentence smuggles the concepts of killing migrant workers through negligence and jailing gays in the conversation under the cover of our differences over alcohol. Moral colonialism indeed.

Dr Tanveer Ahmed goes on to equate dressing as a crusader with wearing Nazi uniforms.

Again, really?

Can you name another culture in the world that would invite immigrants to their country and then provide column inches for such self-loathing in their national newspaper?

Would China allow it? Nigeria? Qatar? Argentina? Singapore? I don’t think so.

Here’s another article to consider, bemoaning the decline of New Zealand, particularly in the quality of its education. The statistics comparing it to Singapore are damning. Even if the Kiwis woke up to the problem today, it’s a multi-generational effort to reverse the decline.

In the UK, we talk of a managed decline since the days of empire, a melancholy acceptance of a slow fall down the world rankings since the war.

It’s worse than that though, as the title of this article infers; “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly”, is how a Hemingway character describes his process to bankruptcy. Perhaps we are in the suddenly stage of our cultural decline.

Britain has been here before, of course. A thousand years ago, we had this pathetic notion of paying off the Vikings to leave us alone, the Danegeld.

But, as Rudyard Kipling wrote, “…once you have paid him the Danegeld, You never get rid of the Dane.“

We’ve lost our cultural self-confidence and now our guilt over the past is preventing us from progressing in the future.

Those who would do us harm have noticed this and, like Dr Tanveer Ahmed, they are keen to exploit our insecurities.

Also, as Douglas Murray points out in The War on the West, many of those who would do us harm are us. We’re doing it to ourselves.

Cultural relativism doesn’t stand up to historic or logical scrutiny.

For example, murdering wives on their husband’s funeral pyre is not just an aspect of culture, it’s immoral. Fortunately, those nasty colonial British were culturally insensitive enough to ban it. It’s not clear whether Dr Tanveer Ahmed thinks this was an intervention too far.

Slavery has been the default condition in every human culture forever. The first time in history it was banned was 1833.

When did Dr Tanveer Ahmed’s culture ban slavery? Well, if he identifies with the Islamic world, not until the 20th century. Perhaps he would prefer to identify with the country of his birth, Bangladesh. If so, maybe he could visit some clothing factories there and let us know his findings.

Bill’s Opinion

My Christian faith is not particularly strong, but I’m very grateful for the benefits accrued to me by those who came before us with that strength of faith. Perhaps I am a cultural Christian.

The Victorians had a concept of “muscular Christianity” underpinning much of their global endeavours. We could cynically suggest it was convenient to have a justification of morality to explain why they imposed Common Law on the colonies, but Indian widows benefit from it today, nonetheless.

We’ve since replaced our faith with atheism and lost our confidence in the superiority of our culture along the way.

How do we reverse this cultural decline? are we too late?

Perhaps we could make stronger counter arguments to the cultural relativists. Maybe it’s time for us to seek our own reparations; the abolition of the global slave trade cost Britain dearly.

We not only had to pay compensation to the slave owners but the Royal Navy acted as the oceanic police for a century to close down the trade, both in the Atlantic and the Indian oceans.

There are people alive today in Britain who lost family members at sea in battles with slavers and the entire British economy had a brake on progress during that time, relative to those nations that were late in banning the trade.

If a politician could show their working to calculate a figure, they’d get my vote if they vowed to send some invoices to other countries. Let’s get that dialogue started, rather than taking domestic lectures from Bangladeshis on the negative impact of colonialism.