A friend and reader of this blog just returned from a trip to Greece and Italy. He writes that in all his years visiting the region, he has never seen it so tense. The sense of anger at immigrants, and mistrust of the political elites, is palpable.
I was reminded of a conversation I had with the driver who took me to Heathrow last weekend. We were talking about the recent election of two members of the far-right, openly racist British National Party to the European Parliament. The driver fretted a bit about it, but said it was no surprise to him. As he put it, none of the mainstream political parties in Britain will talk about the very real problems the country faces, which, in his view, clash with the establishment's commitment to globalism and multiculturalism. The driver said when the mainstream parties are determined to wish these things away, and to demonize ordinary people who try to bring them to the establishment's attention, they shouldn't be surprised when radical political parties with nothing to lose draw support.
To be clear, the driver was not supporting the BNP. He was despairing over the established parties' inability -- because of political correctness and ideology -- to face the world that ordinary Britons have to live with -- and the space that opens up for people like the BNP.
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"If you want to colonize the world, don't be surprised when the world arrives at your door."
Yet amazingly Britain is not over-run with Americans fleeing their country Well, not yet even though America was one of Britain's first colonies. Give Obama another few months.
Seriously Hampton, and no offense, but your statement is wonderfully dumb-assly silly. Thank you for your ignorance on the subject.
Jack Bauer,
Hampton's comments have quite a bit of truth to them. During the 19th and 20th centuries, colonial schools in Africa and Asia told children that they should regard the colonizing country as their "mother" and encouraged the use of English, French, etc. among the natives. Imperial imagery constantly used almost multicultural rhetoric to promote colonialism. During both World Wars, hundreds of thousands of colonial troops from Africa and Asia fought and died for the various European nations. The survivors of these wars still receive pensions from their respective colonizing country. So after being told for more than one hundred years to consider England, France, or Belgium their "mother," should it really be that surprising that some of the ex-colonial subjects took the propaganda as truth and started showing up?
If you want to colonize the world, don't be surprised when the world arrives at your door.
The Brits owe most of their former colonial subjects absolutely nothing. The Brits left virtually every third world colony in better shape than any other colonial power would have, and FAR better shape than such places would have been without colonialism.
The economic and social collapse of those ex-colonies is invariably the product of the viscious, corrupt native regimes that took over from the British.
Bill Butler wrote: "Mexico's problems are the result of many decades of political corruption and one-party rule."
Correction: Many CENTURIES of political corruption. History really does matter, and real conservatives never forget that we're creating the future today.
"Immigrant" is code for "Muslim', right?
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