Britishness, identity and the liberal interpretation of Man

There has been a lot of Establishment hand-ringing of late over the waning sense of Britishness among the natives of these islands.  Specifically, the hand-wringing is about the uncomfortable likelihood that by being true to themselves the natives will leave the Third World of Bradford, Leicester, Peckham and Hounslow high and dry, together with their newly minted British identities.  The future of the great coerced experiment of the Multicult in England, particularly, is riding on whether the pols can keep us from understanding our own distinctiveness.  They, however, can only approach the issue in one way, which is also the wrong way ... as a crisis of that fungible commodity, “identity”:-

White children living in mixed-race communities feel as marginalised and uncertain of their British identity as ethnic minorities, a controversial government report has found.

A review of citizenship lessons in schools by Sir Keith Ajegbo, a Home Office adviser, concludes that white children are suffering “labelling and discrimination” that is severely compromising their idea of being British.

His review will suggest that while most people assume issues about diversity or “cultural and community cohesion” centred on the black or Asian communities, just as much thought and resources need to be put into providing diversity education to white pupils.

To demonstrate that his sudden concern for English children is indeed motivated by something other than compassion, the half-caste Mr Ajegbo informs us:-

“It makes no sense in our report to focus on minority ethnic pupils without trying to address and understand the issues for white pupils.  It is these white pupils whose attitudes are overwhelmingly important in creating community cohesion.  Nor is there any advantage in creating confidence in minority ethnic pupils if it leaves white pupils feeling disenfranchised and resentful.”

But why would they not feel “disenfranched and resentful”?  Has it not occurred to Mr Ajegbo that, cast as sinners, they are actually the sinned against?  As immigration’s victims they have nothing to gain from “creating community cohesion”.  The only thing that is worse than a multiculturalism that doesn’t work is, as they say, one that does.

For different reasons to Mr Ajegbo (ie, non-racial), our Prime Minister in Waiting is also trying desperately hard to sell an inclusive Britishness.  In his case, if the natives begin to sense their distinctiveness and to act as such, his position at No.10 will have no moral legitimacy.  He is plainly scared to death that the times they are a-changing, and he has missed his moment:-

Don’t call us British, we’re from England

The number of people describing themselves as “British” is plummetting amid fears for the future of the United Kingdom.

A major survey of social attitudes among 3,000 Britons reveals a dramatic surge in people who see themselves first and foremost as “English” - in an apparent reaction to nationalism and devolution in Scotland and Wales.

While the British identity is in decline, so is the traditional importance of church and political party in people’s sense of who they are.

... English respondents voiced “an apparently growing wish in the wake of Scottish and Welsh devolution to assert an English rather than a British identity.”

In fact, the picture is almost certainly worse for Brown than the survey reported here reveals, since its “English respondents” must have included some who were anything but.  Yesterday evening, BBC News featured a black member of the public telling us in a West Indian accent that he felt more English than British (followed by a Chinese girl laying claim to Scottishness).  The elite, it seems, so abhors race, it can’t stop itself processing “English”, “Scottish or “Welsh” as a mere identity issue.  No doubt there will be many more reports of Black “English identity” as Britishness slides further towards the eponymous historical dustbin.  “Identity”, then, will have to go!

It is a slippery concept, and one that we do not need to rely upon.  It does not and cannot belong to us, only to the left.  Its utility rests in its making the “identifier” the active principle, whilst rendering supine and open to any abuse the object of his attention.  The implication is always of something elected.  Identity is not who you are, but who you feel yourself to be.  Black and English?  If a black describes himself thus, so he is.  In liberalism, Englishness cannot be prescriptive.

The underlying philosophical idea of an elected identity is, of course, the free and unfettered will.  Like any act of re-invention it is contingent upon a rejection of existential facts.  Those facts are construed by liberalism as a tyranny.  Something unchosen - even our own natures - is imposed, and if it is imposed it is tyrannical.  The only medecine is the application of human will.  Liberalism - the rejection of Nature - and all the noisy claptrap about rights are meant to be the unfettering of the will.

But there is a rather large problem.  Identity = not I.  We receive the truer part of our psyches from our nature and, to some extent, in and through the historical culture that envelopes us from birth.  Flight from this is not possible, because there is nothing else of any solidity to fly to.  Choosing an identity, therefore, never rises above pretence and escapism.  It is dishonest.  Its devotees don’t notice this, or the vanity of a wholesale denial of Nature, because liberalism assigns ultimate value to self-will.  So, for example, normal masculinity and feminity which rise out of the rock of Nature have a negative value to liberalism and must also be denied.  Further, what we might call the semi-permanencies of bio-culture (my Englishness, say, which unites me to my kin past and present, and to the England of Shakespeare and Pitt) also have a negative value.  In liberalism both share exactly the same value as the third component of self: the ubiquities of individual personality which are acquired entirely through the accident of time and place ... “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

In this blanket denial of the non-willed self, liberalism differs from serious spirituality.  The latter bears no animus against Nature.  Without permanency there would be no spirituality.  It promises, therefore, only an escape from the tyranny of the acquired - or illusion, exile, the veil of tears and so on - to a still, essential centre which, so it goes, may then be propagated through a suffering dedication many years long.

In fact, it is precisely this version of the perfectionment of self that was purloined by 18th century secular liberal philosophy and re-presented as a socialised revolt against the given.  From a spiritual perspective it has “counterfeit” stamped all over it.  The self freed a second or two ago by some exercise of choice is just another moment in a life of illusion.

Still, there is clearly a powerful attraction to the modern mind in this field of endless potential ... this magically renewable tabula rasa upon which we can vanquish the demon of tyranny and author whatever “self” takes our promiscuous fancy.  After all, do we not have only to perceive our given “limits” and “boundaries” to find them non-existent?  Does not, for example, the too, too insensitive and dominant male self of the typical MR poster have only to explore its masculinity - so obviously oppressive to the too, too non-assertive and never hormone-bound female self - for its supporting sub-structures to melt into mere convention and superfluity?  Personal fulfillment as a male hausfrau beckons, along with the freedom after midnight to be a cross-dressing denizen of London’s public parks.  Perhaps someone with a name ending in witz will show us soon how to be Black.  Or how to be British once again.

But, of course, we can’t accomplish any of that.  Liberalism is a teleology.  It doesn’t really matter that its acolytes - or, perhaps, atomites - stagger from one wilfull destruction to another, with nothing to fall back upon but lightness of being and a heart untroubled by a single deep love.  It does matter, though, that a sense of nation is a deep love, and nothing of the liberal condition can survive beside it.

Gordon Brown and Mr Ajegbo please note.

Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, January 25, 2007 at 05:26 PM in Political Philosophy
Comments (13) | Tell a friend

Comments:

1

Posted by Britney British on January 25, 2007, 07:44 PM | #

At last someone has noticed the white man!

Yes, we live in Britain too! Where is the support network for us? Where are the government funded organisations?

I am proud to anounce the one and only organisation in Britain which sticks up for infidels in need…

http://infidelcouncilofbritain.blogspot.com

A spoof in the making. Let me know of any infidels who need comic support and publicity for their stories.

p.s. thanks for the link…link back in a second.

2

Posted by Fred Scrooby on January 25, 2007, 08:46 PM | #

Britney British, at your blog you issue a challenge to your readers to:

“Explain what could become of Britain and frighten it right out of its skin.”

I accept:  will this do?

(I think you’ll find it will ...)

3

Posted by Al Ross on January 25, 2007, 09:08 PM | #

The high regard in which the Blair government holds Britishness and Identity can be observed at :

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,24391-2558004,00.html

4

Posted by Fred Scrooby on January 25, 2007, 09:40 PM | #

Al, excellent article you linked!

5

Posted by Robert of the Rohirrim on January 25, 2007, 10:11 PM | #

Years from now, when there is civil war in many formerly all-white countries, we must remember what tribe was the main pusher and funder of open borders, multiculturalism, miscega.. miskega.. oh, hell, who was encouraging black men to stick it to white women.  We will remember what tribe hid the facts about black on white crime (hundreds of times higher than white on black crime). 

Before we fire a shot in the race war, we should first bring to justice all of the leaders of this devilish tribe.  We know their names.  Remember, white boy, your chance will come.

6

Posted by Tim Jensen on January 26, 2007, 01:01 AM | #

Fred Scrroby,
I read that article you linked to above.  Then I read it again.  I printed it and placed it in the kitchen drawer so now I know what is coming down the road 100 mph at whites in the US.  I used to laugh at that kind of stuff and play it off as never happening, just paranoia. 
I can’t honestly say that I am happy now that I know what lies in the future.  I put in the paperwork today to buy longarms and a pistol or two.  No one can say we haven’t been warned.  In the coming years, the rape/torture/murder in Knoxville is going to look like the good old day.  This is going to be bad.

7

Posted by Fred Scrooby on January 26, 2007, 01:40 AM | #

“No one can say we haven’t been warned.”  (—Tim Jensen)

Truer words were never written.

8

Posted by Jim on January 26, 2007, 06:07 AM | #

I envy the US citizens protected by their first and second amendments. What incredibly enlightened founders your country had. Of course most of us have no free-speech and even less capacity to bear arms.

9

Posted by Kenelm Digby on January 26, 2007, 08:58 AM | #

Why does the name ‘Sir Keith Ajegbo’ jar so much?
Is it because it is a peculiar juxtaposition of the Anglo-Saxon and the Bantu?, perhaps rather like seeing a Zulu warriror in full tribal derss wearing a bowler hat and carrying a rolled-up umbrella and briefcase.

10

Posted by East Asian cognitive elitism on January 26, 2007, 10:00 AM | #

http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2007/01/women_sold_as_g.php

11

Posted by Fred Scrooby on January 26, 2007, 10:01 AM | #

A log entry by Jim Kalb up today over at Turnabout is à propos:

Lords, chancellors, and lofty moral imperatives

The Blair government is issuing regulations implementing a statutory prohibition against discrimination in the provision of “services.” The regulations say you can’t discriminate against homosexuals, no exceptions. Among other things, that rule will require Catholic adoption agencies to treat sex as irrelevant to intimate human relationships (and consequently engage in PC child abuse) by placing children on an equal basis with same-sex and different-sex couples. The effect will be to shut the agencies down.

There are lots of things one could say about such a measure. Since marriage ceremonies are also a service, it’s not clear to me, if there’s really no religious exception, that it would allow the Church to deny a church wedding to a homosexual couple. However that may be, one point that particularly struck me was the mindless talk of “discrimination” by the Chancellor of England, Lord Falconer (Tony Blair’s old roommate and now a Labour life peer):

“We do take the view in this country that you shouldn’t be discriminated against on that basis and think that applies to everybody, whatever your religion.”

“[The Government would not accept] discrimination on the basis of religion…. We have committed ourselves to anti-discrimination law — on the grounds of sexual orientation — and it is extremely difficult to see how you can be excused from anti-discrimination law on the grounds of religion.”

[...] Similar mindlessness, with the essential moral fanaticism of the position made more explicit, can be found in the piece by Professor Grayling I cited yesterday. For some reason we’re all supposed to know that “discrimination” — different treatment of persons — is the ultimate moral horror, to be repressed and eradicated wherever found with the full force of state power.

What though can that possibly mean? We discriminate all the time. Every social institution is based 100% on discrimination, since social institutions exist by conferring different rights and obligations on different persons. If I decided to give a series of lectures at the University of London and told them about it they would discriminate against me compared with Grayling. That’s what it means to say he is a professor there.

What then does it mean to say there should be no discrimination based on race, ethnicity, culture, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation and the like, and rooting out discrimination is a primary function of government? Evidently, that no social institution should be allowed that has any connection with those things. The only institutions that can be allowed to exist are those that have been purged of all culture and all nonrationalized human connections like sex, faith and common heritage.

The only institutions that come to mind that would qualify under such a standard are global markets and neutral transnational bureaucracies. Everything else — family or nation, for example — has to become a strictly private hobby, to be squashed if it begins to affect, in more than a minimal way, other people who don’t choose to join in. For some reason that’s called freedom and justice. To me it looks more like totalitarianism.

Be that as it may, all of our leaders buy into it, because all of them agree that “discrimination” is the worst thing possible. If my view is right, then all of our leaders, in concept and implication at least, have accepted totalitarianism. Why shouldn’t they, when they’re the ones running things?

And have a look at this reply, by a Turnabout regular who signs as “MD”:

I read in First Things that the Boston Catholic Charities adoption services had shut down in response to similar regulations from the State of Massachussetts.

This is why freedom of religion is called the “first freedom.” I noticed how the [English] Chancellor just rolled right over that:

“it is extremely difficult to see how you can be excused from anti-discrimination law on the grounds of religion.”

The pushback won’t come from Catholics or the COE, it will come from Muslims. They’ll shove that right down his bureaucratic throat.

Not much more to be added to the last line of MD’s comment, is there ...

12

Posted by PF on January 26, 2007, 12:48 PM | #

A historical parallel to this was when the Emperor Caracalla issued the Constitutio Antoniniana” in the 3rd century. It made all subjects of the Roman Empire into official Roman citizens. This in my view was responsible for destroying the Italo-centric elitist Roman identity, so that Romani could no longer be addressed as a group- and could no longer percieve themselves as a group. In the following century Rome decayed miserably, and another century swept the Western Empire entirely away.

Could you please clarify this statement though:
In fact, it is precisely this version of the perfectionment of self that was purloined by 18th century secular liberal philosophy and re-presented as a socialised revolt against the given.  From a spiritual perspective it has “counterfeit” stamped all over it.  The self freed a second or two ago by some exercise of choice is just another moment in a life of illusion.

I dont quite get what you’re saying there.

13

Posted by Guessedworker on January 26, 2007, 02:33 PM | #

PF, a slave in his waking state is a slave in his waking state whether or not he is liberated according to Locke, Rousseau, Marx or Rawls.

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