The still beating heart of England

American traditionalist conservative Larry Auster had this to say a few days ago:

Like Melanie Phillips, Roger Scruton protests the application of Britain’s law prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals to the area of adoption, but, also like Phillips, he has nothing to say against the sexual orientation anti-discrimination law generally, he criticizes it only when it comes to adoption. Adoption is different, he says, because it involves a duty that one voluntarily takes upon oneself to provide for the care of a child; it is about serving another person’s needs, not about pleasing oneself. There is, he insists, no right to adopt a child, and therefore the very idea of having one’s “right” to adopt denied is false.
Ok, I suppose that’s a decent argument. But there are two problems with it. Scruton accepts the banning of discrimination against homosexuals in every area and activity of life except adoption. And, having accepted that totalitarian law for the whole of society, his plea for a single special exception to it stands on weak ground.

Scruton, of course, is one of Britain’s leading “conservatives.” He doesn’t even have Phillips’s excuse, which is that she is a self-described liberal.

Let’s face it, folks. The British, the great people from which our own country was born, are dead, they are finished, they are kaput. And that goes for their “conservatives” too. Before there is any possibility that they can become a decent and strong people again, they must first be melted down and destroyed as they now exist.

What then for those of us who, hopelessly mired in the liberal zeitgeist though we might be, just aren’t quite ready to be melted down like so much rusted metal? Should we meekly accept this fate, and hope for the sake of the next generation, or perhaps the one several lifespans hence?

Before agreeing to do that, I suggest that readers first go back to that quote and re-read it more carefully. That even an avowed conservative like Scruton is unable to defend the right, and the duty, to discriminate - between effective and ineffective, safe and unsafe, good and evil if I might be grandiose for a minute - is worrying enough. But is it anything new? Did not Heath force Enoch Powell’s resignation for his refusal to treat an Indian as identical to an Englishman as long ago as the late 1960s? Did not the Tory statesmen of the post-war years join in the sordid chatter about sensible precautions to ensure the genetical future of the nation being “barnyard regulations”? Did not Scruton himself already reveal his preference for our national dispossession?

Why, after all this, does Auster choose to declare our incurability now? And why us and not Americans, who surely are in more immediate danger if only because of geography alone?

I cannot give Auster’s answer for sure, but I can guess at it. It has, no doubt, something to do with religion, with America’s Church-goers, with its safety from his favourite bugbear, Islam. He doesn’t dare grasp the nettle of biological reality, and so has to flee to what is ultimately still an abstract, indeed otherworldly, doctrine to protect what he values. It’s no coincidence, as the Marxists used to say, that gay adoption, not mass incompatible immigration, has made him reach for his political pulse monitor and racial hearth.

It’s a pathetic indulgence. Christianity sans the cultural context created by the European phenotype is as good as useless even for his purposes, let alone anyone else’s on the real right. The Metropolitan Community Church has published this profoundly traditionalist insight as an expression of its spirituality:

We have reclaimed ‘Queer’ as an active word, a questioning word, a creative word and a challenging word. When we ‘Queer’ disciplines such as history, literature or religion we are actively looking for Queer people who have been hidden or lost by those disciplines. To Queer these disciplines is also to challenge their homophobic biases. Queer is also an indeterminate or generative word, pointing to the ways all identities are fluid and changing.

For all its waffle, such faith creates nothing - not even the next generation - questions nothing, and challenges nothing of the anti-meritocratic, corrupt racial spoils system that, one must hope, Auster can still see developing in America. This isn’t some departure from Christian doctrine: from medieval antinomians to Tolstoy to the invade the world/invite the world evangelists of modern America, every assault on order, law and justly acquired property has found friends in the religious orders. Rothbard probably put it best:

A menace to America and even to the rest of the world, not only of our time but of the last few centuries, is the deadly threat of the “Religious Left,” a left which began, in the Middle Ages and even earlier, as a hellish Christian heresy, and by now can only be considered “Christian” in the most remote and twisted sense. This menace, which reached its most influential early form in the views of the charismatic and highly influential late-twelfth century Calabrian Abbot, Joachim of Fiore, is “postmillennial”: that is, it struggles to bring about, either immediately or as quickly as possible, a thousand-year Kingdom of God on Earth, a “perfect” and sinless world, a world which would be Communist, collectivist, and egalitarian, although that “equality” would be supposedly assured by the totalitarian rule of a cadre or vanguard of “saints,” presided over by a self-proclaimed Messiah or proto-Messiah, whose reign would supply the pre-conditions for the eventual Second Advent of Jesus Christ. Private property would be stamped out, and all “heretics,” that is, any dissenters from this messianic rule, would be slaughtered.

No, America’s religiosity is no safekeeper for its national integrity. Borders are, deportations are, perhaps secession is. Not much caring for the messianic plans of either America or the EU Commissars is. Voting for a viable and fast growing restrictionist party is. Britain is doing much of that, or at least the hoi polloi are. While that Anglo-Saxon rebelliousness is still there, memories of the Magna Carta and the Glorious Revolution will remain as well, and the heart of Britain still beats.

Posted by Alex Zeka on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 at 03:51 PM in Social Conservatism
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Posted by Desmond Jones on March 28, 2007, 08:06 PM | #

Yet Wilson’s Darwin’s Cathedral suggests the very opposite. MacDonald writes, in his review of the book that religion, as examined by Wilson, is adaptive.

Particularly interesting is the discussion of early Christianity based on the work of Rodney Stark (1996). Early Christianity emerges as a non-ethnic form of Judaism that functioned as a way of producing cohesive, effective groups able to deal with the uncertainties of the ancient world. The ancient world was a very unpredictable place indeed, characterized by natural disasters such as earthquakes, fires, rioting, epidemics, brutal military campaigns against civilians, famines, and widespread poverty. Navigating this world was greatly facilitated by co-religionists ready to lend a helping hand and to establish economic alliances. Wilson has no hesitation in supposing that Christian charity in extending aid to fellow Christians suffering from the plague involved altruism, as indeed it did. But the result was that more Christians survived these disasters than did Pagans: Christianity was adaptive at the group level. The adaptiveness of Christianity also stemmed from its emphasis on several attitudes that were notably lacking in the Roman Empire: encouragement of large families, conjugal fidelity, high-investment parenting, and outlawing of abortion, infanticide, and non-reproductive sexual behavior. The bottom line is that Christian women did indeed out-reproduce Pagan women.

The more religious groups, the Mormons for instance, have a higher fertility rate than averge white Americans, which is higher again than British whites. In Wales and the N/E of England, illegitimate births are over 50%. US rates for whites are 25-30%. Abortion rates for white women in the US is 10/1000 and 16/1000 for the UK.

” Britain has the highest proportion of single mothers in the European Union and, surprise, surpise, one of the highest rates of benefits for single mothersLatest figures from the Office for National Statistics show single-mother families in Britain have steadily risen from 1% of all households with children in 1971 to 11% in 2004.”

High-investment parenting is clearly falling as a priority in the UK. Based on Wilson’s analysis the UK is showing behaviour that is highly maladaptive.

Posted by Michel Brown on March 29, 2007, 02:38 AM | #

The British invented modern homosexuality, then exported it. In Scruton’s “England: An Elegy,” he sings the praises of pederastic schoolmasters. I’m not making this up.

Posted by Alex Zeka on March 29, 2007, 04:26 AM | #

Desmond,

I would argue that the forms of religion - i.e.the churches, the Papacy, all the various religious organisations - are adaptive, but that Christian doctrine itself is a cornucopia of multiple meanings, strange ideas, and the simply absurd. We have the injunction to ‘turn the other cheek’, we have the notion that a desire is as sinful as the act (which the Cathars correctly understood as allowing pretty much any rule-breaking since our every waking moment is a sin anyway).

The groups that you site, the Mormons, aren’t really ‘pure’ Christians. As to the rest of Americans, one of the biggest boosters of immigration in the USA is the Catholic Church, along with the Lutheran and evangelical Protestant ones. They might be reproducing, and doing so in wedlock, but they are still acquiescing in their childrens’ national dispossession.

As to those single mothers, who taught them not to prepare for the next day, the same way the bees and the flowers don’t? I am not suggesting that they’re being feckless for religious reasons, but rather that the literal text of the Bible could equally give them an excuse to act the way they are acting.

‘Turn the other cheek’, ‘do not care for the morrow’, transvaluation of values…Is there a ‘high investment parenting [or anything else]’ strategy in there? I’d say no.

Posted by Retew on March 29, 2007, 07:01 AM | #

Michel Brown says;

The British invented modern homosexuality, then exported it. In Scruton’s “England: An Elegy,” he sings the praises of pederastic schoolmasters. I’m not making this up.

========================================

I heard Scruton on the radio talking about his views on homosexuality, and he said he benefited from the efforts of his schoolteachers who were in his opinion sublimated (i.e. non-practicing) homosexuals. I’d be very surprised if he sang the praises of pederasts in his school (Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe).

Posted by Desmond Jones on March 29, 2007, 03:18 PM | #

Alex,

Wilson appears to be arguing that there is a trade-off.

Skeptics who focus on and scorn religious “hocus-pocus” are missing the point. Religious belief is not detached from reality: It is about motivating behavior and should be studied as such. Wilson calls attention to two forms of realism: factual and practical. To focus on the factual only is too one-sided, and it then becomes too easy to dismiss people who stray from the factual as mentally weak. But with religion as an organism organizing human behavior we are not dealing with mental weakness, but rather “the healthy functioning of the biologically and culturally well-adapted human mind.”

Rationality is not the key to this healthy functioning; adaptation is the key. Evolution is about trade-offs in which becoming better in some respects requires becoming worse in others. There is a trade-off with factual knowledge because in itself factual knowledge is not enough to motivate “adaptive behavior.”

Socrates viewed revenge as self-destructive.

Socrates insists that we should never return wrong for wrong, injury for injury. Socrates was no Jesus commanding his followers to turn the other cheek, but a thinker reminding his old friend Crito of the conclusion of many arguments they have shared in the past, to the effect that the urge to hit back is demeaning and harmful to anyone who succumbs to it. This does not commit Socrates to pacifism (he fought bravely for his country), but to a view of war as the administration of just punishment aimed at restraining and, if possible, reforming the offenders. And that is the view he espouses in Plato’s Republic when discussing war between one Greek state and another. About larger conflicts with non-Greek peoples of the East he remains silent. His more conventional interlocutor Glaucon recommends a no-holds-barred approach to barbarians.

The Stoics, who view mankind as a global community, share Socrates’ opposition to revenge and his judicial approach to the use of violence. Seneca continues the passage quoted earlier with the following words:

Anger, I say, has this great fault - it refuses to be ruled. It rages against truth itself if the truth turns out contrary to its desire. With outcry and uproar and gestures that shake the whole body it pursues those whom it has marked out, heaping upon them abuse and curses. Not thus does reason act. But if need should so require, it silently and quietly wipes out entire households, destroying families baneful to the state - wives, children, and all; it even tears down their houses, levelling them to the ground, and abolishes the very names of the foes of liberty. All this it will do, but with no gnashing of the teeth, no wild tossing of the head, doing nothing that would be unseemly for a judge, whose countenance should at no time be more calm and unmoved than when he is delivering a weighty sentence.

It appears ‘turning the other cheek’, can be adaptive for a group, even though it may be detrimental on the individual level.

Posted by Alex Zeka on March 29, 2007, 04:40 PM | #

Desmond,

I would reply that there is a trade-off between the will to live supplied by religious belief on the one hand, and the otherworldly doctrines required by these beliefs on the other. The transvaluation of values which JC was supposed to have brought to us has allowed any rebel, anyone displeased with the way nature is configured, to argue that it should be conbfigured entirely differently and that we should be sacrificed to make this happen.

Take the Christian feminists for instance:

Christian feminism, a branch of feminist theology, seeks to interpret and understand Christianity in the scope of the equality of women and men morally, socially, and in leadership. Because this equality has been historically ignored, Christian feminists believe their contributions are necessary for a complete understanding of Christianity. While there is no standard set of beliefs among Christian feminists, most agree that God does not discriminate on the basis of biologically-determined characteristics such as gender. Their major issues are the ordination of women, male dominance in Christian marriage, and claims of moral deficiency and inferiority of abilities of women compared to men. They also are concerned with issues such as the balance of parenting between mothers and fathers and the overall treatment of women in the church.

Many Christians who sympathize with women’s issues are uncomfortable with the term feminism. One reason for this discomfort is the claim by some conservatives that Christian feminists are theological descendants of radical secular feminists such as Mary Daly, Betty Friedan, and Daphne Hampson. However, Christian feminists appeared on the scene much earlier than secular feminists (see “History” below). Increasingly, the term egalitarianism is preferred by those advocating gender equality and equity among Christians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_feminism

...or the Christian Liberationists:

In Christianity, liberation theology is a school of theology that focuses on Jesus Christ as not only the Redeemer but also the Liberator of the Oppressed. It emphasizes the Christian mission to bring justice to the poor and oppressed, particularly through political activism. Some elements of certain liberation theologies have been rejected by the Holy See of the Roman Catholic Church.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_theology

Will all these revolutions, all these expropriations of those who have built modern civilisation destabilise the world? Look not to the morrow, for the Lord will take care of you.

Of course, other passages in the Scripture contradict this. The point is that, without other lodestars, Christianity alone is not enough, infact is on the balance harmful as it lends credence to some otherwise utterly preposterous suggestions.

Onto your point about self-defence and ‘turning the other cheek’. Vengeance, etc and all disproportionate violence are ill-advised, as they remove the incentives for others to treat you decently. Yet this isn’t what the Book says; rather it requires you to turn the other cheek, i.e. allow your assailant to attack you again. The act of a just man would be to defend himself, and then to seek proportionate restitution, through official channels if possible. That’s not vengeance, but it isn’t turning the other cheek either.

Posted by Alex Zeka on March 29, 2007, 04:42 PM | #

It appears ‘turning the other cheek’, can be adaptive for a group, even though it may be detrimental on the individual level.

Would not a community in which most turned the other cheek, to the extent of not defending themselves or seeking justice in the courts, become a heaven for criminals?

Posted by Fred Scrooby on March 29, 2007, 05:13 PM | #

In a strong log entry today, Dennis Mangan emphasizes the seriousness of the immigration situation while also quoting Lawrence Auster who says that despite the bleak appearance of things the immigration crisis is still solvable.

Posted by Desmond Jones on March 29, 2007, 05:33 PM | #

Alex,

It’s unclear whether either sect will enhance reproductive fitness. Time will tell, however, if they are not adaptive, neither group will perpetuate itself or their ideas. It appears Wilson is examining the record and found, over the ages, that Christianity enhanced the evolutionary fitness of a societal organism. Not all religions provide an adaptive value.

“Adaptive features of religion evolve by an ongoing process of cultural selection —some religious experiments and ideas survive, others do not.”

Re: ‘turning the other cheek’, if you interpret it literally, then yes you are correct.

Posted by Lurker (Mk II) on March 30, 2007, 10:58 AM | #

FYI Lawrence Auster is a Jewish supremacist phoney, no more conservative than Moshe Dayan. Melanie Phillips FFS—lunatic paranoid Jewess who wants World War IV.

And what kind of an Englishman is a Zeka?

Posted by Desmond Jones on March 30, 2007, 02:10 PM | #

You don’t need Auster or Phillips to recognise that the English are acting maladaptively, even compared to 30 years ago.

In addition to the fact that abortion, and illegitimacy rates are high, compared to US whites, and fertility rates are lower, compared to US whites, black/white intermarriage is much higher, on a percentage basis in England than in the US. Granted the percentage of whites in the English population is higher than the percentage of whites in the US, still “It is not difficult to imagine that soon as many as half of native born Black Caribbean males in Britain will have white partners.” Something like 25% of native born black Caribbean females have white partners.

Posted by Alex Zeka on March 31, 2007, 04:47 PM | #

Desmond,

No, all we know is that Christianity+the rest of European culture which was invariably mixed up with it enhanced fitness. Whether, Christianity was a retarding or enhancing force can’t be deduced, just as often harmful genetic characteristics are transmitted because they are found alongside beneficial ones. To see the effects of pure Christianity, I draw your attention to the Bogomols, the Christian primitivists, the evangelicals in modern America, who ape African tribal culture to reach out to the whole ‘brotherhood of man’.

Re: ‘turning the other cheek’, if you interpret it literally, then yes you are correct.

You’re starting to sound like a modern, wet Anglican there. ‘This is the word of God’ says the blurb; should we take this literally? asks the befuddled Christian. I’m sure you can see how incredible that must sound, and why people either believe literally or not at all.

Posted by Rnl on March 31, 2007, 06:26 PM | #

Lurker (Mk II) wrote:

what kind of an Englishman is a Zeka?

Since the Zeka in question hasn’t replied, I’ll make an educated guess: An acculturated Englishman who identifies with Englishness and hopes to see it survive and flourish.

Posted by Desmond Jones on April 01, 2007, 03:54 AM | #

Alex,

I haven’t finished the book, however it appears Wilson addresses the “other cheek” issue as an efficient and less expensive means of social control. He uses Calvin’s catechism as an example. Wilson argues that Calvin’s catechism “provides a detailed procedure for punishing transgressions in which forgiveness is highly conditional upon repentance” and not just a wanton and reckless forgiving.

“In the absence of a strong church or comparable social organization, individuals must maintain their own social order, which leads to a limited amount of cooperation at a small scale but also to feuds and rivalries that are dysfunctional at a larger scale.”

The argument is that the advancement of greater religious discipline in one group motivates the competition.

Similar observations have been made regarding nation states. An argument can be made the the French revolution was such a determining moment subsequent to France’s defeat by the English in the Seven Year’s War.

“Once the state becomes a functional reality, its components resonate within a single gigantic amplifier. The more powerful the ruling class, the more it can intensify production, increase population, wage war, expand territory, mystify the peasants, and increase its power still further. All neighboring chiefdoms must either rapidly pass across the threshold of state formation, or succumb to the triumphant armies of the new social leviathan.”

Posted by Alex Zeka on April 02, 2007, 10:18 AM | #

Desmond,

Ah, if only avery age and every nation had a Calvin! For all the accusations of maniac literal-mindedness which still attach to him because of predestination, he did manage to sidestep that pitfall.

Still, Calvin+Christianity+Swiss rugged commonsense (remember, these are the people who built one of the longest lasting states in a bunch of mountains surrounded by hostile kingdoms) might be adaptive. Christianity+Pugachev+ignorant serfs is rather less so. As judged by the liberationists, feminists, etc who also find support in the Gospel, Christianity+no leaders+modern Anglos isn’t either.

The question is, is Christian doctrine too potentially deadly when it falls into the wrong hands to outweight the benefit someone like Calvin might derive from it? I would argue that yes it is, certainly if it is translated into the vernacular and becomes accessible to all and sundry.

Posted by Alex Zeka on April 02, 2007, 10:21 AM | #

And an after-thought. I’ll grant you Calvin, but what of Henry VIII? Was the seizure of the monasteries, motivated by literalist zeal alongside sheer greed, not a precursor of the revolts of the ‘oppressed’ which have characterised the twentieth century?

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