The person, writes Dalrymple,
who is supposed to be viscerally and hereditarily attached to his freedom in a way that distinguishes him from his continental opposite number, thanks to the common-law tradition, conceives of it mostly as the freedom to
- be drunk in public
- take whatever drugs he likes
- be sexually promiscuous
Meanwhile the more intellectual portion of the population
increasingly sees freedom as the right to suppress the opinions of those of whom they strongly disapprove.
And the greatest freedom, the one most ardently desired, is the freedom
to be protected from the consequences of one’s improvidence and foolishness.
By DalrympleFans
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Also posted in British, the, drug-taking, drunkenness (public), foolishness, free-born Englishmen, freedom, improvidence, opinions (suppression of), political incorrectness, sexual promiscuity
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Why is it, asks Dalrymple, that England has had such high levels of youth unemployment for so many years while simultaneously importing very large numbers of young people from abroad to perform unskilled work? It is, he says,
an awkward question to ask because it can so easily inflame insensate xenophobia, but it is nevertheless an important one that I have never seen asked in the public prints. By not asking it, we avoid the corollary questions of what social and economic policies have led to this anomaly.
These questions
in turn might undermine our confidence in the presumptions of our social and economic policies of the last three-quarters of a century.
Better, then,
not to notice the anomaly, let alone try to think about how it has arisen, and to pretend, rather, that more of the same, perhaps slightly better-refined or targeted (more training for youth workers in Toxteth, for example), will solve our problems.
The ideal of social justice, writes Dalrymple, is
corrosive.
It has been
etched on to the psyche of the British. It has become the good that is the sine qua non of all other goods.
If society is unjust,
anything goes. The assumption of personal responsibility can be postponed until social justice (always defined by its absence, for defining it positively is rather difficult) has been attained.
Two things about the English becomes all too evident, says Dalrymple, within a short time of acquainting oneself with them:
- their crushed and defeated demeanour
- the extreme ugliness of their lives
It is not just British cuisine which, writes Dalrymple (risking a statement of the obvious), is
the least appetising in the civilised world.
It is more than that. Britishers, he notes, are
spiritually, culturally and emotionally the most impoverished people in the world, compared with whom the slum dwellers of Mexico City or the tribesmen of the Congo (both of whom I have observed at first hand) lead fulfilling lives.
