"...the destruction of the society which accepts it..."

I've written before about C.S. Lewis' brilliant book The Abolition of Man and his prescient observation therein that

The practical result of education in the spirit of The Green Book must be the destruction of the society which accepts it.

The evidence continues to pile up that he was absolutely correct:

Residents in Surrey and Kent villages have been ordered by police to remove wire mesh from their windows as burglars could be injured.

Home owners in the villages of Tandridge and Tatsfield in Surrey and in Westerham, Brasted and Sundridge in Kent have said they are furious that they are being branded 'criminals' for protecting their property.

Locals had reinforced their windows with wire mesh after a series of shed thefts but were told by community police officers that the wire was 'dangerous' and could lead to criminals claiming compensation if they 'hurt themselves'.
...
Crime reduction officer for Tandridge PC John Lee commented: 'We are constantly advising homeowners to protect their property and the contents of their shed or garage, however, a commonsense approach needs to be taken.

'To properly secure your sheds, Surrey Police strongly advises people to invest in items such as good-quality locks and bolts, and not to resort to homemade devices, as this could cause injury.'

A police source added: 'Homemade devices can cause injury and there have been cases where criminals have sued for injuries they have suffered while committing a criminal act.

'We are advising people to do whatever they can to protect their property, but wire mesh is not one of the suggestions we would make.'

20 or 30 years ago, that would have read as parody. Sadly, no longer...

"The worst kind of ally..."

Remember how President Obama was going to change America's image overseas? Well, he's accomplishing that...
Britain's AWOL Ally

Brown claimed just days ago that Obama would make an Afghanistan announcement in the “next few days”. Now, we have no idea when the announcement will come. But this isn't Gordon Brown’s fault – it’s Obama’s. The way Washington is treating Britain is deplorable and the subject of an excellent cover piece tomorrow by Con Coghlin (cover image above). As Con says in his piece:

'The Afghan issue has made clear the astonishing disregard with which Mr Obama treats Britain . As he decides how many more troops to send to Afghanistan – a decision which will fundamentally affect the scope of the mission – Britain is reduced to taking a guess. The White House does not even pretend to portray this as a joint decision. It is a diplomatic cold-shouldering that stands in contrast not just to the Blair-Bush era, but to the togetherness of the soldiers on the ground.'

Obama is simply not there. And in this respect he is, as we say on the cover, the worst kind of ally.

I don't think that this is actually the "change" he was selling, though...

You get what you "pay" for

There really is, unfortunately, no shortage of this kind of story. And it's tragic that we're barreling down the road toward this just as fast the Democrats can take us.

An Iraq war veteran died after receiving cancerous lungs from a heavy smoker in a transplant.

Matthew Millington, 31, a corporal in the Queen’s Royal Lancers, had the operation to save him from an incurable respiratory condition.

But the organs were from a donor who was believed to have smoked 30 to 50 roll-up cigarettes a day. A tumour was found after the transplant, and its growth was accelerated by the drugs that Mr Millington took to prevent his body rejecting the organs.

Because he was a cancer patient, he was not allowed to receive a further pair of lungs, under hospital rules. The soldier had radiotherapy but died at home in Stoke-on-Trent in February last year.

Hey, at least his health care was "free,"¹ right? He got what he paid for...






¹ - Obviously, "free" isn't "free." It's just a system in which the payers of health care costs are disconnected from the consumers of health care. Those that pay more don't get more, or use more, they just pay more. Those that use less don't pay less, they just use less. Under those circumstances, "demand" increases dramatically (as there is no "cost" associated with consumption) and "supply" plummets (as no one profits from providing it). What could possibly go wrong?

No death panels here, nothing to see, better just move along...

Here's an example of how the British NHS (National Health System) is saving money.

AN 80-year-old grandmother who doctors identified as terminally ill and left to starve to death has recovered after her outraged daughter intervened.

Hazel Fenton, from East Sussex, is alive nine months after medics ruled she had only days to live, withdrew her antibiotics and denied her artificial feeding. The former school matron had been placed on a controversial care plan intended to ease the last days of dying patients.

Doctors say Fenton is an example of patients who have been condemned to death on the Liverpool care pathway plan. They argue that while it is suitable for patients who do have only days to live, it is being used more widely in the NHS, denying treatment to elderly patients who are not dying.

Fenton’s daughter, Christine Ball, who had been looking after her mother before she was admitted to the Conquest hospital in Hastings, East Sussex, on January 11, says she had to fight hospital staff for weeks before her mother was taken off the plan and given artificial feeding.

No worry here, of course - obviously, Obamacare will find cost savings without ever performing that kind of rationing. And he won't raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000. And the oceans will recede.

And don't even think that there are going to be "death panels!"

The death of Britain continues apace...

The practical result of education in the spirit of The Green Book must be the destruction of the society which accepts it.

- C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

Evidence of his prescience continues to mount. The only questions which remain are, is it possible to arrest the decay? Or has British society already been destroyed? These may just be the death throes of a historical remnant...

"No death panels here, not no way, not no how..."

"Death panels? What a canard! What a vile slander! No one could possibly think that a government health plan would have death panels!" I'm sure that Obamacare will be just as non-death pannelly as the NHS in Great Britain...

Doctors left a premature baby to die because he was born two days too early, his devastated mother claimed yesterday.

Sarah Capewell begged them to save her tiny son, who was born just 21 weeks and five days into her pregnancy - almost four months early.

They ignored her pleas and allegedly told her they were following national guidelines that babies born before 22 weeks should not be given medical treatment.

Medics allegedly told her that they would have tried to save the baby if he had been born two days later, at 22 weeks.

In fact, the medical guidelines for Health Service hospitals state that babies should not be given intensive care if they are born at less than 23 weeks.

I wonder who set those guidelines. Some kind of committee or panel, I guess. But we sure wouldn't have them under government health care here, no way, no how. That's why that "death panel" accusation is such gross disinformation...

The Death of England and the Abolition of Man

It's been said that "when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." I'd like not to think that C.S. Lewis is a hammer that I need to go to for any discussion of public policy. But he was a brilliant writer and moral philosopher, and there is much of what he had to say that was relevant, sometimes in startling ways, to the world in which we live.

Over in the Corner, Jay Nordlinger and Mark Steyn are lamenting, again, the death of England. This time, the context is a fire in the town of Doncaster in which a family perished, plausibly because the police on the scene felt that their duty was to prevent neighbors from trying to help, rather than to help themselves. The inimitable Steyn went on to decry the way that

the emergency responders who are supposed to save you (or at least make an attempt) instead wind up killing you - because a rote prostration before rule enforcement trumps their basic humanity. In recent years, the British police have evolved from being merely useless (at least when it comes to traditional activities such as solving crime) into what John O'Sullivan calls "the paramilitary wing of The Guardian" - the blundering enforcers of the nanny state.

And finishes by noting that

New Hampshire's great motto, "Live free or die", is not just a bit of bloodcurdling stemwinding but a real choice that Britons, Canadians and, alas, Americans ought to ponder: You can live as free men, with all the rights and responsibilities and vicissitudes of fate that that entails. Or you can watch your society decay and die before your eyes - as England, once the crucible of freedom, dies a little with every day.

In 1942, Alec King and Martin Ketley published "The Control of Language: A Critical Approach to Reading and Writing." This was a text book, "intended for 'boys and girls in the upper forms of schools'." One of the people to whom publishers sent a copy was C.S. Lewis. Lewis took issue with the book. "I owe them, or their publisher, good language for sending me a complimentary copy. At the same time I shall have nothing good to say of them." He used the contents of the book as the jumping-off point for a series of three lectures, the Riddell Memorial Lectures, which he delivered at the University of Durham in February of 1943. The content was later published as The Abolition of Man.

In the lectures, Lewis addresses the ways in which the textbook, which he refers to as "The Green Book," teaches not so much literary analysis as moral philosophy. He gives the authors the benefit of the doubt on their intentions ("I doubt whether Gaius and Titius have really planned, under cover of teaching English, to propagate their philosophy") but not on the impact:

I am not concerned with what they desired but with the effect their book will certainly have on the schoolboy's mind. In the same way, they have not said that judgements of value are unimportant. Their words are that we 'appear to be saying something very important' when in reality we are 'only saying something about our own feelings'. No schoolboy will be able to resist the suggestion brought to bear upon him by that word only. I do not mean, of course, that he will make any conscious inference from what he reads to a general philosophical theory that all values are subjective and trivial. The very power of Gaius and Titius depends on the fact that they are dealing with a boy: a boy who thinks he is 'doing' his 'English prep' and has no notion that ethics, theology, and politics are all at stake. It is not a theory they put into his mind, but an assumption, which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all. The authors themselves, I suspect, hardly know what they are doing to the boy, and he cannot know what is being done to him.
...
They may be perfectly ready to admit that a good education should build some sentiments while destroying others. They may endeavour to do so. But it is impossible that they should succeed. Do what they will, it is the 'debunking' side of their work, and this side alone, which will really tell.

The lectures then move into moral philosophy, and a discussion of whether or not there are objective truths, objective values in the universe. The authors of the book, whether intentionally or not, are in the business of "debunking" traditional values. But "their scepticism about values is on the surface: it is for use on other people's values; about the values current in their own set they are not nearly sceptical enough." They are "found to hold, with complete uncritical dogmatism, the whole system of values which happened to be in vogue among moderately educated young men of the professional classes during the period between the two wars."¹ He sums up their values in the notes by saying that

It will be seen that comfort and security, as known to a suburban street in peace-time, are the ultimate values: those things which can alone produce or spiritualize comfort and security are mocked. Man lives by bread alone, and the ultimate source of bread is the baker's van: peace matters more than honour and can be preserved by jeering at colonels and reading newspapers.

With that as background, I can now get back to where I started. When Steyn and Nordlinger (and others) lament the "death of England," they aren't talking in geographical terms, or even (yet) in political or National terms. They are speaking in spiritual terms. They are speaking of a society that has reached a point where the attributes which made it a great society have withered or been bred away. Is this England the one upon which the sun never set? Is this the society that produced Shakespeare or Wellington or Shackleton? Which colonized the new world and Australia and India? The answer, obviously, is "no." A society may last for a while even if unwilling to respond to all assaults upon it; it cannot survive if unwilling to respond to any assaults upon it. And if "peace" is the highest moral value, one must accommodate rather than respond.

And now, to quote C.S. Lewis, from the first line of the second of the Riddell Lectures that make up The Abolition of Man, demonstrating prescience and foresight of the highest order:

The practical result of education in the spirit of The Green Book must be the destruction of the society which accepts it.

Is there any question that facts have proven Lewis correct?

And, unfortunately, I see the same things happening around me in the United States. And that train is rolling a lot faster than I'd dreamed possible two years ago...

¹ - If that sounds familiar, consider all of the people who look upon traditional marriage as a bigoted or outdated institution, but have no conception or understanding of any reason that one might oppose government recognition of homosexual marriages. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.

If they can't even get this right...

When I wrote about the gift of DVDs which passed from President Obama to Prime Minister Brown last month, I mentioned that there was "no word on whether the DVDs are region 2 and PAL so that the Prime Minister can at least watch them in Great Britain, or if they're region 1 and NTSC, so that they'll make nifty coasters..."

Well, now we know - coasters they are...

While not exactly a film buff, Gordon Brown was touched when Barack Obama gave him a set of 25 classic American movies – including Psycho, starring Anthony Perkins on his recent visit to Washington.

Alas, when the PM settled down to begin watching them the other night, he found there was a problem.

The films only worked in DVD players made in North America and the words "wrong region" came up on his screen.

With apologies to Rush Limbaugh, President Obama's teleprompter has had no comment on this story.

Further endearing ourselves overseas...

It is, of course, usual for heads of state to exchange gifts, particularly when meeting for the first time. So when British Prime Minister met with President Obama last week, it was standard protocol that there would be an exchange of gifts.

Mr Brown's gifts included an ornamental desk pen holder made from the oak timbers of Victorian anti-slaver HMS Gannet, once named HMS President.

Mr Obama was so delighted he has already put it in pride of place in the Oval Office on the Resolute desk which was carved from timbers of Gannet's sister ship, HMS Resolute.

Another treasure given to the U.S. President was the framed commission for HMS Resolute, a vessel that came to symbolise Anglo-US peace when it was saved from ice packs by Americans and given to Queen Victoria.

Finally, Mr Brown gave a first edition set of the seven-volume classic biography of Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert.

The White House issued a press briefing today that put on record how much Mr Obama had appreciated the gifts.

Well, that all sounds lovely and appropriate. The kind of gifts that one head of state gives to another, particularly as they reaffirm a "special relationship." And, of course, Mr. Obama reciprocated.

Gordon Brown has been given a collection of 25 classic American films on DVD as his official gift from Barack Obama. The Prime Minister flew home from his successful trip to Washington this morning with the 'special collector's box' of films hidden in his luggage.

No. 10 had tried to keep the present a secret...One reason for the secrecy might be that the gift seems markedly less generous and thoughtful than the presents taken to Washington by the Prime Minister.

Hmm... I wonder if that set of movies* also sells for $15 at the White House Gift shop, like the little models of Marine One given by Mrs. Obama to Mrs. Brown for the Brown sons.


The funniest line comes from a commenter at Ace of Spades' site, who said that "Gordon should take the pen back and give Mr. and Mrs. Racially Sensitive a Betamax copy of Song of the South..." (As always, there's a language warning if you go to Ace's...)


* - No word on whether the DVDs are region 2 and PAL so that the Prime Minister can at least watch them in Great Britain, or if they're region 1 and NTSC, so that they'll make nifty coasters...

Not all cultures are equal

Female Muslim medical students is apparently not an oxymoron. But properly scrubbed female Muslim medical student appears to be.

Women training in several hospitals in England have raised objections to removing their arm coverings in theatre and to rolling up their sleeves when washing their hands, because it is regarded as immodest in Islam. Universities and NHS trusts fear many more will refuse to co-operate with new Department of Health guidance, introduced this month, which stipulates that all doctors must be "bare below the elbow". The measure is deemed necessary to stop the spread of infections such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile, which have killed hundreds....Documents from Birmingham University reveal that some students would prefer to quit the course rather than expose their arms, and warn that it could leave trusts open to legal action.

So what are the Brits going to do about it?

But how do you REALLY feel?

I said last week that "the sun has officially set on the British Empire.". As this post in the Corner from Derb shows, my reaction was mild...

My Mum...in one of the last conversations I had with her, said: "I know I'm dying, but I don't mind. At least I knew England when she was England."

I discounted that at the time. Old people always grumble about the state of the world. Now I understand it, though. I even feel a bit the same way myself. I caught the tail-end of that old England—that bumptious, arrogant, self-confident old England, the England of complicated games, snobbery, irony, repression, and stoicism, the England of suet puddings, drafty houses, coal smoke and bad teeth, the England of throat-catching poetry and gardens and tweeds, the England that civilized the whole world and gave an example of adult behavior—the English Gentleman—that was admired from Peking (I can testify) to Peru.

It's all gone now, "dead as mutton," as English people used to say. Now there is nothing there but a flock of whimpering Eloi, giggling over their gadgets, whining for their handouts, crying for their Mummies, playing at soldiering for reasons they can no longer understand, from lingering habit. Lower the corpse down slowly, shovel in the earth. England is dead.

The sun has officially set on the British Empire...

If you weren't weeping for the Anglosphere yet, try this...

The only wry smile to be derived from the humiliating circumstances in which our 15 sailors and Royal Marines were captured by just six Iranians came from the comment by Patricia Hewitt. "It was deplorable," pronounced our tight-lipped Health Secretary, "that the woman hostage should be shown smoking. This sends completely the wrong message to our young people."

A people who are governed by such as these are not a free people, and will not retain the illusion of freedom for much longer.

The culture war is over. We lost...

Is there any doubt that Great Britain is a post-Christian nation? I don't think so...

A supermarket chain got itself into a huge muddle over the meaning of Easter yesterday in its attempt to sell more chocolate eggs.

“Brits are set to spend a massive £520 million on Easter eggs this year — but many young people don’t even know what Easter’s all about,” said the press release from Somerfield after a survey.

It then went on to claim that the tradition of giving Easter eggs was to celebrate the “birth” of Christ.