(by John Derbyshire, April 2007)
And all this was, of course, brought to my mind by the story of these British servicemen captured by the Iranians. To return to my earlier question: What on earth has happened to the British?
What has happened is multiculturalism. The British no longer feel that contempt for other nations that sustained them for so many centuries. Or, if they feel it, they guiltily suppress that feeling, as being flagitiously “racist.” ...
If you read that passage through with attention, you will know how our future is going to unfold. That private of the Buffs declared “that he would not prostrate himself before any Chinaman alive.” His early 21st-century equivalent would prostrate himself without being asked. We have actually, I think, reached the point at which prostration is more or less reflexive. Nor would any modern person be so insensitive as to say “Chinaman,” a word nowadays considered to be unspeakably insulting—Ted Turner used it the other day, and had to issue a public apology to Persons of Chineseness everywhere.
And that, ladies and gents, is why our civilization is a goner ...
The tragedy—and I am using that word in its full and proper meaning—the tragedy is, that these westernized Muslims are banging their heads against that Orwell quote. They have signed on to the modern world and its multi-culti fantasies. There was plenty of courage and good sense on display at St. Petersburg, but not much of those energizing principles Orwell spoke about: “racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war.” It’s the jihadis who have those.
The great genius of the English-speaking peoples was in holding the two sets of ideas in their minds at the same time: both “racial pride, leader-worship (well, to be fair to the Anglosphere, we never really went for that one), religious belief, love of war,” and “the inviolable freedom of the individual conscience ... the equality of all human persons.” This was quite a trick, as the two sets of principles actually contradict each other. It was Orwell himself who gave us the word “doublethink.”
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