What is this "culture war" supposed to be about? Beyond "defending", against nobody, statues of people of whom they had never previously heard, what does the ostensibly conservative side want? What does it stand for?
That side's media hangers on, leaving aside whether or not they believe a word of it in private, were no free speech warriors when they were ones doing the cancelling, nor were they opposed to the politicisation of institutions when theirs were the politics.
Not that those institutions ever were apolitical. Nothing ever really is, and contrary to what the products of England's centres of elite education assume to be self-evident, "Tory" does not equal "neutral".
But what of those on the streets, strikingly few in number though they are? Are they opposed to assisted suicide, to abortion, to same-sex marriage, to divorce, to cohabitation, to online gambling, to Internet pornography, to cannabis, or to Sunday as an ordinary shopping day?
In every one of those cases, almost certainly not. Only substituting Friday for Sunday, if anything they see themselves as defending those things against their understanding, such as it is, of Islam. They did not oppose any previous erosion of civil liberties in the name of "the war on terrorism". They were all for locking people up for 90 days without charge, and they will be so until the day that it happens to them.
The question is not what I think of any of these things. It is what they do. On what basis, exactly, are they waging their "culture war" against what are far more likely to be the regular churchgoers if not in, then at least around, Black Lives Matter?
In inclined to agree with Simon Heffer and Peter Hitchens that this attempt at the “final abolition of Britain” is the culmination of a 50-year leftwing assault on our institutions that went far beyond mere monuments. The Far Left/BLM isn’t just calling for the removal of 600 monuments to everyone who made this country what it is, (from Francis Drake to Sir Robert Peel) this is also the excuse for a broad front attack on everything from our already-emasculated police, to the teaching of the canon in Universities (which they wish to change under the banner of “decolonisation”).
ReplyDeleteAs Peter Hitchens notes, while the British Empire is long gone, it’s odd these “decolonisers” don’t call for the end of the one remaining Empire currently raping Africa-that of Communist China. Human slavery, of course, is still practiced in China’s network of prison labour camps and slavery was last practised on an industrial scale by another communist regime-the Soviet gulags.
Funny the Leftwing “anti slavery” movement doesn’t mention that.
Their culture war is really about the final abolition of Britain predicted by Peter Hitchens 30 years ago in the title of a certain book.
Meaning that you cannot answer the question. You just have to blather on to disguise the fact that, merely in order to give yourselves something to do, you have gone to war on the basis of no dispute.
DeleteWhere’s the culture war coming from? It’s all
ReplyDeletefrom one side. This one https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/education/2019/mar/20/academics-its-time-to-get-behind-decolonising-the-curriculum
And again. There is nothing that you would actually change. You are just having a good whinge.
DeleteI don't support any of the changes to the curriculum or canon proposed in that article, (nor the defunding of the police, dismantling of capitalism or of statues proposed by BLM). It is they who want change, not us.
ReplyDeleteIt is they who want change, not us.
DeleteQuite.
The changes conservative patriots seek are mostly restorative not revolutionary. Restoring grammar schools, proper police and prisons, ending human rights and the pernicious assault on freedom of expression etc. In good news, the Tories are scrapping the 2-metre rule and the gender self identification stuff (alongside tougher sentences for desecration of monuments).
ReplyDeleteFinally, we’re reopening after a lockdown and an assault on economic and personal freedom that should never have happened, least of all under a Conservative Government.
None of those demonstrators, such as they are, cares tuppence about your hobbyhorses. Grammar schools? Pull the other one. Nor is it clear for whom they would vote if they did.
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