The end of England’s children
Theodore Dalrymple notes the tragic end of childhood in England, and the end of judgment that has enabled it:
A system of perverse incentives in a culture of undiscriminating materialism, where the main freedom is freedom from legal, financial, ethical, or social consequences, makes childhood in Britain a torment both for many of those who live it and those who observe it. Yet the British government will do anything but address the problem, or that part of the problem that is its duty to address: the state-encouraged breakdown of the family. If one were a Marxist, one might see in this refusal the self-interest of the state-employee class: social problems, after all, are their raison d’être.
Dalrymple is the great secular Jeremiah of England; no one else has so clearly named the evils that infest it. Not only does he see the symptoms, but the doctor diagnoses the disease: statism, Marxism, a glorification of loutishness, and a hostility to the faith and traditions which once made England great.
I watch her decline the way one would watch a parent with Alzheimer’s: here is a great country (where I once lived) that gave us John Locke, Edmund Burke, George Washington, that gave us our hymns, our literature, our ideas of freedom, our very language, and she is slipping into a useless dotage, unable to stir herself though enemies threaten.
A terror cell caught with details of bomb-making and suicide vests may have been plotting to attack the Queen and members of the Royal family, it can be disclosed.
The cell, which included Britain’s youngest ever terrorist, arrested on his way home from his GCSE chemistry exam, was found with information about the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh along with the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, the Earl of Wessex and the Princess Royal.
There was another fellow long ago who wrote eloquently of the plight of children in England. Sad to say many of the social reforms that culminated in Dalrymple’s moral desert started in reaction to the poetry of William Blake:
Youth of delight! come hither
And see the opening morn,
Image of Truth new-born.
Doubt is fled, and clouds of reason,
Dark disputes and artful teazing.
Folly is an endless maze;
Tangled roots perplex her ways;
How many have fallen there!
They stumble all night over bones of the dead;
And feel–they know not what but care;
And wish to lead others, when they should be led.
______________
{Post by See-Dubya, written on my own time, on my own computer.}
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Pay cut?
He’s got “their raison d’être” right…
Nope. just being careful these days.
Read this earlier over at Hot Air. It was absolutely superb. Most important is that America take note because it’s happening here too.
Neglect and over-indulgence are not so very far apart. Over-indulgence is how many parents assuage their own guilt for neglecting their kids. And then there are those who neglect without guilt.
This reminds me yet again of Allan Bloom:
“Students these days are, in general, nice. I choose the word carefully. They are not particularly moral or noble. Neither war nor tyranny nor want has hardened them or made demands on them. The wounds and rivalries caused by class distinction have disappeared along with any strong sense of class (as it once existed in universities in America and as it still does poisonously, in England). Students are free of most constraints, and their families make sacrifices for them without asking much in the way of obedience or respect. Religion and national origin have almost no noticeable effect on their social life or their career prospects. Although few really believe in ‘the system,’ they do not have a burning sentiment that injustice is being done to them. The drugs and sex once thought to be forbidden are available in quantities required for sensible use… Students these days are pleasant, friendly and, if not great-souled, at least not particularly mean-spirited. Their primary preoccupation is themselves, understood in the narrowest sense.”
Allan Bloom, “The Closing of the American Mind,” 1987, pg. 82-83
Being careful of what see-dub, I don’t understand. Did I miss a meeting?
They are few and far between those parents I see actually parent.
That’s what I was going to ask.
Children anywhere and everywhere are losing their childhoods. It’s really quite sad.
Closing of the American Mind is an outstanding book. I had the good fortune to read it just before I left for college. Bloom, like Dalrymple, is a very perceptive atheist–I’ve even heard him called a nihilist–but he saw what’s going wrong with the world that has abandoned the ability to make judgments.
Articles like this make me want to weep. It wasn’t too long ago that I dreamed of going to England and perhaps living there. But the England I dreamed of going to no longer exists.
Tragic.
Does it matter? in less than 15 years London itself will no longer be in the hands of the British, and soon, the entire nation of Great Britain will be just another Islamic State, one more notch in the belt of those that willfully destroy freedom and everything that is good and just in the world…and they are letting it happen all by themselves…thanks to Political Correctness and Multi-Culturalism.
How long before the same will be said about us?
Some EU countries have actually paid for “protection” from terrorists: I wonder if Britain has done the same:
My post to comment section – Gates of Vienna:
President Madison-sent the fleet to finish the job that Jefferson had started against the Barbary pirates.
Madison:
“It is a settled policy of America that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute.
The United States, while they wish for war with no nation, will buy peace with none.”
If officials from my US gvt. have acted otherwise—I want it to be revealed.
Kipling:
“We never pay any on Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost.
For the end of the game is
oppression and shame,
And the nation that pays it
is lost!”
PS: see-dubya- My question is the same as swmbo’s # 5……..Everything OK ????
CW,
Thank you for this post.
Sincerely – I wish I saw more posts like this on this blog.
(Help Stop Comment Abuse – 3 or less per post is sane)
I pray for the British people.
Damn. In many ways the same things are happening here in America as young people close themselves up from the wider world-ironically in the name of “social networking”. Hopefully all Americans will be able to muster to courage and wisom to realize that “self-esteem” and “friendly co-teaching experts” deny children the disipline they need
OK, sooo… lemmie see here, hmmmm.
Welfare breeds uselessness, yeah got that.
Spoiling kids ruins them. Understood.
Unchecked immigration breeds terroists. OK, got that too.
Government can’t fix it cause they can’t admit to it. Eerrrr, yes.
Wow, 4 great turths in 1 post! Very efficent, but what was the point again???
When Henry the VIII allowed sexual sin to rule his heart instead of God, he sealed his country’s fate. The Church of England could have been used for good…but instead of that he used it as a tool to get what he wanted: a woman.
What can we expect of a country that sends its children off to boarding school at age 5 because children are seen as an inconvenience?
They have these incredible cathedrals built for the worship of a holy God that remain empty because they are atheistic.
God is watching….
I was in the UK for 3.5 weeks 11 years ago, right before Tony Blair was elected.
One day I was in Bath, looking out onto the ancient Roman spa, and a child darted in front of me as I approached to look more closely.
Her English mother immediately called on her, and scolded her for running in front of me so “rudely and thoughtlessly”.
I was impressed.
Western culture’s degradation coincides with its abandonment of its Judeo Christian morals.
By John Adams:
There are two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.
It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.
Most of the civilized world owes a tremendous debt to Great Britain, including the United States. If it were not for the traditions developed and discovered there over the centuries we colonists would not have known what rights we had that were tread upon. Seeing this Islamic infiltration of England as well as a resounding lack of urgency or even self preservation on the part of the Establishment is disheartening.
I wonder how many generations we have left before the torch of Western Civilization actually does go out.
The children are not our future if WE do not give them the keys to the past. If we don’t do that there is no real future for all that we have loved.
Hmm, it sounds like there is truth still in this: “A mightier power and stronger Man from his throne has hurled, For the hand that rocks the cradle Is the hand that rules the world.” ~W. R. Wallace, 1865
Rather than watching “Supernanny,” whose techniques do little more than manipulate children into doing right without any explanation as to the “why” or considerations of the heart, or reading Cosmo or some other cheap newsstand magazine, I highly recommend “Shepherding a Child’s Heart” by Tedd Tripp. Rather than mindlessly trying to control the actions of children through threat of punishment or reward, whose power will inexorably wear off, Tripp advocates trying to mold the child’s heart. As his website states, “[His books] focus on heart issues rather than performance issues. We all know that it is possible to master some Christian performance skills without experiencing internal change. We long for authentic change that works from the inside out.” Just food for thought for the group.
We do, indeed, live in an increasingly selfish and self-centered world. As a high school teacher, I see so many kids who think the rules do not apply to them. Parents who instill this lack of values into their children are infantilizing them forever. Even in Texas, the kids are given so much self-esteem without ever having to earn any.
It truly is getting very difficult to teach the upcoming generation.
There was a time when I would say to myself how wonderful it would be to live in England.
Not anymore. I read the Daily Mail every day and have to shake my head all the time and wonder whatever happened to that great country.
Liberal politics and appeasement is what ruined it.
When whole sections of society abandon the principles that got them where they are today it leaves them with one thing “me, me, me”. And when everyone is their own personal dictator who does what he/she wants when he/she wants it leads to anarchy and the fall of the society in which it is occurring. A stronger section of society that works as a group will certainly replace the materialist who is only interested in himself/herself.
The once bright and glorious England appears on the verge of moral and societal bankruptcy. And they have no one to blame but themselves. And yet the liberals in this country would have us believe that jolly old England and the rest of Europe has it all figured out with their ultra-liberal way of life. We’ll see how well it pans out for them in the next 30 years or so as their birthrates keep plummeting for non-immigrants and their own hate crimes legislation is used against them as they become slaves to a new group of people stronger than they are.
What next, Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”?
“This nonjudgmentalism surely helps explain why British youth are among the Western world’s leaders in such indicators of social pathology as teenage pregnancy, violence, criminality, underage drinking, and consumption of illicit drugs. Britain has the third-highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the industrialized world”
CAN WE EXPECT THIS IN THE MSM????????????????????
Children, not only need guidelines, they want them.
And what good are they? Soon enough, they will all be torn down and replaced by enormous mosques, like the one they are attempting to build next to Buckingham Palace, where the Queen herself will be able to look out her window every morning and see the results of what her Parliament and those that were entrusted with the safety and protection of Mother England have done to it.
It appears their own Anthems have little to no meaning anymore.
“Rule Brittania, Brittania rule the waves,
Brittons never never never shall be slaves.”
Seems nothing more than an empty slogan now, for they are most definately becoming slave to Islam and Liberalism.
Empty slogan indeed.
my brother-in-law is british. he and my sister were living in manchester last year and during a backyard party at his parent’s house a group of teenagers wandered through the park on which their house borders (the house backs up to the park). the group stood at the fence and started taunting everyone at the party, throwing all kinds of stuff into the backyard, swearing at them, and taunting them for no reason whatsoever. my brother-in-law hopped the fence and calmly asked them to please stop harassing them and throwing things into the backyard while his father went into the house to call the police. as my sister describes it, when she turned around she saw her husband on the ground, being kicked, punched, spit on and stomped on by the entire group of teens. when they heard the sirens they ran and he had to be rushed to the ER. he sustained a broken nose, ribs, and concussion. apparently this was just one of many incidents during that period where teenagers in the UK were roaming public places looking to hurt people. when he was in the hospital he found out that an older man down the hall was on life support because of something similar.
when i asked my sister why in the world this happened because it seemed so completely senseless – i honestly could not wrap my head around it – she replied, “this is what happens to kids when their parents have lived on the dole their whole lives and grow up to aspire to be nothing, do nothing, and are taught no code of conduct or morals whatsoever.”
You’re quite right.
A friend of my daughter’s told her the other day that she had one question she wanted to ask her mother. She wanted to ask her, “Why did you let me move out at 14?”
This is a tragic seen. Not only is she wasting away Alzheimer’s, but she is in complete denial of it as she lounges on her overstuffed feather bed of materialism between her soft pillows of freedoms purchased with the blood of generations of her warrior children that have gone before her, all the while thinking to herself, “I am rich and have need of nothing, least of all anyone to preach to me”.
And we, here in the U.S. are her offspring, having surpassed her in all things, yet following in her footsteps.
Legislating God out of our country daily in favor of the reprobate, the perverse, and the profane.
Doesn’t sound much different than the gang members and other such thugs who are the result of generations of Welfare sponges here in this country.
My nephew is from London, and I sponsored him to move here simply because he could no longer stand the way things were going there. He had married my niece and had moved them there, but it was bad enough that he was the one who had suggested moving back here.
When I asked him recently where the good places to live in England were, he gave me a map of the entire country wwith a vast majority of it “X’d” out, stating that the crime and such were just too bad in those areas for normal people to live anymore.
All one has to do is look at the Liberal enclaves in this country, the places where Welfar is greatest, where the entitlements are handed out like Halloween candy, where the Liberal method is king, and see that along with those things come the highest amounts of crime, especially violent and gang related crime.
Liberalism is a failed social experiment, and for the Democrats and Liberals to keep pushing Socialism down everyone’s throats, a system that has been time and time again proven to be one of the most violent forms of government, and has failed everywhere it has been attempted, just shows how absolutely stupid they are, and have no ability to learn from the past.
Obama is a true believer in this.
It will not be long before UK streets will be filled with drunken idiots and Muslim murderers.
Obama does not realize that the European policies are abject failures. Sort of like Bill Clinton raving about the European economic model, when these silly countries cannot defend themselves against a halfwit army using 30 year old weaponry because the yokels of America have paid for Europe’s defense for 50 years. And should stop.
Although not as groundbreaking (and often comes off as an extended — if justified — screed against pop culture), “The Death of the Grown-Up” by Diana West is also highly recommended.
Great post, see-dub. But…
WTF? Is there some reference I’m missing?
I, too, have been following Britain news. That country has changed a lot since I remember living in County Kent and going to school there. PC is so rampant there, that I would be afraid to say anything more than, “Where is…?”, “no”, or “yes”, on visiting there.
Melanie Phillips, author of Londonistan and columnist for The Spectator is another excellent source on the statism, multiculturalism and other factors causing the tragic decline of the once Great Britain.
I noticed this line in the article.
So, do you think the politicians over here will see this and think better than trying to tax “the rich” out of existance and give all the money to “the poor”? I’m not holding my breath.
I thought this analysis was particularly insightful:
Let me speculate briefly on the implications of these startling facts. They mean that children never learn, from a sense of social obligation, to eat when not hungry, or not to eat when they are. Appetite is all they need consult in deciding whether to eat—a purely egotistical outlook. Hence anything that interferes with the satisfaction of appetite will seem oppressive. They do not learn such elementary social practices as sharing or letting others go first. Since mealtimes are usually when families get to converse, the children do not learn the art of conversation, either; listening to what others say becomes a challenge. There is a time and place for everything: if I feel like it, the time is now, and the place is here.
redpeach, it sounds like folks are living out the world of the clockwork orange.
The little punks can be so brazen when they know you can’t possess a firearm to defend yourself, your family or your guests with.
Back in 1990’s, when Michelle was still living in Seattle area, Senator Maria Cantwell was campaigning door-to-door in my suburban neighborhood. I was outside doing yard work and she stopped and chatted with me for a few minutes. She asked me what my single greatest concern was and what message, if any, would I want her to take back to congress. I told her that congress MUST stop doing things to destroy the Amercan family unit. She looked at me like I was some kind of space-alien. That was sixteen years ago.
My collie says:
Most do not. They cling to the belief that any problem can be solved by throwing enough money at it.
Last Saturday my dh went to a men’s prayer breakfast. The speaker told a story about being in Britain recently and asking the hotel concierge where they could attend Sunday morning services. The concierge could not find a church with an actual Sunday morning service. He finally located one church that told him they could come to a wedding scheduled for Sunday morning.
England is just one small step ahead of us in it’s degradation of its society and its youth. I like the last line of Blake’s poem which says : ” And wish to lead others, when they should be led“. I am not very good at interpreting poetry, but I think this poem is an accurate description of the youth and staff, at today’s universities.
Liberals often are opposed to anything that judges or restrains people’s behavior. Of course they don’t see the irony, that good judgment, self restraint and discipline, offers us the most freedom, prosperity and peace. I have seen the most bizarre and negative behavior condoned by liberals. Celebrating the gangster culture and hip-hop music is a good example. Anything unusual and weird is celebrated and considered hip and cool, in Hollywood and on most of today’s college campuses, in the name of art, self-expression and diversity. At the same time, many of the more extreme liberals mock Christianity, the traditional family and even our country.
BWWWA-HAhaahaahaaahahahaaaaaaa hahaa snicker snucker snort!!!!!!! GOD that was funny. I think I pulled something.
What a sad, depressing commentary this is. I used to live in the UK back in the late 80’s, early 90’s and I have wonderful memories of my stay there. We lived in West Wales where the people were friendly and the life was pleasant. My numerous visits to London were always enjoyable, no riots, bombs, or thugs. I never felt threatened and there were no places that I was afraid to visit. I used to get on a bus and just ride it around with absolutely no idea where I was going. I remember learning of “the dole” shortly after arriving. At first I could not believe it. People being paid to sit on their butts, watch tv and drink. Boy was I naive. There was a section of welfare housing near me where the people “on the dole” lived. Sometimes when I walked to town I would cut through it. It was always the same. Trash bins were overflowing with beer and cider bottles, broken down cars in the streets, trash everywhere. People living from check to check with no ambition, no motivation, no pride. Fortunately, at that time, this kind of behavior was the exception, not the rule. I shudder to think what it must be like now.
“Consider one British parent, Fiona MacKeown, who in November 2007 went on a six-month vacation to Goa, India, with her boyfriend and eight of her nine children by five different fathers, none of whom ever contributed financially for long to the children’s upkeep. (The child left behind—her eldest, at 19—was a drug addict.) She received $50,000 in welfare benefits a year,”
$50k PER YEAR on welfare! That’s a pretty good job over on this side of the Atlantic. I know lots of mid-level managers that would like to make that kind of dough. Plus, this hussy has the gall to “take a six month vacation” and out of the country at that! Just what the HE[[ was she supposed to be on vacation FROM? Sitting on her butt, not raising her children and eyes glued to that big plasma screen, or maybe wondering how to hook the next babydaddy?
Boy, I thought the American taxpayer was getting screwed. I have to say that you folks over in Britain are way beyond us when it comes to coddling the lazy, the cheaters, sponges and free-loaders. I fear though, that we aren’t far behind.
OMG!! You are bringing me close to tears with this article about the decline of Great Britian. Maybe they need to start blitzing their media with those old black and whites of that earlier generation that fought the Nazis day and night against huge odds and never gave up. I suppose the welfare state is to blame to some degree, but there used to be a lack of decent jobs and opportunities also. Is it still like that? No excuse though–past generations were just as poor and they kept their self respect. Next questions: Can it happen here? Has it started to happen here?
Read the book Liberal Fascism, it’s been happening here for a long time and is getting worse.
Slouching Towards Gomorrah by Judge Bork is another excellent read on the decline of our culture.
This is why the right to bear arms is paramount in a civilized society. Otherwise, it’s Clockwork Orange.
There are many liberals out there who seem to think that there are no consequences to thoughtless and selfish actions. Women (and men) can whore themselves around, bring innocent children into this world, and the chilren will be taught to self-perpetuate the never-ending dependence.
I saw this as a teacher with minority students with no parents around back-talking me and calling me names such as “b**tch.” Then there are the children of divorce who are getting conflicting messages from their parents. I was in the middle of a feud between a student’s parents in which the mother reinforced the boy’s self-destructive behavior and the father was doing all he could just to get his son through adolescence. The father would always come to any scheduled parent-teacher conferences and would ask for regular updates on his son’s behavior. I worked in a school where parents (if they cared that much) could access their children’s grades online. The mother? She didn’t seem overly concerned by anything that happened in her son’s life.
When society tolerates and even reinforces laziness, complacency, and degradation… nothing good results from it. Is this what liberals want? All of us to be dependent on the government and our self-will restrained?
The only way American citizens have a chance to take our country back is to keep the heat on our tone deaf elected officials. Enforce our immigration laws, and use E-Verify for employment, entitlements, housing, school registration, etc. When Obama or McCain propose another Comprehensive Immigration Reform Amnesty, we again need to shut down the switchboards in Washington, and get a Million Man march of citizens on the capital. You can let your representatives know how you feel at NumbersUSA.
We were in England and France this summer with my daughter’s French class.
When visiting Salisbury, we were all shocked to see that the great cathedral was a community center, not an active church, and they were having a flower show inside.
We had already seen St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey so the contrast was quite glaring.
Exactly that.
Liberals want one thing. POWER. They want to re-make our society into one very much like Britain’s so that they can remain in power for life. They don’t care about the next generation, they don’t care about anything but getting into and staying in power.
The best way to obtain power? A complacent and cowed populace more interested in vapid dissolution than in their own well-being.
The best way to get to that point is to first pollute the educational establishment, then the political establishment, and then wreck the economy and get as many people “on the dole” as possible.
At that point you have a population completely dependent on you for everything, who will go along with anything just to keep the gravy train moving.
This is one reason why disaffected Republicans and Conservatives must not sit out their votes in vengeance this November. There are hardcore LEGIONS in this country who more than just don’t care if this occurs here. My own family, brothers, sister, mother and most of my community of Jamaica NY (larger than most major U.S. cities) literally _don’t care_ about the consequences of the United States going Socialist. Forget political philosophy and life ethics angles here; the Obama era will began a force feeding of socialism that will gore your wages and crimp your freedoms — and there will be NO going back when these social and entitlement programs are in place. NO post-Obama Repub/Conservative admin can turn back the clock. We will be stuck and wallets reamed to the gills, and when that happens don’t scratch your head and ask why; just look back at NOW and know that for stuffing an ounce of dissatisfaction we could’ve at least this turn stalled a ton of pain.
James Greenidge
Jamaica NY
All you have to do is look at the New World and contrast the USA and Canada with Latin America to see how fortunate we were to have Great Britain as our Mother.
We benefited greatly from her political and economic advances. The poor Latin American nations have never been able to put into the place the political, social and economic institutions to ensure successful societies despite their abundant resources and huge influx of immigrants from Europe and Asia.
I am not surprised. This is what secular humanism, and the New World Order has in store for everyone.
Do what ever feels good, Christianty as hate speech, murder your children, focus on sex, think of nothing but money, allow false religions to change the culture, etc…
The same thing happened right before Noah’s flood. We have earned it.