Umm, yes, OK, this is personal opinion and all that but the man\’s a fascist.
Nothing there that couldn\’t come from a Mosely or Griffin speech.
I too think there\’s something different and wonderful about Britain…..but it\’s because of the people who inhabit it, the individuals that make it up, not because of some national will.
So you think anyone who is agaiunst mass immigration is a fascist.
And :-
Fascists are always wrong.
That there is no racial conflict in africa and asia.
So the UK should import great numbers from there.
Without the stated and willing consent of the native people of the UK.
So the full strength of the police and education system is to be used to suppress disent.
As it is in the UK.
David Selbourne has bigger problems. See if you can find a copy of his “translation”, City of Light. Libel laws prohibit further comment.
Britain was great when it was trading, innovating and steadily emancipating, in particular with a healthy meritocracy.
The State and SuperState stifles the country.
Plurality and dismantling of Corporatism and unnatural monopolies liberates the country.
His was a tar pit of an article.
I did a pretty comprehensive demolition job in the comments and on my blog.
http://brackenworld.blogspot.com/2010/07/who-is-david-selbourne.html
“David Selbourne is a political philosopher and theorist” is Spectator-speak for “doesn’t have a job and hasn’t written a book”, right?
I thought Jackart’s comment was excellent.
It was odd that in an article on decline and fall he couldn’t identify when it was that everything was so much better in Britain. The only date he mentioned was 1927. But he must have something more recent in mind, just can’t bring himself to specify – maybe he knows that however many things have deteriorated, others have gotten so much better, and then it becomes a matter of taste and priorities, rather than anything existential.
And the self-importance! “Those who have the talent and stamina carefully to record, and to analyse, the travails of this country in philosophical spirit, as a warning to future generations of how the work of ages can be so swiftly undone, might well stay. ” Please!
In which country do you live again, Tim?
I can’t see a great deal of Fascism in that. Old school Tory paternalism, but to claim it as akin to Fascism is completely absurd
Personally, I don’t think Shelbourne went far enough. This country really started going downhill when we stopped burning papists.
Ah, Tim, I see you’re of the school of thought that a country is the sum of its people; ergo, the more people we let in to the country, the better it becomes. To deny this obvious fact is clearly an indication of being a racist xenophobe.
Hmm, put like that, I can almost see the logic myself.
ambrose murphy – “It was odd that in an article on decline and fall he couldn’t identify when it was that everything was so much better in Britain. The only date he mentioned was 1927. ”
It is hard to identify the precise moment at which everything was best in any situation. Yet there certainly were times when things were better and times when they were worse. Britain ceased to make complex material goods and may not have had any cities at all under the early Saxons for instance. Britain had become worse by most measures. May be he wanted maximum agreement and did not want to set off an argument among those who think the 1940s were best and those that think the 1960s were?
“maybe he knows that however many things have deteriorated, others have gotten so much better, and then it becomes a matter of taste and priorities, rather than anything existential.”
Except there is a line where matters of taste and priorities become existential. You cannot plunge from the Empire State and proclaim that falling is as good as standing on solid earth because you have just safely passed the 36th floor. Given Britain will not exist much longer as British in any meaningful sense, it seems to me to be existential. You may disagree. But there is no point telling someone bleeding to death to buck up and stop worrying because they have survived fine so far.
“And the self-importance!”
That I agree with. The man is worse than a fool