It is notable, isn't it, that this pity only seems to extend to people from "far off lands of which we know nothing". When dealing with British people facing charges of writing something hurtful on Facebook, pity goes out of the window.
Our political class seem to think of Britain as a wealthy and powerful country. They look at GDP instead of GDP per head and see it rising due to increasing population. And they look at GDP measured in a supremely ridiculous way that counts money borrowed and spent as "national income".
They also assume that British prosperity has been built on oppression of other countries, with no contribution from hard work and ingenuity of the British themselves.
Basically, our ruling class increasingly despise us. That is a very dangerous situation for the country to be in.
I also think they genuinely don't grasp what a parlous state the country is in. They don't really understand economics, and they don't spend much time in the more down-at-heel parts of our depressed towns. There are still lots of very nice and plush parts of the country. If you live in the rural south east it can be hard to conceptualise how crap it is in, say, Flintshire or Teesside.
In the first place, most PPE students skim or skip the Economics part. Too hard! Secondly, Economics as taught everywhere in the "West" is grossly distorted and truncated. Michael Hudson has pointed out, for instance, the systematic refusal even to mention debt and rent-seeking, which has already sucked out so much money from the economy that it is reasonable to speak of debt deflation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_deflation
Taking your last point. What if there are members of our family who are actually planning to disinherit the rest, are willfully planning and aiding the collapse of the house so they can raze it to the ground and build a shiny new one which they plan to sell to a housing association for loads of dosh?
Seems to me this is what is happening, and they use emotions such as described by David to influence this process.
Yes. Unfortunately the UK, like many other countries, is run by people who have neither the national interest nor the interests of the citizens at heart.
Perhaps, one of these days, we might try democracy. But that would probably require a violent revolution.
An astute point. Here is an old Reason magazine article about how teaching Liberals about White Privilege made them less sympathetic towards poorer Whites, but no more sympathetic towards poorer Blacks.
Good essay. Love the way your piece doesn't come across as angry or lacking sympathy towards migrants. It's a bit like a variant of one of those moral philosophical questions about whether one should chose saving the life of a brother or sister over that of a stranger's child, isn't it? Many would recognise the utilitarian imperative, but who would feel at all comfortable about being around someone so cold they would save the life of a stranger's child over a family member?
The educated Left skirts this question by failing to acknowledge the substantial harms they've been inflicting on their fellow citizens.
I agree with this description, but I’d add one more explanatory factor. The people making the decisions are not generally the ones suffering the costs. It’s not their spacious, comfy houses getting over-run, it is someone ‘out there’ who cannot access any housing or health care. Mrs Thatcher coined it, ‘You eventually run out of o t h e r p e o p l e’s money’.
An unwillingness to make hard decisions is having an adverse effect on many aspects of life, David. One only has to consider the deaths of minors who have been repeatedly returned to appallingly dysfunctional domestic circumstances.
It seems to me that progressive lawyers have done rather well out of globalisation. There will never be a shortage of work for them while immigration, international property and libel cases are held in London. And the idea that a heroin user can't be returned to Afghanistan is rather ironic.
Nietzsche's recurring accusation: an excess of pity.
"Suppose we measure pity by the value of the reactions it usually produces; then its perilous nature appears in an even brighter light... It preserves what is ripe for destruction; it defends those who have been disinherited and condemned by life; and by the abundance of the failures of all kinds which it keeps alive, it gives life itself a gloomy and questionable aspect."
I was taught to avoid using the word 'nice' because it appealed to the emotions without any justification.
So my brain zoomed off at 90 degrees to the topic of legal rulings. There is a special form of the English language called E Prime. From Wikipedia:
"E-Prime denotes a restricted form of English in which authors avoid all forms of the verb to be. E-Prime excludes forms such as be, being, been, present tense forms, past tense forms along with their negative contractions, and nonstandard contractions such as ain't and 'twas."
My inference in reading rulings is that lawyers deliberately exploit the verb 'to be' (the copula) to smudge the difference between identity, group membership, properties, existence and locations. It is their job after all, but rhetoric, even cunningly hidden, is about winning a debate, not reaching a valid conclusion.
The UK is a perfect example of Milan Kundera's notion of "kitsch", which he defined as “Kitsch is the absolute denial of sh*t”, and its replacement by an idealized sentimentality, a kumbaya version of events which also turns out to be totalitarian - you play along or you are "spitting in the face of the smiling brotherhood."
A related view of the cultural collapse comes from the social theorist Philip Rieff, whose critique of the "therapeutic" mindset in "Sacred Order/Social Order" describes a cultural condition where sacred authority—rooted in commanding truths and moral absolutes—is undermined by a focus on subjective feelings and personal fulfillment. Everything is subordinated to how we feel inside, so morality and the sacred are scorned.
> It is time, though, to start confronting it, and to think seriously about whether it is pity that ought to govern immigration law, or other more pressing imperatives.
Napoleon and Hitler failed to subdue Britain, but this horde of illegal immigrants seems well on the way to doing so. With the aid of their fifth column of politicians, civil servants, judges, and other do-gooders.
What I don't understand is how does a EUROPEAN convention apply to a national of a non-European country? Also, how does a citizen of another country have locus standi before an English court?
Hmmm, well it seems to me that was badly drafted - or was it deliberately left wide to enable the Great Replacement? They should have confined it to European citizens. We so need to leave the ECHR.
It is notable, isn't it, that this pity only seems to extend to people from "far off lands of which we know nothing". When dealing with British people facing charges of writing something hurtful on Facebook, pity goes out of the window.
Our political class seem to think of Britain as a wealthy and powerful country. They look at GDP instead of GDP per head and see it rising due to increasing population. And they look at GDP measured in a supremely ridiculous way that counts money borrowed and spent as "national income".
They also assume that British prosperity has been built on oppression of other countries, with no contribution from hard work and ingenuity of the British themselves.
Basically, our ruling class increasingly despise us. That is a very dangerous situation for the country to be in.
I also think they genuinely don't grasp what a parlous state the country is in. They don't really understand economics, and they don't spend much time in the more down-at-heel parts of our depressed towns. There are still lots of very nice and plush parts of the country. If you live in the rural south east it can be hard to conceptualise how crap it is in, say, Flintshire or Teesside.
I agree. And they don't have much excuse for not understanding economics, given many of them have degrees in Politics, Philosophy and ECONOMICS!
In the first place, most PPE students skim or skip the Economics part. Too hard! Secondly, Economics as taught everywhere in the "West" is grossly distorted and truncated. Michael Hudson has pointed out, for instance, the systematic refusal even to mention debt and rent-seeking, which has already sucked out so much money from the economy that it is reasonable to speak of debt deflation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_deflation
Taking your last point. What if there are members of our family who are actually planning to disinherit the rest, are willfully planning and aiding the collapse of the house so they can raze it to the ground and build a shiny new one which they plan to sell to a housing association for loads of dosh?
Seems to me this is what is happening, and they use emotions such as described by David to influence this process.
Yes. Unfortunately the UK, like many other countries, is run by people who have neither the national interest nor the interests of the citizens at heart.
Perhaps, one of these days, we might try democracy. But that would probably require a violent revolution.
An astute point. Here is an old Reason magazine article about how teaching Liberals about White Privilege made them less sympathetic towards poorer Whites, but no more sympathetic towards poorer Blacks.
https://reason.com/2019/05/29/white-privilege-study-sympathetic-black-people/
Yes, Mrs Jellyby from Dickens’s ‘Bleak House’ springs to mind.
Good essay. Love the way your piece doesn't come across as angry or lacking sympathy towards migrants. It's a bit like a variant of one of those moral philosophical questions about whether one should chose saving the life of a brother or sister over that of a stranger's child, isn't it? Many would recognise the utilitarian imperative, but who would feel at all comfortable about being around someone so cold they would save the life of a stranger's child over a family member?
The educated Left skirts this question by failing to acknowledge the substantial harms they've been inflicting on their fellow citizens.
I agree with this description, but I’d add one more explanatory factor. The people making the decisions are not generally the ones suffering the costs. It’s not their spacious, comfy houses getting over-run, it is someone ‘out there’ who cannot access any housing or health care. Mrs Thatcher coined it, ‘You eventually run out of o t h e r p e o p l e’s money’.
An unwillingness to make hard decisions is having an adverse effect on many aspects of life, David. One only has to consider the deaths of minors who have been repeatedly returned to appallingly dysfunctional domestic circumstances.
Yes, great point.
It seems to me that progressive lawyers have done rather well out of globalisation. There will never be a shortage of work for them while immigration, international property and libel cases are held in London. And the idea that a heroin user can't be returned to Afghanistan is rather ironic.
We don't have a migrant problem, we have a welfare state problem.
There's a lot to that.
Nietzsche's recurring accusation: an excess of pity.
"Suppose we measure pity by the value of the reactions it usually produces; then its perilous nature appears in an even brighter light... It preserves what is ripe for destruction; it defends those who have been disinherited and condemned by life; and by the abundance of the failures of all kinds which it keeps alive, it gives life itself a gloomy and questionable aspect."
I was taught to avoid using the word 'nice' because it appealed to the emotions without any justification.
So my brain zoomed off at 90 degrees to the topic of legal rulings. There is a special form of the English language called E Prime. From Wikipedia:
"E-Prime denotes a restricted form of English in which authors avoid all forms of the verb to be. E-Prime excludes forms such as be, being, been, present tense forms, past tense forms along with their negative contractions, and nonstandard contractions such as ain't and 'twas."
My inference in reading rulings is that lawyers deliberately exploit the verb 'to be' (the copula) to smudge the difference between identity, group membership, properties, existence and locations. It is their job after all, but rhetoric, even cunningly hidden, is about winning a debate, not reaching a valid conclusion.
Ha! There is no doubt something to this. A book could be written about it.
The UK is a perfect example of Milan Kundera's notion of "kitsch", which he defined as “Kitsch is the absolute denial of sh*t”, and its replacement by an idealized sentimentality, a kumbaya version of events which also turns out to be totalitarian - you play along or you are "spitting in the face of the smiling brotherhood."
Yes, quite - I've written about Kundera's definition of kitsch a few times (see e.g.: https://newsfromuncibal.substack.com/p/the-mother-hen-state-and-the-denial)
A related view of the cultural collapse comes from the social theorist Philip Rieff, whose critique of the "therapeutic" mindset in "Sacred Order/Social Order" describes a cultural condition where sacred authority—rooted in commanding truths and moral absolutes—is undermined by a focus on subjective feelings and personal fulfillment. Everything is subordinated to how we feel inside, so morality and the sacred are scorned.
I'm sure there's a lot to that - thanks for the recommendation.
Just FYI, I get 'page not found' when I click on that link.
It works for me - it might be because there's a swear word in the title and your browser's safe settings don't like it?
If it's reset itself to bar swear words, I shall howl. Thanks.
> It is time, though, to start confronting it, and to think seriously about whether it is pity that ought to govern immigration law, or other more pressing imperatives.
Yes. Sooner rather than later.
Napoleon and Hitler failed to subdue Britain, but this horde of illegal immigrants seems well on the way to doing so. With the aid of their fifth column of politicians, civil servants, judges, and other do-gooders.
Stunning isn’t it!
What I don't understand is how does a EUROPEAN convention apply to a national of a non-European country? Also, how does a citizen of another country have locus standi before an English court?
The ECHR applies to anyone within the jurisdiction (and actually beyond that in some circumstances too complicated to go into!).
Hmmm, well it seems to me that was badly drafted - or was it deliberately left wide to enable the Great Replacement? They should have confined it to European citizens. We so need to leave the ECHR.