I heard two clarion calls last week. The first was uttered by Toby Young in the Weekly Sceptic podcast, in which he said that he hoped that somewhere the political philosophers are working on some sort of new ideology or religion or system which will enable us to eliminate the fashionable pseudo-liberal and pseudo-scientific cults of our time. The second was uttered by Eric Weinstein in a recent podcast with Chris Williamson (who happens to be English, though now in America): Weinstein suggested that Britain – he was not differentiating between English, Scots and Irish – should abandon all the nonsense and return to its major world-historical position.
Both of these clarion calls resonated with me. Before I comment on them, however, let me say something about the term I want to use, ‘England’. It winds up many. For half a century at least we have been told not to do what everyone used to do (what A.J.P. Taylor used to do) and use ‘England’ to mean ‘Britain’ or ‘English’ to mean ‘British’. But I think we ought to overcome our scruples and wind the clock and the prejudices backwards. I take ‘England’ to be something very simple. Let me define England as the homeland of the civilisation of the English language. Narrowly understood, this means the territorial England; but, of course, when we consider the most glorious eminences of the Scots or Irish of the last few centuries (Hume or Smith or Maxwell, Swift or Burke or Shaw or Wilde), we are not at all dealing with any other language than English – not even in Yeats or McDiarmid. I am half-Scottish myself (hence my name, which has St. Andrew emblazoned all over it), but have never hesitated to call myself ‘English’, as I am in the narrow sense, but also in the broader civilisational and literary sense.
So let us call ourselves English, all of us, without cavill, we British: indeed, anyone who is interested in defending this Pagan-Christian Island and its little imperial consciousness. Consciousness of empire has recently damaged several generations: all those who were embarrassed by Suez, and now all those who assault statues; but this actual and possibly inevitable post-imperial nausea has crippled the mind of the English, whose empire was always much more of an empire of ideas and institutions-directed-by-ideas than an empire in any ordinary sense. In 1878 Disraeli said, “No Caesar or Charlemagne ever presided over a dominion so peculiar.” John Morley called it an “artificial empire”. This sounds negative, but what he meant was an empire-by-art: an empire which had been forged in a language and a literature. Gladstone, Disraeli’s enemy, in an astonishing essay entitled ‘Kin by Sea’ suggested, also in 1878, that America, “at a coming time, can, and probably will, wrest from us [our] commercial primacy”. He was not worried. This is because he thought that America was the same thing as England. The only difference was that England had been made by praxis, by much historical experience, whereas America had been made by poiesis, by abstracting something out of that experience and making something new of it. (He used these Greek words. Those were better days.) It was all the same civilisation, “separated by a common language”, as Shaw once said.
Weinstein suggested that England has to overcome any momentary self-disgust, abandon the foolish politics of the moment, and return to its great historical position of being the guardian of the English language – in being able to use it with something like an original fluency and sense of truth – and of the English heritage which refers back to Shakespeare and Chaucer. At this point let me quote a line from Wordsworth, the sort of line that should make many of our contemporaries shake with shame:
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake…
This is from the sonnet, ‘It is not to be thought of’. Wordsworth wrote it in 1802. It was not to be thought of that England would be destroyed. Shakespeare was mentioned for the language. Wordsworth also mentioned Milton for his faith and morals. It was only a few years later that Admiral Lord Nelson told Lieutenant John Pascoe on the H.M.S. Victory to raise the signal “England confides that every man will do his duty”, and, since there was no code for ‘confides’, accepted the change to the stronger ‘expects’.
This is an apter saying than anything in Churchill or Shakespeare. We are not going to fight anyone on the beaches. We are not going to cry God for Harry, England and Saint George – well, certainly not Harry. Rather, we are going to do our duty, which is the duty England expects – which is to do whatever we can to preserve the traditions of England and the English language: the language by which we ruled over the world, not without some sin (Warren Hastings, etc.), but with the gentlest spirit yet seen abroad: “Never since the heroic days of Greece has the world had such a sweet, just, boyish master [as the Englishman]”, commented George Santayana a century ago. “It will be a black day for the human race when the scientific blackguards, conspirators, churls and fanatics manage to supplant him.”
England expects that every man will do his duty. Again, as with ‘England’, I think we should not cavil at the word ‘man’. For this is a man’s job. It might well be done by women, too. But it is a man’s job. We should admit that we mean man-in-the-sense-of-masculine rather than man-in-the-sense-of-male. Our entire masculine sensibility has been assaulted by conspirators, churls and fanatics who have sought to feminise the entire order. Does anyone remember that it was standard in the 19th Century to advocate something, to approve of it, by calling it ‘masculine’? Coleridge, in a book he wrote in 1830, made the point clearly: it was not femininity that should be despised but effeminacy. He did not fear the ‘opposite’ of masculinity but its ‘contrary’. Well, we live in a very contrary and a very effeminate world. A world of safety – and safety run riot. Again, how many of you know that St. Paul predicted that we would be in the end times when much was made of safety? Let me quote the First Letter to the Thessalonians:
But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.
1 Thess. 5.1-7
The English should be children of the light, should watch and be sober. We should avoid enthusiasm, including sectarian enthusiasm, revolutionary enthusiasm, and climate-covid-equity enthusiasm. In fact, we should condemn them. We should revere our civilisation, relatively, knowing it is not perfect, but defend it, absolutely.
What of Toby Young’s call for a new political philosophy? Well, I know some political philosophers, and read their writings, and my first thought is, in Jordan Peterson’s always pertinent response, “Good luck with that!” I do not suppose that anything will come of innovation. We may leave innovation to the scientists favoured by Weinstein. But there is another task, the reconstructive one, which is to never forget that ‘England’, as I define it, is a unique consequence, in Europe, of the standard northern European compound of at least four significant traditions: the Greek, the Roman, the Hebrew and the German. The Greeks gave us beauty and clarity and ideals and an endless desire to understand everything. The Romans gave us law, order, tradition and a capacity for imperial hypocrisies which could ensure a certain sort of peace in the world. The Hebrews gave us God, another sort of law, also liturgy, a reverence for holy scripture, and a certain sort of prophetic moral intensity not found elsewhere. The Germans gave us the freedom found in the forest, as Tacitus and Montesquieu thought: that original disinclination to be bothered by others, that desire to be lord of one’s own castle, the sensibility which is a better basis for liberalism than any creed of toleration or care. Christianity brought the first three together, in sublime manner, and preserved for us Greece, Rome and Israel as sources or origins, to which we could return; and then Christianity was received into an essentially German mind. And this, no matter how awkward or pagan, or confused, and made gentle by rain and sheep, is the English mind: in its strength and weakness. It runs from the vice of being so committed to the Anglican middle way that the Church will compromise away its entire inheritance – this is what we are seeing at the moment, Welby – to the virtue of feeling superior to everyone else because we are trying to engage with them as equals – superior because not superior, willing to descend from kingly dais to the fool’s step, to make mock and shake hands.
Political philosophy, then, has to be reconstructive, deeply reactionary: reconstructive of an entire civilisational inheritance against the dangerously dissolvent fashions of this very brief and foolish age.
There is no simple way of doing this. It is inclusive of historical variety, and bitterly opposed to the accommodations of the last 10 years, responsibly opposed to the accommodations of the last 60 years, and conscientiously opposed to the accommodations of the last 200, even 500 years: while nonetheless retaining a Weinsteinian sense that some of what we call ‘progress’ has been good in morality (for instance, in no longer murdering one’s enemies, as the Saxons were prone to do), and in machinery.
There are layers evident to everyone in what can be done.
The libertarian/liberal level is worthy, but shallow. Freedom is empty, and is always coloured by whatever tradition it emerges out of. Breaking the tax-and-control nexus would be something, but is not much by itself.
The national conservative level is better, a level higher. It recognises community and tradition, but even it does so abstractly. We need something concrete.
What we have to do is talk about this community and this tradition – which means this language and law. And this means engaging in a great Reconjunction, a restoration of our roots. These roots are not abstract, not found in ideals (we can throw the mere ‘British values’ of our politicians into the waste paper basket), but found slumbering in the past like great Titans, Jupiters, Leviathans and Beowulfs. It is the assemblage of Greek, Roman, Hebrew – that is, Christian – and then German, as filtered through our eccentric Dickensian language, that provides all the political philosophy we need, and knowing all of this well is the way to restore a sense that England is worth anything in this world.
Dr. James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.
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Scruton is dead and Murray, his most obvious successor, is of distinctly lesser wisdom and intellect. I’m not sure who this political philosopher is going to be.
Now that is class.
I have always defined myself as English first and British second and I wholeheartedly support Dr Alexander’s command that we take back our Englishness and treat it with the reverence it deserves.
We English have much to be proud of and it is this nation and its people that has shaped and defined the world. We owe our ancestors a massive debt and as the Satanic forces push to destroy us we must never forget our past and what we are fighting for.
I see nothing wrong in proclaiming …
“For England and St George.”
A t-shirt monikered with ‘England expects…’ also has merit. I might get one made up.
Excellent article
Your comment chimes with my thoughts exactly hux.That being so, I recommend a splendid book: ‘The last Englishman’ by Lt.Col. A.D.Wintle 1st the Royal Dragoons. It really is first rate. Jim Broadbent appeared in a dramatisation of his remarkable exploits (on the dreaded Beeb as I recall).
Thanks for the reference.
I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like.
And big ideas about what I’m supposed to believe in don’t feature much, I can tell ye.
On se fout pas mal de la morale
On sait bien qu’on fait pas de mal
Les Rois Du Monde, Romeo and Juliet
I tend to agree. Maybe if those “big ideas” serve to unite and inspire people they could be positive, but I am suspicious of big ideas and the people selling them and tend to think that the small idea of leaving people to get on with their lives as far as possible is what we need to focus on
Bingo. Big ideas have a way of getting… hijacked.
I owe society nothing, save not to be a burden upon it. And I wish more people would focus on solving their own problems.
I’m not hopeful
People seem addicted to an ever larger state that they hope will solve all their problems
My only source of optimism is that the material comfort people crave will become harder to provide because idiots will be put in charge of everything, and the decline will become obvious, but I think things will have to get a lot worse before they get better
People are lazy. If you give money for something , they will do it e.g. welfare pays to do sweep FA. No surprise we have millions doing nothing. Scrap welfare except for real cases of hardship, and things would change within months. Lazy welfarists would suddenly fill all those vacancies.
Successive governments have declined to do that
This sweet, just and boyish master used about 1.5 million Indians as cannon fodder during the so-called Great War.
…and his own fellows just as much
Or perhaps I am being too harsh. George V obviously had absolutely nothing to do with either Nicholas or Wilhelm.
Our masters were simply keeping us all safe from Those Troublesome Serbs who rather awkwardly refused to accept their masters.
I believe I do
I believe it’s true
I believe exactly what they tell me to…
Obviously. But that was the European standard of the day. Harvesting men from the natives of one’s colonies in order to use them (up) at the western front was an English and French innovation¹.
¹ According to a somewhat questionable source², the French did literal slave hunts for soldiers in their more populous African colonies and French officiers drove these into German machine gun fire with whips.
² Hans Zöberlein: Der Glaube an Deutschland (literally The Faith in Germany, but the German meaning is closer to the English The Religion of Germany). An ardent Nazi in his later life.
Or perhaps I am being too harsh. George V obviously had absolutely nothing to do with either Nicholas or Wilhelm.
England was informally allied with both Russia and France when they used the Balkan crisis in the aftermath of the murder of the Austrian heir apparent by Serbian terrorists the Serbian government was aware of and whom Serbian officials tacitly supported to unleash their long planned combined attack on Germany.
Austria-Hungary desired to go to war against Serbia in 1914 to rid itself of a troublesome foreign power¹ with open designs on large parts of Austria-Hungary, specifically, those which ended up under Serbian overlordship in the so-called kingdom of the southern Slavs (Yugoslavia) after the war. This was a multi-ethnic empire controlled by Serbs (ironically, in the name of the right of self-determination of the peoples) which finally came apart in a serious of bloody regional conflicts in the 1990s as the southern Slavs, ie, Croats, Bozniaks, Slovenes and Montenegrins absolutely didn’t desire to be dominated by Serbs.
Rumours have it that the Slovaks also didn’t want to be ruled by the Czechs just because the latter had powerful friends in London.
¹ During the diplomatic haggling to localize the upcoming conflict in 1914, Austria-Hungary had guaranteed the independence and territorial integrity of the existing kingdom of Serbia after an Austrian victory in the hope to keep Russia out of the war.
Eh!?
Quoting a Sikh from that period who couldn’t understand why people were forced to go back to the front after they had been wounded: “We’re being thrown into the oven again and again, until we’re completely burnt to ashes. This is not war. This is hell.”
[John Keegan, “The First World War”]
Until fall 1917, British ‘tactics’ consisted exclusively of days long all day artillery barrages, followed by so-called human wave attacks which would usually be mown down by German counter-barrages and rifle and machine-gun fire without accomplishing anything worthwhile except “kill some more Germans” (They don’t have all of America to produce shells for them and all of the world to get living bodies will thus eventually run out of both). This calculation turned out to be wrong as the war was really ended by a (somewhat badly staged¹) Bolshevist uprising in Germany.
¹ The ruling party of the day, by strange coincidence also the ruling party of today, formed volunteer units, the so-called Freikorps, out of former army soldiers which conquered the Bolshevists in a bloody civil war while the so-called “winners” were haggling about the division of the spoils. All while ordinary Germans were still merrily starving to death as the country remained cut off from all international trade until the so-called peace treaty had been signed almost two years later.
England confides that every man will do his duty.
But let’s put that aside for a moment.
The above article makes the mistake of painting the war as political. It’s not. It’s a spiritual war and the solution is simple.
We must return to our Christian roots, heritage, culture, values.
In schools, government, business, the Armed Forces, local councils and, dare I say it, the Church.
Britain’s power and prosperity, the greatest empire the world has ever known, was founded on Christianity and that’s a fact.
Before I got to the end of this article another 320 migrants had just been brought ashore. ———So what is England exactly? Is it a Nation or simply a Region? If it were still a Nation it would be deciding for itself who comes ashore, but alas it no longer does.
Open borders satisfy Article 13 of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that all people have the inherent the right to enter, exit, move around in, and live in any country they choose. Notice which countries have open borders.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-with-open-borders
“The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable, indeed a sacred principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation.”
UN’s Commission on Global Governance
And then there is the UN Population Division. See extract below:
…The United Nations Population Division monitors fertility, mortality and migration trends for all countries of the world, as a basis for producing the official United Nations population estimates and projections. Among the demographic trends revealed by those figures, two are particularly salient: population decline and population ageing.
Focusing on these two striking and critical trends, the present study addresses the question of whether replacement migration is a solution to declining and ageing populations. Replacement migration refers to the international migration that would be needed to offset declines in the size of population, the declines in the population of working age, as well as to offset the overall ageing of a population.
The study computes the size of replacement migration and investigates the possible effects of replacement migration on the population size and age structure for a range of countries that have in common a fertility pattern below the replacement level. Eight countries are examined: France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, United Kingdom and United States. Two regions are also included: Europe and the European Union…
https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/unpd-egm_200010_un_2001_replacementmigration.pdf
Yes but ofcourse we do not vote for any of these people, but increasingly our own governments pander to them rather than to their own voters. ——-According to these world government people then the 320 that came ashore yesterday could easily have been 320,000 and that would be perfectly fine. ——No it isn’t.
Much is made of the low birth rates across western civilizations which happen to be all of the countries with the most open borders. What is particularly abhorrent are the assumptions that the unelected UN will ‘fix’ this ‘problem’ and their solution is to replace the peoples within mature well established and successful cultures with completely different and culturally unrelated people. How is that a good thing? We were never consulted and neither are we asked if we are OK with a falling birth rate. I am OK with it and we will find ways of turning that to an advantage and at some point family sizes will naturally grow, if left alone. As you say it is not OK on any level especially as the underlying assumption is that western nations are wealthy through stealing from poor countries using colonialism and slavery. The UN is a Marxist mouthpiece.
Join in with the New Culture Forum (Peter Whittle’s think tank) which is leaning into this idea. It is forming Locals groups all over the country to bring together people who want to protect, preserve and enhance English/British values and culture. No idea where this will go, but who knows. Got to start a journey with the first steps.