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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Thank you Toby for a cracking ‘taster’ into what is becoming an extremely invidious subject. Although I fell out with the Catholic Church many years ago and my anti-stance has hardened these last 2.5 years I remain a Christian and very much support Christian beliefs. I have nothing to say in favour of Islam and it is unquestionably, diametrically opposed, I believe to the Christian way of life. So I agree the undermining of Christianity seems to have been matched by the growth of wokery and the results are bad and getting worse.
The trans / alphabet brigade are very much a minority within a much larger group of people but unfortunately make far too much noise. The vast majority of trans people would I am sure prefer to live quiet lives under the radar.
If the Church went back to basics and ensured the Christian basics were reasserted once more a firmer push back against wokery might commence. Unlikely I know and especially with their current hierarchy.
The wokery infecting our society is evil and unless stopped will grow. It is certainly a nasty element in the push to break apart our society and like all other attacks we must resist and stand up for basic common sense.
“After a brief flurry of feminine freedom towards the end of the last century, once again men are the self-appointed experts on everything female.”. A “brief flurry”?. “towards the end of the last century”?. Not a single word of blame goes to the swivel-eyed loons that are ‘progressive’ women. We’re into the 9th decade of increasingly aggressive feminism and it’s no coincidence that life is becoming increasingly shite. Men must give up their masculinity and women must be more masculine (so few people seem able to see the bizarrely obvious double speak). Where could this campaign possibly end? Men wanting to be women, and women wanting to be men. Suck it up Julie, you’ve got a lot to answer for. Get comfortable in that bed.
Why has she got a lot to answer for?
Look up her previous rants about men. This woman absolutely hates males – hates with a venomous passion. That hatred has consequences – 60+ years of consequences.
Yes, I’m blaming womem like Julie; I’m just saying it out aloud. You sometimes have to dig deep to fnd the roots of a problem.
Well I don’t know anything about her. And I don’t even know if a word exists which is the female equivalent of ‘misogynist’. But I do like men, as long as they aren’t tossers. Women can be complete tossers too. What I will agree with this woman on is her opinion of a man being appointed as “Period dignity officer”. No idea what that job entails but it does sound like something straight from a Babylon Bee skit. I can imagine JP having a lot of fun with that one too.
“Rise of the New Puritans”.
For some time I have been imagining members of this new cult asking (in a “Southern” drawl): “Are you woke? Do you accept woke as your personal…” etc.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…
Four hundred years ago, one could say that the difference between the Catholics and the Protestants was that one set wanted to follow rules, while the other set wanted to think.
The same two sets exist today. Instead of it being Protestants and Catholics, what should it be? Sceptics and Wokesters?
I don’t know. Some Catholics are very sceptical. Have you read The Song Of Bernadette? And some Protestants for that matter are not very sceptical ( the clergy at Durham Cathedral?).
Note that the religious tend to not fall for the wokerati tricks — and the more religious they are the more they’re immune.
Perhaps society needs a religion, and in the absence of any of the traditional theologies people will get suckered into ‘belief’ in whatever is being pushed by the media.
Depends what one means by religious. I tend to consider some of the atheist cults as religious. And by the way, I don’t particularly buy the distinction that the atheist crimes of the 20th century were not in the name of atheism .Even if they were not specifically in its name or about converting the world to atheism, it won’t make much difference to their many victims, but I suppose the likes of Dawkins have to try and distance their religion from these crimes, and I suppose some are bound to buy it. Meanwhile, the maxim that if people cease to believe i n God, they don’t believe in nothing but rather in anything, seems to have a lot of truth in it. Innit? No coincidence that there is a big interest in “the aliens” in post Christian towns in South Wales.
If I say I have no idea about any gods and just want to focus on doing what I believe is the right thing for myself and those I love, what does that make me?
A Christian.
Agnostic I suppose if you don’t claim to know for certain. Nonetheless, there are likely to be other things that you do believe for certain without having seen. These may or may not include “aliens” (as I said), the origin of life, the provenance and age of fossils, whether or not Scottish shrimps are really likely to remain unchanged for 300 million years if molecules to man can allegedly happen in 4,000 million years (according to “the science”), whether T-rex DNA is really likely to survive for millions of years, where matter came from and how much there is and why, what the mind is (atoms arranged in a certain way (which would mean you could theoretically be duplicated and thus one person with two bodies), your own atoms (even though almost all are replaced over a life time), your own DNA (which would mean identical twins were one person with two bodies), or perhaps the dwelling place of the soul), whether the “big bang” is scientific (the universe came from a dot and the dot came from nothing and that idea gets printed in a journal as “science”), how much space, time and matter there is and why (if they are infinite, could anything happen (if so, why isn’t there more than one of me, and if not why not, how much of them is there and why?). why the missing links that Victorian amateur naturalist fretted about remain missing (and what said naturalist would have made of the stunning discoveries of DNA and the mindboggling complexity of the cell), about whether macro-evolution can happen by random chance despite lack of proof and seeming statistical impossibility (amino acids to protein, an eye forming etc.), and why the many natural laws (and many conditions of the unique planet Earth in its unique solar system) just happen to be perfectly calibrated to allow life to exist.
My point is that, whilst atheists and agnostics and “nones” might traditionally be considered as non-religious, they may very well be believers, simply arguing on essentially philosophical grounds that their belief is more reasonable than other beliefs (as indeed most people do to be fair).
And I should add that those atheists who place themselves at the centre and effectively make gods of themselves are effectively atheistic satanists (man made god is a key definition of this). Christians on the other hand aspire to love their enemy and do good to those that hate them. This is a very difficult thing, but very commendable (and to be fair, some atheists and agnostics try to do this. Always worth learning from other beliefs as our old friends the Amish have shown us with “vaccines”).
Which athiests make gods of themselves? So now they’re satanists?
And loving your enemy is commendable, doing good to those who hate you?
Sounds like being stuck in an abusive relationship to me and makes somebody a massive mug.
Just more sanctimonious cobblers and further proof that those of us without religion and happy in our lot seem to really rub the devout up the wrong way. The fact we do not feel we are lacking in the slightest and can have a fulfilling existence without subscribing to organized belief systems really gets up some noses doesn’t it?
Loving your enemy= treating them with respect and recognizing their humanity and agency; not snogging them and giving them your wage packet.
What has characterized all the lockdown protests and resistance movements (e.g trucker protests) has been their decency, kindness and good behaviour.
The religious are not, on the whole ‘rubbed up the wrong way’ by atheists. What rubs many of us up the wrong way is the mealy-mouthed caving-in of some of our own leaders -like the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Kudos to the Canadian pastor who roared at the cops who tried to close his church.
Why on earth would you treat your enemy with respect?? What humanity? Surely if they had any they wouldn’t be considered your enemy? No offence but I’m not someone who enjoys being treat like a doormat because I get to polish my halo and earn some brownie points before I reach your pearly gates. Nope. Treat others as you want to be treat yourself. Simple as.
But I do agree with that Bishop, and the pope actually, being utterly disingenuous in their preaching, and the Polish dude totally rocks. Got all the time in the world for people like that. His video went viral for a reason.
It makes you a decent and compassionate human being, and you do not have to belong to any particular club to be one of those. We aren’t living in primitive times where our very life depended on choosing a side.
“We aren’t living in primitive times where our very life depended on choosing a side.”
We have come very close Mogs. In places like Canada, New York, Australia and the others with ‘vaccine” mandates, for many they really did have to pick a side.
I am an Atheist, i.e. I do not believe in God(s), Angels, Archangels, etc.
That is all being an “Atheist” means.
To construe “not believing in God” as “believing in nothing” is illogical.
To construe “not believing in God” as “believing in anything” is merely puerile.
BTW Christian Cults have been murdering each other throughout history.
There’s always the English Divine Liturgy. Mar Mari Emanuel would get me back into a church.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i1QgjDenQ_s
“Note that the religious tend to not fall for the wokerati tricks”
Well that is a mile off the donkey’s nose. I come from a large and committed family of Catholics and unfortunately they have fallen for the scam hook…
Two churches I know well – Catholic and Baptist. C1984 believers up to their eye balls.
There are smaller groups within Christianity standing up to the nonsense (including that Canadian pastor and certain Catholic groups), however it is hard to think of leaders of any of the major Christian denominations who have made a stand, and many of them inspire little (or no) confidence. What I would say is that the Church is better than its leadership at any given time, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I trust Christ, even if I do not trust some Christian leaders so much.
I’m not alone in being both not religious and impervious to woke claptrap. Society “needs” religion like it needs mask mandates or a harnfull novel injection. All examples of completely unnecessary belief systems in order to live as a decent human being in a functional and civilised society.
But what people will use to virtue signal to the max nevertheless.
Ok… Except for “the child-raping of the Catholic Church”. I am aware of the scandals that prompted Ms Burchill to smear the whole Church in this way, but child rape is NOT part of the (Catholic) Christian religion.
“Far safer to kick the Christians instead” indeed.
I think I’ve spotted a typo in “…bullying cults…”