It Couldn't Happen Here, Now, Could It?

Today’s Cautionary Tale…in The Times (UK), “Alas, poor Britain. The best name for it is Absurdistan:”

I defer to the greater knowledge of modern Britain evidently garnered by standing in empty fields with camera crews, but I wonder if this is really the right conclusion. I love Britain as much as anyone, and I certainly believe it is our openness that makes it such an attractive place. But I can’t share the optimism about our multiculture, and much more importantly, my own impression is not of the triumph of the British spirit but of its steady subversion by an ever-growing dependency culture.

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This is the self-perpetuating logic behind the unstoppable momentum of the expanding State. The bigger it grows, the more it intrudes into our lives, and the more it intrudes into our lives, the more dependent we become on it. Education is the same. Our great universities are struggling to compete in a global market because they are hamstrung by the State. They are dependent on central government for their funding; but that funding is insufficient to meet the needs of global competition. But because they need government money for what they do, they cannot break free.

Leviathan is now so large that, outside London, half the population is dependent – either through public sector jobs or benefits – on taxes. Its power is so large that it has bent us all into submission. It has produced a culture in which no one needs to take responsibility for anything because someone else is always there to back us up.

I’ve said this often, but it bears repeating: Britain seems to have arrived at a place we, as Americans, certainly don’t want to go. But the public pontifications of some of our erstwhile leaders and the triumph of multi-culturalism in academe lead me to believe otherwise. The chorus of dissenting (OK, he’s Australian, but he’s part of the Anglosphere) voices to the British status-quo is encouraging (for the Brits). The dissenters are more of a vocal rear-guard than anything else; their protestations seem to have little, if any effect on Britain’s political life and culture.

The best we can do is observe and vow not to let it happen here. Despite Her Hillaryness, Pretty Boy, and the like.

More, albeit briefly, at The Corner.