Of all the heartbreaking moments from this past week, from the murder of three girls not much younger than my own daughter, to the violence and fear on our streets, there is one thought that I keep returning to: how avoidable it all might have been.
The warning signs have been present for years, but for every person who tried to tip-toe through the minefield of topics pertinent to this disorder—society, culture, religion, disenfranchisement, racism, the speed of change, feelings of powerlessness—there were ten more who wanted to bury their heads in the sand.
This prediction has come to pass, and politicians of all stripes (including myself) must take responsibility for not trying harder to defuse the tensions. What else did you expect when every winning manifesto promised lower migration and every government ramped up the numbers, while refusing to allow enough houses and infrastructure to be built, and the bien pensant classes accused anyone who criticized this as racist?
Britain remains the most tolerant country on Earth, with the deep conservatism of a people who have inherited institutions, traditions, and customs that are the envy of the world. That is why so many people want to come here, to live the British dream as I have done.
But too many from outside these shores refuse to integrate upon arrival, to learn the language and to learn the ways of this place. They, or their communities, refuse to allow themselves to feel what Roger Scruton called oikophilia, a love of home. The British, and other English-speaking peoples, are wont to look at things in our “homescape” as we look at persons, not as means only, but as ends in themselves.
But the scale of new arrivals of sometimes very different cultures necessitates a robust encouragement toward oikophilia, an encouragement that has been completely lacking in Britain. This led to ghettoization and resentment between natives and recent arrivals. To suggest that this isn’t happening, and that concerns about the changes to local neighborhoods isn’t legitimate, just because you have foreign friends in your middle-class bubble is as ludicrous as saying: “I’m not racist because I have a black friend.”
Patriotic Patriot
Article URL : https://www.thefp.com/p/british-establishment-migration