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'The idea of a past consensus which now lies in pieces is a myth.' Graeme Robertson / Getty
During her campaign to lead the Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch described women from ethnic minoritiesĀ who, when she was canvassing during the election, would hand the matter over instantly to their husbands saying: āI canāt speak to you.ā This is a culture, she said, which isnāt as equally valid as our own. It is, she suggests, contrary to British values. It would be interesting to know how far sheās prepared to press this case. If women went on strike until their partners agreed to share half of the housework, would this be an example of British values (fairness, perhaps), or would it be some loony bit of womenās lib at odds with the British way of life? What counts as British values isnāt as clear as some people think. It probably includes feeling patriotic, but being a proud British patriot is a form of identity politics quite as much as being a militant lesbian is. Those who find identity politics distasteful are thinking of other peopleās identities, not their own.
British values include fair play and a respect for the rule of law, but exclude beheading people, which is the kind of atrocity some radical Islamists go in for. Yet hanging people was an acceptable British practice until fairly recently, and the two forms of execution probably donāt feel all that different to the victim.Ā In any case, the meaning of values like fair play and the rule of law is fiercely contested. One has to argue over what counts as such things in a particular context, and this is where the disagreements begin. Fair play, for example, is really a synonym for justice; but there are several different theories of justice, no one of which can be said to be quintessentially British. One central British value is democracy, but there are quarrels over what this means as well. For some on the political Left, the parliamentary system is suspect not because itās democratic but because it isnāt democratic enough. Nor is a devotion to justice or democracy peculiar to the British, any more than is a belief in freedom of speech or not throwing people through plate glass windows. In fact, there is no moral principle revered by the British which isnāt equally cherished by a good many other nations. In this sense of the term, there are no British values, just as there are no British saucepans in the sense of saucepans unique to the country.
Perhaps there was once a British nation which was united around certain values, but which has now been pitched into crisis by the arrival of immigrants with a different sense of what counts in life. But the idea of a past consensus which now lies in pieces is a myth. Britain has always been made up of clashing cultures. In the 17th century, such conflicts tore the place apart. Anyway, what was the common ground between 19th-century manufacturers and the working-class movement? A belief in justice, perhaps? But for some of the manufacturers that meant hanging or deporting some of the working-class militants. The values of The Guardian newsroom have precious little in common with those of Vinnie Jones or the Plymouth Brethren. Does the fact that Ben Elton and Nigel Farage are both British override the differences between them?
The problem, however, goes deeper than individual divergences. Contentions of this kind are actually built into the nature of liberal society, so that what unites people who live in such places ā a belief in freedom, autonomy, self-determination and so on ā is also what divides them. If everyone is free to do their own thing, the result is bound to be a certain amount of discord. The seeds of disunity are secreted at the very heart of everyday life. The competition in commodities is reproduced at the level of ideas. By extending freedom, we also risk undermining consensus, and hence the framework by which freedom is sustained. In any case, the consensus which liberal society affords us is fairly thin. We agree to disagree, and to do so peacefully, but not necessarily on much else. This is why Sufis and professional wizards rub shoulders on the London tube with Seventh-day Adventists and neo-fascists, a situation which many traditional societies would have found incomprehensible. If this makes for a gratifying amount of diversity, it can also make for lethal antagonisms. In non-liberal nations, by contrast, you buy your stability at the price of uniformity.
Most societies feel the need for a degree of solidarity, which oils the wheels of everyday life. In liberal society, however, this solidarity can be peculiarly hard to maintain. How do you unify a civilisation in which there are millions of centres of self-government known as individual citizens? The answer is that you do so by persuading each of them to internalise the law, so that they exercise their freedom within the framework of the common good. (What, however, if the law in question is a malign one?) Itās hard to sustain unity simply at this abstract level, however, not least in times of political crisis. Itās then that you need something more visceral and theatrical to bring people together, which accounts for the rise of autocrats-in-waiting like Donald Trump. If citizens can find their identity embodied in a flesh-and-blood figure who represents them all, the abstract unity of liberal society gives way to the gut-level togetherness of authoritarianism.
When this happens, thereās usually a rise in the ideological temperature. In 19th-century capitalist society, people were divided by spectacular social and economic inequalities, but they could come together as Britons around a set of shared ideas: ruling the waves, Englandās green and pleasant land, the Gospel of Work, the imperial mission, Protestant liberty versus Catholic tyranny, the divinely ordained nature of social class, and so on. The point of most of this heady rhetoric was to mask actual social divisions. Or as Frederic Jameson put it, ideology is the imaginary resolution of real contradictions. Today, in a later phase of the same social system, people are generally too shrewd and streetwise to fall for such high-sounding stuff, the decline of which has gone hand in hand with the decline of religion. Oratory is embarrassing and outdated. Nobody believes that God arranged for someone to own the Ritz and someone else to clean its lavatories. Material self-interest takes over from ideology. Grand narratives give way to pragmatic calculation. None of this, however, is deep-seated enough to cope with a capitalist system beset by serious problems, which is one reason why the rhetoric of ideology has come creeping back. Solidarity between citizens must be reinvented in the face of an economy in trouble, and one way to do this is to create a scapegoat or bogeyman they can all agree to revile. The name of the bogeyman has changed over time. Yesterday it was the Jew; today it is known as the immigrant.
What the immigrant threatens to subvert is the cultural unity of the nation-state. The nation-state is a recent historical invention, dating from around the end of the 18th century, and from the outset unity has been one of its watchwords. A double unity, in fact, as the cohesion of a distinctive people (ānationā) is reflected in a distinctive form of sovereignty (āstateā). This was always something of a fiction, since there are few if any peoples who arenāt to some extent hybrid. Neither was it clear why being a specific nation should give you a claim to having your own state ā why the political should follow so inevitably from the ethnic. In fact, itās a doctrine which has created havoc throughout modern history, as a good many drives for unity do. Unity may sound a worthy goal, and there are times when it is; but it can also mean suppressing essential conflicts, trying to reconcile incompatible interests and marginalising those who donāt fit in. It can steamroller vital differences and quickly become a fetish.
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SubscribeFor Science Sakes Terry, this was masterpiece of clown polemics.Ā It’s so well written and so poorly reasoned that it serves as a literal blueprint for an opposite worldview.
I think my favorite part was when you state “whats wrong with disunity” while effectively declaring sectarian conflict as a form of enlightened living.Ā Immigrants are fleeing their home countries en masse because they’re living in conflict zones.Ā It goes without saying that you don’t want people bringing that same conflict mentality unless of course you want disunity.
For those who DON’T want conflict, they recognize that integration into the existing culture is essential for any country’s immigration program.Ā From across the pond the UK very much appears to have a robust, highly diverse culture with lots of interesting geographical regions of both people and landscape.Ā
Dysfunctional societies lean into “disunity” because they cant prevent it.Ā It becomes Hobbsean clash of disparate groups.Ā British Common Law rooted in the Magna Carta helped create probably the most “equitable” legal system in the history of the world. Many, many governments have built their entire structure around the Lockean concepts of justice and law.Ā The British intellectual tradition is as impressive as it gets.Ā
Not to mention British film dominates the culture industry relative to the nation’s size. There’s a music tradition of the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Queen to name a few.Ā A massive percentage of voice over film/documentary especially geographic stuff is done by someone with a British accent. People associate that accent with British intellectual culture.
To say there’s no “culture” is just patently false.Ā I suspect you know this but the passion for contrarian polemic is just too strong apparently.
Thereās a prevailing cultural through-line in Britain. Certainly more so than the U.S., which has had severe culture clash since arrival of the first English shipsāand plenty of warring disunity among the far-flung tribes that were here already.
But in recent decades itās far more common for a Brit of immigrant roots to become famous, like Freddy Mercury, Zadie Smith, or Steve McQueen (the director).
I think Eagletonās allusion to the English Civil War (1644-60) has present-day relevance. Tons of āwhite on whiteā violence with much religious and class conflict that had nothing to do with not being born there. Then the Glorious Revolution helped established a more liberal, parliamentary order that has endured till now, when the monarch is little more than a symbolic leader. And that raised additional challenges, of a kind the U.S. has always faced (in its much shorter history).
Still, we canāt say that England in 1066, 1534, 1649 was not a bloody and divided land, though people from other continents may not have been able to tell the combatants apart by their appearance. Nor was the country united against Germanyās rising tide in 1938. Shared language, ethnicity, and cultural touchstones are a leg up for unity, no doubt. But it doesnāt guarantee peace or solidarity. We see this in country after country that has splintered off or come apart for one cause (or excuse) or another: religious, micro-ethnic, ideological, haves-vs.-have-notsāyou name it. Including the American Colonies.
And I donāt think we can return to an often nostalgically re-imagined nativismāor in the States a ābig-tent whitenessā, that excludes entire outgroups, as was surely the case before the mid-20th Century
Itās fair to call out Eagletonās āpassion for contrarian polemicā, but I find it to be much toned down in this article. He avoids arch sneers, slurs, and over-certainty in his own conclusions. Doesnāt he? (Iām not certain Iām firmly in the right here either).
Even so, I agree we need to encourage, and to some extent require a significant level of āgetting with the programā and assimilation among immigrant groups, refugees or not. And letting in a great number at once is just a recipe for disaster on multiple levels.
Why are there whole communities of people in the UK and U.S. where itās common to have lived there for decades and speak almost no English? Unless someone arrives elderly (or some other extenuating factor) this shouldnāt be accepted or apologized for. (Not that Brits and especially Yanks donāt live abroad for years without picking up much of the local language).
I think weāll get some welcome British input soon, when the sun rises over the white cliffs of Dover.
Thanks guys (AJ & TBone) for these rebuttals of Eagletonianism, i couldn’t have put it better.
I welcome these articles, if only as demonstrations of how Critical Theory – especially when overlaid on Marxism – can produce the very arguments that result in conflict, when applied to the real world.
Eagelton thinks we’re all “global citizens” now, just at the very point when the travails of globalisation are being recognised and reined back, lest they cause too much damage. He thinks it’s a matter of not yet being able to conceptualise our globalness. I’ve got news for him: the Concepts are Out There. We don’t have to swallow them, as he’s tried to force-feed his students with them. They make us choke, and it feels fatal in the same way as being hung or beheaded would.
Eagleton keeps pushing for the globalisation ideal – surely the ultimate destiny of humanity, but so far off still – and lamenting the retrenchment into national sovereignty, while failing to recognise the current inconceivability of globalisation in a world where there are cultural differences that not only separate us but are actually antagonistic. Notably a religion that at its core demands the conversion or destruction of all infidels and an ideological system that is only able to sustain itself by means of totalitarian governance and repression.
Yes, it would be lovely if the west could find common ground to live harmoniously alongside Islam and communism – we are certainly not against Middle Eastern peoples, Chinese or Russians, in which societies can be found many excellent and admirable individuals – but the religious and ideological beliefs that underpin those societies are incompatible with the democratic values that have evolved over centuries in the west. We need to find common core ethical values that will enable us to coexist harmoniously, outweighing any contentious lesser issues..
When it comes to culture, not all cultural values are even acceptable, much less worthy of respect. That is why human civilization has turned against human and animal sacrifice, cannibalism, slavery, ethnic and gender discrimination and many other cultural practises that had been considered normal in some places. And other practises will keep getting added to that list as we evolve.
So I am sorry Terry, but there are certain values that may not be exclusively British, but are shared by British people and admired elsewhere and should be respected and preserved. It is attracting a stream of immigrants to our country with a whole range of different intents – some of them entirely malicious, using our generosity and tolerance against us to undermine our society from within. The country is already overcrowded, with one of the world’s higher population densities and diminishing countryside. Tolerance has its limits and that flow must be stopped.
If we are unable to hold the barrier at nationalism then we will end up reverting to tribalism, the primitive structure that keeps holding Africa back to this day and will surely destroy our own societies.
I wonder if Mr. Eagleton has had a daughter who was repeatedly raped by a group of immigrants?
The Rape of Britain
Iām not in lockstep with Eagleton at all and Iām not a globalist except to the extent I want a more peaceful world.
I do not accept that Islam is or has to be practiced in the way you frame it. Just as most Jews reject the slaughters and āhonor killingsā of the Torah, most Muslims reject killing in the supposed name of Allah. Sufis and Bahaiāas well as majorities among Sunnis and Shiaāpresent notable examples of tolerant, nonviolent practice rooted in Islam.
We need to be careful of who we admit, on either side of the Atlantic. But placing human sacrifice, cannibalism, and slavery on a continuum with ethnic and gender discrimination seems like a mistake, and perhaps a sleight of hand to me. Almost all people reject the first three, while almost all people are imperfect in ridding themselves of those last two, at least in certain moments.
I agree with you to a significant extent, and donāt want to reflexively gainsay your points. People should not be allowed to abuse or terrorize their wives and children, even in their own homes. Itās not ok to support jihad or unprovoked violence. Some bad actors, many but not all of whom will be Muslim, should be deported or incarcerated as needed. Many more should be refused entry in the first place.
But I urge you not to essentialise Islam as a bad religion, nor Russia and China as wholly inferior societies made up mostly of people who donāt think enough like us in some essential way. There are so many āexceptionsā to such a judgment that I suspect you can find even more within each group that donāt deserve it than do. Close call anyway.
He’s an entertaining writer. I agree that there are kernels of truth here about history but as other’s have noted, the motivation appears to be tearing down the concept of the nation-state.
If you look at the former Soviet Bloc countries (especially the Balkans) there has been long term conflict because ethnic identity was elevated by the Communist International and placed above national citizenship. Basically when borders were drawn you had minority ethnic groups that spoke different languages and identified with the ethnic group instead of the Nation.
The International used the Victim/Oppressor dyad to encourage minorities not to integrate and to act like a state within a State. The point of disunity was to create tribal division, weaken national sovereignty and create a domino effect for the elimination of borders into a stateless society with “one proletarian conscience.”
Fair enough. I guess Iām āgrading himā partly on a curve in relation to many of his (sneering, convoluted, sometimes funny) articles here.
*I understand your point about artificial divisions and pitting groups against one another. European colonial powers also did a version of that, if more to exploit natural resources than rule, when they carved up Africa over a century ago.
Iād note that the citizen of the world/globe mentality neednāt have a centralized socialist sense, though it likely does for Eagleton. (Where does he stand these days, if anywhere? His Marxism seems softened or discarded). The phrase (in the form ācosmopolitanā) has an Ancient Greek origin, in the Cynic school no less (thanks Lord Google).
Other than a paycheck and exposure, Iām not sure why Eagleton continues to write here, at least in his current mode. Or what benefit he brings to UnHerd. Perhaps name recognition and āhate clicksā are enough?
Bindel and Eagleton are running neck and neck in guaranteed hate-receptions these days. Iām not a fan of either, but I feel like they provide biased but knowledgeable views on certain things. And like you I find some value in Eagleton just as a writer. But the comment boards their articles generate are mostly a lot of heated and automatic contempt, venting, and piling on, with notable exceptions from commenters like you and Steve Jolly. Granted, neither Eagleton nor Bindel āplays niceā toward this readership either.
I find him kind of funny. I appreciate anyone that doesn’t care what the masses think.
Alot of these Marxists think they’re Plato and Socrates doing a dialectic that posits an absurd idea just to get a groundswell of rebuttals and ultimately unify opposites. It’s about being on the “Right side of History” not being right in the moment. If they can lob a stupid concept that leads to a conversation that eventually progresses society in some way, that’s a win for them.
I think weād see a more clear picture of where he currently stands in a debate with Patrick Deneen, for example. I donāt think heās a doctrinaire or even serious Marxist these days; could be wrong. He definitely lobs out trial balloons and weak pitchesāand the occasional strike, without engaging seriously with opposing ideas. Most of the time. His articles tend to occasion more words of response than they warrant. With the platform he has, I wish heād take more of a good faith approach.
Ha maybe he’s a Supply-Side Socialist. Pumping out as many ideas as possible to produce mass engagement while indifferent to all the wasted concepts.
In an age of Conservative Revolutionaries just about anythingās possible.
I thought the article was proceeding with cogent and logical argument (I even thought that perhaps Terry had somehow become a ārational manā) up until, without warning, the article had embedded a āDONALD TRUMP!!!!ā wormhole to a parallel anti-truth universe.
Perhaps Terry doesnāt understand that Americaās current dogmatic, cultural and institutionally-rigid uniformity that rejects supporting the law of the land, that rejects fair debate, and that rejects fair play is owned, dictated, and strictly enforced by the Left.
Long gone are the liberal days of accepting diversity in society; of having open and in-good-faith sociopolitical / religious / scientific disagreements and debates; of āagreeing to disagreeā with a handshake and then grabbing a beer together at the local pub or amicably going separate ways.
Long gone are the days when liberal cultural and institutional gatekeepers (such as the ACLU) supported citizens who believed in upholding society through civic discourse and democracy: Expressing oneās own opinion, respecting the right of others to share their own opinions, internalizing and collating these learnings, voting oneās preference, and agreeing – as individuals and as a society – to lawfully live under the leadership of duly-elected representatives (even when disagreeing) and by the established law of the land unless/until the law and representatives are changed through long-established constitutional means.
Nowadays, the āget off my lawn!ā nixonian cultural and institutional gatekeepers on the Left behave as if their personal, emotional, and faddish likes and dislikes take precedent over longstanding negotiated laws of the land, and anyone who dares offend them by disagreeing is Cancelled and banished from society.
Universities no longer teach students their civic duty. That if one disagrees with specific laws, one should consider seeking a coalition of like-minded folks, run for office and/or propose new laws via democratic and representative means. Rather, universities now teach marxist Oppressor / Oppressed ideology – that if you feel that you disagree with the law, you are de facto in the right. That if you squint long enough, youāll find your angle ā¦ that you’re actually Oppressed (or that you fight for the Oppressed), so you should become an extrajudicial vigilante superhero activist: Working outside the bounds of the law to destroy everyone who stands in your way of āachieving social justice.ā These privileged and self-identified āhave notā activists are taught that they are justified to use their unearned privilege to take unearned gain – using doxing, blackmail, cancelling, coercion and force – from their identified enemy āhavesā in society.
Within the past decade, the powerful and influential gatekeepers on the Left have vocally declared that the governing rules of Western civilization were founded on systemic racism. And that the entire system of Western civilization, including law and order, needs to be completely overthrown.
From instigating the lawless Riots of 2020-2021 that have caused so many of Americaās greatest cities to fall into perpetual decay and blight, to defunding the police that enforce law and order, to coopting District Attorneys so they selectively uphold only certain laws and go after political enemies using prosecutorial discretion, to destroying with Cancel Culture any civic-minded citizen who dares to debate and disagree, to denying history, to denying fundamental biological science, to stoking the flames of ancestry-based racism in order to raze the Westās longstanding culture of rewarding meritorious achievement and fair play and replace it with racism, etc.
In short, by their recent vote, Americans demonstrated that they see Trump as a return to normalcy: A return to a respect for law and order, a return to accepting the right of diverse people to live in society and **gasp** even maybe disagree in a messy democratic way, and a return to equal opportunity for all.
Actually – a terrorist beheading a schoolteacher or author for āinsultingā Mohammed is not at all like a murderer being hung after a trial and conviction by a jury of his peers. When did the last hanging take place in the UK in any event?
I think it was 1965. Two ne’re-do-wells found themselves on the end of a rope for murdering an old man in a caravan in Cornwall. Quite right too – a good few thousand should have followed them to the gallows in the past sixty years, but didn’t, sadly.
The incident you refer to was 13 August 1964. The last hanging of a woman was 1955 – Ruth Ellis for the murder of David Blakely, her lover.
I think we should put it about that Eagleton did something inappropriate with a copy of the Koran and see how his moral relativism manages that
An interesting thought. Those who preach cultural equality are rarely excited to experience it in person.
Oh, I’m sure he’ll be excited, as he flees for his life! ;o)
However, it would be very unBritish – in the sense of a set of models and ideals to live up to (much broader and less materialistic than the American Dream) – to subject him to such a hazard.
We’re not really talking about a hanging though, are we? We’re talking about lynching and the last one of them in the UK was a long time ago.
The answer to your question Terry āwhat are British values?ā is I donāt know. But I do know what values are not British values.
Radical Islamists behead people for drawing cartoons. When capital punishment was abolished, the British state hung people for murder. A slight difference.
Short of time so will only pick up on one point. England was a coherent nation state long before the 18th century. From Athelstan on there was a a recognised King, the principle of common law, which was entrenched from the time of Henry II. People understood that they were English had a shared language, a common set of beliefs (Christianity) and Common law. It wasn’t perfect but it was there. That’s what makes a nation state, and that is what is being destroyed.
I’d like to know why it’s a commonly held belief that the nation state is necessarily far right leaning and hysterically anti ‘foreigner’? Has anyone out there read economist Leopold Kohr’s ‘The Breakdown of Nations’? I think he makes a very good argument here for the small nation state.
āThe name of the bogeyman has changed over time. Yesterday it was the Jew; today it is known as the immigrantā.
No. I think youāll find that across quite large parts of our delightfully diverse society the bogeyman is still the Jew.
And often in the name of ‘anti-racism’. They falsely equating Israel with ‘white’ despite over 50% of Israelis having ancestors that always lived in Asia or Africa does that.
A fine specimen of the genre.
The ‘cultural unity’ of this land is permitted to exist coherently as a continuous historical entity, but only when it can be conceived of as an ongoing vehicle for prejudice.
Insofar as the nation might be regarded as a repository of anything worthy or beneficial in our common life it is must be considered as a ‘myth’.
One can see the crude ‘workings out’ on the page in these things.
Not a myth, but a broad set of models or ideals to aspire to.
The American Dream performed a similar, if narrower more materialistic function and has been dubbed the American Myth (by myself and others) only because they insisted it portrayed the actual reality of the country, which of course it isn’t and never has been. But that discrepancy doesn’t invalidate the importance of having ideals to live up to.
That is why so many people are turning to religion and I just hope they follow the ideals of Christianity, not the poor examples of so many churches that call themselves Christian but have been sequestered by mundane values.
Amen.
Diversity is a dangerous concept. I struggle to think of one historical example of a successful diverse nation.
The United States. Rome. Canada. The United Kingdom. If you donāt think those examples represent some version of both diversity and success perhaps you can tell me why, or name the more homogenous nations you consider to be successful.
Multiculturalism or globalism are quite distinct from diversity as I think you mean it.
Rome is gone, and the US and Canada are buckling under the strain of “diversity.” Saying that diversity works because the US and Canada haven’t collapsed yet is the worst kind of wishful thinking.
Ha! Thinking theyāre on the verge of collapse because of some trouble, or due to Diversity the big bad dangerous concept, is a bad kind of wishful thinking too. Iāll avoid superlatives though.
Where do you live? What place or time would you travel to if you could?
Justin Trudeau has just buckled: he is resigning.
So the imminent collapse has been forestalled?
They are much more diverse than they were a couple of generations ago, and the USA/Canada, due to unique circumstances, have been very successful nations for their entire history as nations. But it’s not economic success or temporary self-confidence that tests long-term longevity of a polity, it’s cultural continuity in spite of loss, defeat and failure (eg at least 3500 years of a recognisable Chinese nation).
The USA was a) built on genocide, b) enslaved the remaining largest minority, then c) built a successful nation based on white western european, largely Christian values.
In Rome you did as the Romans did.
Canada, like Belgium, is based on separating the two cultures, even though, apart from language, they are much the same,
Ok, but not ONLY so in any instance. There were a few nice Thanksgivings etc. before it got so bloody. And some outspoken advocates of something better all along. Which we now have: Something betterāthan 1619, 1775, 1864, or 1963āthat is still achingly less good than it could and ought to be.
Itās twisted to suggest that the enslavement and genocidal campaigns led to the success in some neat cause-and-effect formula. Thatās a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. The country has been far more successful since slavery was outlawed (for complex reasons I wonāt bore you with, given that your beliefs seem simple, and fixed in stone). But then thereās the problem of what to do about the former slaves, remnants of Indigenous people, and women whoāve had the vote for over a century now.
You ought to take a closer look at a worldview in which diversity is a dangerous plague but slavery and genocide bring net benefits, or reflect a sincere Christian faith. Sounds like Rome from Constantine onward.
You are the one who is twisting my words. I was merely pointing that the USA has not been a diverse society as you seem to think.
Check your own a-b-c formula, from slavery to success. The very presence of non-white slaves and a more sizable remnant of Natives than many realize has made it somewhat diverse from the get go. That was massively increased with an influx of Chinese and Japanese from the Gold Rush onward. And of Irish, Italians, and East Europeans who were not considered fully white. With millions of freed slaves newly in the paid workforce and able to vote (in the North). That coincided with the rise of America as an industrial powerhouse, later an empire.
Your concept of U.S. history in connection to diversity or the lack thereof is a convenient fiction.
*We need more cultural and social unity but thereās no need to racialize it or call for a religious litmus test thatās removed from sincere faith anyway.
Those Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans, Chinese and Japanese who emigrated to America all wanted to be American. American was known as a melting pot, not a multicultural package of skittles
Iām not a proponent of muticulturalism. I am an opponent of ethno-nationalism.
The importance of diversity is in bringing together a diverse range of stakeholders to address any given challenge. If the group is focused on solutions, by a good manager, then they are far more likely to come up with viable answers than any single individual could.
‘Diversity’ is only dangerous when it becomes a political aim. In biology it is part of life, it is neither good nor bad it just is, transposing it as a concept into a political ideal makes no sense whatsoever.
Aye. It is not an automatic good.
Well ‘illegal immigrants’ at any rate. I think (at least hope) there is widespread appreciation of lawful and well-integrated immigrants. It has been a British tradition going back centuries.
“Which brings us to the question of whatās wrong with disunity. Whatās amiss with having a territory inhabited by a whole host of different cultures and ethnicities which donāt share a single political or cultural consensus?”
We should at least be unified on the issue of child sex trafficking. That’s not a high bar, at all.
People who seem to think child sex trafficking is okay shouldn’t be allowed to stay in civilized society.
Politicians who cover up sex crimes, or who think that “racism” – by which they must mean criticizing certain people within certain ethnic groups, for truly despicable behavior – is a worse crime than child sex trafficking, should be voted out of office.
Ditto knife crime and terrorism. It shouldn’t be tolerated, excused, minimized, nor concealed.
I think you said lesser when you meant worse, Andrew.
If not for that I’d have fully approved your post. :o)
Fixed! Thanks for the edit.
If only sophistry was an argument or ideology logical, fallacies and projection were truth. You cannot debate with the Left, it’s like arguing with a young child who keeps on saying “That’s not fair” or “but why?”. No amount of evidence will satisfy them, their ideology can never be wrong. Reality is so oppressive that we must simply ignore it and call it a “myth”. Like the child, the make believe world wrapped in the comfort blanket of ideology is better than the real one; “It wasn’t me that scribbled crayon all over the wall, my imaginary friend did it”.
Perhaps Eagleton can write an article explaining why balkanisation or utilitarian dystopias are superior to the myth of the nation state.
The ‘child’ metaphor is very apt. The current Labour Party is full of them.
Of course, of course. What could possibly go wrong?
I think we saw what could go wrong in Yugoslavia, 1990-1992.
Sorry Terry, but I’m reading about what happened to Lebanon and don’t want Blighty to follow a similar path.
Yes, it now seems we’re the ones having Syrians interfering in our internal affairs. No good can come of that!
“The nation-state is a recent historical invention”ļ»æ
There is a tired desperation in the rehearsal of the Old Creed these days.. The travestying of history and memory by Marxists and Marxist influenced historians is a genuine period piece and in Prof. Eagleton we see the genre in its swansong.
The nation state existed in parts of Western Europe from more than 1000 years ago. Imperfect because it was a monarchy of some kind. The alternative was empire which was the normal state of affairs for lots of people; and some city states. But we don’t like empires anymore do we? Trashing the idea of a nation state like Britain is only encouraging the new empires of China and Russia.
I am reminded of the French physician who once argued that the Pharoah Akhenaten couldn’t have died of Tuberculosis as Tuberculosis was only discovered and named by Dr Koch in 1882.
The thing designated by the term ‘nation state’ has existed since men began to form societies. It is not circumscribed by the writ of professors like Eagleton or Hobsbawm.
The idea that language precedes meaning is a creedal issue for the Pharisee in every age as it allows them to play the gatekeeper on interpretative legitimacy, to “keep the gospel in bondage”, in the old formula.
Whereas the common man knows it is the other way around.
Athens was a nation, Israel was a nation, Egypt was a nation – Britain is a nation.
What did that French physician think the World was like before Isaac Newton?
Call me old fashioned, but Iād rather be professionally hanged than beheaded on video with a zombie knife.
Can’t help wishing that UnHerd had a “one in, one out” policy for writers. So that in adding Wolfgang Munchau to the roster (raising the batting average considerably), Terry Eagleton could be freed up to preach to an audience that might appreciate him better.
I won’t begin to critique the actual article. Other than to note that it claims British values are hard to define, but immediately goes on to state as fact (his fact, not for us to question) that they include fair play and a respect for the law. Does the man have any self awareness ?
Contention is built into liberal societies, that’s the reason why they are successful. They do however rely on the rule of law and the consent of the majority. To the post modernists this is seen as tyranny, it is their belief that the minority should hold sway. The trouble is they can’t adequately explain why (maybe because it’s such an idiotic premise).
I don’t think they believe the minority should hold sway. It’s that they derive their power from the fact that the minorities make the most noise and attract the most attention. That’s how the far left have remained in power for so long – despite their undemocratic values (totalitarianism is their ideal) – they attend every single meeting, make the most noise and influence the decisions in their favour. That’s not how the silent majority behaves, so we keep losing, at least until the insanity becomes flagrant and the voters wake up.
‘Cultural Unity’, as Prof Eagleton paints it, is not a myth but rather it is a Straw Man. He essentialises it to dismiss it.
‘Theres no such thing as a Full English Breakfast!’
Noone is fooled or even amused by this sort of ontological sleight-of-hand any more. Its moment has passed, the mechanics of the joke are well understood now, even by the man on the street.
And, in truth, Prof Eagleton rather deserves our compassion in all this.
“Breathes there the man, with soul so dead…”
Of course the country has had different groups throughout history, often competing with or attempting to supress each other, and this has sometomes broken out into violence. This is inevitable.
But it is not an argument for increasing the number of significantly sized-competing factions. That just leads to more division, with more of the negative consequences as a result. If there are a small number of different groups, it is relatively easy to find common ground when necessary (eg WW2). The more groups, especially if there isn’t a dominant one, the more difficult this is.
Maybe over time the groups realign and merge, increasing the social cohesion. Or maybe they don’t. Or even if they do merge eventually the pain and disruption of getting there outweighs the benefit. I have never heard of a particularly good reason why it is worth the risk.
I agree with you, if we stipulate āincreasing the sizeā. That still leaves the problem of how to tolerate, and coexist with those weāve already let in, and will still admit in some number. And of how those admitted will be asked to do the same.
We have to be able to talk about assimilation and unity without so many people on either side getting freaked out within seconds. Ok, I guess we donāt HAVE to, but I believe itās doable and I sure hope we will.
We need to strengthen the ground between rootless, ideological tolerance-in-theory (often very selective in practice) and outright reactionary ethno-nationalism. I recognise that most already land well between those extremes, and that reasonable people will disagree about which is the greater threat. But the warring extremes are ramping upāthis is early yet, the āmiddle of the beginningāāand I hope the vast majority of us will continue to choose neither warring extreme. Fringe zealotry has way too many adherents, from Islamists or self-hating whites to burn-it-all reactionaries or blood-and-soil rioters. Choosing ANY warring extreme only sets the world further ablaze. Our English-speaking nations are not at their best, but weāre in imminent danger of something FAR worse.
Keep calm and carry on then.
Well said.
The heat is building up so much in the UK because of 2TS’s suppresion of information and repression of complaints that it could stoke a backlash that will target all immigrants – legal and illegal, assimilated or unassimilated. That would be highly unjust and very unBritish!
One of the most psychologically iliterate pieces of writing I have read in a long while.
You give Prof Eagleton and his school too much credit for decency.
It is dishonest, not illiterate.
They know full well what they do.
Including giving up on UnHerd.
Yes, it was well written, but trying to push an unsustainable argument.
Demanding British values as a list is an example of reductionism; something you would think that sophisticates like Eagleton would reject. In any event, we observe that many people are trying very hard to get here, but not many (Eagleton included), going the other way.
Indeed we know he rejects it, and in advance. Which is why he then delights to go on in the deconstruction his own confection over the course of a further 1500 words.
Of course Britain, like any ancient nation, is ‘a part of all she has met’ in thought, word and deed down the ages. Addison had a friend who kept Paine and Burke bound in one volume and called it the British Constitution. Noone credible, or honest. could argue, as Prof Eagleton does, that Britain’s cultural complexity renders her a nullity.
A parcel of vain strivings, perhaps, a bunch of sorrel and violets intermixed – but still bound in, as it were, by the triumphant sea of custom, patrimony, language, time, place and shared memory
But we all know this, just as he knows this, I suspect. This is merely how Prof Eagleton has always made his salt, as the Kept Fool of Christminster.
And those that are – going the other way – are doing so mainly because of the many entering, refusing to integrate and assimilate and being allowed to set up their own ghettos, where the prevailing rules are those of the countries they left (supposedly fled)..
Eagleton’s main argument fails.
‘There is no definitive form of Britishness! British people vary in their attitudes and behaviour! So there is no cultural unity! Just let it go, people!’
Well, there are – for example – many varieties of speaking English: RP, Geordie, West Country, Birmingham, Yorkshire, Scouse, not to mention Rab C Nesbitt-style.
Not identical by any means. But all English. All mutally intelligible. So there is a practical, real-world, easy-to-grasp unity, provided you don’t insist on identicality as the (impossible) standard for the meaning of unity.
A well written piece to be sure; but disingenuous and dishonest at its core. It is purely and simply a lengthy expression of ideological dogma with some carefully crafted untruths woven into the fabric of the prose which, I assume, Mr Eagleton hoped to beguile us with.
There is so much to be aggravated by that I will refrain from a lengthy critique and will confine my scribblings to dissent of only one, distasteful statement. Mr Eagleton says: … Solidarity between citizens must be reinvented in the face of an economy in trouble, and one way to do this is to create a scapegoat or bogeyman they can all agree to revile. The name of the bogeyman has changed over time. Yesterday it was the Jew; today it is known as the immigrant. The incoherence of this is mind boggling. Why must solidarity between citizens be ‘reinvented’ when the economy is in trouble? Surely under such economic conditions people have a natural reason to pull together for the common good and the only bogeyman they may rail against is the politicians who (perhaps) created the problem in the first place.
The unpleasant, and I think unreasonable, slur that Mr Eagleton aims at the British people is that we, because, of course, we are all racist bigots, blame immigrants for the the economic hard times we find ourselves living through. This is patently nonsense. In truth many wish to blame Brexit for our problems which is probably over-egging that particular pudding; whilst others, perhaps more accurately, look to the measures taken in response to the pandemic allied to the energy problems precipitated by the Russia-Ukraine war to find a root cause for our difficulties.
It is undeniably true though that many are horrified at the unprecedented numbers of immigrants arriving on our shores and recognise the problems which such an influx must logically cause – pressures on public services; the huge pressure for additional housing, etc. – without having any intention of laying the blame for the problems at the feet of any individual ethnic group.
Perhaps I am an uneducated, naive fool but I don’t recall when the Jews were reviled as ‘the bogeyman’ in this country. Oh wait, yes I do! It was during the recent, regular marches through the centre of our towns and cities by those who sought to demonise Israel and show solidarity and support for that well known proscribed terrorist organisation called Hamas. But, Mr Eagleton, I don’t think anyone could reasonably opine that those who took part in those marches were all, or indeed were mostly, native white British people.
As a final thought I would opine that the ‘bogeymen’ that many, many British people wish to see rooted out of our society are that group of unpleasant people who do their utmost to denigrate us all by portraying us as racists and bigots at the same time as they deny that such a thing as British culture exists whilst, of course, extolling the virtues of all the cultures of the arriving migrants and then, adding insult to injury, these same people insinuate themselves into every level of the education system where they poison the minds of our children by indoctrinating them with the notion that our country’s history is a thing of shame to be first thoroughly denigrated and then completely erased.
Those are the ‘bogeymen’ of today Mr Eagleton and, unless I am very much mistaken, it seems very obvious that you are one of them.
His point was that in time of trouble and hardship many political leaders succumb to the temptation to deflect blame on to minorities, hence Germany’s defeat in WW1 was because of a “Stab in the back” by members of a world wide Jewish conspiracy, Idi Amin’s economic troubles were the work of Asian shop keepers profiteering, the UKs current housing crisis and crumbling public services are because of freeloading immigrants etc etc.
This deserves thousands of thumbs up! Very well said!
what in the name of God is this Imb Ecile on about now? lawful execution after a jury trial and appeal is the same as islamic beheadings?? Half of the housework? WTF??
There is a fundamental flaw in this piece. It is the British way to be fairly tolerant. To believe in freedom of expression.
Anyone who subscribes to a belief that denies freedom of expression – or who believes that anyone not subscribing to a particular religion is a bad person- is not conforming to the British way of life.
So a belief that someone who practices any particular religion is a bad person is also in opposition to the modern British way of life. Correct?
I think youād agree. But throughout the West I do think we see a rising rejection of that belief relative to one particular religion. Fear and hatred of Islam writ large isnāt generated in a vacuum. Their violent and oppressive zealots should not be excused or ātoleratedā. But itās still best to avoid fear and hatred, and not to place millions of peopleāwhatever their colour or absence of colour, whatever their faith or faithlessnessāunder one umbrella of contempt. Again, not that you said otherwise.
While I fully agree and sympathise with your fears, the growing backlash against Islamism is based not merely on the violent conduct of its extremists, but on the fact that Jihad is central to its ideology. All non-believers must be either converted or destroyed!
This does not have to be an insurmountable obstacle, as the western church went through its own very unChristian phases (crusades, Inquisition, witch hunting and inter-sectorial wars), before evolving towards proper Christian (New Testament, not OT) values (which continue to be sorely tested today). Islam needs to evolve also, and quickly, if there is to be any chance of peaceful coexistence.
I can understand your fears too, but they donāt warrant, let alone prove the validity of blanket Islamophobia.
Your second paragraph puts it precisely where I stand: jihad is not central to Islam, in any insurmountable way, any more than believing you must force conversions or kill heathens is central to Christianity. (Though it was quite widely practiced when Christians had been around for about as long as Muslims have now).
I absolutely agree that the Islamic world itself needs to root out this sickness, which indeed bleeds into the very core of the faith as practiced among too many today. With its scriptural justifications of the sort that can be isolated and used by violent Christians, Jews, and Hindus too, as water for even bloody designs can be drawn āfrom tank of holy writā in just about any religion. Itās not our job to fix this for them, or look the other way while they practice things that would never be tolerated from a ātraditionalā American or British person. But we should be adamant about not using the broad brush, if only for the calculating reason that there are many devout Muslims, most of whom are not violent zealots yet. A religious war is an intrinsic horror, but are we quite sure this one will end in our favour, given the amount of worldliness and lukewarm faith in the West? I sure donāt think we want a return to the militant, expansionist Christianity common in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Also, forebearing to tar the sons with the sins of the fathers or others who resemble them, and forebearing to shut down pathways of understanding, forgiveness, and redemption is the right thing to do. Or, in this case, not do. Itās also fits with what I consider to be a very good version of Christian faith and practice.
I donāt think that you and I are coming from a place thatās all that far apart. But extremists and opportunists are trying to capture and employ more of the sensible, broad middle 80 percent or so of the electorate. We shouldnāt join them just because we sympathize with aspects of their platforms.
Article summery: Itās not happening, it is happening, youāre a racist for noticing, and besides you bigots, balkanised societies engaged in perpetual ethnic and racial conflict are great and progressive.
Peak clown desperately clinging onto failed idea that was always a failed idea anyway.
It’s a mystery to me that Eagleton still has a platform here. He hasn’t written a coherent essay, even a self-aware one, in some time.
Which was the last coherent one?
UnHerd wants to reduce its audience?
It’s the posters that add quality.
Well, at least some do! š
This will come as a terrible surprise to the Romans, the Greeks, and many other historical nations which far predate “the end of the 18th century.”
I also would argue that you have the cause and effect backward: It’s not nation-states that give rise to cultural homogeneity, but cultural homogeneity that gives rise to nation-states.
Ludicrous. It smacks of Marxism in both form and content. We’re all citizens of the world, we just don’t know it yet. I guess you would like to “reeducate” us, perhaps. That didn’t work very well in the Soviet Union, all it did was get people sent to gulags. Do you hope for the same fate for the UK?
It would be a desirable long-term future for humanity and probably inevitable if we are to survive as a race. But you can only successfully change society at a certain pace – hence the centuries long evolution of the present British constitutional monarchy. And the world is clearly not ready for globalisation, given the antagonistic positions of western democracy (unfortunately allied to hegemonic ambitions), communist totalitarianism and Jihadist Islamism.
Exactly this! We cannot successfully fast-forward to the stage or version of society weād like to seeāeven if huge majorities agree thatās where we should go, even if thatās where we need to arrive someday if we are to survive as a species. Sudden upheavals and armed uprisings lead to metastasized ill will and lasting, bloody aftermath. They should be an absolute last resort, not an impulse, or strategy. Incrementalism and tempered reform get a bad rap. As someone with a sort of radical and stubborn hope, Iāve quite gradually, grudgingly come to this conclusion.
“British values … exclude beheading people, which is the kind of atrocity some radical Islamists go in for. Yet hanging people was an acceptable British practice until fairly recently, and the two forms of execution probably donāt feel all that different to the victim. In any case, the meaning of values like fair play and the rule of law is fiercely contested.”
Sigh. Today’s exercise in hackneyed false equivalence from Mr. Eagleton.
So many people will be triggered by this article. I offer a safe place!
I hope young minds are not being imbued with this nonsense
Of course they are. That’s how he earns his living – mainly.
Terry, if you have to ask the question “what are British values” you are either not British (we know instinctively what they are) or being deliberately provocative (aka trolling). I suspect the latter.
Terry Eagleton is a silly old sod.
The evidence? This article.
If Britain doesn’t have a unifying culture, does that apply to other countries such as China or Japan etc.?
I donāt think Iāve read such a poorly evidenced and argued commentary in a long time. Massive gaps in reasoning just brushed over. My favourite is the āwhatās wrong with disunity anywayā paragraph where you can practically hear irate readers screaming a thousand very obvious bloody historical examples – but the author just drifts on. Nothing to see here.
Honestly, if I had written this blatantly propagandist twaddle Iād be deeply ashamed in the morning. At least try give your readers a bit of credit for seeing the most obvious of holes and make a small attempt to address them.
Mr. Eagleton disparages authority, as if it were a bad thing. Yet, a person who resorts to violence proves only how little authority he has. While a person who resorts to argument or persuasion proves only that authority is in abeyance. Real authority, true authority, needs neither the sword nor the megaphone, as it speaks for itself.
Erā¦ the time when ‘a whole host of different cultures and ethnicities’ lived cheek-by-jowl had one thing guaranteeing that nirvana: a series of empires with bloody great swords telling them not to pick on each other or else. It wasn’t the Great Age of Sociology.
Disunity instead of unity is like 10 people in a boat all rowing in different directions and expecting to get somewhere.
How can you spend your whole life being some sort of academic Marxist, & then just turn around and proudly support Neoliberal global capitalism in its very decadent end stages?
Is it just pompous middle class tribalism over immigration Terry?
A pointless mass of words
I think Terry has amply demonstrated how easy it is to analyse oneself into the black hole of reductionism.
Trying to essentialise mental constructs and then reductively nonessentialise these mental constructs serves no purpose other than highlighting how the human imagination intertwines with the genetic and epigenetic basis of our everyday lives.
The entire evolutionary point of our imagination is to create mental constructs by which to cohere genetic and epigenetic human differences at some specified level whether at the clan, tribal, national, civilization, global or species level. So of course, the same mentally constructed values will cohere humans at different levels with values often being duplicated especially if they cohere at the civilisational level or even the species level. Hence why most humans in the present age largely agree on the value of human rights for example and so will be duplicated at lower scales.
Thus when we talk of British values, especially within the context of multiculturalism (which is a value), then of course British values will be similarly shared by other countries within the same Western Civilization.
This is a product of (evolutionary) history, not an arbitrary coincidence and the reason why these mentally constructed values are deployed and reproduced is because of their power to cohere. Thus the marketplace of values you refer to is the process of natural selection in service to the power by which different values are able to cohere. This is an organic dynamic process, not one of inertia and stasis.
Hence the current value politics surrounding Asian rape gangs is largely about cohesion and whether the Old Testament values of misogyny, patriarchy, polygamy, paedophilia and racial superiority embedded in Islamic Hadiths serve British cohesion or not.
The Left value system is currently avoiding this much needed discussion whereas the Right value system is not. This avoidance by the Left unfortunately does not give much hope for a global value system which coheres the entire human species since how would the Old Testament values of misogyny, patriarchy, polygamy, paedophilia and racial superiority realistically cohere humans at the global level. Clearly they would not.
The same applies to your optimistic reading of political and economic cohesion at the global level. Global cohesion infers sustainability, resilience and sufficiency but the human species is not globally cohesive at the political and economic levels as evidenced by wars, neocolonialism, forced displacement and extreme poverty. Similarly the human species is not globally cohesive at the ecological level with human overshoot eroding the global ecological basis of human survival.
This brings us back to the national level where there might be some hope of cohesion and the contested field of mentally constructed values in order to achieve that.
There’s an old clip on social media of Michael Caine talking about the British class system. I think he’s from Cockney or something, but Iām not entirely sure. In the clip, he talks about how he became successful, moved to Windsor, and tried to renovate his house. However, the city council or local authorities assumed he would be vulgar because of his Cockney background. The barrier to him was British value system that often not talked about.
He also shared a story about his aunt. She was on a bus and she mentioned meeting “a lady.” This upset Caine, as he told his aunt *she* was the lady, explaining that being a lady isnāt about coming from a certain class but about how one carries themselves. He was challenging the traditional British class values. He was seething in the clip!
So because these class values are so ingrained in British society, immigrants often adopt and mirror these hierarchical structures but in their own ways. This, of course, tends to upset people and creates tension.
That makes sense, Muslim rape gangs are a product of the British class system.
The English Class System!
Don’t include the Welsh or Scots: they are islands unto themselves.
sorry you misunderstood me…this guy, Jimmy Savile and many of the catholic church good doers are a product of the culture!
So Jimmy Saville and the Catholic Church are copying those gangs of paedo Toffs as well as the Muslims.
The sexual attraction of children is abhorrent. There are lots of theories about why it occurs in a given population but none of them involve copying the poshos or any other class for that matter.
The question isnāt why are there only Muslim nonces? Nonces come in all creeds. Itās why are Muslim men mainly of Pakistani origin more likely to be a nonce than any other group. In Rochdale it was 1 in every 73 men.
I think the factors around cultural difference are worth exploring. This is a direct quote from Khadija Khan today (she also talked about general attitudes to women).
āI want to address the mindset. Itās ingrained. Not only men but women are also brainwashed. Western women are presented as an example of disobedient women, as vulgar women with no moral compass,ā
āThey tell us we should not be following them, dressing like them, because if we do it we become one of them. Western women are labelled as āimmoralā and āfair gameā.ā
āDenying that there is a mindset that has emboldened these criminals in committing these acts against women and girls is a travesty. For them, it was justifiable, because of the brainwashing mindset that persists.ā
I think facing the world as it is and exploring this may be more fruitful than spouting some class war nonsense.
Excellent article and spot on analysis. Incidentally as recently as the 2019 I was canvassing a local village when a middle aged white British woman told me she could say which way she would bee voting as her husband wasn’t in!
Sarcasm?
āWe agree to disagree, and to do so peacefully, but not necessarily on much elseā.
If only this version of minimal consensus were the general practice on either side of the Atlantic! It is not agreed upon by many throughout the Anglosphere, nor across our amplified domestic divides. āLive and let liveā sounds a bit old-fashioned or namby-pamby to many ears. We are at one anotherās throats in a figurative sense, and here in the US I estimate that the planned, mass murders that spill into our gathering places represent a tiny fraction of the rage and distrust we feel toward one another, across multiple points of division. We havenāt succumbed to outright armed conflict yet. How long can that hold at this level of mutual antagonism? Mr. Eagleton says solidarity and unity emerge from free individuals āby persuading each of them to internalise the law, so that they exercise their freedom within the framework of the common goodā.
But the letter of the law has no life without the spirit. Nor is charity, forgiveness, or sacrifice as good when done grudgingly, or for ulterior gain. Are we too sophisticated to āhave mercy on the orphan, stranger, and oppressedā and ālove our neighbors as ourselvesā?
Those of us who oppose the levels and kinds of immigration weāve seen in our more affluent countries in recent decadesāfor whatever reason, with however much vehemenceāshould try to remove the anger, the bitterness from our hearts. Iām not exempting myself here. Anger can energise, but itās quite powerless to illuminate, and makes it hard to see ourselves reflected too.
While I donāt anticipate much agreement, I think Eagleton has written a fittingly serious piece here. He puts aside quips and is less one-sidedly political than usual. Thanks.
This is the key phrase I take from that: “the letter of the law has no life without the spirit”.
Unfortunately, the growing plactise of lawfare (to achieve political and social ends) often uses the letter in direct contradiction to the spirit.
Way to isolate a biblical reference in defense of Trump*. But true enough, when the concept is placed in context. The newly packed Supreme Court has given a volatile president something like a stay out of jail forever card, with few exceptions. And weāll see how his promised āultimate revengeā will manifest in the incoming administration.
i absolutely acknowledge that there was overreach and miscalculation in many of the cases against Trump. The one that should have been prosecuted before the election seasonāwhatever the verdictāhad its 4-year anniversary yesterday. The other of notable merit was in Georgia.
The combination of near immunity and pardon-power could enable a whole series of unchecked commanders-in-chief.
*IF thatās what you are doing. 1) I know you are thoughtful and fair minded and I shouldnāt assume my takeaway from your comment is correct. 2) Even if thatās exactly what you mean Iāll still credit you with intelligence and good-faith argument (sorry if that sounds patronising).
It is now utterly impossible to have any cultural unity with the UK
and that’s exactly why Scotland
Shall become Independent
The process is well underway
And the Genie out of the Bottle
Never to be put back in
All this is as certain that the Sun shall rise again come the Morn
william Mcgonagall?
“British values include fair play and a respect for the rule of law….., but exclude… beheading.. atrocit(ies) some radical Islamists go in for”! What?
How many innocent Islamic civilians has GB beheaded in Gaza using its weapons and its disgusting proxy genociders?
Count Christian victims of Islamic massacres, then count Muslim victims of Christian massacres – I think you’ll find the latter is a very, very large multiple of the former.. You smug, self deluded, white (so-called) Christian supremacist propagandists make me sick!
Heās baaack! Hi, Mr OāMahony. You wouldnāt want to start that count anywhere in the last several decades though, right?
There are white pseudo-Christian supremacists all over this website but do you think Eagleton is one of them?
Zero. Precisely zero.
It is worrying that some Irish still identify so closely with terrorism. Makes me worry about the future of such a lovely country.