In a Christmas nutshell, Julie Birchill shows us just who is on the other side of the culture wars, and why we must fight against them:
I’ve always found the idea that Irish nationalism is somehow radical really cretinous. With its reverence for the supremely reactionary Catholic Church and its historical opposition to divorce, abortion, homosexuality, feminism and everything else that makes life worth living, it’s about as radical as Islam.
So there we have it, ladies and gentlemen: liberal individualism pared down to its very bones.
Notice what’s missing?
No, not sanity, silly; this is liberalBritain
No, not sanity, silly; this is liberal
What’s missing is any kind of a future for the human race. I mean, for a creed that essentially argues that the feelings and needs (however trivial or illusory) of any individual at any one time trumps the rest of the Universe, including the feelings and needs (however trivial or illusory) of any and all other individuals, you’d like to think that people would:
A) be allowed to exist,
and B) live in a world where folk can stick together long enough and productively enough to pay the taxes needed to support every ‘student’ who wants a personally costless skip through a limited viewpoint of the end-products of a culture built upon twelve thousand years of agriculture and settled existence.
Just look at those Glittering Prizes!
Even of the best of them - the essentially harmless one - you’ve got to wonder how Mz Birchill imagines, in a world run along tastefully furnished lines to the music of Broadway in its heyday (plus Stephen Sondheim’s proto-Emo warblings), who’s going to be alive when she is in her raddled old age. Who’s going to run those darling little restaurants where they do Death By Prosciutto at a very reasonable price when her sugar rush is replaced by an adrenaline crash and she’s growing a moustache, but not in a nice way?
Of course, divorce, abortion, homosexuality, feminism are just the aristocratic fruits of the liberal triumph. Consequences are for the rest of us: presumably there will be Morlocks from the bastardy-and-mother-abandonment-come-as-standard housing estates plus some licenced craftsmen and local shops (not multiples or supermarkets) to service her every ageing whim and to mop up all those non-lipstick stains of her dotage.
Of course, divorce, abortion, homosexuality, feminism are just the aristocratic fruits of the liberal triumph. Consequences are for the rest of us: presumably there will be Morlocks from the bastardy-and-mother-abandonment-come-as-standard housing estates plus some licenced craftsmen and local shops (not multiples or supermarkets) to service her every ageing whim and to mop up all those non-lipstick stains of her dotage.
And at least we can be sure that Stephen Fry will be on the telly, and making us love it.
Hmm.
Some more of the culture war to be fought, I think. Maybe I’ll do some myself.
In the meantime, a very merry Christmas to any and all of you out there, and a happy and conservative New Year.
Hat tip to A Tangled Web
Picture from here.
3 comments:
Welcome back! And a very Merry Christmas to you and yours... ;)
The modern IRA are clearly on the Marxist Left. The Marxist left has a long and clear history of entry-ism - of capturing movements that hold different objectives to advance socialism. Marxists regard Nationalism as sometimes positive and sometimes negative.
The confusion here is entirely Julie Burchill's. She imagines that the IRA were Irish Nationalists & Catholics first rather than incidentally.
That's rather surprising for someone who was a Stalinist.
Welcome back from me too.
Note the sleight of hand in Burchill's article: isn't there some middle ground between smoking crack at an orgy and Cardinal O'Letterbomb claiming God wants to cleanse the sacred soil of Ireland of alien transplants? What happened to all that leftist nuance?
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