PETER HITCHENS: Only strong borders and pride in our civilisation can save us now
January 11, 2016 in News by RBN Staff
By PETER HITCHENS FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
Every educated and intelligent person glories in the freedom of women in Western societies to exercise their talents to the full, and their freedom to walk safely in the streets of our great cities.
So what are the enlightened minds of the Left to do when news comes of revolting assaults on women in front of Cologne Cathedral, one of the jewels of European Christian culture in one of Germany’s proudest cities? And how are they to react when growing evidence suggests that at least some of the culprits are newly arrived migrants from the Muslim world?
With mumbled embarrassment and nasty jibes against those who have long opposed uncontrolled mass migration, that’s how.
As an illustration, I had a radio clash with the Guardian writer Gaby Hinsliff on Friday after she admitted that ‘liberals like me are reluctant to talk about it’. While rightly chiding her own side, she couldn’t resist dismissing opponents of mass migration as dinosaurs and their views as ‘frothing rage’. Here is the news, Ms Hinsliff. Those who for many years warned against non-selective mass immigration (and were dismissed as bigoted dinosaurs by people like her) were concerned about just this sort of problem.
If migrants from other cultures arrive too fast and in numbers too great for society to absorb and integrate them, they begin to impose those cultures on the host country. Germany is witnessing this now, and so are we.
The louder our governments shout about their dedication to fighting Islamist extremism, the readier they are to Islamise our own society. The sheer size of the Muslim population compels them to do so.
That is why exams in England are to be moved to accommodate Muslim pupils taking part in the Ramadan fast. And it is why the Mayor of Cologne, Henriette Reker, reacted to the first reports of women being molested in her city by advising them: ‘It is always possible to keep a certain distance that is longer than an arm’s length.’
Of course she has now been mocked so much that she has backtracked. But the point is that it was her first instinct, and what she really felt.
Radical multicultural types will in the end destroy the things they claim to like, because they don’t understand that liberty and reasonable equality are features of stable, free, conservative societies based on Christian ideas, which guard their borders and are proud of their civilisation.
The people who really want to defend our enlightened society, in the end, are dinosaurs like me.
Where’s the fury about these beheadings?
I have endured endless pious lectures about the wickedness of Vladimir Putin and Syria’s President Assad from supporters of the Government’s wild and ignorant foreign policy.
So how startling it was to see the same people mute themselves when Saudi Arabia, now seemingly Britain’s closest ally, beheaded 47 people on one day.
Some of these victims were no doubt real criminals, though the expression ‘Saudi justice system’ is a grim and bloodstained joke, so we cannot be sure of the guilt of the condemned. But some were political dissenters.
Yet a government that squawks mightily over every Islamic State death video was strangely measured over these very similar events, which incidentally menace the peace of the Middle East.
I took a careful look at Government statements. They all had the same odd, weak theme. We condemn the death penalty, whoever carries it out.
David Cameron said: ‘We condemn and do not support the death penalty in any circumstances and that includes Saudi Arabia.’
The Foreign Office said: ‘The UK opposes the death penalty in all circumstances and in every country.’
So, as far as Mr Cameron and the Foreign Office are concerned, the beheading of a political opponent after a jury-less, unfair trial in a country with no free press is just the same as the execution in Texas of a bloody murderer convicted after due process by an independent jury of free men and women under the scrutiny of a free press. And we condemn them both equally. And that’s all we’re going to say. Now, would you like to buy some aeroplanes?
Well, they don’t speak for me. I’d much rather hang convicted heinous killers than bomb foreign countries (there’s less chance of killing innocent people).
I have used the word ‘feeble’ so many times to describe this Government that the poor thing is quite exhausted and I have had to send it on holiday.
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