The Abolition of Britain
The Abolition of Britain: From Winston Churchill to Theresa May, by Conservative British journalist Peter Hitchens, explores the moral and cultural changes that have led to the United Kingdom's conditions today, where freedom of speech is threatened, national sovereignty traded for membership in the European Union, and Islamic immigration and subsequent terrorism have become a normal part of life in the nation. Hitchens brings not only the contemporary journalist's understanding of the current socio-political scene, but also demonstrates a clear historical perspective of the gradual decline of British society, culture and politics since the 1960s. As Hitchens warned prophetically, "A great civilization, whose greatest possession is liberty, is on the edge of extinction and we have very little time to save it." While his Leftist detractors scoffed at that warning when originally penned in 1997, today his warning is a very harsh reality. For example, Catholic journalist Caroline Farrow was accused of "misgendering" a transgendered person, and the police came knocking on her door to investigate her for hate crimes. (Hear her story here.) I also have a personal experience of this, albeit second hand, through a friend in England, who denied that transgendered "women" are really women on Twitter, receiving a phone call from the local police questioning him on why he would post something that is potentially a "hate crime".
Conservative author, Peter Hitchens |
Hitchens notes that things took a decisive turn in 1997, when the General Election brought the Labour Party and Tony Blair to power. Hitchens details how the Leftist socio-political worldview took off like never before. He explores how the history of Britain was re-written, education became a method of socio-political programming, television began promoting the Leftist socio-political agenda (Anyone familiar with the BBC- its programs, and even its hiring practices- can see clear evidence of this.), the number of unwed mothers increased, sexual freedom promoted, homosexuality celebrated, language quickly became debased, the Anglican Communion moved decidedly to the Left, and families were destroyed while divorce rates rose. He refers to the endgame as the "Chainsaw Massacre", in that the Left had cut down every tree of culture that made up traditional British society.
I want to provide a few quotes to demonstrate just how desperate the situation is for Britain, according to Hitchens.
Of the English countryside, he writes that it,"has largely disappeared, digested by urban sprawl, leveled by new roads... English rural, urban and suburban life has been strangely denatured. People live in places, but are not of them. Communal activities... have died away. Front gardens... are increasingly concreted over and turned into car parks".
On television, he states,"In this medium, a conservative message will always look foolish"
On the Leftist attitudes of Millennials: "This does not record a mere change in political loyalty, which is not specially important in itself. It shows that, for the first time this century, the young are not inheriting prejudices, opinions, values, morals and habits from their parents. The continuity that once ensured that most people followed their parents in such things, has been broken. The post revolutionary generation, whose families have often disintegrated and are usually weak, whose schools do not uphold authority or tradition, whose religious experience and understanding often do not exist, has also grown up with several immensely strong outside influences, all of them radical enemies of existing culture. The same generation has had little chance to develop its own critical, personal imagination through reading, and so has been a blank page on which the revolutionaries have been able to scrawl their own slogans".
I don't want to give too much away, but this is a book that has just as much to say to Americans as it does the British, as we are experiencing the very same issues from the very same socio-political forces at work in the U.K. and throughout Western Europe. I'd encourage Apologists interested in Cultural Apologetics specifically to read this book.
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