Oikophobia - British-style.

There is something about the Left that hates their neighbors as they are.  They hate the middle class and above, and they profess a love for the poor as an abstraction, but they hate the poor as a reality.

It's true in America and, apparently, it is true in England, as well:

//First, Scotland. The latest polls show that the United Kingdom is close to breaking up. This is a remarkable state of affairs when you consider that, a year ago, polls were two to one against partition. How has this occurred? Because we have allowed the British Labour party to lead the No debate.

This was a disastrous decision, given that, as Orwell noted, Labourites and Lefties revile and deride so many of the things perceived as quintessentially British. Take your pick from the monarchy, the flag, the Army, the history of rampant conquest, the biggest empire in the world, the supremacy of the English language, anyone who lives in the countryside, the national anthem, the City of London, the Royal Navy, a nuclear deterrent, the lion and the unicorn, duffing up the French, eating loads of beef – all this, for Lefties, is a source of shame.

The result, north of the Border, is plain to see. Whenever the passionate and patriotic SNP asks the No campaign for a positive vision of the UK (instead of dry economic facts, and negative fear-mongering) all we hear is silence, or maybe a quiet murmur about “the NHS”. Yes, the NHS. For many Lefties, the NHS – an average European health system with several notable flaws – is the only good thing about Britain. It’s like saying we should keep the United Kingdom because of PAYE. Thus we tiptoe towards the dissolution of the nation.

There is a deep irony here. If Scotland secedes it will hurt the Labour Party more than anyone, electorally. But such is the subconscious hatred of Britain and Britishness in Lefty hearts, I believe many of them think that’s a price worth paying: just to kick the “Tory Unionists” in the nuts, just to deliver the final death-blow to British “delusions of grandeur”.

It is a tragic state of affairs. And yet there is worse. Rotherham.

We don’t need to rehearse the facts. We’ve all read them, and reeled away in horror. The interesting question is how and why would any country allow the racialised gang-rape of its own daughters?

Why? Because too many in that country, especially on the Left, most especially in the Labour Party, despise their own ordinary people: the white working classes.

Take this comment by Jack Straw, Labour MP for Blackburn, and Home Secretary from 1997-2001, when the Rotherham atrocities were beginning. “The English are potentially very aggressive, very violent.” It is almost unimaginable that any senior politician would say this of his own people in America, Russia or France. Yet here it comes straight out of the mouth of a very senior politician indeed – along with many other expressions of Guardianista sneering: at the white working classes with their “chav culture”, “BNP values”, “Gillian Duffy bigotry” and so forth.

What kind of message does Straw’s statement send to everyone else? It says that the English are dislikeable, that they are to be feared, and contained, to be treated with contempt. It says that the ordinary English are a nasty race who need to be diluted by mass immigration; it says, in particular, that poor white English people are especially worthless.

And thus, Rotherham.//

Not too far off the American experience, but far more extreme at present.

Sour Grapes from the Losers.

A Brit responds to the Obama administration's opposition to democracy in Britain.

From Autonomous Mind:

The President of the United States is considered by many to be the leader of the free world, and the United States itself considered to be a beacon of democracy. So it is profoundly disappointing to see the United States administration endorsing and encouraging something that is fundamentally undemocratic. I would like to ask you the following questions.

• Would it be acceptable to you and your fellow United States citizens that over 70% of the laws and regulations they were forced to comply with across all 50 states were created by a supranational government comprising layers of complex political and judicial structures, mostly unelected and unaccountable, and made up of delegates from not only the US, but Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, El Salvador, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela and Peru?

• Would it be acceptable to you, your fellow United States citizens and members of the Senate and House of Representatives that they were routinely handed diktats from the various bodies that make up the supranational government and were bound by law to implement the directives or be fined or dragged into a supranational court operating an alien form of judicial code and process? Further, that Congress was denied the ability to draft, and the President sign into law, other legislation of national interest whenever the supranational decided it was not appropriate?

• Would it be acceptable to you, your fellow United States citizens and the Justices of the Supreme Court that decisions made by the bench, the highest court in your land, could be appealed to a supranational court overseas with the hearing presided over by foreign judges and if overruled the Supreme Court would have to accept that as a binding ruling?

If these scenarios do not sound very democratic or judicious to you and your fellow Americans it is because they are not. Intentionally and by design. But this is the reality of the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union and its associated bodies and institutions. UK membership of the EU has entailed a substantial loss of power from our democratically elected Parliament as it has been quietly and steadily transferred to unelected and unaccountable bodies abroad – all done without the people of the UK being asked to give their consent for it to happen.

While it may be in the geopolitical interest of the Government of the United States for the United Kingdom to remain a member of the European Union, opinion polls show this anti-democratic situation is opposed by a majority of British citizens. Membership of the EU dilutes the voice of the United Kingdom. Seats on various world bodies held by the UK have been given up so the EU can supposedly represent the competing and disparate interests of 27 countries in a wholly unsatisfactory fudge that frequently fails to serve British interests.

I am sure you will recognise the obvious contradiction in the position of the United States, on one hand calling for Syria’s regime to heed the wishes of the Syrian people, while on the other calling for the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to maintain membership of the EU, despite the wishes of the British people. I am sure you will also recognise the obvious contradiction of the United States urging countries around the world to embrace democracy, while urging the United Kingdom to maintain its place in political and judicial structures that replace representative democracy with control by unelected and unaccountable aliens who are drawn from a pool of self-selecting career politicians and civil servants.

Would such a situation be an acceptable settlement in the United States? I think we both know the answer to that is categorically ‘no’.

Britain has become a Catholic country.

According to the Telegraph:

Roman Catholics have overtaken Anglicans as the country's dominant religious group. More people attend Mass every Sunday than worship with the Church of England, figures seen by The Sunday Telegraph show.

This means that the established Church has lost its place as the nation's most popular Christian denomination after more than four centuries of unrivalled influence following the Reformation.

Last night, leading figures gave warning that the Church of England could become a minority faith and that the findings should act as a wake-up call.

The statistics show that attendance at Anglican Sunday services has dropped by 20 per cent since 2000. A survey of 37,000 churches, to be published in the new year, shows the number of people going to Sunday Mass in England last year averaged 861,000, compared with 852,000 Anglicans ­worshipping.

The rise of Catholicism has been bolstered by an influx of immigrants from eastern Europe and Africa, who have packed the pews of Catholic parishes that had previously been dwindling.

It is part of the changing face of churchgoing across Britain in the 21st century which has also seen a boom in the growth of Pentecostal churches, which have surpassed the Methodist Church as the country's third largest Christian denomination.

For the English Anglican church, English gay marriage law means that it will stop performing marriages for the state.

From the Guardian:

The threat of an unprecedented clash between church and state over the issue of gay marriage has opened up after the Church of England delivered an uncompromising warning to the government against pressing ahead with controversial proposals.

Introducing same-sex marriage could lead to the church being forced out of its role of conducting weddings on behalf of the state, the church claimed in a potentially explosive submission in response to the government's consultation on gay marriage, which closes on Thursday.

The submission's warning of a potential clash between canon law – that marriage is between a man and a woman – and parliament is likely to put pressure on the prime minister, David Cameron, who has spoken out in support of gay marriage and already come under fire from supporters of the proposals for allowing a free vote amongst Tory MPs.

In a 13-page submission, the church says it cannot support the proposal to enable all couples, regardless of their gender, to have a civil marriage ceremony.

"Such a move would alter the intrinsic nature of marriage as the union of a man and a woman, as enshrined in human institutions throughout history," it says.

"Marriage benefits society in many ways, not only by promoting mutuality and fidelity, but also by acknowledging an underlying biological complementarity which, for many, includes the possibility of procreation."

70% of Brits oppose gay marriage.

This is interesting, and odd in light of the fact that I recently listened to a British debate on gay marriage via Unbelievable, where the gay marriage proponent was claiming that polling showed that a majority of Brits favored gay marriage.

According to this Telegraph article:

In the first test of opinion carried out since the launch of a high-profile campaign against the proposed change, 70 per cent of respondents agreed with the proposition that marriage should remain a “life-long exclusive commitment between a man and a woman”.

Only 22 per cent disagreed while nine per cent remained unsure, according to the ComRes survey carried out for the religious campaign group Catholic Voices.

But the poll also found strong support for civil partnerships for same-sex couples with six out of 10 people showing their approval.

While 68 per cent of respondents agreed with the idea that marriage is important to society and should be promoted by the state, support was much stronger among married people, at 83 per cent, compared with 55 per cent of single people.

Dr Austen Ivereigh, coordinator of Catholic Voices, said: “Our poll shows that the Government has no mandate to alter an institution which lies at the foundation of our society.

What it looks like is that the British gay marriage proponents are doing the same thing that their American counterparts are doing, i.e., dishonestly counting pro-civil union people as being pro-gay marriage, when in fact they are anti-gay marriage.

Evidence that this poll is accurate may be found in the further polling showing that British Members of Parliament acknowledge that their constituents are anti-gay marriage:

Tolerance - the moment between breathing out one orthodoxy and breathing in another.

How does gay marriage affect your marriage?

Well, quite a bit if the government is going to tell you that your obstinate refusal to change your position from that which has been the normal human position forever to that which became "normative" last Tuesday by fiat is "not acceptable."

Opposition to Gay Marriage is "not acceptable" according to British minister for
"justice and policing":

Nick Herbert, the justice and policing minister, joined the growing political row within the Conservative Party about giving homosexual couples equal rights to marry.

David Cameron has said he wants to change the law to allow same-sex marriage, but has faced a backlash from members of his own party, including some Cabinet ministers.

Mr Herbert, who is homosexual and in a civil partnership, said that he and others of the same sexuality are effectively being treated as second-class citizens.

Opponents of same-sex marriage, he suggested, are making intemperate and unreasonable arguments.

“I am getting rather fed up with people metaphorically jabbing a finger into my chest and saying I should put up with a civil partnership,” he told the London Evening Standard.

“How would they like it if I jabbed a finger into their chests and said they should put up with a civil partnership instead of their marriage?”

Mr Herbert added: “In my view it’s not acceptable to say to a group in society, ‘You should put up with something that is a second order institution to something that everybody else is entitled to, because we say so’. I think this is about nothing more or less than a fundamental issue of equality.”

Jeepers, if you hold to a position that was the position for Western Civilization - and all of humanity - until last Tuesday and suddenly you are an "enemy of the state."

It makes you realize that the stakes are much, much higher in the gay marriage dispute than simply whether Bob and Tom get a piece of paper that says they are "married."

Tolerance is the moment between breathing out one orthodoxy and breathing in another.