May 30, 2008

The Few, the Brave, the Other

Modern Western culture, dominated as it is by status striving among whites to score points off each other by most fervently embracing "The Other," has largely become dependent upon a tiny handful of Others to say the things that need to be said.

From the Daily Mail:

Bishop says collapse of Christianity is wrecking British society - and Islam is filling the void

By Sean Poulter and Niall Firth

The collapse of Christianity has wrecked British society, a leading Church of England bishop declared yesterday.

It has destroyed family life and left the country defenceless against the rise of radical Islam in a moral and spiritual vacuum.

In a lacerating attack on liberal values, the Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, said the country was mired in a doctrine of 'endless self-indulgence' that had brought an explosion in public violence and binge-drinking.

In a blow to Gordon Brown, he mocked the 'scramblings and scratchings' of politicians who try to cast new British values such as respect and tolerance.

The Pakistani-born bishop dated the downfall of Christianity from the 'social and sexual revolution' of the 1960s.

He said Church leaders had capitulated to Marxist revolutionary thinking and quoted an academic who blames the loss of 'faith and piety among women' for the steep decline in Christian worship.

Dr Nazir-Ali said the ' newfangled and insecurely founded' doctrine of multiculturalism has left immigrant communities 'segregated, living parallel lives'.

Christian values of human dignity, equality and freedom could be lost as the way is left open for the advance of brands of Islam that do not respect Western values.

The Bishopric of Rochester is one of the ten most powerful positions in the Church of England.

Dr Nazir-Ali's attack on the decline of Christianity appears to put him in the opposite corner to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and many of his fellow bishops.

But he holds some views in common with the Church's other widely-heard and popular prelate, Ugandan-born Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York.

Over the past six months, Dr Nazir-Ali has made a number of criticisms of Islam and its influence.

Among them have been charges about the spread of no-go areas for non-Muslims and worries over the impact of new mosques.

Last weekend he was one of just three bishops who backed a move in the Church's parliament, the General Synod, to encourage the conversion of Muslims to Christianity.

His latest attack once again criticises Dr Williams's backing for sharia law, saying that 'recognising its jurisdiction in public law is fraught with difficulties, precisely as it arises from a different set of assumptions than the tradition of law here'.

Dr Nazir-Ali detailed his arguments in an article in the newly-launched political magazine Standpoint.

The bishop, himself an immigrant from Pakistan in the mid-1980s, admitted that he might be thought the least qualified person to discuss British identity. But he quoted Kipling: 'What should they know of England who only England know?'

The bishop said 'something momentous' had happened in the 1960s. He quoted historians who point to a cultural revolution in which women ceased to uphold or pass on the Christian faith and to the role of Marxist revolutionaries.

Dr Nazir-Ali pointed with approval to a finding that 'instead of resisting this phenomenon, liberal theologians and church leaders all but capitulated.

He said: 'It has created the moral and spiritual vacuum in which we now find ourselves.' In the place of Christianity there was nothing 'except perhaps endless self-indulgence'.

The bishop said the consequences were 'the destruction of the family because of the alleged parity of different forms of life together, the loss of a father figure, especially for boys, because the role of fathers is deemed otiose, the abuse of substances (including alcohol), the loss of respect for the person leading to horrendous and mindless attacks, the increasing communications gap between generations and social classes - the list is very long.'

Another result, he said, was that immigrants had been welcomed, not on the basis of Britain's Christian heritage, to which they would be welcome to contribute, but by the 'newfangled and insecurely-founded doctrine of multiculturalism'.

Back in 2005, I wrote a VDARE column about why the white working class in the U.S. has lower crime rates than their distant cousins in the white working class in Britain. Stronger Christianity in America was the first explanation.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

27 comments:

  1. If anyone's interested, there's a lengthy collection of articles about Nazir-Ali over at Spengler's site:

    Meet the Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop, Rochester

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  2. Back in 2005, I wrote a VDARE column about why the white working class in the U.S. has lower crime rates than their distant cousins in the white working class in Britain. Stronger Christianity in America was the first explanation.

    Probably a good second explanation - competing for the first - is that the white working class here has lots more elbow room if it wants it. It requires living in a more backwoods area, but if you want to live far enough away from high society even a mechanic can afford an acre or two, especially in the South.

    White blue collars are free to own pickup trucks, boats, ATVs, a little bit of land, and can go hunting. The British working class is getting squeezed like sardines - it's either watch TV or engage in violence.

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  3. He's a hero, but it's tragic that there are so few like him, and that most of those few are non-native, as you say. The worst thing is knowing that if Nazir-Ali is martyred for his Christian faith, the pseudo-Christian likes of Rowan Williams will be defending his murderers and calling for more 'understanding' and 'tolerance'.

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  4. Back in 2005, I wrote a VDARE column about why the white working class in the U.S. has lower crime rates than their distant cousins in the white working class in Britain. Stronger Christianity in America was the first explanation.

    Included in "British white working class" are a violent group called gypsies. They're not good at infiltrating politics and silencing criticism, so their misbehaviour gets reported prominently sometimes:

    Levi Bellfield was brought up with two sisters, a brother and a number of step-siblings in a shabby terrace house on a West London council estate. All the children were told they should be proud of being Romanies and Bellfield would boast of his "pure" gypsy blood, claiming it made him superior to other races.

    Bellfield: The killer with a hatred of blondes who boasted 'I'm above the law'

    If you look at the history of crime in England, violent and otherwise, it's been dominated by non=English groups for a long time. Gang rape, for example, is one of those jobs that the natives just won't do:

    The savage path from Knoxville to Tottenham Hale

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  5. Isn't that a picture of Peter Cook in The Princess Bride?

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  6. I think William's comment has some truth to it.

    Maybe the English also have a wider standard deviation in IQ than other groups of whites?

    Free trade and high levels of immigration may be making such a larger and larger part of England's native population unemployable.

    The problem with religion as an explanation is that it ignores the fact that whites in the northern US are less religious and less crime prone than in the southern US, and that other parts of Europe are even less religious than England, such as Sweden and France.

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  7. The problem with religion as an explanation is that it ignores the fact that whites in the northern US are less religious and less crime prone than in the southern US, and that other parts of Europe are even less religious than England, such as Sweden and France.
    Naah, it makes sense. Religion makes up for the 'born fighting' culture of the South. If the whole country really were made up of mild-mannered Kucinich types you could run it like Sweden and things would be OK. But we're too, ah, diverse for that.

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  8. "The problem with religion as an explanation is that it ignores the fact that whites in the northern US are less religious and less crime prone than in the southern US, and that other parts of Europe are even less religious than England, such as Sweden and France."

    Steve was comparing two modern white populations of similar I.Q. and trying to figure out why one is so different from the other. Comparing Anglo-Saxon and European populations with Southeastern whites is an apples and oranges comparison; Steve did a very good job with his group selection. My idea of good populations for comparing Europe and New England would probably be Utah, Midwestern states like the Dakotas, etc.

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  9. "The British working class is getting squeezed like sardines"

    And in fact so is much of the middle class in Britain as well. They are much more wary of complaint about it though, lest they find themselves drifting into dangerous Anti-Stuff White People Like thinking.

    I was vaguely muttering about crime to nice middle class lady, a fellow parent from school, recently, she really is one of the nicest, brightest people Ive ever met, anyone who met her would think so, no question! And I was hit with a blinding flash as we spoke, her family would always move away from crime and 'vibrancy' and never, never confront it, never acknowledge the racial or political realities.

    It was a depressing moment, one wrong word from me (Ive nearly slipped up with her before on the subject of vibrancy) and I suspect I would be cast into social oblivion, nothing explicit of course, but the PC party line must be preserved at all costs.

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  10. The problem with religion as an explanation is that it ignores the fact that whites in the northern US are less religious and less crime prone than in the southern US...

    The religious explanation does not ignore that fact. It's offered as a possible mitigating influence on the potential criminal behavior of southern whites.

    I imagine Yankees have a higher average IQ and are less prone to violence (or, a southern man might suggest, less honorable) than your average southerner of Scots-Irish descent who was "born to fight."

    Working class southern whites are much more likely to join the miliary than than their compatriots in the north. Perhaps that is the influence of their religious faith channeling the southerner's propensity for violence into a non-criminal outlet. I believe it's undeniable that the prevalence of evangelical Christianity amongst the US military's NCO corps is perhaps the biggest factor in restoring the discipline lost during the Vietnam era.

    Conclusion: A little ol' time religion wouldn't harm the British white work class one bit.

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  11. Travis that's a bunch of bunk.

    1. New England participation in the Military was relatively high, until fairly late in the game, during the 1950's. New England was well represented in the Mexican American War, Civil War, Spanish American War, WWI, WWII, and Korea.

    In fact, much of the officer class in the Union Army in the Civil War came from the elites of New England. Such as Joshua Chamberlain of Little Roundtop fame.

    2. There is likely no significant difference in IQ between the average New Englander and Southerner. Both groups having widely varying populations, from Boston Brahmins and Mayflower descendants to guys like Emeril Lagasse, of immigrant Portugese descent. Or old line Tidewater aristos to Old Hickory type small holders and the like. But apples to apples, comparing middle/working class whites in both areas, I'd bet there is no real difference in IQ.

    The only real difference was much higher amounts of slaves in the South, and much later Indian Wars (largely abetted by the Spanish) in the South -- the New Englanders had the threat of Indian attacks ended when the French were forced out of Canada by the Seven Years War. Frontier violence lasted longer, along with racial tensions, than in the North, creating a different culture.

    Indiscipline in Vietnam was caused by draftees, often middle class New Englanders and other Northerners, not wanting to be in the Military. It's an all volunteer army, so that explains the discipline. It's self selecting -- people join the military because they want to. They want a sense of mission, purpose, and yes discipline.

    Rather than Christianity, Theodore Dalrymple offers another explanation from the decline of the UK's working class in the 1950's when unlocked doors were common and crime was unheard of, even in terrible, rationing-derived poverty, and today. Dalrymple suggests that the common code, the morality, the belief in simple right and wrong, have been erased in the 1960's by a rebellion of the rich youth against the strictures of the older morality, and this along with a rampant consumerist culture has debased Britain's white working class into thuggery.

    I would go a step further, that women unconstrained by morality and economic necessity, chose the most hyper-macho Big Men available, and so helped create a society where only the most violent and brutal have women. Dalrymple goes into telling detail on how even his middle class nurses choose violent, thuggish men who abuse them.

    I am sure this view is not popular. But women seem hard-wired to choose the most violent thugs unless social structures intervene, the way men choose T/A over other attributes. When women choose those attributes, sexual selection alone guarantees that within a generation or two, that's exactly what a society will get. Britain's illegitimacy rate is 50%.

    So, while the decline of Christianity may be related (largely if the Rev. Nazir-Ali is correct, because women don't like restrictions on their sexual choices), it is probably not the entire explanation, and may in turn be related to women's position improving to the point where any choice carries very few immediate penalties.

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  12. steve, your link to the daily mail article links to the vdare article.

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  13. Dr Nazir-Ali is not only an infidel, he is a traitor to his people.

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  14. "I imagine Yankees have a higher average IQ"

    Testing99 is right. The difference in white median IQs by state in the US is at most 4 points, from around 100 at the low end in the rural South to around 104 in Minnesota, normed at median US = 100. In UK-normed IQ that's 98 to 102, which is the same narrow distribution you find across the northern European countries (and Italy).

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  15. Ahmed, you pinhead, you just couldn't help it, right? Making a total ass of yourself by calling the guy names, that is?

    Did it feel good to sputter the words "infidel" and "traitor"? Did you have an orgasm while you were saying them? I can picture your whole reptilian brain getting involved at full activation levels.

    You also expect the rest of us to admire your braveness, to respect you for "standing up for your identity," right? I'm pretty sure you do -- even though the rest of us feel only pure disgust looking at your pathetic one-liner.

    You know the difference between a noble animal and a savage, good-for-nothing one, Ahmed the Muzzy clown? The really crappy ones are like you: you give them an AK-47, and they'll shoot you just for a nuisance like crossing them in traffic. You give them a cannon, they'll shoot a fly for annoying them. They have no other states: one OFF (while they are sleeping or there's no stimuli around), and one ON (stimuli; switch to shooting state).

    That's because they are primitive and can't afford any better. Accepting the views of a different man criticizing them is too expensive for them. Their survival capability is very low, so they have to kill anyone who is "NOT ONE OF US," who is "AGAINST US."

    The noble ones, on the other hand, are not even disturbed by people calling them names (like you childishly do here) right at their face. They are strong. They're not frightened by MICE like you.

    I bet if you had this man captive, you'd torture him or cut his head off. Both of which would show how brave you are, right? Killing a man with his hands tied behind him like chicken? Right?

    Right, you despicable fuck? C'mon and say it. Show us your primitive colors, don't hold back.


    JD

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  16. BTW in the UK these days the cousins of the US Scots-Irish, the Ulster Protestants, have much better academic achievement than do the cousins of the New England Puritans in Cambridgeshire & East Anglia. The explanation is environmental - Ulster still has a fairly functional education system, England does not.

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  17. Ahmed said...
    "Dr Nazir-Ali is not only an infidel, he is a traitor to his people."

    Nazir-Ali isn't a convert to Islam. He is a member of Pakistan's Christian minority. From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Nazir_Ali


    "Michael Nazir-Ali was born in Karachi, Pakistan to Christian parents, James and Patience Nazir-Ali[1]. He comes from a Christian family background.[2] He attended the Roman Catholic-run St Patrick's school in Karachi and began attending Roman Catholic services and identifying as Christian at the age of 15; he was formally received into the Church of Pakistan aged 20.[3]."

    Perhaps you were thinking of the head of the Barnabas Fund, Patrick Sookhdeo, who is a Guyanese-born Indian convert to Christianity from Islam. More about Sookhdeo can be found here:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Sookhdeo.

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  18. "I would go a step further, that women unconstrained by morality and economic necessity, chose the most hyper-macho Big Men available, and so helped create a society where only the most violent and brutal have women."

    Testing99,
    Your Evil Neocon is showing...

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  19. In fact, much of the officer class in the Union Army in the Civil War came from the elites of New England. Such as Joshua Chamberlain of Little Roundtop fame.

    I can always count on a Yankee to suggest there were many notable New England soldiers in the civil war and the one example offered is inevitably Joshua Chamberlain. Yankees place a high value on writing well, so it's not surprising that Chamberlain is their model soldier (and Barack Obama their model presidential candidate). They loathe to credit the less polished midwesterners like Grant, Sherman, and the soldiers of the Iron Brigade who were primarily responsible for the north's victory.

    And I don't buy that New Englanders were eager participants in the military up until the 1950's. What magically happened in that decade to dampen their warrior spirits?

    Dalrymple suggests that the common code, the morality, the belief in simple right and wrong, have been erased in the 1960's..."

    In other words, there was a decline in religious belief.

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  20. Testing99 sez: Rather than Christianity, Theodore Dalrymple offers another explanation...

    I'm not sure it's a different explanation, just a more generalized version of the same explanation.

    Dalrymple suggests that the common code, the morality, the belief in simple right and wrong, have been erased in the 1960's by a rebellion of the rich youth against the strictures of the older morality...

    You might paraphrase this as "the decline of Christianity." Of course, there was more to George Orwell's England of gently, nobbly-faced gardeners than just Christianity, but one can argue (as Orwell did) that Christianity was the substrate.

    I would go a step further, that women unconstrained by morality and economic necessity, chose the most hyper-macho Big Men available, and so helped create a society where only the most violent and brutal have women.

    This dovetails very nicely with the recent thesis (referenced by the Bish) that key event in British Christianity's collapse was young women turning away from traditional piety and restraint to the hedonistic ideals of the 1960s.

    So, I'd say your alternative view is a really just a variation of emphasis.

    intellectual pariah

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  21. It was a depressing moment, one wrong word from me (Ive nearly slipped up with her before on the subject of vibrancy) and I suspect I would be cast into social oblivion, nothing explicit of course, but the PC party line must be preserved at all costs.

    Screw the PC party line. I've decided that social oblivion is a better place to be than the multiracial utopia our betters have laid out for us.

    If you think there's no urgency to it, witness this: a group run entirely by minorities is
    fighting to pass a law
    that would force charitable foundations to identify how much of their staff & board is minority and how much of their money gets directed to minorities. Obviously this is only the beginning. The next step in the process will be to require them to give to minorities, or else. Or else? Or else the state will deny them tax exempt status? Or else the state will sieze their money and distribute it themselves? Or else the state will allow groups like Greenlining (Board of Directors: 0% white) to sue them for God only knows how much.

    This is the magic future that awaits all of us when California's demographics become our own.

    Screw social oblivion. Open your mouth (but be diplomatic, of course: there is racism and there is race realism).

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  22. travis,

    "testing99" is Jewish, not a "Yankee".

    Sherman's ancestry was entirely from New England. Grant's partially so.

    New Hampshire and Maine have above-average rates of military participation down to the present. Vermont and particularly Connecticut and Massachusetts are underrepresented in military recruiting, but the descendants of Puritans are not exactly the major population element in these states today.

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  23. I'd imagine a Pakistani bishop would be more immune to the Whiterpeople/Stuff White People Like mental disease than an English bishop.

    I'm not surprising that it is nonwhites in Britain who are most strenuously raising the alarm about the collapse of Christianity.

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  24. Why is Anonymous talking about racism and race realism, but not using his or her own name?

    I post under my own name, and have done so for a number of years.

    Folks will interpret (or misinterpret) what you say as they see fit.

    Better to speak up now, or have it crushed out of existence.

    The keys are to be specific; to resort to a minimum amount of personal attacks (if possible); and substantiate as much as possible via extensive links.

    And to have no fear.

    Grow a backbone.

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  25. travis ...the 1950's. What magically happened in that decade to dampen their... spirits?

    What indeed?

    That's one of those mega-questions which tend to have answers like "42".

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  26. "...a society where only the violent and most brutal have women." This could help to explain the popularity of John Mayer...

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  27. I wonder if you could map a country's crime rate onto its church attendance rate in any consistent way. It seems unlikely to me. Japan is one of the most atheistic societies in the world, yet it has very low crime. Brazil is one of the most religiously Catholic countries in the world, yet it has a crime rate comparable to some of the world's war zones. Japan is ethnically homogenous and has a very low Gini score. Brazil is ethnically diverse and has a very high Gini score. These factors might be more relevant.

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