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January drudion & I've had it with the Drude's xenophobic insinuations
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IanB
IanB
6761 posts

Edited Jan 07, 2008, 15:27
Re: January drudion & I've had it with the Drude's xenophobic insinuations
Jan 07, 2008, 11:42
The debate is always worth having but having been guilty of over-reacting spectacularly to the pre-release brouhaha around YGAPWM I shall step lightly this time.

Natural wonders aside, whatever it is that this country has going for it is built on immigration, conquest, absorbing difference and expanding the parameters of common knowledge through tolerance.

Centres of capital, of ideas and of influence move inexorably west and the US is as certain to overtaken by SE Asia as we in Europe were destined to be usurped by the New World. We have gone from being a culture that throws its weight around (for better or for worse) to one that is taking stock and redefining itself. An autumnal adjustment so to speak.

It is a huge over-simplifcation but we do have a happy knack of being able to take on board the best of whatever wave of ideas is sweeping from east to west and putting the pernicious and the downright poisonous out with the trash but that takes self confidence and vigour on the one side and flexibility on the other. Things which seem to be in short supply at the moment.

If what we value is not strong enough to resist the block-headed and the black-hearted as these waves of influence sweep in from the east (or rebound in echo from the west) then that's cultural evolution I'm afraid. The alternative is to shut the door to everything, repel all that is new - the good, the cruel and the unusual - and take our chances. Not a strategy that has served other cultures all that well in the past. I have no interest in living in an Anglo-Celtic Albania or some Brit-nationalist warm beer and skittles bushido cult - three parts Mishima to two parts Ealing Comedy and one part Robert Bly. I imagine I am not alone in that.

One thing that is getting kind of tiresome is the use of "poltical correctness" as a synonym for "liberal" and the use of both as insults.

Two things here ....

1) I abhor the headlong rush of many from the Old Left into the arms of all kinds of repressive, backwards thinking crackpots and this is hardly the first time, eh comrades? However it would serve us well to remember that Liberalism (as opposed to the Liberal Party) has, in this culture, been responsible for more social good and less social evil than any faith group or any of the extreme philosophies of either left or right

2) The cry of "Political correctness gone mad" has been firmly established as part of the lingua franca of the closet bigot, misogynist and misanthrope. However much some of the folks on the socially conscious left wind us up with their self-hate and tokenism, our adopting the language of Clarkson, of The Sun and of every late night phone-in crack-pot on earth is not going to to help us keep to the the path of the enlightened and the forward thinking. And don't kid yourself that this is a case of defeating the enemy by singing his song!
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January drudion & I've had it with the Drude's xenophobic insinuations (Bonzo the Cat)
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