OK, it's an old quote but just as appropriate today.
"Happy Victoria Day, the day we honour an old queen by giving her not a moment's thought. A year or two back, some professor thought we should change Victoria Day to Heritage Day to "strengthen our heritage." We strengthen our heritage by obliterating it, apparently. "
Of course, we do not strengthen our heritage by obliterating it. What this sort of thing is supposed to do is enable a different kind of "heritage" to take precedent over the established heritage - and hence the relentless machine of "multiculturalism" grinds on, it's purpose to obliterate the glories from the past and only to remind us of the bad we did before progressive liberalism opened our eyes to the "truth".
Thus children are taught that British sailors endured weevils in their bread and rough punishment, but not that the Royal Navy was the spearhead by which the British Empire rid the world of the abomination that was slavery - an abomination which, in case people forget, was in place long before Britain was a nation in its own right and has since resurfaced since traditional conservatism was replaced by social liberalism.
People like myself are criticised for harking back to some golden age of the Victorian era as if we want to take Britain back to the "good old days" of workhouses, rickets and horse drawn carts - but the reality is that people like myself seek only to remind people that the Victorian era was a time when modernity worked hand in hand with traditional conservatism and created the environment that resulted in greater social progress for the majority of people than at any other time in history.
In other words, traditional conservatives are not afraid of change, progress or technology - we just recognise that real progress comes by applying change and using technology in conservative ways.
It's liberal progressivism that has taken us back decades in terms of societal progress, education, health, industry and morality - and we're far more likely to end up with poor houses, rickets and horse drawn carts if we stick with it than if we restore traditional conservative values. Given a choice between the golden age of Victoriana or the seething cesspit of immorality, crime and truly grinding poverty that preceded it I'll choose Victoria any day of the week.
3 comments:
Bloody good comment. Well written.
When I think of Victorian times, as a retired engineer, I often wonder how long it would have taken Brunel to build the Great Western Railway in this era. Judging by the time that it took to build the high speed railway from the Channel Tunnel to London, maybe he would have managed to get from Paddington to Reading in his quite short lifetime!
And remember that he also built a few bridges and ships in his spare time!
I despair about the modern way of doing things.
I've come to understand that 'real' conservatism is organic, in the true sense of the word. ie, it grows authentically from the living organism.
As opposed to implanted/superimposed ideologies, which rot beneath a fake veneer of function, eventually succumbing to total rejection by the organism.
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