Whither Britain?

     The courageous Mayah Sommers, who has been called “The Young Queen of Scots:”

This brave young lady was chasing off Muslim attackers from her sister.

Her name is: Mayah Sommers "Queen of Scotts"

Share it and let the world know. pic.twitter.com/0jh1jkbmAF

— Cynthia Holt (@Ghostofcynthia) August 26, 2025

     ...is still very much in the news. Mike Hendrix has some thoughts about the matter. So does el gato malo. Both are worth reading. And of course there are these irrelevancies immediately below.

     My thoughts this morning run in another direction: How did Britain fall this low? It’s worth a lot of thought, though I doubt it will get even a fraction of the thought it deserves.

     From anyone else, that is.

***

     Let’s have a little music before we proceed to the analytics – no, wait; I think the thoughts expressed below deserve to be part of the analytics:

Another suburban family morning
Grandmother screaming at the walls
We have to shout above the din of our Rice Crispies
We can't hear anything at all
Mother chants her litany of boredom and frustration
But we know all the suicides are fake
Daddy only stares into the distance
There's only so much more that he can take

     Many miles away
     Something crawls from the slime
     At the bottom of a dark Scottish lake

Another industrial ugly morning
The factory belches filth into the sky
He walks unhindered through the picket lines today
He doesn't think to wonder why
The secretaries pout and preen like cheap tarts in a red light street
But all he ever thinks to do is watch
And every single meeting with his so-called superior
Is a humiliating kick in the crotch

     Many miles away
     Something crawls to the surface
     Of a dark Scottish loch

Another working day has ended Only the rush hour hell to face
Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes
Contestants in a suicidal race
Daddy grips the wheel and stares alone into the distance
He knows that something somewhere has to break
He sees the family home now looming in the headlights
The pain upstairs that makes his eyeballs ache

     Many miles away
     There's a shadow on the door
     Of a cottage on the shore
     Of a dark Scottish lake
     Many miles away...many miles away...many miles away...

(Sting, “Synchronicity II,” 1983)

     Yes, I’ve used it before. It’s potent. It’s penetrating. It asks the same question I posed above: How did Britain fall this low? And it asked it forty-two years ago.

     Forty-two years before Synchronicity was released would be 1941: the year of The Battle of London. Britain was still in decent shape before the Nazi bombing campaign. It wasn’t as well off as the United States, but its economy wasn’t yet dismissible and its men included a fair number of actual men. The American-British alliance that won World War II’s Western European Front was powerful. It suggested that British men were still masculine, a force to be respected.

     But appearances can deceive. Britain was already sinking into the Slough of Despond. In part, that was because its economy hadn’t progressed as far as the American and German economies. In another part, it was because of the deaths of so many British men in World War I, up to then called “The Great War.” And in a third part, it was because of the sense that the ineptitude of His Majesty George VI’s government was responsible for Britain’s involvement in the new war that was devastating their homeland.

     The sense of having been battered by events and bad governance was already at work on the minds of the British. Popular will had begun to wane. When socialist Clement Attlee took the reins from the Churchill government, it received further “humiliating kicks in the crotch:”

     Attlee led the construction of the first Labour majority government, which aimed to maintain full employment, a mixed economy and a greatly enlarged system of social services provided by the state. To this end, it undertook the nationalisation of public utilities and major industries, and implemented wide-ranging social reforms, including the passing of the National Insurance Act 1946 and National Assistance Act 1948, the formation of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948, and the enlargement of public subsidies for council house building. His government also reformed trade union legislation, working practices and children's services; it created the National Parks system, passed the New Towns Act 1946 and established the town and country planning system.

     There was no disguising the direction of Attlee’s program. He aimed to make Great Britain – soon to be renamed United Kingdom – into a socialist state.

     Nothing enervates a people as swiftly, or as thoroughly, as socialism.

***

     Other things must be sketched in for a complete picture: the rise of the trade unions and the accompanying violence; the deterioration of Britain’s “public services,” especially the NHS, from the administrative bloat and underperformance characteristic of a socialized system; the flowering of the various “rebel” movements: “punks,” “skinheads,” “rude boys,” and the like; the decline in marriage and fertility; the retreat from Christianity; the “brain drain;” the opening of Britain to unlimited immigration from the Third World; and so forth. Many causal threads are intertwined there. Suffice it to say that none of the trends that emerged after World War II favored the development of a masculine, self-reliant British man. He was being transformed into a villein.

     Villeins seldom rebel against their masters. They depend on those masters for far too much.

     Today, Britain’s “law enforcement” targets Britons who dare to resist the forces of depredation and degradation. Mayah Sommers was arrested for her courage. As for the multitudes of rapists and despoilers The State has allowed into the Sceptered Isle, they’re under official protection. Their numbers are still increasing, despite Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s declaration that immigration be slowed. The Muslims among them have become arrogant, publicly assertive, and impossible to discipline.

     Popular will is supposedly being expressed by Operation Raise the Colours. Yet those flags are being ripped down as fast as they’re put up. Who stands against that counter-movement? Who will stand against it? One might surmise that the flag-raisers are waiting for Mayah Sommers to do it.

     Talk is not enough to save Britain. Neither are flags.

     It’s been suggested, by Larry Correia among others, that American arms makers go to emergency production levels, and their output be airdropped over Britain. Yet British hoplophobia is so advanced that it’s likely that the airdropped weapons would remain untouched until “trained firearms officers” should arrive to “safe” them.

     A recent email from my dear friend Margaret Ball contained this gem:

     I've been reading a lot of British mysteries lately. The cultural differences are sometimes amusing. Recently, for instance, I read one which started with 3 chapters of the cops agonizing because they've learned that in a certain house in Leeds there may exist...
     A GUN!
     Leads me to suspect that if a bunch of British cops were suddenly transported to the US they'd have a collective nervous breakdown.

     Britain needs men. Have any survived Britain’s century-plus of degeneration? Or are they waiting for Mayah Sommers to lead her sisters and her neighbors’ daughters to save them?

     Your Curmudgeon reports; you decide.

Masculinity And Individualism

     This piece at Ace’s place got me thinking:

     President Trump is their worst nightmare of an Alpha Male; he gets the hot chicks, he has lots of money, he is physically imposing, and worst of all, he doesn't run away from a fight the way they were taught by their mothers. That's why they snipe at him behind the anonymity of Twitter, and the protection of the crowd during press conferences.

     But deep down in their frightened and intimidated hearts, they know that Donald Trump and his immense shock of hair would punch the bully and bang the prom queen...and they wouldn't and couldn't.

     Alpha-male masculinity has been condemned by the Left for several decades. And of course, they’ll have no truck with my notions about the manly virtues. That’s threatening stuff. It proclaims an absolute standard of right and wrong. Worse, it locates the responsibility for publicly upholding that standard in folks with Y chromosomes: men. I dealt women out of that game – as I intended.

     If you ever hear someone use the phrase testosterone poisoning, you’ll know the utterer is a leftist. Testosterone is the quintessential male hormone, responsible for masculine initiative, drive, and aggression. Without it, a man will get nowhere.

     Note that initiative, drive, and aggression are individualistic qualities. They don’t animate groups; they animate individual men in their individual circumstances. The Left, which hates individualism even more than it hates traditional masculinity, is forever promoting the very opposite – “consensus” – while concealing an all-important fact:

If an issue is to be decided by “consensus,” it is the strongest and most determined personality who will determine the course of events.

     Sometimes that’s a mannish woman – a virago, a mockery of the feminine virtues — and sometimes it’s a man (if there are any men in the vicinity willing to take command in such a context).

     “Consensuses” don’t lead. Individual leaders do...and such leaders, both historically and in today’s milieu, are overwhelmingly male. Exceptions are few and notable.

     At this time America has a masculine, individualistic, alpha male for its president. We’re fortunate in that, especially considering that the alternative was Hillary Rodham Clinton. But on November 3, the Left intends that he be displaced by a womanish, mentally deteriorated, boughten creature of the Establishment, who would be operated thereafter like a marionette in furthering the Left’s anti-American agenda. If that comparison doesn’t make the magnitude of the stakes crystal clear, I can’t imagine what would do it.

The Nice-Guy Revolt

     It isn’t often I read an angry article that warms the cockles of my spiny little heart:

     You had your chance on our first (and only) date. I held the door open for you and bought you dinner at that 5-star restaurant you so slyly worked into the conversation. You looked amazing and I went all out to impress you. You walked through the door I held open for you without a thank you or really any acknowledgement of my little gesture.

     I asked you about your hopes and dreams and listened to you bitch about your ex-boyfriend as you ordered that $100 bone-in ribeye and the wine with the fancy vintage you just had to try. You finished the wine but took most of the steak home in a doggy bag. I only now realize that it was the ex-boyfriend you were texting all evening, I hope he enjoyed the steak I bought him. By the way that “emergency call” you got after dinner didn’t fool anyone. I’m not stupid, unlike most of the guys you’ve dated.

     I was wonderful to you, I was a gentleman. I treated you with respect, like a lady deserves to be treated. I enjoyed your company and you had my full attention. I didn’t expect anything in return except a chance to win your heart. I’m stable, I’m a good provider, I want marriage and kids in my future. I’m the man of your dreams, but you couldn’t see that. Or maybe you just didn’t care. You were pretty preoccupied with your texting.

     But now you’re ready to date me? Really? You’ll excuse me if I’m not jumping for joy. You’ve dissed me, rejected me, took advantage of me, dodged my goodnight kiss and couldn’t wait to get away from me. Now suddenly you want me? Sorry, I’m not buying it.

     Please read it all. It speaks volumes...volumes an awful lot of women, now that the ticking of their bio-clocks has become audible, should deign to hear.

---

     During the years I was “between wives,” I had one date like the ones outlined above. One. (There was a minor difference: at that time, very few persons had cellphones and “smartphones” – i.e., cellphones made for idiots, obsessive-compulsives, and the terminally bored – were unknown.) It was shocking enough to put me off dating for several years, which, given the changes washing over the social environment during that interval, was probably a good thing.

     (A not-so-brief tirade-within-a-tirade: Rarely these days do I see anyone without a cellphone in his hand – and women are the worst offenders. Why that should be, I leave to the brain-care crowd. It irritates me so greatly that I resolved never again to see or speak to a friend of thirty years’ duration when, during our first get-together in several months, he never once let his PDA out of his grasp. The message is quite definite, whether or not the offender is aware that he’s transmitting it: Anything and everything I can access through my device is more important than the person I’m with.

     Glory be to God, people! Get off your BLEEP!ing phones! Power them down and put them away! Your life is being lived here and now. Take some interest in it – and I don’t want to hear any “my phone is an extension of my brain” garbage. No, it is not; it’s a BLEEP!ing crutch, a salve for your inability to endure an interval of stillness or silence.

     It’s just after noon EST as I write this last bit. I’ve just returned from the car wash, where I sat waiting for about twenty-five minutes. During that period there were three other customers. All three were women. All three were on their cellphones throughout. Two spent their time complaining into some distant ear about the men in their lives. The third, from what I overheard, was listening to a friend complain about the man in her life. I am not fabricating this, nor am I exaggerating it. End of tirade.)

     A man who’s been properly raised will know how to treat a woman, especially one with whom he’s exploring the possibility of romance. I’ve known enough such men to conclude that despite all the adverse propaganda from women’s magazines and feminist crap-spouters, we are a majority. But I’ve known enough women – single women – to conclude that today’s typical single woman doesn’t begin to appreciate the value of such a man until she’s at least thirty-five years old.

     A well-raised man with good morals, ethics, and manners – i.e., a nice guy – will open doors for his date. He’ll ask for her preferences about hours, food, and entertainment; if he can’t oblige them, he’ll say so, courteously, with an explanation if it wouldn’t be excessively personal. He won’t even touch his phone, unless he must do so to confirm their restaurant reservation. He’ll ask nothing from her except some conversation and the pleasure of her company. And he’ll respect her preferences, whether explicit or implicit, about physical contact.

     And it is profoundly heartening to note that there are more men declaring themselves in this fashion than there have been in years. The Bad Boy Interregnum might be ending after all. But best of all would be if good men were to decide not to take it any more.

     And maybe, just maybe, that time is upon us.

---

     Talk, of course, is cheap. Deeply discounted in preference for observable action. And while many a man will “talk the talk” of swearing off women, not many have “walked the walk”...until recently.

     Lately, we have a rising trend toward self-imposed celibacy. It’s especially strong among men who’ve been burned in a divorce, but it’s extended some filaments among never-married men who’ve become disenchanted with the ways of American women. And while I’d be the last person to encourage celibacy as a life choice for anyone other than a Catholic priest, I must say that the reasoning I’ve heard from such men strikes a chord.

     “It’s not worth being on tenterhooks all the time,” said one.
     “I have enough demands on my money and energy,” said another.
     “As soon as they set the hook they stop treating you well,” said a third.
     “Prostitutes are a lot more honest about what they’re looking for,” said a fourth.

     Tragic. Typical, but tragic. Not because these men have elected to forgo marriage and children – such a decision can be reversed, after all – but because American women are forfeiting the possibility of mating with some of the best men in this country.

---

     There’s no salvation to be found in non-American women. The attitudes that make American women a trial of a good man’s endurance have spread throughout the First World. Many non-American women are implacably hostile to child-bearing and child-rearing. Some are completely averse to sex. Moreover, a non-American woman being courted by an American man will be aware of the prize to be won. That can cause her to radically alter her behavior...until she has a ring on her finger.

     The question before us is whether the upcoming generations of American women can free themselves from those pernicious, bad-boy-chasing, milk-him-and give-him-nothing, I-want-it-all-and-I want-it-now attitudes. The evidence is inconclusive.

     A genuine, conscious revolt among good men – a resolution not to tolerate any further crassness from or exploitation by women – would help immensely. To the extent that it’s already in progress, I applaud it. Of course, it would help even more if American fathers were to ensure that their sons become good men and their daughters appreciate them, but that should go without saying.

Moo-oo! Don't you LOVE the sound of skewered feminist-sacred-cows in the morning!

As one of many supporters of "The Red Pill" (including the humble founder of Liberty’s Torch, whose name I spotted in the credits, but not mine, because I guess I was too much of a cheapskate to qualify for that perk), and now a recent pre-release viewer, I presumed (like I imagine director Cassie Jaye did) going on this documentary-adventure would hold no big surprises for me.

LOL

My arrogance came, I suppose, because I was "Red-Pilled" a while back. I thought I knew enough not to be surprised - or impressed. But turns out her film did both! I became aware of the Men’s Rights Movement (via avoiceformen.com) in late 2011 - participating actively there for several years: commenting often and writing a few pieces that Paul Elam published on the site. (The photo-collage within the collage, above, is of me with just a few of the amazing people I met at AVfM's 1st International Conference on Men's Issues, held outside Detroit, in 2014.)

A most remarkable thing about documentary creator, Cassie Jaye, is that she is a young woman who boldly went where most of her Feminist sisters will never go...to their ideological opposition. Even more radical, was HOW she went: NOT screaming, NOT blockading, and NOT making threats of violence, but rather, with a willingness to listen. To learn. And to reconsider, even jettison, intellectual inconsistencies, without regard for the personal paradigm-shifts such honesty can bring...

Based upon my experience, both in the world of the Men's Rights' Movement and in watching this film about it, I can guarantee 100% that you will learn something unique and valuable. And because I believe this so strongly, I’m very confident that if you watch it with an open mind (and heart) - intuitively grasping the significance - you will become a better person for having done so. I hope you will take the transformative Red-Pill journey made possible by this amazing young filmmaker, and then pass it on to others.

If you can bear the entirety of my 1900-word review/analysis, please visit my blog: housewife3-0.com.

Roles

     Sometimes, when I’m feeling creatively dry, I return to my past writings and spend some time studying them. I try to do so as if they weren’t emissions of mine. It’s difficult but not impossible to do so, and it can sometimes refresh the sense that matters most to a writer: the sense of why I’m doing this.

     I’ve made some interesting discoveries by doing that. In particular, I’ve been reminded – forcibly at times – about what it was that got me started writing for a general audience.

     I shan’t tell you what that was (and is) straight off. Permit me to meander around it for a few hundred words. With luck you’ll get a better feel for the wherefores that way.

---

     In a piece that appeared at Eternity Road in 2010, I had some fun with the idea of a “silly syllogism:”

     It occurred to your Curmudgeon this morning that many of one's decisions, however great or small, are likely to be founded on theorems that, let us say, could stand closer examination. For those Gentle Readers who cut all their tenth-grade geometry classes: a theorem is a statement of implication, which states that a specific premise implies a specific conclusion. For example: "If Smith is a man, then Smith is mortal." (Alternately, "All men are mortal.") Thus, we have the famous demonstrator:

Theorem: All men are mortal.
Premise: Socrates is a man.
Conclusion: Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

A three-part inference such as the above is called a syllogism. Whether any particular syllogism ends with a trustworthy conclusion depends on the soundness of its theorem. So if the theorem is wrong, the conclusion is likely to be wrong as well:

Theorem: All mortals are men.
Premise: Rufus the Newfus is mortal.
Conclusion: Therefore, Rufus the Newfus is a man.

But there is a special class of "theorems," distinct from all others, in which truth is inherent. These are so obviously correct that they require no proof. They're called tautologies.

A tautology takes the form: If X is true, then X is true.

Well, uh, yes. Indisputable! But how useful is it?

Your Curmudgeon had a demonstration of two such just this morning, in conversation with the C.S.O. She was speaking of her need to go to the gym after work, to which your Curmudgeon replied, "If ya gotta go, ya gotta go."

Theorem: If ya gotta go, ya gotta go.
Premise: The C.S.O. gotta go.
Conclusion: Therefore, the C.S.O. gotta go.

"But," your Curmudgeon continued, "why not come home first and sit for a bit?" The C.S.O. replied, "Once you're home, you're home."

Theorem: Once you're home, you're home.
Premise: The C.S.O. has come home.
Conclusion: Therefore, the C.S.O. is home.

Your Curmudgeon admits to having been temporarily blinded by the brilliance of these insights. But on later reflection, he recalled an even more striking syllogism from a few years back. On that occasion, he asked the C.S.O. whether she wanted to go on some errand immediately, or wait until after lunch. The C.S.O. replied, "Let's go, so we can come back."

Theorem: If we go, we can come back.
Premise: Let's go.
Conclusion: Therefore, we can come back.

The variation in form from that of a "classical" tautology is purely incidental.

Such silly syllogisms are at the base of a great part of human decision-making. Watch for them in your life. And always remember:

A tautology is a tautology.

     Now, I’m not advocating the displacement of conventional reasoning by a scheme built entirely on tautologies. We wouldn’t get much done that way. But occasionally a tautology (or a close relative) will “wander by” that expresses a truth one needs to emphasize to oneself. Here’s one:

You are what you are.

     This isn’t a perfect, “classical” tautology. It’s true, but it doesn’t cover the whole of the matter. Yes, you are what you are – i.e., your organic nature – but you are also who you are: those traits and capabilities you’ve added to your God-given organic nature via individuation.

     However – and this is the crux of the thing – there are limits to individuation:

What you are constrains who you can become.

     Note: Constrains is not synonymous with determines. I had a fictional character put it thus:

     Father Ray rose from his armchair and ran his hands down his trim, muscular frame. “I am a combination of two things: what God has given me, and what I’ve done to develop it. The first of these is immutable. God decreed it. His will in the matter cannot be countervailed. The second is merely the consequence of my decision to make the most of that gift—to develop my body in a direction natural to it with proper exercise and dietary discipline. As that does not in any way cross-cut God’s gift, or whatever element of his plan resides in me, my use of his gift is entirely acceptable.”

     [From “One Small Detail”]

     To try to individuate in a way that contradicts one’s nature is a bad, bad idea. There’s nothing but suffering at the end of such a journey. In other words: Don’t jump off a cliff hoping that you’ll learn how to fly before you hit the ground.

---

     Quite a long time ago, I wrote an essay that’s become something of an Internet staple. It proceeded from my perception of what a man is, and the role he must fill to be true to his manhood. I sincerely believed it when I first wrote it, and I stand by it today.

     Many years later, I wrote the following:

     Just as the manly virtues define the essence of respectable manhood, there are feminine virtues that define the essence of respectable womanhood:

• Nurturance of a man;
• Management of a household;
• The skills demanded of a mother.

     A woman who lacks those virtues isn’t merely a marginal creature, unlikely to contribute constructively to her society; she’s a disruptive and destructive force. A fair number of such women infest our society today. Worse, they’ve wangled special legal privileges that no one deserves nor should be allowed. In consequence, young men are being taught to fear: especially, to fear women. Young women are being taught to resent: especially, to resent men.

     Again, I stand by what I wrote.

     This is not to say that a woman must not become a wage-earner, a monetary contributor to her household; that would be foolish in this day and age. Rather, a woman’s pursuit of an income should not cause her to disparage the feminine virtues or stint their development and employment, for those virtues are prior and superior to her wage-earning possibilities. Indeed, I’d advise a woman blessed with a husband who provides amply for her and her children to consider eschewing wage labor in favor of “traditional” womanly pursuits.

     This heartening piece at The Federalist elaborates on the reasons for my contentions.

---

     It’s a matter worthy of considerable attention that masculinism – a return to the manly virtues and what a man needs to practice them – is rising sharply, while feminism, especially militant, misandrist feminism of the sort Stacy McCain often lambastes, is fighting a rearguard action to hold onto its place in Americans’ minds. Metrosexuality is retreating, as are the gender-war attitudes purveyed by the Anita Sarkeesians. In effect, what we humans are is reasserting itself against perverse notions about who we are or could be.

     Of course, there’s no such thing as a unanimous movement among human beings. Men aren’t that biddable; even the soggiest, most easily led milksop will assert an individual preference or two, especially if he doesn’t think he can measure up. Similarly, there will always be women who are utterly averse to traditional femininity, and will fight to their last breath against “being assigned to a role.” Yet those who adopt the traditional masculine and feminine paradigms appear to be prevailing – winning. On the whole they’re happier with themselves, their fellows, and their lots in life. That seems to be the case even among individuals who fought the traditional roles for decades, only to “surrender” to them later on in life.

     Perhaps time will paint a shaded picture. Perhaps among men there are some who must depart from traditional masculinity as the price of survival. Perhaps among women there are some who must forgo traditional femininity for similar reasons. It wouldn’t surprise me. But neither would it surprise me to learn that traditional masculinity and femininity have tremendous value, both to those that accept them and to their societies. Traditions and conventions arise not from the arbitrary decisions of individuals, but for reasons of utility. That utility is well expressed in the history of the United States of America.