Rootlessness

     First, some thematic music:

Now it's been 25 years or more
I've roamed this land from shore to shore
From Tyne to Tamar, Severn to Thames
From moor to vale, from peak to fen
Played in cafes and pubs and bars
I've stood in the street with my old guitar
But I'd be richer than all the rest
If I had a pound for each request
For "Dueling Banjos," "American Pie"
It's enough to make you cry
"Rule Britannia" or "Swing Low"
Are they the only songs the English know?

Seed, bud, flower, fruit
They're never gonna grow without their roots
Branch, stem, shoots
They need roots

After the speeches when the cake's been cut
The disco's over and the bar is shut
At christening, birthday, wedding or wake
What can we sing until the morning breaks?
When the Indian, Asian, Afro, Celt
It's in their blood below the belt
They're playing and dancing all night long
So what have they got right that we've got wrong?

Seed, bud, flower, fruit
Never gonna grow without their roots
Branch, stem, shoots
We need roots

And haul away boys, let them go
Out in the wind and the rain and snow
We've lost more than we'll ever know
'Round the rocky shores of England
Haul away boys, let them go
Out in the wind and the rain and snow
We've lost more than we'll ever know
'Round the rocky shores of England

We need roots
We need roots

Now the minister said his vision of hell
Is three folk singers in a pub near Wells
Well I've got a vision of urban sprawl
It's pubs where no one ever sings at all
And everyone stares at a great big screen
Overpaid soccer stars, prancing teams
Australian soap, American rap
Estuary English, baseball caps
And we'd all be ashamed before we'd walk
Of the way we look and the way we talk
Without our stories or our songs
How will we know where we come from?
I've lost St. George and the Union Jack
That's my flag too and I want it back

Seed, bud, flower, fruit
Never gonna grow without their roots
Branch, stem, shoots
We need roots

And haul away boys, let them go
Out in the wind and the rain and snow
We've lost more than we'll ever know
'Round the rocky shores of England
Haul away boys, let them go...

     [With thanks to Tom Kratman, who first exposed me to this quintessentially English song.]

     I’d guess that most people alive today don’t think much about their roots. Indeed, they might reject the concept, at least if it applies to anything beyond their own families. But there was a time when the traditional concept of roots as including one’s neighborhood, its institutions, and the ethnocultural commonalities that dominated there was widely recognized and honored. That time, in these United States, ended with World War II, if not earlier.

     Several questions arise at this point:

• Did that concept have value?
• Did it have religious or occupational facets?
• What baggage did it carry that we’re better off without?
• Can one remain “faithful” to one’s roots after moving a significant distance away?
• What influences other than geographic displacement can weaken one’s attachment to his roots?

     Those are difficult questions for a Twenty-First Century American to face. They demand a sober look at ourselves and what made us who we are. Europeans face them somewhat more equably, because of the obvious differences among the nations of the Old World, even those near to one another. There’s specific ethnocultural meaning in claims such as “I’m English, “I’m French,” or “I’m German.”

     The song above says strongly that an Englishman should know and honor his roots. That comes close to blasphemy today, with the U.K. having filled up with persons no one would associate with the England of 1940. The multiculturalist gospel condemns such allegiances.

     But what if we need them? Is rootlessness a special kind of vulnerability? Something that attracts predators, perhaps? What if one cannot live a decent life – one that satisfies levels two and three of Maslow’s Hierarchy — without an awareness of one’s roots and their value?

     I need to ponder this awhile before I can continue. However, you, Gentle Reader, are invited to post your thoughts as comments here. When I return to this topic, I’ll make use of them, with proper attributions.

Issues

     Have you noticed? No one has problems any more. No one has a character defect that demands correction. And no one is ever irritated. Instead, we have issues.

     Issues, they say, are for “working out” – and you know how hopeless it is to argue with They. Of course, there are better and worse means of working out an issue, but we wouldn’t want to be judgmental, would we? Each to his own vision of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful!

     Except that some of them are pretty damned ugly, aren’t they? Especially the ones that involve rape, murder, and rioting in the streets.

     I’m a long-time admirer of Mark Steyn. There’s hardly any other commentator in the Right who equals his gift for unsparing penetration. He’s especially good at coining a pithy phrase. I have several of his books, and that pattern of penetration married to eloquence persists throughout.

     But by my lights, one of his coinages stands above the rest. He made it in America Alone, in discussing the evil that has striven to displace national pride, patriotism, and love of justice: multiculturalism. He called it “societal Stockholm Syndrome:”

     If Islamist extremism is the genie you’re trying to put back in the bottle, it doesn’t help to have smashed the bottle. At the core of multiculturalism is the assumption that a non-Western culture is somehow primal and immutable, but that an advanced nation is no more than the sum of its parts. It’s a kind of societal Stockholm Syndrome—a desperation to identify with anything that comes along other than your own.

     That appears to have become the dominant approach to multicultural “issues” throughout Europe. Muslims think it’s just grand to kidnap and rape white European teen girls? Muslims force their own pre-teen daughters into marriages to much older men? Muslims harass Jews in public places, sometimes with violence? Well, it’s okay in their homelands, so who are we to condemn it? Besides, we wouldn’t want them to become angry with us, would we?

     I have an issue with that. So did this young woman. But it appears that few of her countrymen share that issue.

     Remember the Nuremberg tribunals? No, I wasn’t there, and I doubt you were either. But the principle they established is one that deserves a lot more thought than it routinely gets. They ruled that there is a standard of justice above all political law – that the Nazi war criminals brought before them could not stake their defense on the laws of the Third Reich, but must be judged according to that supreme standard.

     Europeans who cower before the Muslims that have flooded into their nations are as culpable as any Nazi official who claimed that he was merely following the laws of his nation. They avert their eyes from vicious and savage behavior, preferring “tolerance” to being called “racists.” They permit those hordes to disrupt the public life of their countries, rather than assert their long-established norms. They shun all possibilities of confrontation.

     And it’s coming to America. Muslim street prayers designed to monopolize parks, impede traffic, and assert dominance. Muslim demonstrations against Israel in public parks and before public places. Muslims marching and chanting for sharia — in Idaho, of all places. And no one says a word, much less does anything to prevent or correct it. Even in districts where there are water cannons and snowplows aplenty.

     Do you have an issue with any of that, Gentle Reader?