Scene One: In America, desecration of the U.S. flag is treated as a constitutional right (many constitutional rights are capable of exercised in a despicable fashion), protected by the ACLU, but recently a woman in England was fined 200 pounds for stepping on the US flag.
The reason? It was a "hate crime." You see, Americans are a racial minority in England.
A peeress in what's left of the House of Lords complained that since flag burning was legal in the U. S., it should be legal in Great Britain. This is inconsistent. Would she suggest that Britons should have all the Constitutional rights that Americans do? The right to keep and bear arms, actual free speech, even the right to practice medicine?
They used to have these rights, and in a sense invented them. But they're gone, and have been for years.
Scene Two: In fact, Britain's official political culture has become increasingly hostile to freedom of speech with regard to race relations. While Post-WWII immigration has led to increased crime, including the kind of street crime associated with New York and Detroit, people aren't allowed to complain about it.
In the last British election, Britain's state funded Commission for Racial Equality imposed what amounted to a Loyalty Oath on all parties, requesting them to sign a pledge not to discuss the "National Question," or advocate restricting immigration. (Just as the US Civil Rights Commission is controlled by vicious, bloodthirsty Democrats, the CRE is pro-Labor.)
The text of the Commission for Racial Equality's "Election Compact" states:
Elected politicians must represent everyone, not pitch one group against another for short-term political or personal gain.
Which suggests that they haven't grasped the basic idea of democracy, let alone the corollary, which is that an attempt to "dissolve the people and elect a new one" will face some resistance.
Under party leader William Hague, the Conservative Party imitated the Republican Party in rolling over and playing dead for the race relations industry. It hasn't done them any good, of course, because the other side always wants more.
Scene Three: In spite of the "Election Compact" there was a lot of rioting during the election. During this rioting there was not only violence by Indians but, to the horror of the press, by white people as well.
The British authorities have a plan to deal with that, at least. They're going to deny bail to whites accused of racial violence. (As with American legal practice, blacks are not charged with hate crimes.)
The rationale behind this last act is significant.
A Home Office source said: "With a racist attack, if someone is given bail it is not just the person who may have been attacked that is put in fear."
"Such a person might attack any black or Asian person. They can affect a whole area with a climate of fear by their very presence on the street."
This is ridiculous, especially when you consider that it logically applies with more force to suspected armed robbers, or rapists, who don't discriminate. However, in recent moves to deny bail to repeat offenders, the Home Office has been unable to have armed robbery and street mugging included in the non-bailable offences. The European Convention on Human Rights includes a presumption that everyone is presumptively entitled to bail. This is the same Convention that leads people to pass Race Relations laws.
Of course, if the U.K. authorities did manage to hold armed robbers without bail, they'd no doubt face complaints that this had a "disparate impact" on minorities.
Thus in Great Britain 17 years after 1984, the following serious dangers exist:
The worst aspect of this problem is that it's all very non-partisan. Gun control laws, abolition of the death penalty, Race Relations laws, and immigration policy are all things that all the parties seem to agree on.
Furthermore, even if these things could be changed by legislation, the European Union would never agree to any kind of effective crime control measures.
There may not be a solution to the problems of Great Britain, but for some, there's a personal solution:
Emigration.
There's a lot of prejudice against British immigrants, some of it vicious. But people like John Derbyshire, the Brimelows, and John O'Sullivan have somehow managed to muddle through.
It is unfortunate that people who aren't prejudiced against any other immigrants should hate them so much, when you consider their low crime rate, fluency in English, and general all-around niceness. But these things can be overcome with perseverance.
And America is a nation of immigrants. Isn't it?
June 27, 2001
