Saturday, July 09, 2005

"They'll Always be An England...."
I'm going to assume that no one who reads this will have ever heard of Vera Lynn (unless you're either a WWII buff or a Pink Floyd fan). Ms. Lynn was an English chantruese who helped solidify British resolve to beat the Nazis in the 1940's by singing little ditties that reminded people of just what they were fighting for.

It wasn't just for King and Country. There was a culture of Englishness, that was both unique and natural, that needed to be maintained (and not just for sentimental reasons) because it was inherently good, while the Axis was inherently evil.

In today's morally-relative world, the concepts of "good" and "evil" are sometimes likened to the use of a racial epithet and it is believed that by doing away with such "conventional" distinctions we'll somehow create a better world. This kind of thinking never really computes, however. There is a grave difference between calling someone a "nigger", for example, and entering a crowded subway station and igniting an explosive that kills someone. One is merely a calculated act of ignorance whilst the other is a calculated act of murder. Ignoring both the intent of either act or the ramiofications it unleashes, does nothing to better mankind or to alleviate the motivating factors behind them. In order to fight evil, one must be first prepared to define just what evil is, and further be prepared to identify it when one sees it.

A racial epithet is nasty, but it's necessarily evil. Blowing up businessmen, tourists, laborers and policemen to forward a twisted ideological mindset which masquerades as religion, is.

Good and evil do exist, and not as mere adjectives that one can apply to one and not another depending upon your political whims. The "good" England of Vera Lynn's day was a beacon of civilization and civility, the rule of law, and the ability of a people, across a broad spectrum of wealth and class, heritage and language, to band together to fight a common enemy for a common purpose. It was the England of comunity. The "evil" it was fighting against was one of the rule of the dictator, the marching of populations into servitude and death, and the ideology of hate as a national virtue.The very core of Nazi ideology was barbaric inhumanity.

The England of that day fought to remain not only English, but to remain HUMAN. The spearpoint of Nazi barbarism was countered by the shield of English community and humanity. The concepts of politics, freedoms, economics and social forces are merely secondary to the main thrust of English resistance in 1939-45: we have seen evil and hate it, in fact, we'll destroy it.

And so the same holds today.

The same London that burned under the bombers of the Luftwaffe, the doodlebugs and the V-2, and emerged victorious, will again stand up to the Nazis of the 21st century and similarly emerge victorious. Times and attitudes may have changed in post-War Britain, but it takes more than that to emeliorate the inbred virtues of a people. The Churchillian race of the Bulldog British will once again emerge, counter the threat at it's doorstep and triumph.

History, after all, does repeat itself.

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