Britain's dying nationhood

The State, which since the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) has been the most important and most characteristic of all modern institutions, is dying. … Inside their borders, it seems that many states will soon no longer be able to protect the political, military, economic, social, and cultural life of their citizens. These developments may lead to upheavals as profound as those that took humanity out of the Middle Ages and into the Modern World.

Martin van Creveld, "The Fate of the State" (1996)

Hardly more than 60 years after it withstood the punishment of the Blitz and went on to play a large role in defeating the Third Reich, today's United Kingdom seems more and more like a nation that exists only on paper.

Its answer to domestic terrorism perpetrated on behalf of Islam has been to define opposition to Muslim political goals as "hate speech" and to try to overcome the distrust of its Muslim citizens. Even more than the United States, Britain has no control over its borders. Every year, it tries to absorb still more dubious asylum seekers and economic refugees, many of them Muslims, into its generous social welfare system. European correspondent Fjordman writes in Dhimmi Watch:

Britain's population is projected to rise by more than seven million in the next 25 years. The predictions were even greater than those made by the Migrationwatch UK think-tank, whose forecasts had been dismissed in the past as alarmist. Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of Migrationwatch, said the figures were '"staggering." "They totally demolish the Government's claim that it has a 'managed migration' policy. In fact they show that immigration into the UK is out of control." British citizenship has been granted to nearly one million foreign nationals since Labour and Tony Blair came to power in 1997. "Grants of citizenship have quadrupled under the present Government. This is a direct result of their 'no limits' immigration policy." "Immigration on this scale is changing the nature of our society without public consent. It is no longer acceptable." …

"Asian youths," a British euphemism for Pakistanis and Muslims from South Asia, in parts of Oldham are trying to create no-go areas for white people. One of them told: "There are signs all around saying whites enter at your risk. It's a matter of revenge." However, it's not just the white natives that are targets of Muslim violence, but other non-Muslims, too. A report on Hindus being driven out of the English city of Bradford by young Muslims was described by some Hindus as "ethnic cleansing." Some of them want to leave the city to escape the "Talibanization of Bradford."

A line that should never be crossed has been. During the Muhammed Cartoon Festival, some British Muslims "protested" by carrying signs urging that their countrymen who were thought to have insulted the Prophet be beheaded. The British state's only response was to drive off and in some cases arrest other Britons protesting this incitement to murder. The Establishment behaved like true dhimmis, in a cowardly pretense that they were upholding free speech. A country that cannot distinguish between a political argument and threats of atrocity is a country that has given up, that knows no way of preserving order short of surrender.

But for the British people, the most immediate evidence that their nation is dissolving is that it can no longer protect them against crime. Britain now has the highest rates of violent crime in Europe, in most categories higher than the United States. The Sunday Telegraph assigned a reporter to catalog "a week in lawless Britain."

There was nothing extraordinary about it — just a typical seven-day period in which children were killed, old women mugged, youths stabbed, young women raped. We have space to list only around 100 of the worst cases.

Interposing the force of the state on behalf of the innocent against predators is the most basic duty of any political unit that wants to call itself a nation; the legal government must in theory, and to a large extent in reality, have a monopoly on violence. But that is no longer true of Britain, which in its dysfunctional social environment more and more resembles an African country-in-name-only where daily life is at the mercy of bandits.

That's particularly hard on a people who have been conditioned for several generations to expect the government to solve every problem and take care of them. When the government fails, neither it nor the citizens it is supposed to watch over know what to do. Danger and oppression are met with yet more "programmes" and "schemes" on the government's part, and continued passivity by the populace.

I don't enjoy pointing these things out. There is much about the British past, and some aspects of its present, that I like and appreciate. Britain's many good people deserve better. The saddest thing is not that their state has failed them, but that they have failed themselves.