Peter Hitchens:
Actually we can’t do what we like with this country. We inherited it from our parents and grandparents and we have a duty to hand it on to our children and grandchildren, preferably improved and certainly undamaged.
It is one of the heaviest responsibilities we will ever have. We cannot just give it away to complete strangers on an impulse because it makes us feel good about ourselves.
Every one of the posturing notables simpering ‘refugees welcome’ should be asked if he or she will take a refugee family into his or her home for an indefinite period, and pay for their food, medical treatment and education.
If so, they mean it. If not, they are merely demanding that others pay and make room so that they can experience a self-righteous glow. No doubt the same people are also sentimental enthusiasts for the ‘living wage’, and ‘social housing’, when in fact open borders are steadily pushing wages down and housing costs up.
As William Blake rightly said: ‘He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars. General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite and flatterer.’
Britain is a desirable place to live mainly because it is an island, which most people can’t get to. Most of the really successful civilisations survived because they were protected from invasion by mountains, sea, deserts or a combination of these things. Ask the Russians or the Poles what it’s like to live without the shield of the sea. There is no positive word for ‘safety’ in Russian. Their word for security is ‘bezopasnost’ – ‘without danger’.
Thanks to a thousand years of uninvaded peace, we have developed astonishing levels of trust, safety and freedom. I have visited nearly 60 countries and lived in the USSR, Russia and the USA, and I have never experienced anything as good as what we have. Only in the Anglosphere countries – the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – is there anything comparable. I am amazed at how relaxed we are about giving this away.
Our advantages depend very much on our shared past, our inherited traditions, habits and memories. Newcomers can learn them, but only if they come in small enough numbers. Mass immigration means we adapt to them, when they should be adapting to us.
So now, on the basis of an emotional spasm, dressed up as civilisation and generosity, are we going to say that we abandon this legacy and decline our obligation to pass it on, like the enfeebled, wastrel heirs of an ancient inheritance letting the great house and the estate go to ruin?
Every one of the posturing notables simpering ‘refugees welcome’ should be asked if he or she will take a refugee family into his or her home for an indefinite period. Above, well-wishers greet migrants off a train in Frankfurt
Having seen more than my share of real corpses, and watched children starving to death in a Somali famine, I am not unmoved by pictures of a dead child on a Turkish beach. But I am not going to pretend to be more upset than anyone else. Nor am I going to suddenly stop thinking, as so many people in the media and politics appear to have done.
The child is not dead because advanced countries have immigration laws. The child is dead because criminal traffickers cynically risked the lives of their victims in pursuit of money.
I’ll go further. The use of words such as ‘desperate’ is quite wrong in this case. The child’s family were safe in Turkey. Turkey (for all its many faults) is a member of Nato, officially classified as free and democratic. Many British people actually pay good money to go on holiday to the very beach where the child’s body was washed up.
It may not be ideal, but the definition of a refugee is that he is fleeing from danger, not fleeing towards a higher standard of living.
Goodness knows I have done what I could on this page to oppose the stupid interventions by this country in Iraq, Libya and Syria, which have turned so many innocent people into refugees or corpses.
But I can see neither sense nor justice in allowing these things to become a pretext for an unstoppable demographic revolution in which Europe (including, alas, our islands) merges its culture and its economy with North Africa and the Middle East. If we let this happen, Europe would lose almost all the things that make others want to live there.
You really think these crowds of tough young men chanting ‘Germany!’ in the heart of Budapest are ‘asylum-seekers’ or ‘refugees’?
In the UK a promise to accept another 20,000 Muslim ”refugees,” has been made.
Last week, the Muslims already there took umbrage at the beginnings of trials of the Muslim males who gang raped and prostituted over 1,000 ethnic British girls near Rotherham.
These Muslims took to the streets with signs proclaiming ”Never Again!” and “No to the Nazis.”
They complained that the streets belong to them and Sharia allows certain things so the men should all be released.
So add another 20,000 to the mix.
Are Sryian and Pakistani Sharia exactly the same?
Will these factions among Islam get along or fight?
Up until now a nice bit of real estate separated these two factions.
No more.
Nanny many of the refugees are actually Christians that fled the debacle in Iraq
Between 1/2 and 1 million fled primarily to Syria
Do you think that they should be allowed to come here as war refugees?
Please remember that conservatives ( of both parties) refused Jewish refugees in the 30sand 40s
Mr Hitvhebs first crested a giant straw man
Then destroys it
How about instead of demanding that everyone open their homes it shut up
He were to ask if they would be willing to pay 1% more in taxes? Or even pay 1% less to Defence and gave that transferred to the refugees
Nanny
Doesn’t the Old Testament admonish those who vex strangers? Aren’t we supposed to welcome them ? And not vex them?
@John: Do you have a verse or are you parroting something someone else wrote?
And what puts modern-day Christians under Mosaic Law which was supposed to tutor the Jews to their Messiah (Christ) then be done away with?
As to supporting strangers, don’t you wonder at the way these particular strangers are slashing the tires of service volunteers and throwing away the food given by them?
How long do you “throw pearls before swine?”
Jesus recommended against that, you know.
Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan recently volunteered in Italy.
“I have seen refugee columns before, and they tend to be made up disproportionately of women and children. But more than 80 per cent of the people disembarking here were young men – the classic indicator of economic migration,” he noted.
See how our generosity is treated:
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/09/05/watch-footage-emerges-of-refugees-abusing-police-throwing-food-and-water-away-onto-train-tracks/
You, John, have a narcissistic need to be seen doing good, by proxy!
You insist others do good for your edification.
I’ll look for that last man who couldn’t get in the healing waters, who Jesus put his hands on and chose to heal, as opposed to all those men who could afford the 1,000 Pound (about $2,000) crossing fee.
You can go help those rich, choosy invaders who throw your gifts back at you and strike out at your things with weapons.