Piddingworth Greg Benton
'Piddingworth...where St. George's Cross is not yet banned.'
                                                                               Mark Steyn
Richard I - The Lionheart
It has become rather common in these days of our armies fighting
in far-off places, where the distinction in principle between the sides
is dismissed by 'intellectuals', i.e., the characterisation of a 'clash
of civilisations'and 'cultures', as being mere propaganda in an attempt
to disguise the 'oppressive' and 'exploitive' policies of the United States,
Britain and NATO.

Please.

There has been, since the expansion of 'intellectuals' as a class
from the 19th c., especially in the service of the fanciful evil of Marxist
socialism, a commensurate increase in the denial of the realities of life
that almost invariably must be 'proved', usually militarily, in each
generation to 'reset' the bar and further deter the threats to our 'way of life'.

'Political Correctness', a form of cultural Marxism that has permeated our
schools and universities and is animated by a variety of 'angry people' who
identify themselves as 'progressive', advances the Lie, not only that our
enemies would not exist if it wasn't because we behaved so badly towards them,
but that the religious/political culture that is advancing it's terror is not only
legitimate, but equal to our own in 'virtue'.

It is a given, of course, the 'faults' in any culture, religious or political at
any time in history.  The dishonesty of the 'Left'  is not so much in
acknowledging the failure of ours or any people to live up to the principles
or theoretical ideology that identifies the culture but rather in the denial
of the de facto experience of the life of the citizen.

For those of us who have had the good fortune of living in countries that
have as their fundamental heritage, freedom and the rule of law, there is simply
no argument, moral or otherwise, that can deny the superior virtue that
is embraced by the British and American heritage and that is shared with
people of many races and cultures.  The spoiler, of course, is that the
expansion of that heritage coincided with the economic and territorial
expansion that was 'Empire'.(a term now so pejorative that it
is almost equated with original sin.) 

Christendom, established by Constantine, flourished for centuries in many
places throughout Europe and the mediterranean.  It served as both a theoretical
as well as pragmatic backdrop to the evolution of human freedom that is bookmarked
in great moments such as that of the Magna Carta in 1215 at Runneymede and the
Declaration of Independence in 1776 at Philadelphia.  From the British Common Law
and the Bill of Rights of the Republic, the world has come to know and recognise
the principles that permit the greatest good for human beings and their societies.
The transition from peasant to free citizen, accelerated by the Industrial Revolution
(Blake's 'dark satanic mills' and Dickens 'Oliver Twist' notwithstanding) has
been remarkably successful in those countries that have adhered to the notion
that 'all men shall be free from the tyranny of a bad King'. So it was that, in
the two great world wars of the 20th c., the citizens of free societies, volunteered
to defend not just the castle of the 'King', but their own 'castle', i.e., 'ome'.
Not only that, but the enemies whom they defeated have themselves acquired
the culture of freedom and the rule of law. 

The problem is:  some people, mostly in other cultures, but even in our own,
hate freedom and the rule of law.  Not only do many despise it, some are driven
to tyranny, terror and death through their primitive and perverse passions motivated
either by a warped vision of a religious edict or of an archetypal political leadership
that rules by old-fashioned fear.

The disgrace is in those who, whilst continuing to benefit from society that has
afforded them their perch, are smug and indifferent to the legacy and
fragility of preserving a way of life; one that, even in it's imperfection, at
the very least seeks to uphold the dignity and prosperity of human life.

As before, the current replay of history's 'symphonic' theme will find it's resolution
one way or another in the will or the lack of will, of the citizen to defend that which
has been bought so preciously in previous generations.

Today, the horizon shows the shadow of a greater calamity than what now
exists.  The price in blood today, so valiantly spent by those to whom the
responsibility has been given, is just a hint at what the enemies of freedom
intend to exact upon us in their own time.

Enjoy your latte.
CRUSADE OR BUST