Piddingworth Greg Benton |
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| 'Piddingworth...where St. George's Cross is not yet banned.' --Mark Steyn |
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| Let us then move forward together in discharge of our mission and our duty, fearing God and nothing else. Sir Winston Churchill |
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| William Wilberforce, M.P. |
| What would Wilberforce do? 'Victor Victorians: A lesson in real morality.' |
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| Thank you very much for your support! |
| Click to buy |
| Click to buy |
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| Our Lady & The Christ Child Tintern Abbey |
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| 'This noble and elegant site is both a tribute to a family's history, and to a national heritage.' --Daniel J. Cassidy Sunlit Uplands |
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| A CANADIAN LAMENT by David Warren 'In my lifetime I have seen the “re-branding” of my country, and with it, inevitably, the rewriting of our history to accommodate many lies. The project began officially with Lester Pearson’s new flag, in 1964 -- that ad-agency 'red maple', doubling as the emblem of the Liberal Party. Under Trudeau we saw this red maple used as a kind of rubber to erase the old heraldry; and almost every other symbol of Crown-in-Parliament followed into disuse. The proud word, “Dominion,” was among the noble artefacts put out with the trash in annus horribilis, 1982. By such acts -- including, more substantially, the rewriting of our laws -- our governments and our "gliberal" governing class have made it impossible for the patriot of the old order to be a patriot of the new. And the very freedoms we inherited as Canadians now fall, successively, before the State’s new “human rights” inquisitors, as we face an ignominious future.' David Warren |
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| Benedict XVI- Spe Salvi In Hope Are We Saved The Pope's new encyclical concerning the Hope for mankind |
| THE STATE FUNERAL OF SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL, K.G, O.M., C.H. (movie approx. 28 min.) |
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| MUSIC OF PARADISE-MUSIC FOR THE SOUL Cistercian Abbey Stift Heiligenkreuz |
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| And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats Matthew 25.32 |
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| The Daily Telegraph has reported recently that Emmanuel College of Cambridge University has renamed its annual colonial-themed ‘Empire Ball’. This, following upon some harping accusations that it was "distasteful". ‘The £136-a-head Emmanuel College ball was advertised as a celebration of "the Victorian commonwealth (sic) and all of its decadences". Students were urged to "Party like it's 1899" and organisers promised a trip through the Indian Raj, Australia, the West Indies and 19th century Hong Kong.’ The complainers-in-chief were certain ‘anti-fascist’ groups who denounced the British Empire for what the groups claim as it’s associations with ‘slavery, repression and exploitation’. Without firing a shot, the ball’s organisers surrendered to these historically-challenged and dim bulbs and have changed the name of the event to the desperately banal ‘May Ball’. Workers of the world! Dance! The Empire Ball might well have been distasteful in its amateurish portrayal but certainly not because it was named after the British Empire. Often called the Pax Britannica, the Victorian era was a time when the British Empire, as we were reminded at school, included one-quarter of the population of the world. The map on the wall showed it all in pink; a big family. This is yet another plop of nonsense over the use of a word; a lexicon established and enforced by the intolerant left. In other, more important ways, this gives further evidence of our culture’s serious loss of memory, fortitude, conviction and principle. In the span of just a few decades, the greatness of Britain, in history and in fact, has been mocked and twisted and reduced to being defined by weak, ideological minds whose insidious pursuits have infiltrated every institution and family in the realm. The new Labour party and their ilk, like their forerunner in Canada, the Trudeaupian Liberal elite, have managed to largely erase a nation’s memory and replace it with politically-correct, soul-destroying leftist rubbish that has deeply transformed not just the governing of the people but the identity of a nation built upon centuries of wisdom and the enterprise of the British Empire. The ironically identified ‘anti-fascists’ disdain all that Britain has stood for whilst fascistically demanding allegiance to their woefully hysterical sensitivities…or else! Indeed, it is sadly more apparent that the People’s Government in the UK (According to Jack ‘Last’ Straw, the Queen is no longer Sovereign) and all the Euro-nuts have forgotten or deliberately ignore the truth of a superb, defiant anti-fascist British Empire that made its’ last great stand against the murderous tyrants of the twentieth century; including 'Uncle' Joe Stalin. The modern, industrialised, advanced and largely prosperous world we and the malcontents live in and enjoy could not have arisen without the British Empire and its’ progeny. It is only those who dismiss, not just the Empire, but the people and generations who built and sustained it, who are blind to the enormous contribution to the welfare of mankind it has been. The simpleton sloganeers of the left care little for the truth and the complexities of culture and history spoken through generations of brilliance and the genius of the British people. Appealing to the au courant supremacy of ‘feelings’ among the elite, these cretins attribute slavery to the British Empire knowing full well (or not, given the state of education today) that just about everybody in the olden days was in the slavery business until the great William Wilberforce, a Tory, who with his friends abolished the appalling trade throughout the Empire using the superiority of the Royal Navy that enforced the consequent freedom of tens of thousands of people. Indeed, it was the inspiration of that same Mr. Wilberforce and his companions who reinforced the importance and necessity of morality and decency in the public square and all across the Empire. When slavery was abolished in 1833, thousands of slaves from the United States secretly found their way to Canada via the ‘Underground Railroad’. For every brutal slave master there were thousands more of good British people to embrace those who sought freedom. Long before Obama of Kenya in the USA, many descendants of slaves have occupied positions of authority, honour and responsibility in Canadian society; including the Vice-Regal office representing the Sovereign. Michaelle Jean, the current Governor-General of Canada, is an immigrant descendant of slaves from Haiti (formerly of that late, lamented French Empire). No one ought to pretend that any nation, society or empire that has ever been or ever will be will be devoid of tyrannies, small or great, or of acts of repression. It is dishonest to suggest that the Empire, even with all of its faults, did not contribute most to the advancement of the human condition and advanced the dignity of the individual human being. It is outrageous that it ought to be singularly characterised as an evil in a whole other world far more evil than good. There is a much greater foundation for human rights to be found in British common law and its’ ministration than those hollow voices found in the morally bankrupt committees of the United Nations. By all accounts, many of the member states of the UN would have benefited more if they adhered to the principles and institutions of the British Empire. Some could argue convincingly that the British government prematurely closed down their shops in the colonies knowing full well the disastrous consequences that it bequeathed ill-prepared societies. Idi Amin, for one, comes to mind. There was a very real, pragmatic, economic and strategic quid pro quo between Britain and the colonies of the ‘third world’ and it certainly was handled very badly at the end. The partition of India remains one of the greatest blunders of the Empire that ‘didn’t want to be anymore’. The greatest scandal of Empire is not that there were cruel administrators and out-of-control bureaucrats or even injustices and violence; all of which is to be found in every society and in every place today. It is that the British government and bureaucrats failed to properly correct its’ mistakes and finish the job. Of course, they couldn’t ‘afford’ it. All empires evolve and inevitably must end but it is their legacy, fairly judged, by which they should be celebrated or condemned. Consider, by contrast, the socialist legacy of the Soviet Empire. Done. With the British Empire there remains a so-called ‘Anglosphere’ of countries founded by Britain and whose relative distinction from the statist nations of Europe and elsewhere remains a beacon of hope for many millions. The United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Mother Britain are glued by a common history and shared institutions that stand at the top of the class for civilisation. The Spring Ball Committee at Cambridge should view the statistics for migration to these countries from other places that over two centuries continue to give ample evidence of the prevalent human desire for the freedom and prosperity they afford. Compare those stats to the lack of hordes and queues seeking a fulfilled life and adventure in Russia, China, Venezuela, North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Cuba. A frequently dishonest habit of the People’s Revisionist Historians in the West is to characterise the whole by citing the inadequacies of the few. Again, this is an intentionally dishonest attempt at covering that which contradicts their ideology. In popular culture, such as in Hollywood and the media, this has meant showing Britain and the British people in the worst possible light, often through mocking caricature, so that in their inherently adolescent need to defy authority, including the facts of history, the ‘activists’ and ‘commentators’ might advance their own self-serving propaganda; all neatly planted in Marxist drivel. There are so many examples of this that it is dizzying. It is not uncommon and perhaps to be expected that most stories and films about British society, particularly in reference to the period of Empire, focus on the aristocracy, the nobility and, of course, the monarchy. The bulk of recorded history refers to the generations of these classes of people for they are the ones who largely governed the great events of history and provided the ‘fodder’ for the historian and storyteller. Some of them were great. Some of them were not quite as great as they might have thought and most of them were far fro m great. The building of an Empire required more than what the Kings, Queens, Princes, Dukes and Earls could provide in a class-driven society. Behind them are hundreds of thousands of ‘ordinary’ English, Scots, Welsh and Irish women and men; the common man, among whom civilisation has been afforded the benefits of their genius in science, art, literature, religion, industry and military achievement. Although the left defaults to characterising people by ‘groups’, the British culture is one that is best identified by the individual citizens, great and small, who are defined not by the some collective, racist attributes but through their own character and achievements. This character, this decency was the fruit of the British culture that, even in the midst of vulgarity and, yes decadence, found its’ greatest expression through an Empire where British law, institutions and Christian virtues were at the centre of a way of life. Remarkably, this remains mostly true for the United States. From the societies for young ladies, the Boys’ Brigade, the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, the Church, the Salvation Army and at the civic square, at school and even at the workplace and on the battlefield, there was this common thread that was generally regarded and understood. Like so many of their privileged Cantab predecessors, the Ball Committee invited their friends to dress up and play at being what they define as ‘Victorian England’ with all its’ ‘decadences’. It is highly doubtful that any of their pretend ‘decadences’ could approach the utterly disgusting and shameless practices eagerly promoted and openly embraced in the popular culture today. Of course it wasn’t the kingdom of heaven on earth. It was a very human thing with the characteristics of any human society. There was racism. There were injustices and cruelty. There was a pervasive class system that too often unfairly prevented the advancement of the ‘working man’. There was greed, violence, criminality and exploitation of the vulnerable. There were nasty people and vulgar people and selfish people just like we all know today. Unlike the ‘workers paradise’ however, the benefits of the evolution toward the dignity and freedom of the common citizen and the common good of society mitigates by far these acknowledged offences; ones that busily continue in many other places to which the ‘anti-fascist’ crowd look admiringly from afar but dare not go to dwell. Perhaps the most serious and distressing characteristic of contemporary British society is the self-loathing so broadly expressed, not just by those who govern, but especially in the lives of so many young people. Taught to essentially ‘hate’ what they are, what their fathers and mothers and ancestors were, they turn inward on themselves in all manner of self-destruction. That glue that was the thread of British life has largely come undone and the remaining voices like that of the bishop of Rochester and others have called for a return to the goodness and stability of the Britain that created a world of heroes as a force for good. Many are asking what happened to their country and yearn to get it back; at the very least to a place where British soldiers returning home from war are not abused by those who hate the place and way of life that those brave soldiers have defended. Replaced by the ‘Way’ of New Labour and an illogical, some have even said seditious, submission to the utterly foreign, statist and bankrupt socialist ideology of Europe, the Mother of a once-great Empire is rapidly euthanising. The Empire is long gone and the stories of the likes of Kipling and G.A. Henty that once inspired so many young people (and still do in some few places) have been replaced by Harry Potter et al. Still, the vital spirit and substance that was celebrated in their stories remains alive and well in the hearts of many. What remains to be seen is whether all the good for which the Empire stood and for which our forebears fought and gave their lives will withstand the relentless assault of the corrupt and delirious left with its contempt for history, for individual freedom and for prosperity. It is time to Redoubt. |
| Not just faith, but also history by David Warren |
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| The King & Queen unveil the War Memorial, Ottawa, 1939 by Margaret Fulton Frame |
| THE 'E' WORD |