Saturday, April 21, 2012

Theodore Dalrymple: The Ugly Brutishness of Modern Britain - WSJ.com

Theodore Dalrymple: The Ugly Brutishness of Modern Britain - WSJ.com:
What has caused this collapse of civility in Britain, which was, within living memory, a civil country? In my view, it is a demotic version of egalitariansim, allied with multiculturalism.

Even middle-class people now behave in an increasingly uncouth and rough fashion in Britain because they think that by doing so they are expressing their solidarity with the lower reaches of their society. Imitation, they think, is the highest form of sympathy. This, of course, is an implicit insult to many of the poor, for poverty and unmannerliness are by no means the same thing.

Multiculturalism is damaging because it denies that, when it comes to culture, there is a better and a worse, a higher and a lower—only difference. The word culture is used here in its anthropological sense, that is to mean the totality of behavior that is not directly biological.