British Degeneracy on Parade

NB: As Americans, we are sometimes uncomfortable blogging some of Dalrymple’s pieces that heavily criticize England. Please understand that we are only forwarding his criticisms. The headline above is not ours, but City Journal’s. America certainly has plenty of its own problems. My comment here explains further.
At any rate, Dalrymple writes of the riots again, in City Journal:

The riots are the apotheosis of the welfare state and popular culture in their British form. A population thinks (because it has often been told so by intellectuals and the political class) that it is entitled to a high standard of consumption, irrespective of its personal efforts; and therefore it regards the fact that it does not receive that high standard, by comparison with the rest of society, as a sign of injustice. It believes itself deprived (because it has often been told so by intellectuals and the political class), even though each member of it has received an education costing $80,000, toward which neither he nor—quite likely—any member of his family has made much of a contribution; indeed, he may well have lived his entire life at others’ expense, such that every mouthful of food he has ever eaten, every shirt he has ever worn, every television he has ever watched, has been provided by others. Even if he were to recognize this, he would not be grateful, for dependency does not promote gratitude. On the contrary, he would simply feel that the subventions were not sufficient to allow him to live as he would have liked.

And here is yet another potential addition to our page of favorite Dalrymple quotes:

There is nothing that an intellectual less likes to change than his mind…

4 thoughts on “British Degeneracy on Parade

  1. Andrew S

    I agree with almost everything Dalrymple writes about my country, England. The only criticism I would make is that he sometimes gives the impression he is referring to the entire nation when usually he’s just referring to certain parts of it – specifically inner city areas. I can understand why this is so, however; it would be rather tedious to constantly write “inner-city England” in place of just “England”.

    Reply
  2. cmp

    Fellas, your concern about causing offence is a sign of basic American decency. In the UK the loony left wear their anti-americanism as a badge of honour.

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