FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
nationthailand

Refugee crisis plus democratic inertia is a recipe for civil war  

Refugee crisis plus democratic inertia is a recipe for civil war  

Re: “‘Our civilisation’ belongs to every person who assimilates”, Have Your Say, yesterday.

Our Western civilisation is in danger of being “gone for ever” thanks to the main failing of democracy – short-termism – and the cowardice and abnegation of responsibility that flows from that. JC Wilcox neglects to mention that the majority of Europe’s migrants who seek “the humanity offered by our civilisation” are economic migrants, not genuine refugees, a fact belatedly recognised by Europe’s leaders. With regard to “assimilation”, this is not happening – the migrants wish to retain their 7th-century culture, and together with the huge numbers involved, therein lie the seeds of the collapse of Western civilisation. The cracks appearing in Sweden, UK, France and Germany have attracted the concern of President Trump and Eastern European leaders, but are denied by the leaders of those countries.
Why is this suicide mission being allowed to continue? Because of democratic inertia and irresponsibility. Those of a certain age might remember the much-vilified British intellectual and MP Enoch Powell, who became famous for his erroneously titled “Rivers of Blood” speech. 
Apart from warning about the consequences of large-scale immigration, his opening statement on the supreme function of statesmanship was most important: “The discussion of future grave but, with effort now, avoidable evils is the most unpopular and at the same time the most necessary occupation for the politician.” Powell enlarged on this in an interview nine years later: “It is better for us to do nothing now than to seize the many poisonous nettles which we would have to seize if we were at this stage to attempt to avert the outcome. So let it go on until the civil war comes. We won’t be blamed. We will either have gone, or we’ll slip out from under somehow.”
And we can be sure that the treasonous cowards who “slip out from under” will not have to suffer the consequences of their failure to seize those “poisonous nettles” as the rest of Europe’s people will.
Nigel Pike
Phang Nga

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