THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE: The Culture of Repudiation
Scruton, Roger
HE ENGLAND INTO WHICH I WAS BORN was a country thatacknowledgeditspast,itsinstitutions,andits culture. It remembered its national heroes, and rejoicedinitsvictoriesintwoworldwars.Ourhistory...
...Almost overnight, following the Madrid bombings and the election of Mr...
...the Muslim Eid is respected as a significant feast, as is St...
...Patrick'sDay,occasionofanti-EnglishsentimentamongtheIrish.ButSt.Georgeisnevermentioned.England's victories and virtues are absent from the new history books, which dwell on the oppression of the working class, the history of slavery in the colonies, thewomen'smovementandthesuffragettes.England comes across as a long drawn-out tale of oppression, the only heroes in which are those like the Chartists and Mrs...
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...George's Day, VEDay,andGuyFawkesDayor"bonfirenight,"when the most famous of conspirators against our Crown was burned in effigy...
...SINCE THATCHER WAS OUSTED, by a conspiracy of gray nonentities who had no idea what to put in her place, there has been a radical change in national sentiment--a change reflected elsewhere in the Western world, though particularly evident in England...
...A case in point was recently mentioned by Andrew Sullivan on his blog: the decision by a London borough council to mount a public celebration on Guy Fawkes Day--the still popular November 5th festival, in which children set off fireworks, and the stuffed effigy of Guy Fawkes, chief conspirator in the GunpowderPlotof1605,isburnedonapyre.This festival has been singled out in one of the few patrioticrhymesthatallchildrenlearn: Remember, remember, the 5th of November The Gunpowder Treason and plot...
...We were constantly reminded that our country was only one among many, each of which had an a priori claim on the loyalty of its citizens...
...Concerts and theatre performances would begin with the National Anthem, to which we all stood up, and on solemn occasions we would toast the Queen, God Bless Her...
...We kept our national festivals--St...
...These outward signs of patriotic sentiment were matchedbyaninwardresonancetotheart,literature, and music of England--a resonance captured for all timeinLawrenceOlivier'sfilmofShakespeare'sHenry V, and in the music that Sir William Walton wrote for that film...
...HewillmodelhisvisionontheEnlightenmentandthe Goethezeit--the brief moment of poetry and highmindedness, when Prussia had not extinguished localloyalties, nor Napoleon sparked the fires of nationalismacrossthecontinent.EventhechildrenofTurkish immigrants seem happy with this idea, and join in the task of constructing an imaginary Germany with no sensethatthetaskisnottheirs...
...Thissuddenrepudiationofanationalculturecan be witnessed also in Spain...
...Make a Gift from Your IRA THE PENSION PROTECTION ACT OF 2006 allows individuals age 7012 and above to make current gifts from their IRA accounts directly to nonprofits like The American Spectator Foundation...
...Nevertheless, a certain decorum, a quiet English pride, survived even the worst socialist excesses, and Margaret Thatcher, at the time of the Falklands war, could call upon an undepleted reserve ofpatrioticsentimentwithwhichtoinspirethecountry to its feat of arms...
...It was no longer a Catholic country, no longer a bastion of Counter Reformation values, no longer a country of machismo, gallantry, and cortesia, but the leading light of postmodernism, with every cause deemed offensive to the old Castillian dignity, fromgaymarriagetothesecularizationoftheschools,prominentonthenewagenda.JustasEnglandisconfirmingthepropheciesofGeorgeOrwell,whosawthe anti-patriotism of the intellectuals as a disease that would spread in time through the national culture, so is Spain now confirming an even older prophecy of OrtegayGassetwho,inL'Espanainvertebradaof1921, foretold the sudden spinelessness that would afflict hiscountry,whenthemassesatlasttookcharge...
...It is why American children grow up as Americans...
...AmongtheyoungpeopleofWesternEurope,only theGermansseemtobefullyateasewiththeireducation and eager to learn about the past...
...Ofcourse,aftermassimmigrationandtheswinging sixties, it would be absurd to expect things to stay that way: as absurd as to think that the Hellenistic worldcouldhavesurvivedtheriseofChristianity,despite the flow of ideas and people that was set in motion by St...
...There was no question in our young heartsthatEnglandwasareality,andthemostimportantrealityinourworld.Wedidnotgoalongwiththe imperialist triumphalism of our Victorian ancestors...
...The gift is made on or before December 31, 2007...
...I know of no reason why Gunpowder Treason Should ever be forgot...
...loyalty comes--as it inevitably comes when the adolescent faces the world of strangers--there is nothing onoffersavethecultureofrepudiation.Weshouldnot be surprised, therefore, if so many children of Europeanimmigrantstrytofindanidentitybyhatingthe societyinwhichtheyhavebeenraised...
...It is therefore of special significance among our nationalicons,andeventhepressurefromthehealth and safety fanatics has not prevented every village from lighting its fire, and every London street from setting off its fireworks...
...It remembered its national heroes, and rejoicedinitsvictoriesintwoworldwars.Ourhistory books told us of countless episodes--from AgincourttoTrafalgar,andfromtheIndianMutinyto the Battle of Britain--in which British people had faced appalling odds, held firm, and finally triumphed...
...The gift will be counted against your required minimum distribution but will not be counted for income tax purposes (in exchange, the IRS does not permit a tax deduction on this amount...
...George's Day, to teach the fund of patriotic poetry, or even to encourage your pupils to listentoElgarandVaughanWilliams,youwillbeofferingconclusivesignsthatyoudonotbelong.Likewise,a Spanish schoolteacher who begins his class with a prayer, who frequents the bullfight (already going the wayoftheEnglishfoxhunt),orwhoteacheshispupils aboutthetriumphoverIslamandtheChristianizingof Andalusia,wouldsoonbeboycottedbyhiscolleagues...
...Pankhurst who fought against the established interests of their country...
...The gift is $100,000 or less per person for the calendar year...
...These young people grow up surrounded by the same anti-patriotism, the same repudiation of historical belonging, that has infected the culture of England and Spain...
...The reason is that Germany has been abolished, so that there is nothing left to repudiate...
...Zapatero, Spain placed a negation sign in front of its inheritance...
...and if you cannot identify with it, then you must find a new identity by rejecting it...
...Our teachers at school were quick to remind us of the cruelties perpetrated against Catholics during the Reformation, against the Boers and the Zulus in the scramble for Africa, against the American Indians and the aborigines of Australia, on both of whom we inflicted our unwanted psychopaths...
...This gesture parallels similar initiatives in everysphereofEnglishnationallife.Thestateschools celebrate the Hindu Diwali, but not Christmas...
...Paul...
...AmericashoulddrawalessonfromEurope.There is,intheAmericancurriculum,asharednationalmyth, a cherished history, and a collection of icons, customs, andceremoniesthatareendorsednotonlybythepeople but also by the political class...
...Roger Scruton,thewriterandphilosopher,ismostrecently the author of Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life (Continuum...
...T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R F O U N D A T I O N...
...WE SHOULD NOT SEE THIS KIND ofrepudiationas a fleeting gesture...
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...Hitler saw to that, and the worldhasendorsedhisachievement.Enteringaworld of state-sponsored amnesia, the German adolescent writes on the tabula rasa of his mind a description of an ideal German culture, one to which he might wish to belong, secure in the knowledge that nobody living willpollutethatidealwithmessyhumanattachments...
...As Francoise Thom and Isabelle Stahl pointed out over 20 years ago in L'Ecole des barbares, the busy revision of the curriculuminthewakeof1968ledtoakindofnegativeschooling,inwhicheverythingFrenchwastoberejected,and an "inclusive" nothingness put in its place...
...The idea was, not to preventthefireworks,whichwouldbedifficultorimpossible, but to pretend that they had nothing to do with England...
...Whatever their religion, their locality, their class, or their race, they grow upbelonging.Thisisapreciousgift,andifeverthecultureofrepudiationshouldspreadfromtheuniversities to the rest of American society, this great nation, like thenationsofEurope,willbegintofallapart...
...In France as in Britain the children of immigrantsareofferednoloyaltythatcouldrivalorreplace thefadingloyaltiesoftheirparents.Whenthetimefor R O G E RS C R U T O N ThechangeIamreferringtoistherise ofa"cultureofrepudiation"--akindof vigilantseekingoutofthesignsand symbolsofnationalidentity,inorder toabolishorpourscornonthem...
...Repudiating a culture becomes a culture--a way of belonging by not belonging, an identity in difference that is also a differentidentity.Toinheritacultureyoumustidentify with it...
...After all, comparative anthropology was itself a product of the BritishEmpire, and those Englishmen who had traveled far afield in the service of Her Imperial Majesty had returned with the message that ours was neither the only form of human life, nor self-evidently the best one.Nevertheless,aquietsenseofbelongingradiated ourexperienceandattachedus,eveninourmoments of rebellion, to the quiet, self-deprecating English way of doing things, to which, it was understood, we were entitled by 300 years of civil peace...
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...The festivities declared by the London borough council for last fall's 5th of November, however, were to celebrate Bengali Night...
...The change I am referring to is the rise of a "culture of repudiation"--a kind of vigilant T H EP U R S U I TO FK N O W L E D G E 4 8 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R M A R C H 2 0 0 7 TheCultureofRepudiation by Roger Scruton T M A R C H 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 4 9 seekingoutofthesignsandsymbolsofnationalidentity, in order to abolish or pour scorn on them...
...T H EP U R S U I TO FK N O W L E D G E 5 0 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R M A R C H 2 0 0 7 For more information, please contact: Patrick Pyles, The American Spectator Foundation, 1611 North Kent Street, Suite 901, Arlington, VA 22209 Ph: 703-807-2011 ext...
...Hence if you areateacherinastateschoolinEngland,andyoupropose to mark St...
...I say England, rather than Britain, for the brand of anti-patriotism that we witness in England hasnorealparallelinScotland,Ireland,orWales,allof which have retained their national myths and imagined heroes, and all of which are frozen in postures of rebellion against an English domination that ceased two centuries ago...
...25 * E-mail: pylesp@spectator.org Want to Help Spread Free Market, Conservative Ideas...
...But you don'tincludepeoplebyofferingthemnothing.Youinclude them by offering a something in which you believe...
...If you were looking for a simple explanation of why the youth of the Parisian bidonvilles are without any loyalty to the country that has taken in their parents, you need not look far...
Vol. 40 • March 2007 • No. 2
