Louder Than Bombs

‘It is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that kills a civilisation’, the historian Kenneth Clark once said. ‘We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs.’

The cynics and the suicide bombers are among us, along with the grifters, race hustlers and a posh white left eager to erase the country’s past, re-write it, or define it in terms of its barbarism.

Those with an alternate take are accused of celebrating a mythical, utopian, monocultural past. Yet the mythical, utopian, multicultural present they cling to is imploding before our weary eyes. As Morrissey says, no one writes songs about England anymore. The queen is dead, boys, and it’s so lonely on a limb. (Spiked: Michael Collins: The Fire in Morrissey Now)

The world, and the human civilizations it contains, continue to change and evolve and remake themselves. Even the most grizzled old cynic could find himself kicking wet leaves down Maudlin Street, lamenting the demise of all he took for granted… Nothing left to save anyway… It’s all something else now.