The Fall of Britain — and the Warning for America
For reasons too dull to disclose, I didn’t become an American citizen till age 26, 20 years after arriving in the U.S. from Cuba. I had to drive from Washington to Baltimore with a good friend, Tom, who would testify that I was worthy of the honor. The two of us sat outside the immigration office waiting for Tom to be called in first. I was already a rock-solid conservative by then, more so than my buddy, and we got into a deep political argument. When the immigration officer popped her head out and called for Tom, he looked at me and said, “I don’t know now.” Of course he endorsed me. But that’s how challenging it was back then to become a U.S. citizen. Today, you probably don’t even have to speak English.
Fortunately for America, Donald Trump is President, so the Democratic open door to unvetted immigrants is now exit only. While the Administration prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our wonderful country, and restore her heroes to the pantheon from which shrieking liberals sought to remove them.
Maybe Britain can be saved, but time is running out, at ludicrous speed.
“All of you [Republicans] sit silently, even though you know what that means,” whined California congressman Jared Huffman at a House hearing last month. “You let him hijack the country’s 250th anniversary to sell access, hide his donors, and rewrite history.” Huffman and his fellow party leaders’ screams about white male slaveowners and stolen land are falling on patriotic deaf ears.
The situation is far more dire across the Pond in once great Britain, tragic in fact. For it signals the end of a magnificent 2,000-year history, betrayed from within at Mel Brooks -level “ludicrous speed.” Last week the Bank of England announced it would be removing Winston Churchill from the five-pound note, and replacing him with some form of British wildlife. You read right. The greatest British leader of the 20th century must give way to a fox or a hedgehog.
The man who foresaw the Nazi menace and did his best to prepare England for it: “Germany is arming fast, and no one is going to stop her.”
The man who kept the nation united and defiant in the heart of darkness: “We shall fight on the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.” Only Britain has surrendered, or at least her leaders have, to a different yet no less hostile invasion by Islamists.
For 16 years, an Indian restaurant in London, Rangrez, proclaimed it served non-halal meat. Halal is the ritualistic animal slow-bleed process mandated by Islam for the meat of observant Muslims. Rangrez owner Harman Singh Kapoor used jhatka, the more humane Sikh quick slaughter method. With Muslims now dominant in London, and exalted by Mayor Sadiq Khan and apparently the Metropolitan Police force, the Rangrez came under attack last week by a crowd of angry Muslims. The police responded to the trouble — by arresting Kapoor.
The displacement of traditional British values, including Law, proved too much for some classic liberals, such as comedy legend John Cleese of Monty Python and Fawlty Towers fame. Once an acerbic critic of anything remotely conservative, Cleese has become outspoken in his disgust for the rapid Islamization of his island. Remarking on the Kapoor arrest, he tweeted, “Can this really be happening in England. If it is, my next thought is ‘Where am I going to live.’”
But it was the eminent scholar Jordan Peterson who best expressed the tragedy of Britain one year ago on Piers Morgan Uncensored.
“I don’t know if you guys in the UK understand how sad it is for us in Canada, and in the United States, to watch what you’re doing to yourselves. We owe the UK such an immense debt. And to watch you guys spiral yourselves into the ground for this weak political correctness that has gone so far… and gaslight people who are telling the truth. It’s so sickening, it’s so demoralizing. It’s almost unspeakable. We all hope and pray that you get your act together, and grow some spine again and put your country back together, and stand up to these bloody psychopathic bullies and the woke green mob, because it would be a dreadful shame to lose you.”
Peterson definitely spoke for me. Much of what I am today, culturally and intellectually — and I think for the better — came from the English Literature I devoured. As a kid, I learned about things I hadn’t experienced — resilience from Robinson Crusoe, justice from Sherlock Holmes, honor from Rudolf Rassendyl (The Prisoner of Zenda), romance from Elizabeth Bennett (Pride and Prejudice), sexuality from James Bond, and everything else from Charles Dickens and Shakespeare. And all of them inspired me to write for a living, if only in their shadow.
So when I see a fat male cop yank a Union Jack flag away from a 16-year-old girl at an anti-Muslim protest, it personally disgusts me. That there are no Knights of the Round Table or Robin Hood or Simon Templar to teach that contemptible bully a lesson in manners — along with the pathetic Prime Minister and the Labour government that created him. I call it Operation Mordred, after the villain who brought down Camelot in Arthurian lore.
Maybe Britain can be saved, but time is running out, at ludicrous speed. All we Americans can do is make sure it never happens here, beginning this November 3rd, midterm Election Day.
READ MORE from Lou Aguilar:
Cuba’s Long Night Nears Its End