Charlottesville

Roger Scruton cogently points out that there is a difference between “race” and “culture.” The second paragraph of the United States Constitution, “all men are created equal,” referred to race. Racism remains not only unconstitutional but also morally wrong.

We acknowledge that different races may have different cultures. Societies evolve into cultural entities – culture defines us. We may choose to be different and to live differently from others and, over time, that becomes our defined culture. To what extent, therefore, should we in the West, when confronted by substantial immigration of different races, mainly Muslim, absorb the respective incoming cultures into our own?

The superficially cosy concept of multiculturalism blurs the distinction between race and culture. In all its pompous virtue and an overriding effort to be inclusive, multiculturalism renounces and disdains our cultural heritage.  Indeed, the very defence of Western values is branded as racist! Topsy-turvy Land indeed!

I have no inside knowledge of what is going on in Charlottesville but I suspect it is much more complex than that which is being reported by the breast-beating media. This cultural conflict, tragically reduced to violence, may, in essence, have quite a lot to do with the electoral wishes of 63 million American voters. We need to look objectively beneath the veneer of swastikas and opposing black lives matter propaganda, both undoubtedly racist, to reveal the legitimate cultural battle to preserve our Western civilisation beneath.

Chillingly, as Douglas Murray has argued persuasively in The Strange Death of Europe, this battle may already be lost.