- Walden, George.
Time to Emigrate?
London: Gibson Square, 2006.
ISBN 1-903933-93-5.
-
Readers of Theodore Dalrymple's
Life at the Bottom
and
Our
Culture, What's Left of It may have thought his dire
view of the state of civilisation in Britain to have been unduly
influenced by his perspective as a prison and public hospital
physician in one of the toughest areas of Birmingham, England. Here
we have, if not the “view from the top”, a brutally candid
evaluation written by a former Minister of Higher Education in the
Thatcher government and Conservative member of the House of Commons
from 1983 until his retirement in 1997, and it is, if anything, more
disturbing.
The author says of himself (p. 219), “My life
began unpromisingly, but everything's always got better. …
In other words, in personal terms I've absolutely no complaints.”
But he is deeply worried about whether his grown children and their
children can have the same expectations in the Britain of today
and tomorrow. The book is written in the form of a long (224 page)
and somewhat rambling letter to a fictional son and his wife
who are pondering emigrating from Britain after their young son was beaten
into unconsciousness by immigrants within sight
of their house in London. He describes his estimation of the culture,
politics, and economy of Britain as much like the work of a house
surveyor: trying to anticipate the problems which may befall those
who choose to live there. Wherever he looks: immigration, multiculturalism,
education, transportation, the increasingly debt-supported consumer
economy, public health services, mass media, and the state of
political discourse, he finds much to fret about. But this does
not come across as the sputtering of an ageing Tory, but rather a
thoroughly documented account of how most of the things which
the British have traditionally valued (and have attracted immigrants to
their shores) have eroded during his lifetime, to such an extent that
he can no longer believe that his children and grandchildren will
have the same opportunities he had as a lower middle class boy
born twelve days after Britain declared war on Germany in 1939.
The curious thing about emigration from the British Isles today is that it's the
middle class that is bailing out. Over most of history, it was the
lower classes seeking opportunity (or in the case of my Irish
ancestors, simply survival) on foreign shores, and the surplus
sons of the privileged classes hoping to found their own dynasties
in the colonies. But now, it's the middle that's being squeezed
out, and it's because the collectivist state is squeezing them
for all they're worth. The inexorably growing native underclass and
immigrants benefit from government services and either don't have
the option to leave or else consider their lot in life in Britain
far better than whence they came. The upper classes can opt out of
the sordid shoddiness and endless grey queues of socialism; on p. 153
the author works out the cost: for a notional family of two parents
and two children, “going private” for health care, education
for the kids, transportation, and moving to a “safe neighbourhood”
would roughly require doubling income from what such a
typical family brings home.
Is it any wonder we have so many billionaire collectivists (Buffett,
Gates, Soros, etc.)? They don't have to experience the sordid
consequences of their policies, but by advocating them, they can
recruit the underclass (who benefit from them and are eventually made
dependent and unable to escape from helotry) to vote them into power
and keep them there. And they can exult in virtue as their noble
policies crush those who might aspire to their own exalted station. The middle
class, who pay for all of this, forced into minority, retains only the
franchise which is exercised through shoe leather on pavement, and
begins to get out while the property market remains booming and the
doors are still open.
The author is anything but a doctrinaire Tory; he has, in fact, quit
the party, and savages its present “100% Feck-Free” (my term)
leader, David Cameron as, among other things, a “transexualised
[Princess] Diana” (p. 218). As an emigrant myself, albeit from
a different country, I think his conclusion and final recommendation
couldn't be wiser (and I'm sorry if this is a spoiler, but if you're
considering such a course you should read this book cover to cover
anyway): go live somewhere else (I'd say, anywhere else) and see how
you like it. You may discover that you're obsessed with what you miss
and join the “International Club” (which usually means
the place they speak the language of the Old Country), or you may
find that after struggling with language, customs, and how things are done,
you fit in rather well and, after a while, find most of your nightmares
are about things in the place you left instead of the one you worried
about moving to. There's no way to know—it could go either
way. I think the author, as many people, may have put somewhat more
weight on the question of emigration that it deserves. I've always looked
at countries like any other product. I've never accepted that because I
happened to be born within the borders of some state to whose creation and legitimacy I never
personally consented, that I owe it any obligation whatsoever
apart from those in compensation for services provided directly to
me with my assent. Quitting Tyrania to live in Freedonia is
something anybody should be able do to, assuming the residents of Freedonia
welcome you, and it shouldn't occasion any more soul-searching on the
part of the emigrant than somebody choosing to trade in their VW bus for
a Nissan econobox because the 1972 bus was a shoddy crapwagon. Yes, you should worry and
even lose sleep over all the changes you'll have to make, but there's no
reason to gum up an already difficult decision process by cranking all kinds
of guilt into it. Nobody (well, nobody remotely sane) gets all consumed by
questions of allegiance, loyalty, or heritage when deciding whether
their next computer will run Windows, MacOS, Linux, or FreeBSD. It seems to
me that once you step back from the flags and anthems and monuments and kings
and presidents and prime ministers and all of the other atavistic baggage
of the coercive state, it's wisest to look at your polity like an operating system;
it's something that you have to deal with (increasingly, as the incessant
collectivist ratchet tightens the garrote around individuality and productivity),
but you still have a choice among them, and given how short is our tenure on this planet,
we shouldn't waste a moment of it living somewhere that callously exploits our labours
in the interest of others. And, the more productive people exercise that choice,
the greater the incentive is for the self-styled rulers of the various states to create an
environment which will attract people like ourselves.
Many of the same issues are discussed, from a broader European
perspective, in
Claire Berlinski's
Menace
in Europe
and
Mark Steyn's
America
Alone. To fend off queries, I emigrated from what many consider
the immigration magnet of the world in 1991 and have never looked back
and rarely even visited the old country except for business and family
obligations. But then I suspect, as the author notes on p. 197,
I am one of those D4-7 allele people (look it up!) who thrive on risk
and novelty; I'm not remotely claiming that this is better—Heaven knows
we DRD4 7-repeat folk have caused more than our cohort's proportion
of chaos and mayhem, but we just can't give it
up—this is who we are.
January 2007 