[Previous entry: "Denmark rocked again by race riots"] [Next entry: "German professors suggest balanced approach to Israel"]

02/19/2008: "Ethnic salvation begins with cultural renovation"

But everybody recognises that it is not that simple. Which is to say that everybody knows that we have a far more profound dilemma: Britain does not have a unified, coherent, identifiable self-image, either as a people or as a political entity, which it can offer to incomers as an inspiration and a ready-made value system.

There is a reason why all the attempts to define Britishness seem to end in fatuity: not only because they dribble off into nebulous virtues such as tolerance and decency, which should be common to all
civilised people, but because the British opinion-forming classes tend to find the whole concept of national identity either sinister or risible.

[ Most people in cities indulge in the pretense that they are so unique they do not need culture. ]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?
xml=/global/2008/02/18/noindex/do1801.xml