Destroying the Present by Attacking the Past
Ross Greer is an MSP for the anti-British and separatist Scottish Cabbage Party (otherwise known as 'the Greens' – which purports to care for the environment, but is really just a Marxist Trojan Horse party).
He recently claimed that Winston Churchill was a "white supremacist" and a "mass murderer".
That got him a lot of attention. He must be very pleased. We're not going to waste time engaging with his points.
Rather we're going to ask what people like Greer intend to achieve with this inflammatory rhetoric.
Firstly, let us dismiss the idea that he is simply "immature", or "too young" or "stupid" or "doesn't know what he's talking about" or is just "an attention seeker". He understands and knows very well what he is doing, and why he is doing it.
THEIR AIM: DESTROY THE PRESENT BY DESTROYING THE PAST
Such people are involved in an attempted revolution against the idea of the United Kingdom today, and in order to perpetrate that revolution, a prime requirement is to destroy the past...in our minds.
They have a deliberate agenda to delegitimise – remove the moral authority from – the very idea of our United Kingdom, in order to make it easier to dismantle.
If they can attack the country's history and prominent people as somehow "tainted" with some kind of "sin/political-incorrectness" then they can delegitimise its moral authority today. They can make it look as if the United Kingdom of today does not deserve to exist.
If you can make people ashamed of the United Kingdom of today and of the past, then you can ensure they will not stand up for it. And you will find it easier to dismantle (quite literally, such as removing monuments)!
That's it in a nutshell.
We spoke more about this at our Speech in London last year "15 Reasons to be Proud of the United Kingdom".
FINDING BALANCE
Of course, most normal people understand that Britain's history and its prominent people (along with the history of all countries in the world) is a complex mix of "good" and "bad"; and often tending towards balance, day to day, as time moves on.
Furthermore, it is obvious that things which people have said or done have to be seen within the context of the times. Attitudes considered "bad" today were not considered "bad" in the past, and may even have been considered "good". As David Brent said in The Office, the 1950s was "before racism was wrong".
But here's the thing. Those of us who like the idea of our country in the first place – the United Kingdom – will make an effort to consider all these angles, and mix the good with the bad to find a balance. We're reasonable people who will acknowledge "the bad"; we will find ways to learn from it, at the same time as we look for "the good" to esteem and hold up for inspiration.
Those who oppose our country are not interested in such nuance.
They are not interested in "shades of grey". They are not interesting in "considering both sides". They are certainly not interested in "seeing things in the context of the times"!
REVOLUTIONARIES ARE NOT REASONABLE
They are not interested in being reasonable because you cannot win a revolution by being reasonable.
They take their lead from the professional leftist agitator, Saul Alinsky who wrote Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals in 1971.
His chapter "Of Means and Ends" is worth studying in depth.
He speaks about the necessity to avoid such reasonable considerations regarding the balance of right and wrong, or good and bad on either side...if one is a "Radical" intent on promoting a revolution!
To illustrate his points, he references the American Revolution, and the Declaration of Independence.
He points out that the American Colonists who drafted the Declaration saw it as a glorious document. To the British, it was a deceit, which deliberately ignored the benefits of the British presence.
However, as he says, if the Colonists had listed the benefits of the British Empire, then they would have constructed a document which was 60 per cent on the side of the Colonists, and 40% on the side of the British.
The Declaration was intended to be a call to war! Therefore, as he says, it would "defy common sense" to expect a man to "join the Revolutionary Army for a 20 per cent difference in the balance of human justice".
Therefore, the Declaration had to be 100 per cent on the side of the Colonists and had to 100 per cent denounce the British; even if the British were not in fact 100% wrong!
"Our cause had to be all shining justice, allied with the angels; theirs had to be all evil, tied to the Devil; in no war has the enemy or the cause ever been gray. Therefore, from one point of view the omission was justified; from the other, it was deliberate deceit...The opposition's means, used against us, are always immoral and our means are always ethical and rooted in the highest of human values."
He further uses the example of the "Boston Massacre".
Patrick Carr, one of the 5 townspeople shot dead by the British, stated on his deathbed that the townspeople had been the aggressors and that the British fired in self defence. This admission threatened to destroy the martyrdom that the Revolutionary Leader, Sam Adams, had invested in the townspeople.
Adams thereby set about attempting to discredit Patrick Carr as, writes Alinsky, "an Irish 'papist' who had probably died in the confession of the Roman Catholic Church."
To the British this was an immoral deception and deliberate bigotry.
As Alinsky writes: "Today we may look back and regard Adams' action in the same light as the British did, but remember that we are not today involved in a revolution against the British Empire."
THE REVOLUTION AGAINST BRITAIN
Today, people like Greer, the Scottish Cabbage Party, the SNP, Irish Republicans, and many on the extreme left are still involved in "a revolution against the British Empire"!
They have no intention of ever noticing or commending any "good" things about our past, or even our present. It is naive of us to expect that they might! Anyone who expects them to do so, does not understand the nature of the political battle in which we are involved.
They seek no nuanced understanding; no shades of grey; only stark black and white division will effectively further their anti-British agenda.
It is always a mistake to try to imagine that reason and logic will appeal to such people. They are not interested. They have a deliberate political agenda!
HOW WE SHOULD RESPOND
We should always respond with reason and logic, and seek to find a balance because only then can we find redemption as human beings, and as a society.
However, we should also be wise. We should learn to spot people who are not interested in learning or debating our past, but who only have an agenda to destroy our present.
Furthermore, we must do everything in our power to ensure that such people are not re-elected to the Scottish Parliament in 2021!
