WATCHING THE RIVER FLOW

NOW THAT HISTORY IS MATCHING THE FUTURE pound for pound, perhaps we should consider a tale of two British voices. History speaks first. Controversial British politician Enoch Powell throws himself on the pyre of political correctness, and suffers the black and white result we now produce in color and in common all across the world with tragically discouraging results in far too many situations to continue to ignore.

Parrhesia is the moral concept of speaking truth to power, never an easy task in the past, hardly the present, nor God help us in the future to be certain. Powell's speech "Rivers of Blood" spoke to the power of his time and ours. The consequences of what happened to Powell and the civilization he sought to preserve are now upon our brow. We can continue to ignore the evidence that is before us, or miserably cling to a broken idea that was mismanaged with great care for several generations unto the present hour.

But let's start simple. Rabid, unchecked, inflexible multiculturalism is damning the world to a poverty of reason and a gross impersonal terror upon civilization.

As one commentator put it, "Multiculturalism is cancer, the school system has bred an entire generation of weak and sniveling cowards who are more concerned with being politically correct, bowing to the money of their new masters, than they are in comporting to a rational strategy in maintaining their own most basic interests."

It's no secret among those who can connect the damned dots without paying homage to that snarling beast of MSM that Great Britain is breaking down rapidly, right along the precise fault lines that Powell predicted, but the folks who have bought heavily into Beatle logic refuse to deal with what their stance has wrought. The left-wing of Britain, enforced with prejudice by the EU, has successfully destroyed the future of the UK, short of all out civil war, it seems. But that is what THEY THE MULTICULTURALIST ELITES had planned all along. The Marxist snarl is a smiling face supported by a toothless but pervasive police power and a lawmaker's holiday. British columnist Melanie Phillips writes:

This new strategy entails targeting countries with a substantial Muslim presence for 'low-intensity warfare' comprising bombings, kidnappings, the taking of hostages, the use of women and children as human shields, beheadings and other attacks that make normal life impossible.

So, al Qaeda, according to Phillips, plans to target countries with a substantial Muslim presence for low-intensity terrorist warfare along the lines of the Bombay attack that would make normal life in those countries impossible. Isn't that phrase, "substantial Muslim presence," uh, telling us something? Something connected with the non-discriminatory immigration policies that have brought into existence the substantial Muslim presence in Western countries?

Phillips writes that Britain is highly vulnerable to the threat of Bombay-type attacks, and she expresses great anxiety about it, but she ends the article without a single mention of a possible course of action. The thought evidently doesn't even cross her mind: "Shouldn't we at least stop further Muslim immigration into Britain? And those 2,000 known terrorists currently under surveillance by the police—shouldn't we just, uh, remove them from our neighborhoods, expel them or neutralize them by any means within the laws already on the books?"

Note: Britain is busily whitewashing their laws against treason and other high crimes and misdemeanors against the state, so as not to offend those who will soon rule over them.

While Phillips repeatedly insisted in her 2006 book—Londonistan— that Muslim immigration into Britain had been a "lethal" development, she has never proposed that Muslim immigration be reduced by so much as a single Muslim per year. If Melanie truly fears and loathes the lethal, her own submission to liberalism in power doesn't convince her that she should call for anything to stop this lethal policy.

Such is the mindset of the modest American liberal and moderate appeasers, also. Better to drown oneself in yesterday's details than imagine the impact of tomorrow's invoices. The drama is excruciatingly loud and proud but is also effectively muffled by the beautiful sway of political incorrectness. Incorrect because it reeks of wrongness and moral insanity not for the idea itself, but for the brutality of its consequences. Incorrect because I refuse to call this upside down political phenomenon politically correct. I slip occasionally, but I am earnestly resisting this disturbing groupthink.

Here's the second part of the Rivers of Blood video series, and a classic Bob Dylan track to help those, whose fertile minds haven't glazed over in self-righteousness yet, to ease the existential angst served up when having to rethink yesterday's task again today without much thought of what tomorrow's task may require.

HAWKS ON THE HORIZON

BRITISH POLITICIAN Enoch Powell, a member of Parliament for 37 years, died in Febrauary, 1998. Powell was a man of extraordinary ability, who had the courage to speak the truth on immigration. For this, he was driven from the Tory leadership and became known as the best prime minister Britain never had.

The son of teachers, Powell won a scholarship to Cambridge, was a professor of Greek at 25, enlisted in the British army as a private at the outset of World War II and rose to the rank of brigadier general. A Thatcherite before Thatcher, Powell was a forceful intellectual and an eloquent speaker.

On his death, Margaret Thatcher said: "There will never be anybody else so compelling as Enoch Powell. He had a rare combination of qualities all founded on an unfaltering belief in God, an unshakable loyalty to family and friends, and an unswerving devotion to our country."

But Powell is best remembered for a controversial 1968 address warning of the dangers to national unity from immigration, which came to be known as the "Rivers of Blood" speech.

Powell saw immigration from Britain's former colonies leading to an upsurge of crime and poverty and the fragmentation of British society. From his vantage point, the future looked bleak. "Like the Roman," Powell observed, "I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood."

The Tory reaction was to brand him a racist. Powell was removed from Edward Heath's shadow cabinet and forever barred from the prime ministership.

Conservatives have a long and depressing tradition of bludgeoning immigration skeptics. In 1993, Winston Churchill, grandson of Britain's wartime prime minister, made similar observations. Churchill noted that while immigrants accounted for 6 percent of the nation, in some cities they constituted half the population.

Then-Prime Minister John Major, seeking to reassure the British, predicted that 50 years hence spinsters would still bicycle to communion on Sunday morning. "More likely the muezzin will be calling Allah's faithful to the High Main Street Mosque," Churchill countered. For integrity to match his namesake's, Churchill was excoriated by members of Major's cabinet.

Among the tributes delivered on Powell's passing, William Hague, the current Tory leader, said, "Powell spoke his mind without fear or favor." When Lord Norman Tebbit spoke his, at the Conservative Party Conference last year, Hague's gang rushed to disown him.

Tebbit didn't urge that immigration be curtailed, but merely warned of the dangers of multiculturalism. The children of immigrants "born here should be taught that British history is their history, or they will forever be foreigners holding British passports and this kingdom will become a Yugoslavia," Tebbit warned.

"Tebbit gives the impression of intolerance," Hague's office clucked. "William Hague wants to build a multicultural society." Well, good luck to him, and God save the Queen.

Still, Britain's immigration problems seem trifling next to our own. By the latest count, 9.2 percent of our population is foreign-born. In California, that figure rises to 25 percent.

Due largely to immigration (at the rate of about 1.5 million a year, 90 percent non-white), Americans of European stock will decline from 73.6 percent of the population today to 52.8 percent in 2050.

Augmenting the welfare rolls and crime statistics aren't the only contributions of newcomers. Like Enoch Powell, the more discerning among us see our national identity slipping through porous borders. In his monograph Huddled Cliches, Larry Auster warns: "In addition to the millions of people who see the United States as a candy store without a lock, a significant number of immigrants have a conscious animus against this country.

"A very bright Bengali-American college student told her college English class that the word 'American' is 'Orwellian' because it imposes an identity on her that she doesn't feel. 'I am not an American. I'm Bengali.'"

Those who dare to recognize reality get the Powell treatment. The American elite can't take the truth today any more than Britain's could 30 years ago. In surveying the ruins of a once promising career, Powell stoically commented: "All political careers end in failure. No regrets."

At least Enoch Powell won't have to witness the balkanization of his nation. Your children and grandchildren won't be nearly so fortunate.

Thanks to Don Feder of Jewish World Review.