Peter Hitchens Interview 2018 - 'The Abolition of Britain' and other topics

[Music] what compelled you to write the abolition of Britain well knowing compelled me to write it I was told that I couldn't really get any further in the national debate unless I have a book to my name which i think is true I think that if you really want to be part of the national discussion then you have to show that there's more to you than a few columns and articles you need to be capable of doing something a bit more depth and I decided that right what if that was necessary then this is what I was going to write about and there was no great difficulty in fixing on the subject because it was what had been interesting me for some time particularly since I had returned from five years abroad two and a half of them in the Soviet Union and two in the United States and the rest of it going to other parts of the world I basically had a gap and I'd returned to a Britain I didn't fully recognize and was disturbed by the changes and increasingly began to ask questions about why it seems in so many ways that my country now had begun to resemble the Soviet Union which I'd seen collapse I don't mean in terms of the cityscapes although the decrepitude but in terms of this spirit of the place that seemed to have altered very considerably and that's why I wrote it but I wasn't compelled writing a voluntary act it's just super work I like it I have it does time goes by I see flaws in it that I would now correct but it's on the other hand it's now achieve the source of state is where I'm very reluctant to touch it in any case I think that if I tried to re with I tried to revise it I end up writing new completely different books I prefer to leave it more or less as it stands though I am planning to write a new and then with some new chapter but perhaps a new introduction to the introduction which it's not to update it but to put in it some section which recognizes there's a lot of staff and since 1999 which it has it certainly has since then of course you've read can have just the word taking on the role of a bitterest of Britain well I cheered for it nobody else seemed to be seem to be doing it also I grew very tired of people who had paved as far as I could see no attention to my attempts to intervene in politics saying to me oh you stand sniping on the sidelines you never do anything you it's time you did something I should do it was nothing I write the obituary of the country which I did what I could to rescue but I found when I did so that there was no way of doing so because when it comes to it when offered even a pretty simple and straightforward means of changing all the politics of the country most people were defiantly uninterested so I you guys I came off this so-called sidelines whatever they are and urged my readers I had a platform I urged my readers to a particular course of action and they there any response was to get angry with me so I thought well you don't really mean it when you say why don't you intervene kha'zix or why don't you go into politics had I actually gone formally into politics I would have crashed and burned in the same way there's someone like me in my generation there's an awful lot of history which we weren't privy to I found it wonderfully clarifying clarifying and mentally liberating knowledge is he was saying English is bliss I think it isn't but it's it's shocking to me and one of the again things that I realized the point when I began to write it was that the history and knowledge of the country not just a history and things like the names of its principal rivers and counties the location of its major cities as well as the hugely important episodes in its recent history were completely unknown to people who regarded themselves as educated I just didn't know what I was talking about and you can watch now editions of University Challenge in which highly educated persons at Oxbridge colleges know nothing of what I regard as the essential canon of English literature and I'm not particularly well indicated in these things by my own estimation but they just look blankly as when asked to show what I would think I was a schoolboy so I just say Keats just don't know they never heard of the earth water how can this be the subtitle of the book is from Winston Churchill to Princess Diana my titles are always pestilential nuisance publishers insist that you have them so he'd rather not have it I have to well I was there and it's it's if if pressed it provides a theme there are two episodes there is the chapter of the book where I compare the funerals of Winston Churchill the Princess Diana and that was really a reference to that and why did you choose those two particularly not because they were both funerals and because they bracketed the era quite neatly and because they gave me an opportunity to write an essay on how much the country had changed in in ways which were not political or legalistically the way was the atmosphere and nature of the country had changed in in that period during which I had been alive and capable of observing it a lot of people have actually quite liked that chapter and see it as central to the book and I'm not sure they're entirely wrong either but the other thing about it is which I would stress very much on these grounds that it points out that there were many things about the the the pre-revolutionary period which were not pleasant and not enough strategist I point out the stink of Syria horrible food the people at the dingy greyness of it which I remember and I'm constantly told that I heart back to a golden age to the nineteen fifties I remember the 1950s I have no desire to return to them and they were cold there were things called chilblains as I said the food was disgusting it was not a time that I don't look back to toward and yet I'm ceaselessly accused of this nostalgia Strummer SHhhh and anybody who read that chapter with the slightest care would know that I wasn't in nostalgia and I think one reviewer said well how can Hitchens look back on the fifties as a golden age when he describes it like this to which the answer was the Frances I don't look back on it as a golden age that's why I describe it like this is you who think I look back on it was a golden age it's it's a it's so often the response of anybody who criticizes at the president yeah to be told that he's just dwelling him some kind of Wind in the Willows past not true fury dating almost as if the future that was chosen at that time was the only possible future well this is the mistake people make this it was such and such a thing is if you when I go on about railway nationalization they said we just put the railways in 1990 was such a Issac well yes they were but a great deal of that was to do with the fact that it was the 1990s and a lot of things hadn't been invented or developed that when she was this now had they remained nationalized they would have taken account of all these things you need to make a comparison between what they would be like now and what they are like now rather than a comparison to what they were like there that's again that's business part you get with people say oh what a Margaret Thatcher before she privatized British Telecom you had to wait six months for a telephone actually yes you did but that was partly because there was a huge shortage of lines at the time which technology very shortly afterwards overcame if the rare if the if the telephones had remained in state ownership the the technical change will also have happened that wasn't the issue the rejection of garden of Christianity weaves its way through every aspect of the book I found was that deliberate look it seems to me to be inseparable from its I think when I first wrote the book and for some time afterwards I was looking for a cause it was like search for the the one ring that rules them all something which you could put your finger on say this was the cause of it this this this idea this person this particular political idea and I came more and more as I wrote it to see it much more that what has happened was an absence that there had been a gap that people no longer believed in certain things and that into this vacuum all kinds of stuff rushed it's not a positive thing just as a cold does not radiate cold is an absence of heat likewise darkness you can't project darkness through a projector it's not possible it's it doesn't it darkness rushes in where light vanishes and coal appears where he's is heat is lost and I think we've seen a decay of something and I absolutely can put my finger on the thing which is decayed and that is that is the Christian belief which used to inform every action and thought in this country and now doesn't I think that's unquestionable and we can't really talk about Winston Churchill and or mention him and the decline of Christianity without referring at least to was quite an irony as I don't think Churchill was himself a Christian even in you navel claimed but he was instrumental perhaps in the instigation of an event which began the decline in me the first one well I think so yes I think this is one of the many problems about about Churchill worship is that you you could certainly say that he was one of those people who who pushed us into what I regard as a war of choice and a great mistake he loved war he was quite frank about it wanted a war with Jude with Jovian that a lot of the Conservative Party at that time in 1940 knew that the Liberal government was greatly divided and several members of the cabinet secretly resigned over the war and were persuaded to keep their resignation secret but one of the reasons why that didn't have any effect was because the those in the Liberal government who were in favor of war even doubtful about it were pretty sure that if they didn't think what were then their government would fall and the Conservatives would would form a coalition with pro-war Liberals and create a war anyway and Churchill was among those who were very strongly pushing for a war with Germany no doubt about it I think what was the results of that war on Christianity in this country well I think completes a mortal blow because the Christian Church is particularly the established church but not many millions and were among those institutions and bodies which proclaimed that the war was a war against barbarism and for civilization and it wasn't true and those who forcing it and those who were believed by some of those who saw the countries stripped of its wealth and peace by it all came to learn over the next four years - there was no such thing there particularly those who went fortunate in this terrible squalor and cruelty we're both Christians but we don't look at the horrors of war and that doesn't shake our faith was the synth was where the foundations already shaky before oh sure as well oh he mentioned the Victorian and Edwardian England sure they were the victory of the Victorian period was one which captured Himmelfarb makes its point the the the sunday-schools slowly changed the way in which people behaved and the the late Victorian period was the reward of that and of course of the evangelization of Wesley and the others in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as well Britain was recrystallized from almost any pea chaos that is reached by the by the 18th century by these people but as Wesley himself pointed out later on and this seems to be an almost invariable paradox societies which become thoroughly Christianized also become literally very successful societies and the material success of them then operates against the Christian religion so they they destroy themselves there may well have been some of that but it's not that the I'm not saying that the horrors of war destroyed people's faith I'm saying that the church endorsing the horrors of war as a good thing destroys people's faith yeah and the hypocrisy there in Dutch ative worst of hypocrisy it's it's just a lie it wasn't true it wasn't the the war the First World War simply doesn't stand out to analysis as a war for civilization against barbarism the country unleashed the decline that began in 1914 was that among the elite class and then it was until the 1960s that then I think I think the early the elite class circle were already fantastically corrupt and immoral long before the First World War but they they lived in a secret world in which they could continue to behave in that way while appearing to believe publicly in a morality they wanted the poor to follow and they had a choice as people of this kind of always do of either converting themselves to the morality they wanted the porter for them or expecting the pause to follow their example and become as divorced as they did as they as they had become even need to read stories like sakis short-story Tobermory about the cat loves to talk country house weekend to see and and sake faith for you I think reproduced the the attitudes and and and what and the way of life of the Edwardian rich to see that the particularly the aristocracy at that time would by no means practicing Christians in that private lives it's great story to worry about if you haven't read it you should I shall look into it before we move on to the sixties itself I want to start looking at some of the aspects of the book in the opening chapters of the book you focus on the radical change in the education system during this time period very sketchy well sketch it was casually knew perhaps not me it was very illuminating for me someone who was brought up in the comprehensive mold in GCSEs which I was aware of at GCSE ease at the time they wear a new thing a relatively new thing but I have no idea of how radical the change was between what was even in my parents generation perhaps and what became what were the key a the key changes between the old and new system and the drivers behind them the drive behind them is I've written about this much greater length in both in separate publications and and in a book now published under the name of the Cameron delusion but the the comprehensive education idea was was actually born in the United States where's the public school system as they call it state school system we would call it was designed as a as a socializing force primarily not an educational force and in in response to particularly to the Roman Catholic Church setting up schools the the politicians of the time who were not Roman Catholics believed quite strongly that they needed to educate young Americans it had to be Americans and the point of the American high school was to produce Americans education Americans get by our standards tended to come later at college the the high school system was it was an egalitarian socializing measure Michael Graham savage an interesting brave and quite clever man physically brave as well he was quite badly wounded in the First World War felt that Britain was an undemocratic and unequal Society and went across to study the American education system in the nineteen twenties in the red paper for what was then the Board of Education urging that Britain adopted the American high school system basically on grounds that would make the country more egalitarian more democratic and he invented the term comprehensive school and he helped the the then London County Council set up what were effect the first comrades of schools in Britain in the 1940s and it was a movement and he admitted in his paper that the results would be a decline in the sounds of education particularly for the for the brighter later on when he saw the destruction he brought him I think he recognized that he never really fully understood just how much damage it would do and of course we now see that far from creating a more democratic society it's ended up creating unintended unintentionally it's ended up creating a much more unequal Society and in my childhood there was much more and teens there was much more commerce between the classes and there is now on much more equal terms now there's a total gulf the middle class and then what we used to call the working-class have gone their separate ways through an educational apartheid imposed by catchment area which means they never meet each other so it was it was done as so many bad things are done for idealistic and benevolent reasons and it caught the imagination of the Labour Party which had but for the 1950s at least had numbers of people and in Wilkinson being the obvious example who were in favor of grammar schools that saw them as an advantage for the way the principle consequence of it and it may well be the something of this kind would have happened anyway for other reasons but not in this form was an almost total collapse of the idea of authority in education the idea that what the school does and what teacher does is pass on knowledge to pupils a term should no longer use their students now learning became discovery the idea that failing to learn was in itself a bad thing which might subject the person involves discipline was discarded and the idea that you might select people for higher education or particular jobs on the grounds of their ability to do the job was increasingly squeezed by the idea that the prime purpose of Education was to create a more equal society and then the ridiculous body the ego up button starts secret Allen Milburn who's now quit this egalitarian body which the Cameron government set up pursues private companies and universities for failing to give people preference because of their backgrounds run them because of their education and this is the embodiment of this idea which is the utopian ideas strongly believed in by certain people all that came in but the consequence that the simple consequence of getting rid of selection by ability in the state school system was that state secondary schools became much bigger because you can't sustain a sixth form in a comprehensive school unless it's very big and also that they became much less easy to discipline control and finally that it also became harder and harder to create the conditions in which people could study subjects rigorously in the old ways so the old level examination which had in the early in middle 1960s when I took her levels had been quite rigorous and stiff was first of all regraded to make it be easier to get good grades without having don't say well in the exams and then when even that wasn't good enough for all the Colorado schools which simply produced results in our levels which were intolerably bad was got rid of all together and replaced with the GCSE which which basically I abandoned rigor altogether but it had to do it because the comprehensive school simply were not educationally equipped to give a rigorous education and they couldn't with given their size and their mixed ability classes and and their ethos they simply couldn't impose the conditions where it could be done anymore and of course that lowered the standard education for everybody because once the examination system has been devalued all the schools including the private schools and lower lower their standards to suit it what is the point in continuing to teach people to the standards of an exam which has been abandoned when you can get terrific results a grades all over the place by teaching to a lower level and what's more you can attract the parents to pay your large fees by being able to say look everybody everybody gets a stir season less than get a start whereas some boggs comprehensive down the road they can't even begin to do that so the private schools by declining in quality were able to increase their commercial success good task mmm-hmm everything advantages grotesque that nobody will reverse it the next blunder that you can have this argument over and over and over again appeals and they will constantly raise the difficulties of the remaining 163 grammar schools most of them concentrated in rich commuter areas almost entirely wiped out in areas where poor people live and say because but these discriminate against the poor of course they do look at where they are and the opportunities they give for middle-class parents in commuter areas to move in to move in on them and to to their children of course they do but that has no bearing on what a national system of selective schools would be like and I have this a statistic in the gurney Dixon reporter I think nineteen for which is not about grammar schools and wasn't intended to discover this fact but in the course of discovering whatever it was it was doing which I forget it produced a survey on the number of working class children and growl schools and in 1953 or for the proportion of working class children in English growl schools was 65 percent 65 percent of children Rascals came from working class homes you could not find me a good so-called comprehensive anywhere in Britain now which I and I think remotely resembling that proportion and yet these people tell me that grammar schools discriminated against the way in class that always shuts them up of that statistic they really cannot catch no it does reminders on the matter of the sixties revolution the at that time you turned to Marxism anythi ISM yeah I mean that's a sure dude um you've said in a interview did that 88 years of Marxism go hand in hand could you elaborate on that one it seemed self-evident to me but asked to explain it I returned after interesting passage in Richard perhaps this history of the Russian Revolution which he points this out there was a a a thinker called hell vicious who pointed out but I think in the late 17th century that's those who wished to create a new man which most utopians do were very much up against the Christian religion because the Christian religion says that man is made in the image of God and therefore is fundamentally unknowable this is the philosophic equivalent to the idea of the human nature can't be changed and I think the hostility of utopians to religion is fundamentally based in that and there are all kinds of things which flow out of it beliefs in original sin and it's said the unalterable isset of man in all kinds of ways but that's what really gets them but you don't need to look very far in the writings of people such as Lenin in the in their statements that they they are inimical to any religious thought nor do you need to look very far in their actions one of the first things that both the Jacobins did when they had power enough to do it in France and the Bolsheviks did in what was to become the Soviet Union was to mount a specific and direct attack on the Christian Church and you know about the D Christianization program of the of the Jack bells and Fouch A's deliberate desecration of churches and the absolutely conscious desire to destroy Christian belief and the respect that the Christian religion had the pockets because they viewed it quite rightly as a rival for their affections and also as an obstacles of their thinking and the Bolsheviks yet the looting and plundering of destruction of churches the the banning of religious education the murder of the priests or their slow starvation by by cunning legalistic methods was an absolute part of what they did and it's in as society grotesquely unfree in which very few independent organizations permitted to exist one of those which was and which had limitless supplies of paper and large supplies of money an organization called the League of the militant godless which was licensed to mock and and attack and desecrate the Christian religion everywhere in the so unit who condensed it finally a Christian Bolshevik the the the the two forms of thought are antagonistic and and and must be I don't I don't worry but people then say that I I say that atheists are all Marxist which I don't because it's not true but I think on the other hand is true to say that all Marxist Lannister atheist and he might be able to find a Marxist who who came up with some bizarre since the system which he claimed to be a Christian like I I think it would be a bit of a struggle even then and once they go into the practical business of revolution and no thank you very much absolutely not though they want they're not unwilling to to have sympathizers and Patsy's among the religious in fact the Bolsheviks did have various of pseudo Christians who who they are allowed to play along with them but they killed them all at the end when they had exhausted their usefulness which is that that's all described in the rage against God one thing I like about you is that you don't subscribe to a group think you rather you have a very balanced and in the matter of free markets for example versus socialism capitalism business visual ISM what you just described there would presumably not be ascribed to all socialism no course not yeah I'm good there and there cuz I think there is a huge number of varieties of socialism and you kind of have a capitalism is the use of the term capitalism is itself a Marxist way of thinking it the idea that what we live under is isn't is contains this the the belief that there is another ISM under which we could live whereas in fact capitalism is just a way of describing the economic system as it will invariably function in one form or another look you could understand the Soviet Union this way as well when I first went to live in Moscow there was a restaurant I rather liked which I'd be introduced to by my Russian friend with the the poetic name of the centrality and the central restaurant on what was then go he Street and she took me there and we had I wanted to go back my wife however was now the door with him with Pete Cavanaugh large coat he just said it's full and they were house silencing near snezhnoe room and you'd see through the glass behind that the restaurant was empty and it infuriated me to be given that I began to make the first steps which would enable zoo understand Soviet society actually there will be a reason for this and the reason was very quickly Devine I went back to my Russian friend I said well why can't I guess she said oh for goodness sake he wants 10 rubles so that was the first step I get to the door then and I would give 10 rubles to the doorman and suddenly there would be places he was prepared let me in that but then the second station negotiation but again because the everything on the menu was off and who the menu was completely fictional but if I was prepared to engage in negotiation by tough earn during the previous day that I wanted to go I could get a very find another smoked sturgeon ice to the state potatoes vodka in order so it would appear but I would have to pay I have a very large selling rules or a smaller so in US dollars and the whole point of it was this restaurants in the Soviet era got privileged supplies of neat vegetable stock Hall but they had to sell them at state prices which were tiny and instead of doing this they would sell them out of the back door at black market prices and that was how they lived and so a customer was a disaster but as soon as you reintroduce the rules of what the Marxist Leninist would call capitalism the restaurant offered them more than they were getting out of the back door then they transformed back as a restaurant yet you can't abolish capitalism but on the other hand it that doesn't mean that it can't be moderated or made less ruthless and cruel or inconvenient cents a cap all totally capitalist countries like this most of the stuff you can't just have no passenger railways and as a results they're hideously ugly and polluted at full of people driving unsafe cars on overcrowded dangerous road a sensible advanced country which is capitalist has passenger rail ways because it in rational you can see this is a better organization doesn't make it a communist country because it attacks these people to provide passenger railways it just makes it an intelligent country capitalism can be run intelligently both sides can be used to construct a worldview without God both free markets and socialism both of those very tended to are they indeed they are the voice of the Serpent's you shall be as gods mmm-hmm the route as always is what we think of God whether we choose to believe in him and B whether we whether we think that whether we actually adhere to his teachings and well the choice of believing it was is an acceptance of a certain Authority exactly and we and in doing so we commit our lives to in faith and repentance to Christ well don't get carried away I mean it's the summers not as good as that I didn't know that well I mean I think the new that's that's I may take it you may add so seriously as that I'm I regard myself as an ordinary backsliding human being and I don't I wouldn't place my adherence that high it's the recognition that there is that our hope is there's also recognition the difference between between that desire an achievement in price and fulfillment right now well you can't know the further part that you are intending to do something doesn't miss everybody mean that you succeeded doing it in putting your trust in that quite and in every act think of every day if you if you were able to do that then you'd be the perfect man and I don't think any of us is indeed certainly not certainly not me no me no me so I'm slightly I'm slightly repelled by by anything beyond beyond what I would like well I'm prepared to say that this is this is something that I believe and desire but I often wonder offer myself as any example of it on the contrary read the collects in the Book of Common Prayer which is full not invariably but the full of the confessions of inability to fully to meet the things that's even quite absolutely and even in controlling a society that is as close to what it should be in the eyes of the law of God as possible we will always fail well it will be no social so I just never let me do it it would not be no there will not be yeah but the key here in the book is that society has thrown off the shackles seemingly although it's difficult it's as if I were interested in theology which I'm not one of the difficulties would have to be the Wesley point that the more Christian society becomes the more successful it becomes you know sorry the Shakers american religious sect who who wouldn't have sex so it it was one of the reasons they died out and the other but there were other reason they died they did everything with it we believe in every single action of every second of the day should be governed by it I by the love of God and that what they're principally famous for now in America is there's the beautiful furniture they produced which was of course a work of the work of love and they everything beautifully made to last pretty much indefinitely you have to pay an awful lot of money for shaker fashioner but they they also became very successful in business they grew that they were very successful farmers they grew very good food and all kinds of other things but in in the end they were killed off first over the fact they wouldn't reproduce and secondly by the fact that they the quality of the stuff that they that they produced was was blotted out by the success of mass production and achievements of it but also they their their communities had great material success and so they were distracted from their initial purpose and any any Christian society which is which successfully governs itself according to the the conscience will be commercially and critically successful to an extent that people become so complacent materially contented that they Minds turn away from spiritual things and it's not an old story it's a dishonest ensel's in the story of the children of Israel who are always most diverted to to God at the moments when they've been most badly behaved and have been rescued and then very rapidly full-back IDI into their it so their former habits you know in an almost comical way now here we are things are looking good let's get the golden car fired again how about a quick spell worshiping bail here we go Sampson yeah here come the Babylonians oh no yes so once that once you come to the end of yourself you then come to the beginning of God I'm sure it's very profound thing to say it is profound I don't know it Cylons prefer what kinds of things do they don't they media you know and there was somebody who wants to do satire of this and he produced all kinds of profound signing statements such as he you digs deepest diggers deeps deepest digs we'll have her it goes about I it's we've done weather on analysis it turns out to be profound I'm not sure do you remember that's that thing that used to be in every student room in the world in the 1970s desiderata supposedly and they go placidly remember it was full of profound thoughts I think it would turned out to be a fake in the end but it was was it on the wall of every student bedroom pretty much in the late nineties no you know just looking up desiderata hunch about that begins des ID er ata it begins I think go placidly with go spells in ratings actually where it's supposed to been taken from some inscription on the wall of the church okay is everywhere and it said sounded totally profound but I think I think that's generally now YouTube in bogus but it was very fashionable couple more question me I just veer away from automatically Ike I just can't do something that's often talked about by the Christians do one of the things unseen today is the as the state grows stronger state control become stronger there is a creasing attack on the family and that's a point you're making the book I do it but it don't talk yes we do and you mentioned that hi opening story of public more self yes hoarding and hoarding of grain which actually is just keeping what belongs to them is it an inevitable increase in the power of the state lead to a strong and a strong attack on the family and does an increase in the power of mistakes well isn't it rather than as this that's that's the inevitable increase in the power of the state undermines the family and destroys a lot of these things that it does so whether it be the care of children of the care of the old or the nurturing of of the young in the culture and and morality in which they ought to be brought up all these things cease to happen when the family weakens that the state necessarily has to become stronger than becomes a vicious circle because otherwise Society can't function who else is going to look after the children on the ol because the family is seized to do it you want to certain describe politics as a form of idolatry um which is once I agree once God is removed from the equation then something must take its place and invariably and certainly in our country and in the West it has become the government they are the divine and also they are the they are the point of to which people turn when things go wrong what is the government going to do about this that the answer is quite often it's because they can't well they haven't a clue what to do do you think or if they do know I mean why don't the government fix this yeah sort of thing yes to lead on to the NHS which is something that you discussed recently on the daily politics and what does need to be done to reform as many things as no there's no single cause and of the fundamental thing that's wrong with the NHS as it was designed for another age as I've related where people at the end of their lives were but physically broken down by immensely hard physical bad diets for housing most of which have departed from us they're not it's not the very few people who reach the end of their lives often enough to burn after decades of shoveling coal or slaving in hot steel works it's not what people do anymore they reach the end of their lives having eaten too much and exercise too little far more often or done other things which if we should which have made them unwell and in in ways far more avoidable I have to say that and the the problems which were imposed on the old working class Dupree 1960's working class they if you wanted to work you had you had to face these dangers and risks often a very unsafe workplace is exposed to chemicals and all kinds of other things which wrecked your insides I it was it was designed for something that no longer needs to be done and we now have a completely different if we wanted to safeguard the health of the nation we need me two completely different sort of health service it's the first thing you know there's so much of our current illnesses self-imposed by bad lifestyle choices and particularly by the by the almost complete abolition of exercise in daily life particularly by the the the worship of the motorcar people just do not walk and you'll find what do you when somebody who has previously not had a car requires well within a few months rather than part of the car two or three hundred yards from destination and walk that person will drive the car round and round for maps upwards of twenty minutes looking for a fighting space right next to his destination no one's hurt by walking two or three hundred yards but people stop doing it it abolish is walking and children don't walk to school or bicycle and it becomes also then the roads become places entirely diversions of cars and and so walking and cycling become dangerous people stop doing them there's a slight reversing this now but not very much at one for those people and the the smoking and there's the eating and was them mad dietary advice people get with a toll to avoid fact to press our mall J on the way back from settings and bought a cup of tea and remembered as I did it because they don't have full fat milk although they say they're natural I teased them that I said I thought you said you were a natural shop everything is natural with you milk you're you're selling is unnatural as this obsession with fat and I almost everything in pressure washer is full of sugar is what makes you fat so all these things go on education is up the suspect and they and the nearest hospital to me is ringed first of all there's the ring of people smoking many of you were patient some of you've actually brought their drips out with while they smoke and then once you've penetrated the ring of smokers you enter the ring of car parks we symbolize to me the reasons why the hospitals are so full of ill people in the first place because I want people who are injured in accidents or fully also be treated so the full extent of our ability and they shouldn't have to be made to pay for it but but honestly if people were encouraged to live healthier lives there wouldn't be so many of them that's one way of looking at it the other thing about the health social I pointed out which got me into the usual wave of illiterate travel was that because people who used to look after the old well the families and particularly the women who've been dragooned into that he was a paid worth I should say indeed because women work like anything but a lot of it is not just not it's not rewarded with a wage and I was so oso you think only women should laughter I don't care who looks after the old provide it somebody comes after the old if men want to stay at home look after the old fine by me but it's made into an issue of Oh Hitchens is aunty women rather than the the important moment Hitchens is Pro old I think the old should be looked after preferably by their own families within the moment everything in the arrangement our society makes that difficult for people to do people are encouraged in two ways of life which make it difficult to perform these function and then the state complains that the hospitals are full of old people dumping last thing AHA yeah it's not a question I'm undecided on this issue or this point that I've heard good arguments from both sides monarchy versus Republic you're Pro monarchy a constitutional monarchy list yes what are the why the arguments do you mind a straightforward and very simple the the monarch occupies spaces in the political system which politicians shouldn't be allowed to occupy politicians should not be should not be given any particular respect as persons they should always be subject to criticism and my classic example of this is that in during the Iraq war Americans who criticized President George W Bush were to some extent being disloyal because the president is their head of state we when we criticized as I criticized for instance and did lampooned and jeered at Mr Blair who didn't have this problem because our politicians are not are not heads of state and not do not embody the nation and and we don't have to respect them if any respect they has to be earned and and can equally easily been lost the whole point of Maliki is that it has a it has majesty and reverence that at a great extent this is imagined this is this is reverence for our sovereignty over ourselves but it is the other thing is that the the in our particular constitution the monarchy embodies the Christian nature of that Constitution and and it's it's completely about the central part of the coronation service is a service of Holy Communion and the the anointing which is in my view secondary to that is again the placing of the of the pneumonic directly under the under the rule of God abolish all that and what do you have instead well what is the source of legitimacy the sociologist misused the people and the people are currently being used in Turkey for instance to abolish the rule of law as your boorish Liberty as they comes as they will increasingly do in those countries which have nothing but the people as their source of legitimacy if the people are always right then the people can very easily because endure to enter into abandoning both Liberty and law and they will if there's an if there has to be another source of authority which is above that and it's and particularly there has to be a source for the authority which places law above power and that is foreign language CERN is one honor he does because it's the origin of laws God all power is subject to God and therefore and therefore all Paris of its law once that goes everything happens and anything could happen this is a republic a if it's done well good as in I was looking at the different finger publics and democracy and democracy is where the people the majority have the say the Republic has a irrefutable set of laws whether it be the Bill of Rights or whatever manicott I don't know whether there's any problems any proper denial definition of a republic and I always point out that's here are some republics which we have had on the face of the earth the Republic of South Africa the apartheid state was a republic the Democratic People's Republic of Korea which is North Korea that's a republic the Chinese People's Republic the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics there are all kinds of things the Republic's and the the Republican form government doesn't exclude them in itself likewise you can have democracy that are not free the prime example of the democracy which which was the enemy was saying freedom used used to be National Socialist Germany where Hitler came to power just money and exercise power subject to the revive our Constitution which was which was never formally got rid of during the 12 years and third right the modern example of this says is a trans Turkey where the Democratic Republic is currently turning itself into into quite a nasty lawless autocracy but there are other examples of that there is nothing intrinsic in a republic which leads to freedom there's nothing intrinsic in democracy which preserves freedom democracies are often the enemy of freedom there's nothing intrinsic in monarchy which which means that it's despotic the operation of constitutional monarchy in this country has tended to be in favor of of the rule of law over power which is crucial and one of the the great paradoxical tests of freedom in the world used to be in some extends to this the former British crown colony of Hong Kong which had no more democracy and see the people's relic of China next door but was and to some extent still remains a beacon of Liberty in that part of the world because it has the rule of law and because it has freedom of speech and fortune of the press these things are much much more important than the democracy and a much more likely to be guaranteed by a constitutional monarchy than they are to be guaranteed by a republic ultimately subject to the will of the people and the book is the abolition of Britain by it read it in that order unless you bought from the library certainly Burroughs absolutely remember what your favorite that indeed Peter thank you so much I must let you go thanks a lot take it

Channel: Dan Pugh

Views: 175,323

Keywords: Peter Hitchens, The Abolition of Britain, Christianity

Id: AWrPrFPCIoY

Length: 51min 46sec (3106 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 06 2018