The words ‘nation,’ ‘ethnic group’ and ‘race’ are all closely related depending on the extent to which you identify them with a descent group. Edmund Burke (1729-1797), the founder of conservatism, would have agreed for he said that the nation-state was a partnership between the living, the dead, and the yet unborn. The question before us then is: is it wise, right or moral to put the various descent-groups or nations of men together into one state or lock-in society. There are good reasons based on the nature of man and his psychology, as well as the nature of politics and morals, to conclude that multi-racial societies have little to commend themselves to any of us in terms of them being either morally justifiable or practically workable and beneficial. There are a number of inter-related moral and prudential principles which point to this and we will look at them one by one.
According to the democratic system we should follow the will of the majority. We at once come across a difficulty here with regard to the multi-racial society: no majority of the native British people, or even of the migrating communities, have ever mandated or endorsed mass immigration into Britain and its consequence: the multi-racial society. What has been happening in the last fifty years or so lacks a democratic mandate; and if such a mandate tends to make something right, then the lack of it does not bode well for the moral credentials of what the politicians have been building. If the building were good - which is debatable - it lacks planning permission. This is especially so in view of international law which backs up the need for a democratic mandate where it says in Article 1, Part 1 of the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that ‘All peoples have the right of self-determination... ...to freely determine their political, social, and cultural development.’ It is to be deeply regretted that the elites of the three main parties have such a disrespect for majority rule (when it comes to Britain, that is) together with the UN’s endorsement of it - at least in this particular; and this must cause very grave concern for every right-thinking person. We naturally feel that our consent should be sought for any major change in our national life; and we are horrified in this matter, as in many others, that our consent has neither been sought by the elites nor given by us. If the legitimacy of government rests upon the consent of the governed, as the United States Declaration of Independence affirmed in 1776, then what is imposed without our due consent is not morally legitimate - at least in that respect.
But is the multi-racial society in itself a good thing? Surely, if it is - the elites may feel - then it should be imposed upon those who are too stupid to value or see it for the ‘good’ that it is. There are sound reasons, however, for thinking that the multi-racial society would not be a good society even if it did have a democratic mandate and majority planning permission. The philosophy that helps us here is not so much the philosophy of mass democracy and the consent of the many as that of liberalism/conservatism. There is an overlap between liberalism and conservatism. Both hold that there are inalienable individual rights - again this is put well in the American declaration of Independence - such as freedom of speech and thought, person, association, and the sanctity of private property. These rights, holds liberalism and conservatism, do not come to us by leave or consent of the majority - because if they did they could be taken away by the majority; rather these rights (and matching duties) derive from the moral nature that exists within and through the material universe; and these natural rights are therefore held not from the majority but against the majority - the majority may have the political power but they can never have the moral or natural right to take these rights away. We are here now bordering on the deep truths of our most holy and Christian faith from which - to a large extent - our political philosophies come. We all recognize this moral system running through both the physical universe and our own natures when we judge a law as either good or bad rather than, like sheep or moral morons, allowing a bad law to dictate to us what is right or wrong. Rather our moral nature within us tells us whether a law is good or bad.
However, our natural rights and basic freedoms have to be vindicated in an actual legal and political system of courts, police and governments. The question is: does a multi-racial society conduce to that end; and the answer is that it does not. The reasons for this are many but it is the fact and the tendency of this, which must now be demonstrated; and it is done so by the cogent observations and insights of the 19th century’s greatest liberal thinker, J. S. Mill (1806-1873).
Mill observed of the multi-national or multi-racial societies of his day that, generally, they could be of little benefit to any people. It was in his essay on Representative Government, chapter Sixteen, ‘Of Nationality as connected with Representative Government’ that he wrote that ‘...free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative Government, cannot exist... ...it is in general a necessary condition of free institutions that the boundaries of Governments should coincide in the main with those of nationalities.’ By ‘nationalities’ Mill meant what we would today call ‘ethnic groups.’ Rather than celebrating diversity Mill had seen the divide and rule policy that autocratic governments would exploit over the various ethnic groups as a means to uphold their own unaccountable system of tyranny which, by the way, frequently led to war. Far from vindicating liberal rights such a multi-national society would endanger them and make their vindication in the courts, and through a free press, well nigh impossible.
In Mill’s day such states were ones like Austria and Russia - they were multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-lingual, and multi-faith; and thus autocratic because of this lack of a cohesive folk with the fellow-feeling needed to hold government to account. And it was these sorts of government, in particular Hapsburg Austria and Romanov Russia - so used to double-crossing their own diverse peoples - who applied such practices to one another in their mutual rivalry for hegemony over the Balkans. And it was these two multi-national and autocratic states, not the democratic nation states of the West, which led to the blood bath of World War I. And yet the modern equivalent of Austria-Hungary, the European Community, guided by a new Hapsburg, does not acknowledge any of this. For example in the European Community’s Laeken Declaration of December 2001 the European Council of that body attributed war, amongst other things, to ethnic nationalism per se, rather than to the lack of a due recognition of liberal nationalism as a democratic and moderating force for good. A true liberalism and conservatism are the friends of both nations and nationalism simply because only in nations and in moderate nationalism can our liberal and democratic rights in a free and hierarchical society be conserved and protected. And, generally, democratic and liberal nation states do not willingly go to war for a bad cause: the people who have to fight wars are not as keen on going to war, especially in a bad cause, as the protected rulers who can insulate themselves from its horrors.
We have thus far tested the morality and practical wisdom of the Multi-Racial Society by the canons of majority consent, international law, and its ability to vindicate our natural rights and inalienable civil liberties under a democratic, liberal, and nationally accountable system of representative government. In all three cases we have found the Multi-Racial Society sadly lacking in its ability to deliver. Not only does it lack democratic planning permission but it also breaches liberal health and safety regulations! If the former is bad news for us, the British, the latter is bad news for all! But is there something wrong with the Multi-Racial Society at a deeper level - not just given the nature of man as inherently territorial and tribal - but by the Multi-Racial Society being, as it were, a transgression of God’s will for His creation as He has seen fit to make and rule it; as well as it being a transgression of the way societies are seen to work in practice.
The greatest source of literature and wisdom on this matter is the Judaeo-Christian Bible; and this gives us reasons to think that the above is indeed the case. Whilst the Bible does have a concern for justice between individuals (see James 5: 1-6) it does not support the far-left’s, or the European Community’s, contention that nations are the source of our woes; rather wars and fightings come from man’s fallen nature within, not from his existence in nations - this is according to the apostle James, the half-brother of the Saviour, see James 4: 1-2. Rather God’s will for us in history and in the Bible - is to exist in nations, and as nations - that is, as families. In Genesis 1:28 and again in Genesis 9:7 Moses, the founder of the ancient Jewish State, tells us that Adam and his descendents were commanded by God to fill the Earth, not to come to one part of it, namely England!
The refusal of Adam’s surviving descendents through Noah to spread out led to God’s confusing of the tongues at Babel, Genesis 11: 1-9, which compels the families of men - the nations-to-be, that is - to do what God had originally commanded Adam, be it noted, in his estate of innocency, before our fall into original sin through Adam’s first transgression. The blossoming of the proto-race into many nations was to be a manifestation of God’s glory like light passing through a prism. David, king of Israel, therefore praises God in Psalm 86: 9 for all the nations which He has made. There is not a hint of supremacism here but there is more than a hint of maintaining this diversity, on the world stage that is, by each nation, including our own, having its own homeland where it has priority and is there especially protected and honoured. This is especially brought out by Paul in the New Testament where in Acts 17: 26 Paul says that God has made from one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the Earth and has chosen their times (or histories) and their boundaries. The Saviour Himself gives no hint of the EC’s or Karl Marx’s concern to end nations but, as both God and man, commissions His apostles to preach the gospel to all nations, Matthew 28: 19, and to every creature within them, Mark 16:15. The object, as John tells us, is that every nation is to bring each its glory into the Kingdom of God, Revelation 21: 26. Nations are both a part of God’s plan for the world and for the variety, it seems, in the world to come!
The very Bible-based Book of Common Prayer (1662) of the Church of England gets the balance right. In the worship services at morning and evening prayer we are to pray for the Queen, the Royal Family, and the Bishops and Clergy of our own Church of England, thus combining deep Christian spirituality with civic duty and national patriotism. God has made us a Nation and we are to continue as a Nation; and such are the prayers of the Church! But there is also a due recognition for other nations. In the Deus Misereatur (Psalm 67) we pray at Evening Prayer that God’s way may be known on Earth ‘... thy saving health among all nations’. That strikes the right balance: we should help foreigners where we can, in both our prayers and in our deeds; but we should not cede either our country or our children’s future to them. Such would be an incitement to racial hatred of our own. A Holocaust against any race is wrong.
© Rev RMB West.
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