Skip to main content

Brexit will bring a new ‘blitz spirit’? This is nostalgia at its most toxic | Matthew d’Ancona

Brexiteers who say we need some collective hardship insult those who lived through the hell of world war two

As 2018 limps to a close, senior government ministers are back on parade to remind us how glorious Brexit is going to be – lest, in the gluttonous stupor of Christmas, we had allowed ourselves to forget what marvels lie ahead. In the Sunday Telegraph, Gavin Williamson, the defence secretary, declared that Britain, far from retreating into indigent introspection, will become a “true global player” after 29 March 2019, with military bases all over the world. In the Mail on Sunday, meanwhile, Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, invoked the economic success of Singapore since independence in 1965 as a blueprint “for us as we make our post-Brexit future”.

Like Williamson, Hunt suggests that the rest of the world is on tenterhooks, longing for Britain to assume a bullish new role once liberated from the tyranny of Brussels: “We may no longer be a superpower but we are still very much a global power … I have been constantly struck by how much more other countries respect us than we seem to respect ourselves.”

Continue reading...

from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2Q9qCN3

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

REPORT: Furious Spike Lee Paces Aisle, Turns Back To Stage...

REPORT: Furious Spike Lee Paces Aisle, Turns Back To Stage... (Top headline, 5th story, link ) Related stories: REVIEW: Hostless Show Starts With Rock & Rolls Off Rails... Actor knocks borders, walls during speech in Spanish... Stage designed to look like Trump hair? 'GREEN BOOK' OVERCOMES BACKLASH, NABS BEST PICTURE... Top Critics Fume... LIST: WINNERS... Advertise here from Drudge Report Feed https://ift.tt/2SUpIKy

Tiny Love Stories: ‘Who Was I to Deprive Him of Joy?’

By Unknown Author from NYT Style https://ift.tt/2UV7YAG

The Ugly History of Dual-Loyalty Charges

When Representative Ilhan Omar recently complained about “the political influence in this country that says it is okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country,” many noted accurately that she had deployed a trope—dual loyalty—that had been used against Jews for years. But this accusation has a broader history in the United States, having been used against several religious minorities—including Muslims like Omar. Indeed, many battles over religious freedom have revolved around dual-loyalty claims. [ Read: Ilhan Omar just made it harder to have a nuanced debate about Israel ] In the 19th century, many attacks on Catholics stressed that these immigrants were pawns of a foreign power. In the 1830s, Samuel Morse—then a prominent painter and later the inventor of the telegraph—urged Americans to build “walls” and “gates” to keep out Catholic immigrants, who would always be loyal to Rome. Because these Catholic immigrants were decrepit —“halt, and blind, and naked”—they were easy to co...