Melanie Phillips: Society

Melanie Phillips is British journalist. Explore interesting quotes on society.
Melanie Phillips: 30 quotes0 likes

“In our libertarian society, where individual choice is all, ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ have come to mean something very different. Liberals took for granted that freedom depended upon self-discipline. Libertarians decided that all such restraint was repressive. The individual had to be free from all attachments to family, culture, nation, institutions and traditions that might fetter freedom of choice. Since every individual was equally entitled to such free choices, the distinctions that were the basis of morality became eroded.”

Melanie Phillips

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles/archives/2000_01.html

“Since World War Two, Britain's elite has suffered from a collective collapse of cultural nerve. Many things contributed: postwar exhaustion, the collapse of the British Empire (and therefore of national purpose), and post-colonial flagellatory guilt of the kind that white western liberals have made their specialty. This left the British establishment vulnerable to the revolutionary ideology of the New Left, at the core of which lay a hatred of western society. As a consequence, the British elite decided not only that the British nation was an embarrassment but also that the very idea of the nation was an anachronism.”

Melanie Phillips

"The Country That Hates Itself" http://www.melaniephillips.com/the-country-that-hates-itself (June 16, 2006)

“Since most of the mass immigration now convulsing Europe is composed of Muslims, it is therefore hardly surprising that anti-immigrant feeling is largely anti-Muslim feeling. The sheer weight of numbers plus the refusal to assimilate to western values makes this an unprecedented crisis for western liberalism. The crisis is forcing it to confront the fundamental questions of what constitutes a country, national identity and the very nature of a liberal society.”

Melanie Phillips

"How the West was lost" http://www.melaniephillips.com/how-the-west-was-lost (May 11, 2002)

“After eight years in government, Mr Blair has precious little to show for his ambitious plans to heal the divisions in society.”

Melanie Phillips

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles/archives/001442.html

“Thousands of alienated young Muslims, most of them born and bred here but who regard themselves as an army within, are waiting for an opportunity to help to destroy the society that sustains them.”

Melanie Phillips

http://www.wam.umd.edu/~stwright/rel/islam/britain-muslims.html

“For the further western society retreats from its core morality, the more it opens the way for Islam to fill the gaps left by Christianity in full flight from its own beliefs. Multiculturalism is predicated on the idea that all faiths are equal; but the fact is that if enfeebled Christianity no longer identifies itself as the spiritual pastor of the culture it founded, then Islam will move into the vacuum.”

Melanie Phillips

"How the West was lost" http://www.melaniephillips.com/how-the-west-was-lost (May 11, 2002)

“I find that Muslims are often allies. Their critique offers a salutary contrast to western indifference and inertia. Muslims rightly condemn the collapse of western moral authority, the failure of nerve that has created our epidemics of crime, drug abuse, family breakdown and promiscuity. They are right to be horrified at the wholesale destruction of the sacred, and the worship instead of consumer choice. They are right to point to the meaninglessness and vacuity of secular society, its arrogance and the paralysis of its institutions. This is, after all, why so many are turning to fundamentalism in Christianity and Judaism as well as Islam.”

Melanie Phillips

"How the West was lost" http://www.melaniephillips.com/how-the-west-was-lost (May 11, 2002)