We ignore evil at our peril
He’s right - people in Britain are afraid to stand up to terrorist sympathisers. What he says is true - if a society doesn't have the collective will to deal with trouble on the periphery, it will only embolden the troublemakers to bring their destruction and misery to the centre. What he said reminded me of something one of the tutors said on the PGCE Art teacher training course which I took at Liverpool Polytechnic more than forty years ago. He was answering a question from one of my fellow students, about the problem of vandalism in certain inner city schools - in particular about how to respond when pupils with no sense of respect for their environment repeatedly rip down, deface or destroy artwork displays on the corridor walls. He said ‘You just keep putting the artwork back on the walls, until it becomes an accepted part of the school environment.’ Well, that was a rather more passive approach to dealing with troublemakers than I would have liked, but it was a starting point. At least he was enunciating the fundamental principle that you don’t lie down to people whose behaviour is unacceptable. You address the problem. You don’t allow a minority of lawless individuals to spoil everything for the majority.
I fear, as several concerned observers in recent years have often said, that generally speaking, British society has lost it’s moral compass. Until recently, the laws of the United Kingdom were firmly based on the ten commandments. The majority of citizens accepted and valued those laws and, crucially, expected them to be enforced by the authorities. Increasingly however, we have seen the politicisation of the police towards ‘woke’ agendas, the introduction of laws which blur the boundaries between male and female and indoctrinate and subvert the minds of children with ideas which run contrary to God’s good laws. At the highest levels of authority in this land, there has been a steady drift away from the absolute moral standards of the Bible towards the ever shifting sands of ‘cultural relativity’ - the mad notion that morality is not fixed but malleable according to the prevailing views of society at any given moment.
Those who stand for traditional, Biblical morality are increasingly seen as irrelevant, anachronistic and a hindrance to so-called progress. How relevant are the words of the Psalmist: “If the foundations [of a godly society] are destroyed, What can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:3 The Amplified Bible). The only thing law-abiding citizens can do in the face of such chilling hatred and lawlessness, is—on the one hand, to stand up for what’s right, no matter how many may shout us down—and on the other, to cry to God for divine intervention in the midst of this increasing spiritual darkness.