Article

2008-01-05 Britain

G.M. Fraser - How Britain Has Destroyed Itself

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Posted by Anonymoose 2008-01-05 09:28|| || Front Page|| [11135 views ] Top

#1 I just re-stole this excerpt and sent it to a bunch of my friends and relatives. It makes a chain letter worthwhile for once - but it won't catch on like ones that promise a free computer or something.

Posted by Glenmore">Glenmore 2008-01-05 09:55|| 2008-01-05 09:55|| Front Page Top

#2 Wow! Just wow.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2008-01-05 10:35|| 2008-01-05 10:35|| Front Page Top

#3 Beautiful rant. I like the "scunnered."

Posted by Broadhead6 2008-01-05 11:43|| 2008-01-05 11:43|| Front Page Top

#4 "a caring force for the future"

speechless....

Posted by john frum 2008-01-05 11:57|| 2008-01-05 11:57|| Front Page Top

#5 Mr. Fraser was ahead of his time:

'Afghan heroes home for Christmas forced to change out of uniforms on freezing runway before using airport terminal'.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=505864&in_page_id=1770

We're faced with civilizational suicide by a thousand cuts. We're losing the War. It's well past time to strike back. Consider that before you vote in 2008.

Posted by Mark Z 2008-01-05 12:14|| 2008-01-05 12:14|| Front Page Top

#6 Nice catch, 'moose.

Posted by anonymous5089 2008-01-05 12:16|| 2008-01-05 12:16|| Front Page Top

#7 I heard elsewhere a comment to the effect that Flashman could be made into a movie, but only with an eastern European director, filming the English and Irish scenes in eastern Europe and on location in India.

That is, because only an eastern European director could be good enough without the nasty British or US political correctness screwing things up.

Flashman, they noted, while having some comedic elements, is not a comedy. And casting Flashman would be exceptionally hard. While Malcolm McDowell did the sniveling and smarmy parts well, he didn't depict the cowardly, lewd, rude, cruel or mean parts of Flashman as well as he could.

Posted by Anonymoose 2008-01-05 12:55|| 2008-01-05 12:55|| Front Page Top

#8 Christopher Hitchens?

That casting would knot a few knickers...

/caveat I never read the books

Posted by Seafarious 2008-01-05 13:05|| 2008-01-05 13:05|| Front Page Top

#9 From across the Atlantic, I think I first noticed that American-style PC had infected Britain when back in the 90s I first watched that Brit detective series that starred Helen Mirren (what's it called?). More recently, new episodes of that dismal series have returned to PBS, and I tuned in wondering if the earlier giddy level of PC had been toned down. No such luck. Instead, I was struck by how PC destroys the essence of the detective story, which is Who Dunnit? Because of PC, it is now possible to precisely predict who dunnit from the very beginning of the show, it's always the respectable middle-class white male.

Posted by moody blues 2008-01-05 13:43|| 2008-01-05 13:43|| Front Page Top

#10 Yes, hell of a dann catch 'Moose.

Posted by Thomas Woof 2008-01-05 16:23|| 2008-01-05 16:23|| Front Page Top

#11 Fraser as usual: blunt, straightforward and absolutely spot on. I am so sorry he's gone.
I can't remember the last white male Briton I spoke to who, when speaking of the UK, didn't say something on the order of "I feel like I'm a stranger in my own country."

Posted by Jomosing Bluetooth8431 2008-01-05 17:35|| 2008-01-05 17:35|| Front Page Top

#12 For those of you not familiar with the Flashman series, a few details that may entice you.

First of all, you can get a used paperback copy at Amazon for $6.58. Second, it is one of the best historical novels you will ever read, the historical part is very accurate, and heavily footnoted. It is an excellent introduction to the world of the 19th Century. About 1/3rd of the original reviewers thought that it was a genuine autobiography of Flashman.

The character Flashman himself was taken from the very popular novel, "Tom Brown's School Days" (1857), by Thomas Hughes. Flashman was an abusive, vicious upperclassman villain who savagely beat the underclassmen until he was thrown out of school for drunkenness.

The Fraser novels begin at the point where he was thrown out of school. He returns to the home of his father in London, who refuses to take him back after he willingly molests his father's mistress. To get rid of him, he buys him a commission as an officer in a lancer regiment in India.

Flashman eventually meets up with the most notorious people of the era, inadvertently being thrust from military disaster to military disaster, yet from his efforts to cowardly escape, he ends up riding into the thick of things, then being honored and rewarded for the heroism deserved by others.

He is a liar, a cheat, a braggart, a coward, a rogue, a scoundrel, a whore monger and occassional rapist, and invariably the pawn of the the brilliant and ruthless in their games of realpolitik.

Importantly, the setting for all of this are some of the greatest battles of human history, from the British retreat from Afghanistan, the Charge of the Light Brigade, through many others including the US Civil War, Fraser's "great lost novel". His adventures take him all over the map.

Highly recommended as an enjoyable history lesson.

Posted by Anonymoose 2008-01-05 17:51|| 2008-01-05 17:51|| Front Page Top

#13 What I particularly enjoyed about many fo the Flashman novels was that they took place during Victorian wars that my American education had somehow bipassed or given short-shirft. Tapang Rebellian, Sepoy Mutany, Sikh War, Great stuff all.

Posted by rjschwarz 2008-01-05 18:59|| 2008-01-05 18:59|| Front Page Top

#14 See CS Lewis, "Screwtape Proposes a Toast," an essay on muddled thinking and the ancestry of Political Correctness. Lewis wrote this as an addendum to "The Screwtape Lettters" in a new edition in the early 1960s. He saw this coming.

Posted by mom">mom 2008-01-05 21:06|| http://idontknowbut.blogspot.com]">[http://idontknowbut.blogspot.com] 2008-01-05 21:06|| Front Page Top

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