We could all do with some Korean unity

We are fortunate indeed that yesterday there wasn’t a meeting between North Japan and South Japan, declaring peace and looking forward perhaps to eventual reunification. There is one reason and one reason alone why this didn’t happen. The planned invasion of Japan “Operation Downfall” which was to have taken place in November 1945 was cancelled.

 The Soviet Union also had a plan. They declared war on Japan on August 9th 1945 and in a short time occupied Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, Manchuria and Korea up to the 38th Parallel. The Soviets intended then to invade the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.

If the war had continued there would have been a similar race to that which occurred in Germany. The Soviets careless of casualties would have sought to make as much of Japan communist as possible. The Americans wishing to save as many G.I. lives as possible would have been slow. The result would have been to split Honshu down the middle with a divided Tokyo and eventually a wall round it.

In this case socialist North Japan like everywhere which experiments with trying to achieve equality of outcome would be poor, while South Japan would be one of the richest countries in the world. North Japan would have attempted to achieve unification by force sometime in the 1950s and if the West had been fortunate enough to prevent this, the two Japans would have remained technically at war with each other from then until now.

It would, of course, have been tragic if Japan had been divided. But Japan was not always as united as it appears to be today. The Ryukyuan languages, which are not mutually intelligible with Japanese, although they are part of the same language family, are still spoken by some people in the southern Japanese islands. The Ainu language, unrelated to Japanese, was spoken by the indigenous people of Hokkaido, but is now endangered. This was in part because Hokkaido was gradually incorporated into a united Japan by a process that was completed only in 1858.

Like nearly every country in the world, Japan was once made up of different peoples who owed allegiance to various feudal warlords. They fought wars to gain control over territory. Eventually these wars led to unification. The same can be said about Korea.

The Korean peninsula is now divided. But it has been divided before. It had a North-South States period lasting from 698–926 AD. It also had a period when it was divided in three 57 BC – 668 AD. It has at various times been invaded by Japan and by China and incorporated into the Japanese Empire from 1910 to 1945.

The process of human history the world over is one of conquest, division and unification. There are any number of “countries” that once existed in Japan, which now no longer exist. Korea was once three kingdoms, then two, then one, then two again. There are likewise any number of languages that have died out, sometimes because the people who spoke them have died out or been absorbed into those who conquered them.

Uriah the Hittite would have spoken an ancient Indo-European language native to Anatolia. There are no native Hittite people now and the language is dead. The reason for this is that the Turkic people’s, who don’t speak an Indo-European language, migrated to present day Turkey, at various points between the 6th and 11th centuries. This was no doubt tragic for Uriah’s descendants if indeed he had any prior to being sent into the front line, but there is no more point regretting the loss of the Hittite language than regretting the loss of Pictish or indeed Anglo-Saxon.

In the British Isles nearly all of us speak varieties of English. Prior the Roman conquest nearly all of us spoke various forms of Celtic. We speak English, because like everyone else in the world we have been engaged in various forms of conquest and migration since history began.

The Iceni would have spoken a language similar to Welsh when Boadicea fought the Romans. It is therefore peculiar for people who think of themselves as British to mock those who speak Welsh. It is the child of the ancient language of our island. But it is also peculiar to blame the English for somehow persecuting those who spoke Celtic languages in the British Isles and driving those languages to destruction. It was the migration of Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Normans which pushed the Celtic languages westwards. But it isn’t as if Celts didn’t do any pushing or any migrating. The Celts after all did not originate in the British Isles.

The Celts migrated from Central Europe and spread to France, Spain, Britain and elsewhere. They too, no doubt, supplanted the people and languages of those who lived where they settled.

There is no point regretting the history that made us what we are. It is this that makes the hatred that is sometimes met in the British Isles all rather silly. The Celtic people of England were conquered by Romans, Anglo-Saxons and Normans. Migrations went back and forth between mainland Europe and the British Isles. Ancient Britons colonised Brittany and some of them still speak Breton. Next door Normans repaid the compliment. The reason we all speak English is that our ancestors are a mixture of all the people who migrated to our islands. To regret this is to regret who we are.

Ireland apparently suffered centuries of oppression and colonisation by the wicked Brits. But then Britain suffered centuries of oppression and colonisation by the wicked Romans, then the wicked Angles and then the wicked Normans. Perhaps we should all have a chip on our shoulder about William the Conqueror the Vikings. Perhaps we should complain to the Danes that they oppressed us, raped and pillaged us. We could maintain that Britain has suffered two thousand years of being colonised by the Romans and everyone else who persecuted the poor Iceni and their children, but we are both the children of the Iceni and the children of everyone who migrated since the Romans.

Whether they like it or not the Irish are the descendants of those who settled in Ireland due to migration. The Irish are no more pure Celts than anyone else in the British Isles. We are all just a mixture of everyone who came here.

Everywhere in the British Isles, just like Japan and Korea went through a process of conquest and migration. These processes led to the nation states that we have today. They are the reason we are as we are. If Angles and Saxons had not migrated to Ireland they would no doubt all speak Irish, but to regret this migration is like regretting that in Britain we don’t speak the language of the Iceni, or that in Turkey they don’t speak Hittite.

To be Scottish today is almost certainly not to be someone who speaks Gaelic. To regret this is to regret the process of migration that led to the mix of peoples who make up Scotland. It is to regret who we are and who are parents and grandparents were.

Scottish nationalism picks one period of Scottish history, the period when Scotland was a kingdom and prioritises it over every other period. But Scotland was divided when the Romans first called us Caledonia. We were separate tribes. We had migrations from Ireland, we then gradually unified the various peoples in Scotland and then gradually mixed with the Anglo-Saxon peoples who had migrated here from the continent. This didn’t begin in 1707. It didn’t even begin in 1066. People have been speaking a variety of Anglo-Saxon in Scotland originally called Ynglis or Inglis for well over a thousand years.

We speak English because the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants came to dominate the British Isles. I have no idea why these people should have been more successful than the Celts, but they were. The story of the British Isles is how a Celtic speaking people became an English speaking people. Our mothers taught us English and their mothers taught them. To regret the language that you speak and to hate it is to regret who was your mother. It is to regret and hate your own self.

Some Irish, Welsh and Scottish people can’t even bear to think that speaking English as a native speaker provides them with an advantage. All they can think of is that the wicked Brits have repressed them, conquered them and persecuted them for centuries. But this bitterness is peculiarly self-defeating. The language used to express the supposed oppression is the language of the supposed oppressor. It’s the only language most people in Scotland and Ireland know. Instead of embracing who they are, the English speaking people of the British Isles, they hate who they are and delight in blaming someone else for it.

The Korean speaking people of the Korean peninsula and the Japanese people of the Japanese islands either have unity or long for it. It would be the most wonderful historical development if Korea could be united. But while we look on and cheer potential reconciliation in Korea, we find ways to hate each other here. Our history is no different from the history of Japan and Korea. We too are the result of conquests and migrations. We share a common language because of this. But instead of finding unity we continually seek division and blame each other because of the wrongs that were done by our ancestors. But I’m sorry we all have the same ancestors. We are all the descendants of the perpetrators and the persecuted. Each of us was a conqueror and each of us was conquered. We used to speak various Celtic languages, now we are all Anglo-Saxons. To deny this is to mutely try to speak the language of the Iceni, the Picts, or the Scoti. To regret the migrations that led to the people that we are now, is like a Turk regretting that he is not a Hittite. We have just as much unity as the Japanese or the Koreans. Wouldn’t it be as tragic and equally absurd to divide an English speaking island as to divide a Korean speaking peninsular?

It’s not bad enough yet

 I was going to write about something else this week. I had something almost ready about Jacob Rees-Mogg’s views on theology. But then I saw that he had ruled himself out from being leader, no doubt because of his views on theology. Maybe at a later date I will discuss those views. I think there is an interesting rational argument to be had about the subject. But why stick your neck out. It’s not bad enough yet.

 Every other day now North Korea either has a new test for a new sort of nuclear weapon or else it sends a rocket over Japan. Kim Jong-un is the Little Engine that Could. He’s little and a little round and he can. Everybody gets very angry about this and makes all sorts of threats. But nothing is going to happen until and unless he does. If any sort of nuclear weapon actually lands on American territory or the territory of an ally then there will be a nuclear response. But until and unless that happens Mr Kim knows that he can pretty much do as he pleases. The Chinese don’t want to see a unified Korea, so they will do nothing. The Russian’s chief foreign policy goal is to do the opposite of what the Americans want and so they will do nothing. Mr Kim wants attention and perhaps needs it and so he will throw his rockets out of his pram, but the game requires that he doesn’t go too far. The only problem is if he miscalculates. What if one of his rockets accidentally lands in Japan? Is there a response then? But fundamentally until the situation gets bad enough the Americans will do nothing. It’s not bad enough yet. I think it has to get very bad indeed before any sort of military action is taken against North Korea. So Mr Trump’s threats are probably empty, just as Mr Kim’s rockets are empty. The game is very dangerous indeed, but for the moment that’s all it is.

The same logic applies to our domestic security situation and the situation of every other Western European Country and indeed the United States. Here we face a situation that is much more dangerous than North Korea, but here too it isn’t bad enough yet.

Every now and again for the last while we turn on the news to find there has been another terrorist incident somewhere in Europe or the United States. We’ve had big ones (9/11) and small ones (Parson’s Green) and medium ones (e.g. Nice).  But none of these are bad enough. What we always get afterwards is the same meaningless words from politicians and the same meaningless gestures. The Eiffel Tower is lit up with the colours of another country’s flag. Scared people tell other scared people that they are not scared. We promise that we won’t give in to terrorism while trying to modify what we say and do in order not to provoke it. None of these things do any good whatsoever. We’ve even ceased to listen to what the politicians say as we already know what they said last time and what they will say next time.

The problem is this. Just as Jacob Rees-Mogg has to rule himself out of being Tory leader for telling the truth about his views, so all of us have to rule ourselves out of membership of polite society if we tell the truth about the nature of the problem and provide solutions that might actually solve it. It’s not bad enough for us to do this and so we say nothing.

There is an unforgivable sin in the modern western world. Because of this unforgivable sin most people go to great lengths to prove that they are not sinners. The unforgivable sin is so awful that I dare not even name it. I can blaspheme against the Holy Spirit with impunity, but we all know that certain words and certain truths may not be said in modern Britain. The reason they may not be said is that it isn’t bad enough yet.

Since Scottish politics became a dead issue not worth writing about I have spent the whole summer trying to explore the fundamentals of politics. Our problem is that we have turned equality into a God that must be worshipped at all costs. It means that whenever we face a situation that requires discrimination we fail to discriminate. We may start off with the best of intentions, after all we all want to be treated fairly, but we end up ignoring real difference. There is a real difference, for instance, between men and women. We are all of us who are not blind and unable to touch fully aware of it. But the logic of the equality lobby leads to children of six being told that this difference is not real and that girls and boys are interchangeable at will. The truth remains the truth and reality remains reality. The foundation of human society is the real difference between men and women. Throw away that foundation at your peril. Men and women want different things and to an extent we think differently and are often good at different things. Treat us fairly by all means but don’t ignore the reality of our difference.

There is likewise a difference between the duty I owe to my family, my fellow citizens and the duty I owe to people in general. These are real differences. I do not have a duty to ruin my own country in order to save the people of another. We are not equal.

When we turn equality into the thing to be worshipped at all costs, the cost in the end is Parsons’s Green. Discriminate has become a bad word. Not the worst of words of course, but bad enough. But really it means to recognise a distinction. People are different. Of course there are fundamental characteristics that we share with people the world over. But anyone who has travelled realises that there is a distinction between my society and your society, my culture and your culture. This is a real distinction. The attempt to erase this distinction because of equality is leading the West to disaster. Many people on the Left because of their belief in equality are trying in effect to create a world without borders. The result will be very bad indeed. It already is pretty bad as you may have noticed in the last five years or so. It may get much worse.

Can anything be done? Possibly. The most important step is to leave the EU. This makes Parliament sovereign and gives us the power to elect politicians who will do what it takes to make our country safe. It also gives us the power, if we choose to exercise it, to act in the interests of our own citizens rather than the citizens of the whole world. We must have no foreign court telling us what to do. The problem is that whenever a country attempts to do what is necessary to make itself safe (e.g. Poland, Hungary etc.) other countries condemn them for failing to share in our common danger. Each of our European countries ought, after all, to be equally dangerous otherwise we sin against the God of Equality.

Will anything be done? Probably not, at least not yet. I think it probably needs a plane to fly into the Houses of Parliament and for that plane to be packed with radioactive material or else some form of chemical or biological weaponry. Such a plane could easily have been flown on September 11th 2001 in which case it might have killed 100,000 people rather than 2996. That would probably have been bad enough. In that case our politicians would not have gone on about what this had nothing to do with. Rather they would have solved the problem. We wouldn’t have had any choice. But this won’t happen, not yet anyway, because it’s not bad enough.