Peter Hitchens
Journalist
1951-10-28
Quotes by Peter Hitchens
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We welcome into our homes the machines that vacuum the thoughts out of our heads and pump in someone else's. John Berger in Ways of Seeing said that television advertisers succeeded by persuading viewers to envy themselves as they would be if they bought the product. These programmes do something similar, by persuading the viewer to envy himself as he would be if his life were that little bit more exciting and melodramatic than it actually is. They can make things seem normal that are not.
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Americans may say they love our accents (I have been accused of sounding 'like Princess Di') but the more thoughtful ones resent and rather dislike us as a nation and people, as friends of mine have found out by being on the edge of conversations where Americans assumed no Englishmen were listening.And it is the English, specifically, who are the targets of this. Few Americans have heard of Wales. All of them have heard of Ireland and many of them think they are Irish. Scotland gets a sort of free pass, especially since Braveheart re-established the Scots' anti-English credentials among the ignorant millions who get their history off the TV.
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The freer a society is, the more it leaves the family alone.
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The freer a society is, the more it leaves the family alone.
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We welcome into our homes the machines that vacuum the thoughts out of our heads and pump in someone else's. John Berger in Ways of Seeing said that television advertisers succeeded by persuading viewers to envy themselves as they would be if they bought the product. These programmes do something similar, by persuading the viewer to envy himself as he would be if his life were that little bit more exciting and melodramatic than it actually is. They can make things seem normal that are not.
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Americans may say they love our accents (I have been accused of sounding 'like Princess Di') but the more thoughtful ones resent and rather dislike us as a nation and people, as friends of mine have found out by being on the edge of conversations where Americans assumed no Englishmen were listening.And it is the English, specifically, who are the targets of this. Few Americans have heard of Wales. All of them have heard of Ireland and many of them think they are Irish. Scotland gets a sort of free pass, especially since Braveheart re-established the Scots' anti-English credentials among the ignorant millions who get their history off the TV.
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We say we want politicians who are open and honest. And then, when we get one, we angrily pelt him with slime until he cringes to the mob, starts hiding his real views, and hires a spin doctor just like all the others.
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At every future election, there should be a slot, at the top of each ballot paper, in which we can put a cross against 'None of the below.'
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Freedom of speech is freedom above all for those whose views you dislike most.
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Donald Trump is a symptom, not a disease. The disease is the death of real political conservatism: a cool, intelligent reluctance to believe that all change is good, a love for the established, the particular, and the well-worn.
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Terrorists are overjoyed when we shut down our freedoms and turn ourselves into a police state and when we retaliate, swatting the Middle East with useless bombs or rounding up the wrong suspects and locking them up without charge.
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Freedom of speech, for those who don't accept multiculturalism or the sexual revolution, is increasingly limited, mainly by threats to the jobs of those who speak out of turn.
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I can't say I'm sorry to see that the name 'Nigel' is dying out, but I'd be happier if it wasn't being replaced by made-up names out of TV series 'Game Of Thrones.'
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In a supposedly free and equal country, there is no excuse for our rulers having VIP treatment. On the contrary, there is every reason for them to get what we get, hot and strong.
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A referendum is almost always a device by which governments get the voters to endorse what they wanted to do all along.
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What we need and have not got at Westminster are real experience and wisdom, possessed by people who do not view politics as a career.
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Man without conscience is wilder and more dangerous than any beast.
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The sad truth is that mass migration, whatever the colour of the skins of those involved, upsets and worries indigenous people, especially the poorest.
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I have visited nearly 60 countries and lived in the U.S.S.R., Russia, and the U.S.A., and I have never experienced anything as good as what we have. Only in the Anglosphere countries - the U.S.A., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand - is there anything comparable. I am amazed at how relaxed we are about giving this away.
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