- The purpose of a national border that I'd like to see roughly along the line of Offa's Dyke would be Archived Message
Posted by Rhisiart Gwilym
on November 16, 2019, 9:12 pm, in reply to "The opinions of those that live outside high immigration areas are frankly of less, or no "
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to protect - mildly, un-draconianly, un-exclusively - our old Cymreig national heritage, by simple and strictly fair and just control of the inflow of new people. Any state with any sort of sense of its own national identity is going to want to do that, simply because most of the citizens want it. I have no truck with tropes about national superiority over all others, which I think frankly is arrant tripe. But the old, unique characteristics which define any nation - including those peoples attempting wisely and justly to sustain multi-cultural respect for the ancestral heritage of all minority communities amongst them as well, at the same time - that inheritance is always worthy of cherishing in the minds of the bulk of the native population (if they're actually asked). So there's a careful balancing act that has to be carried on here. If that isn't done - as it isn't for Cymru right now - then you get the horribly painful situation that you have - for example - in Fachwen in Eryri, Gwynedd, Cymru Gogledd, where the last time I visited there was one old man like me, Dafydd, who still spoke his native language, as had literally everyone in the village during his youth, whilst literally everyone else in the village are now English people, speaking no Cymraeg, who have taken over simply by the power of the property-buying purse. That sort of thing simply shouldn't be allowed to happen just by default, as it has here. And a state in proper, which is to say full, sovereign control of the permeability of its own borders is the only thing that can regulate it: By all means always let in a non-swamping trickle, since in-coming immigration both of genes and customary memes is generally a good thing for enriching any country. Done Britain a massive power of good just in my lifetime, making it a much richer culture now. But take care to integrate the new citizens (with, of course, unfailing respect for the foreign cultural heritage that they bring with them), and simply never allow the incoming to be a free-for-all flood. That's just asking for a lot of heartache, and a lot of trouble. Generally, maintaining the vigour and the universal usage of your national language is a sure touch-stone for whether this delicate balancing act is being done about right. We have a saying: "Cenedl heb iaith, cenedl heb galon." - A nation without its language is a nation without its heart. Even the Kernowek people, in a much more extreme state of foreign over-running than the Cymry, are still holding on to their own language, and reviving it steadily. (You might like to look in to the story of NyNorsk and Bokmål in modern Norge (Norway) for another example of a small nation, recently liberated from someone else's empire, reviving the best of its old, eclipsed language. And similarly for another small NW European nation recently liberated and now universally speaking its own unique language rather than the former language of the imperialists, take a look at Suomi (Finland). There's virtually no hint of persecution of foreigners or of any widespread continuing hostility to their former overlords in those relatively young, small - but sovereign - states.) Imagine if Napoleon or Hitler had been successful in their invasion plans, and everyone here now had to speak Deutsche or Francais as a matter of public law, with English - the uniquely-magnificent language of Will Shaksper and John Milton, FFS, as well as a hundred other barely lesser giants - with the glorious native speech of these immortals left to live or die on its own resources. Don't we think that English people would have something - unbendingly resolute - to say about that? And bloody-well rightly so! Would anyone dare to challenge their right? |