I know very little about politics in Britain. Along with many other Americans, I find the ins and outs of the political parties, the players, and the methods used to build coalitions between and among differing parties quite confusing.

However, I am aware of the extent to which the Prime Minister, David Cameron, has demonized one party, UKIP, and I know that his ad hominem attacks go back a number of years.

This video of Melanie Phillips speaking on March 7th is a fine example of how to counter such attacks. Would that our politicians were as fluent as she:

[A side note: the young woman in the audience who mounted the demonizing attack to which Ms. Phillips referred turned out to be a Labour Party stooge planted in the audience for that express purpose.]

UKIP is easy to demonize: the party expresses openly what many people haven’t the courage to say out loud. The valid concerns UKIP has about the European Union, and the (perhaps) unintended effects on Britain’s culture of large numbers of unassimilated immigrants, shouldn’t even be controversial. They are common sense, normal adult wisdom arrived at through the experience of social interactions with those whose backgrounds and cultural differences easily lead to friction.

This isn’t rocket science; it’s learned very early on in the schoolyard that different people from the very same neighborhood may play by surprisingly different rules. One learns to negotiate, to compromise — but not to bury differences.

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UKIP’s acronym stands for The United Kingdom Independence Party. Its platform sounds like the average libertarian and/or conservative political philosophy to me. If we had a third party in the U.S., its policies would probably resemble those of UKIP for a number of reasons. Perhaps the main one would be the sad fact that what is supposed to pass for a haven for conservatives, the Republican Party, is useless when it comes to taking a stand on the deleterious effects of immigration on our national security and well-being. Large numbers of illegal immigrants continue to flow across our southern border, including drug kingpins and any number of jihadists. We’re in a heap of trouble and few people at the national level are willing to discuss the issue with any integrity. President Obama has made plain his unconcern.

Based on that issue alone, UKIP is a breath of fresh air. On their website, at the “About Us” page, it says:

UKIP was founded in 1993 to campaign for the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. Not because we hate Europe, or foreigners, or anyone at all; but because it is undemocratic, expensive, bossy — and we still haven’t been asked whether we want to be in it. But the EU is only the biggest symptom of the real problem — the theft of our democracy by a powerful, remote political ‘elite’ which has forgotten that it’s here to serve the people. WHAT WE BELIEVE IN We believe in the right of the people of the UK to govern ourselves, rather than be governed by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels (and, increasingly, in London and even your local town hall).

We believe in the minimum necessary government which defends individual freedom, supports those in real need, takes as little of our money as possible and doesn’t interfere in our lives.

We believe in democracy devolved to the people, through national and local referendums on key issues, so that laws are made by the people’s will, not the fads of the political class.

We believe that the government of Britain should be for the people, by the people — all the people, regardless or their creed or colour — of Britain. [emphasis in original — D]

Sounds like the average American conservative/libertarian viewpoint to me. Which means, of course, that in Liberal Land across the map, it is always open season on those who say this out loud, those who refuse to sing in the multicultural p.c. chorus. Not singing along makes you a heretic worthy of being banned from decent company. Sound familiar?

Thus are members of UKIP regularly trashed — as are Conservatives in the U.S. — for being racist bigots due to the mortal sin of raising questions regarding the wisdom of a huge influx of immigrants where there are neither jobs nor existing houses to shelter them. In that environment, the Prime Minister was free to let go the reins of his own prejudices in 2006, calling members of UKIP “loonies and closet racists” for questioning the common wisdom of multicultural dogma. In other words, people who are concerned about what is happening to their country and their culture are shunned and shamed in the hope they’ll be intimidated into silence. Ask members of Sweden Democrats, or Americans who join their local Tea Party, or the shunned and shamed Norwegians who flee rather than live in silence.

In an infamous case last December, an experienced foster family had three children summarily removed from their care when the social worker discovered — gasp! — the couple belonged to UKIP. I guess it never occurred to the children’s agency that anyone willing to do this kind of work could ever be knuckle-dragging UKIP members.

As a former social worker who supervised foster care families, I know how exceedingly rare good families are; you treat them like gold. Some deeply compassionate people do this kind of work, and no foster care worker in her right mind would ever do anything to estrange such a couple. But…

But…there are limits in these politically polarized times. Thus right-thinking (or rather left-leaning) people who swallow whole the received wisdom, the common consensus, as the only acceptable view would find this family prima facie insane based on their political affiliations. “Everyone knows that UKIP…”

Thus the agency jerked those three children out of their placement so quickly you’d have thought they’d discovered a pedophile under the bed. To those who aren’t familiar with the world of temporary child placements, I assure you that one simply does not disrupt a placement of foster children without very serious cause. Not ever. Each and every disruption further damages the child’s ability to form attachments, to bond with any lasting sense of security. That was an abominable, immoral act on the part of the agency and even now, months later, I am dumbstruck at the immorality of that decision.

UKIP members, like others on the right, are simply saying out loud what is common sense. No family can take in huge numbers of new members without serious stresses on the fabric of the family. It is no different with cultures, or with countries. Even with the best of intentions, trying to make new members fit in is a long, complicated process. When the newcomers make it plain they don’t like you, or they plan to replace you, only the suicidally inclined would find such a situation palatable.

UKIP says in public what many, many other people say around their kitchen tables — but very quietly for fear of being brought up on Hate Speech charges. Britain is fast becoming a soviet state. UKIP may be the last best hope for saving Britain from being destroyed as a sovereign state.

I applaud UKIP and Melanie Phillips for being willing to speak out, to stand fast in the face of The Destroyers.

You can find more of Melanie Phillips’ videos on You Tube. Here is one of them.

Hat tip for the video: “Heresy Today” (newsletter)