“And the truth shall set you free!” – Liar Liar
Before you read on, I urge you to watch this narrated version of There’s No Such Thing as a Dragon by Jack Kent. It is necessary if you want to know why I’ll be banging on about Dragons for the next two pages, and therefore, worth the three and a half minutes it takes to watch it.
Don’t worry. I’ll wait… Here it is again… Watched it? Good.
Now that you’ve watched it, I’ll take for granted that you’re a well-educated person who understands that the story is about more than mythological wingèd serpent-cats, who lack any understanding of personal space, and who have a total disregard for the concept of ownership and the baking industry.
The Dragon in this story represents a problem we face in our lives. This problem can be anything. It can be something small and personal, like a health-related issue. Or it can be something bigger, between you and a family member. It can be something bigger still, something societal, like a highly contentious political issue, say.
The main point of the story is this. As long as we do not address the problems in our lives -from that burning sensation around your inner thigh, to the perpetually mounting washing-up left in the kitchen sink, to that time Jimmy Savile flashed you- these problems will get bigger and bigger, and like the Dragon in the story, become so big that we can no longer ignore them. It will be too late.
The Dragon I want to write about is a dangerous one indeed. It has been growing at an alarmingly quicker rate over the last three decades. I myself never appreciated it until only recently. Now, having looked at the evidence, I have come to understand that this Dragon does exist. It is monstrous and if we don’t acknowledge it soon, it will be too late.
There is something else about this Dragon that you need to know. Some people out there, like Billy’s mother for example, do not only not accept that this Dragon exists, but if you so much as broach the subject of its existence, you will be told that you are exaggerating, or worse still, called a racist nazi bigot (in no particular order).
This Dragon, as you might have guessed, is framed within the topic of Immigration. It is more acutely, the ‘problem of immigration’, from a European viewpoint.
Assuming that mathematics is not racist, the statistics tell us that immigration has a limit. Once it goes beyond this limit, any given society can no longer sustain itself, and the hope of an integrated society will be lost.
Billy’s dragon was small at the beginning of the story, but before long, it grew larger and larger and larger until it ran away with the house. The problem that we face in Europe is if immigration continues at its current rate it will run away with our house.
Let us now face some uncomfortable truths that go even deeper than the problem of immigration itself.
Migrants are coming into Europe at an alarmingly higher rate than at any other time in history. Many migrants come here to start new lives for themselves and their families, but there is a shocking proportion of migrants that, while seeking a better life, wish to do so on their own terms and not abide by the laws of the land.
Most of these migrants are young males. Most of these young males are Muslim. Most of these young Muslim males have no intention of imbibing the culture of their new found home. They do not want to learn our customs or be a part of our European culture. They do not want to abide by our laws, they want to keep their own archaic ones. And we are letting this happen because we are not acknowledging that this Dragon even exist.
The far Leftists and those under the Progressive banner appear to be blinded by their own untrammelled empathy. They cry and scream for those in power to open up the borders and let these poor people in, without reminding themselves of Newton’s Third Law of Motion. How will the Left feel, I wonder, when they discover that most Muslim migrants do not share their beliefs about anything?
I’ll ask you this. How many more Londoners need to be ripped apart by explosives or stabbed to death in the streets before we face this Dragon? How many more French civilians needs to be crushed under the wheels of buses, or shredded by automatic weapons (for the sin of drawing cartoons) before we face this Dragon? How many more German women need to be mass raped before we admit that there Dragon is in our house, and it is getting bigger?
When my father’s uncle, Séamus, was on his deathbed, my father was told by his American cousins that Séamus was “…like, totally fine. He’s just a bit under the weather. Come visit!” Having crossed the Atlantic to see Séamus, my father told us that when he saw him, his uncle could barely speak, he was drooling, he didn’t know where he was. Séamus was at death’s door, and death found him soon. Nothing could have changed the fact that Séamus died back then. But not speaking the truth surely made the experience far worse than it needed to be.
Opening up the doors to migrants at the current rate is too much to sustain the European project. This is why Brexit happened. It is related to why Trump happened. And it is why a rising tide of populist conservatism is sweeping across Europe. Whatever else you may think about these movements, they are at least broaching the subject. People on the Left cannot admit that a Dragon exists. The Right, for all it’s nationalistic chest-beating, can, at the very least, admit there is a problem.
In mythology, the Dragon always hoards the gold. In doing so, it simultaneously represents opportunity and chaos. Opportunity, because if we face the Dragon we can capture its riches, and chaos, because we might very well die in the attempt.
The only way to proceed in this debate is by carefully treading down the centre, like the Yin and Yang symbol, with one foot in order and the other in chaos. Because if we don’t acknowledge that a Dragon is in our house we will soon be consumed by its flames.
Nothing about this problem is good or easy. Yet, if we hope to have a European culture one day, we had better face this Dragon and face it now.
Uncle Spinny Dervish 