“Phillips” was the surname adopted by her parents, who moved to Britain from Poland and Russia after the Holocaust, because “their real name was difficult for the English to pronounce”, she said.
More likely it was, as she wrote elsewhere, because they lived as Jewish outsiders in an impoverished area of London and "kept their heads down and tried to assimilate by aping the class mannerisms of the English."
She began her career writing for The Guardian and New Statesman and currently writes for The Times, The Jerusalem Post, and The Jewish Chronicle.
Phillips was in Israel on October 7, when Hamas fighters invaded from Gaza, killed 1200, and took 240 hostages, while gang-raping and mutilating numerous others. “Western civilisation is facing a critical moment,” Phillips writes.
“Foreign enemies sensing weakness are circling. Internally, the West is being consumed by division, decadence, and demoralisation.”
“The October 7 attack on Israel presented it with a choice between civilisation and barbarism – a challenge the West failed,” she wrote.
“But this damaged society is far from lost if the West and its struggling Christian church, as well as the secular people who shun religion, learns lessons from the unique survival of the Jewish people”, she wrote.
Britain and Europe make up the front line of the attack on the West, and those societies have been weakened both by the sheer numbers of Islamists who have immigrated there and the feebleness of the response by governments there, she wrote.
At root is a spiritual problem, a crisis over meaning and purpose, she wrote. A spiritual vacuum underpins the denigration of the nation, the abandonment of the family, and the destruction of education.
It has shaped contempt for the past and despair about the future, she wrote.
Published in January, I was aware of it because I had been following posts by Phillips for a couple of years so bought my copy from Amazon.
Well-written in an easy-to-follow style, The Builder’s Stone is clearly laid out.
After an introductory Letter to the Reader, the 11 chapter titles are: The Inflection Point, Judaism and Western Civilisation, How the West Unravelled, The West’s Pathological Disorders, The West’s Autoimmune Disease, How Britain and America Lost the Plot, The Historic Attrition of the Jewish People, The Secret Sauce of Jewish Resilience, The Evils of Deracination, Wrestling With Destiny, and lastly, the 11 steps of Saving the West, which can be summarised as “choosing to survive”
A one living in the West, it looks like too few think that there is anything to survive.
The Builder’s Stone is a must-read for those interested in what is going on, not only in Israel, but throughout the entire western world.
The Builder’s Stone, Melanie Phillips, Wicked Son Publishing, 307 pages, is available from https://www.amazon.com/Builders-Stone-Christians-Built-West/dp/B0DT15VDW6
9 comments:
'The West' (depending on how one defines it) arguably has its governmental and philosophical/ethical roots in ancient Greece and Rome - bear in mind that the Roman Empire only adopted Christianity as a State religion towards the end of its existence.
As a 'Westerner', I love flaunting my Graeco-Roman heritage!
The Jewish people lost 6,000,000 people during World War 2, and this war which they are still fighting was started by Hamas with 5000 rockets fired at them, yet we have twits in our very own parliament saying "from the river to the sea" and wearing scarves of the invaders. The Jews are not a plight on the rest of the world, their attackers are!
Kevan
The "West" has now outlasted the Roman Empire, which was in the failing state with the rise of Christianity. As a medievalist, I must see a parallel with the Fall of Rome..... followed by the 'Dark Ages' during which the culture of Greece and Rome was preserved in monasteries, while the populace grew only ignorance and poverty. As the west fails it will not be followed by a "golden age of AI" and its dehumanised dreams. More - a horror of bebased and lost humanity at the hands of Evil Masters. [Glad I have no kids.].
An excellent contribution to BV, thanks Mike Butler. The WW2 attrocities are learned in many ways and for myself 20 years after WW2 ended I worked on a weekend retail job in southern NZ. A Polish immigrant customer whose number was tattoed on her forearm caught my youthful attention and I obviously stared. She asked "do you understand?" I nodded and said I have read about Austwich. The lady thereafter always supplied a piece of cake to me each weekend for years, I remember the tatto message long after the cake was gone.
and I remember Mrs Burns, with the tattooed number on her arm... Alas tatts are now everywhere, just as they were in Stone Age Britain before the Romans.... "wode" they called it. Became a sign of ignorance in those days...
Basil and Glan001, I too met a woman with a death camp tattoo. That was in 1972. I've been with Israel ever since.
agree completely with Mke and Melanie . From the French revolution terror of the 18th century fhrough the mind control of communism to the tyranny of fascism , a desire to bring about the perfection of the world led instead to tyranny and mass slaughter . Today Western Liberals have become the accomplices of Islam through their own misguided fantasies about the brotherhood of man . There has arisen in trans-nationals and a global humanitarian establishment, actually established after the defeat of Nazism to ensure that such a terrible evil should never arise again has ,itself become a monstrous force producing the conditions for a second holocaust. The mere existence of Israel a tiny nation surrounded
by mega Muslim states , proves there is a God who keeps his promise to preserve them.
Mike NZ
I've read Melanie Phillips for a decade or two, have her 2 previous books and she is the only journalist I have subscribed too.
Always informative and even if you don't agree with her, she makes her case clearly.
Mike your article was a brave and well articulated piece of informative journalism. Bravo! I shall purchase The Builder's Stone for sure.
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