England's Vanishing Inns

Ovar at the St. Austin Review, Joseph Pearce laments the sad demise of the English Pub, and points to this article in The Economist that goes into greater detail. Read it and sob;

"More than half the villages in Britain now have no pub at all"

This is no mere cultural footnote, either. It's a Big Deal. Slow, unseen tectonic plates of history have been grinding away under our feet and this is a sign, the surface manifestation of a deep fault. As Joseph Pearce quoted Hilaire Belloc;

"When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England."

It reminds me of when I was a teenager in the 1970s, and there was a great deal of attention given to the loss of the "family farm". It happened before  our eyes and we, as a people, apparently didn't feel the family farm was worth saving. Oh, we were a little sad to see it go, perhaps, but these things happen. Time marches on. That's how it struck me. It was far more momentous than we knew. And so with the pubs of England.

Why? I think one could realistically look at a loss of the sense of community, of local patriotism. We simply feel no natural attachment to these things. We are therefore, I think, un-naturally detached.

In the words of John Kassaian,"What a revolting predicament!"

Comments

[Del]

It has been many months since I settled back in a pub to talk a little treason.

The regime outlawed smoking indoors... I know why. The Statehouse wanted to discourage our talking with our neighbors about their errors.

[Patrick]

"The regime outlawed smoking indoors... I know why. The Statehouse wanted to discourage our talking with our neighbors about their errors."

Hahaha.

This is all too bad. Like Original Sin itself, we didn't fully realize what we'd lost - a rooted populace who loved their places- until we'd lost it. Same thing with the pubs, I'll bet - though I've never been to England.

What's to be done (besides prayer and fasting?) Changes are necessary, but the idea of change has been, ahem, *divorced* from moral order since at least the Reformation. As a consequence, "newness" becomes it's own justification, and instead of reinvigorating the old order, we toss it aside without fully knowing what it is we're doing. And we always regret it.

But again: what's to be done? It's very tempting to participate as little as possible, but surely that *isn't* the right answer.