When a culture forgets itself

Clive Pinder on colonial roots, Europe’s unraveling, whether “humanity” exists without humans, and if healthcare is a “right.”

Health isn’t only about hospitals and lab reports. It’s the health of a civilization– its memory, its courage, and whether it knows who it is. Clive Pinder was born in Nigeria in 1960, coincident with its gaining independence. His father was British colonial service, but Clive was raised to act like a guest, not a master, in another man’s country. That formed his creed. He calls himself an “apatheist realist”— not sure if God exists, certain that belief and myth still govern men. He spent his life moving– West Africa, Britain, the oil fields, a stint near Hollywood, a home in Zanzibar, and now Paso Robles, California.

He carries satire like a pocket knife– subtle, sharp– and complains Americans no longer understand it the way Twain or P. J. O’Rourke once wielded it. He runs a small radio show called Ceasefire, where argument is allowed but shouting is not. What he fears isn’t conflict– it’s silence.

Europe, he says, is sick, not in its clinics, but in its soul. Culture comes before politics. He warns of a continent that no longer believes in itself. He makes no war against Islam, but he draws a hard line with Islamism– a political theology that leaves no room for a secular world. He lived fifteen years on Zanzibar, surrounded by Muslims, and says respect worked both ways– his wife dressed modestly, they observed local customs, and nobody surrendered his identity.

But in Europe? “They’re not interested in assimilating– and we’re too ashamed to ask.” Since Angela Merkel opened Germany’s borders to over a million migrants, assimilation stalled. Some London districts are now nearly half Islamist; flying an English flag can be called racist. Sweden and Denmark– once moral beacons– now require language tests, civic loyalty classes, and even relocation of immigrant families to break ghettos. “Europe forgot who it was,” he says.

He believes the next battle isn’t only cultural– it’s biological. We are building our own successors, a species he calls Homo intelligis. Not science fiction, just acceleration. Humans eat and sleep; Homo intelligis just needs sunshine and batteries.”

For fifteen years, Pinder sat inside healthcare– on NHS boards and in U.S. tech. He retired at forty-seven after selling digital tools to both systems. He says the NHS is “no longer fit for purpose.” It isn’t compassion killing it; it’s entitlement. He believes in shared responsibility, even single-payer, seeing healthcare as “a human right.” I caution that someone else must be forced to provide it, given that “rights” are zero-sum (what is given to one must be taken from another); therefore, “When you call healthcare a right, you make someone else your servant.”

I see the easy phrasing of “healthcare access for all” as the nose under the tent. First, we “give” care – through some central governmental institution, which thereupon attempts to dictate behavior– diet, speech, movement, even thought. The covid tyranny was a prime example and should be a premonitory and disqualifying factor.

Join us at 5 pm ET weekdays on America Out Loud Talk Radio. Listen on iHeart Radio, our world-class media player, or our free apps on Apple, Android, or Alexa. Discover all the episodes on podcast networks, i.e., Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, TuneIn, Stitcher, and iHeart. You’ll find them the day after they air on talk radio, available on podcast. Extraordinary voices for extraordinary times.