politics – Page 13 – All Things Considered

29 Sep

Lefties, letters and lit crit

Why the persistence of this delusion that good writing flourishes when there is a left wing government?

In a recent article about Anthony Burgess, Irvine Welsh writes, “There are notable exceptions, but generally speaking the embracement of a reductive conservative political philosophy seldom heralds an era of flowering for an artist.”

I can attach no meaning to his use of the word “reductive,” but Welsh is certainly right about the notable exceptions. Plato under the rule of a strict oligarchy. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in Tsarist Russia. Nietzsche under Bismarck. Eliot, Pound, Wyndham Lewis and T.E. Hulme all wrote in a very conservative period. Sisson says somewhere that, in paying due respect to such fine writers as these, the lefty critics always feel somehow they have to make excuses for their politics as if this were some sort of inexplicable lapse. Do the lefties never notice that it was these conservatives who did the really original work in the English literature of the 20th century? They don’t come much more conservative than Pound and his slogan was “Make it new.” There is a good reason for the fact that it is the conservatives who are actually the avant garde. For conservatives are traditionalists and it is only those who understand tradition who can develop the tradition. Has Welsh not read Eliot’s Tradition and the Individual Talent – an essay which discusses precisely this truth?

Most of the world’s great literature – and its music and visual art – was published under “reductive” dictatorships. Or are we to imagine that Bach lived on hand-outs from The Arts Council?

Welsh says, ”Burgess read, wrote, drank gin… lambasting socialist Britain with its high rates of taxation. For this we must forgive him.”

These are words spoken from a very great height and I must say it is unusual to hear absolution pronounced by a leftie lit crit with such a restricted awareness of what actually goes on in the world of English letters.

One thing is clear though: Welsh, as a writer, is the living refutation of his own argument.

27 Sep

The state will provide

Young first-time buyers in England could buy a house at 20% below the market rate if the Conservatives are re-elected, David Cameron has pledged.The Tory leader said the party would build 100,000 new homes reserved for those under 40 buying their first home. They would be exempt from some taxes and would be built on brownfield land already identified for development, Mr Cameron said. Making this pledge – an extension of the Help to Buy mortgage scheme – Mr Cameron said the Conservatives wanted more young people to “achieve the dream” of owning their own home.

“I don’t want to see young people locked out of home ownership,” he said. “We’ve already started to tackle the problem with Help to Buy mortgages – and these new plans will help tens of thousands more people to buy their first home.”

Sounds good eh?

Not if you think, as I do, that the state has no business getting involved in the housing market. But, as a true socialist, Cameron has announced a state subsidy. He wants to appear generous. How easy it is to be generous with other people’s money! The scheme will be paid for, of course, out of further taxation and, as he has said, tax exemptions on those who are helped to buy.

Thus the taxpayer – already labouring under a heavy burden – will pay yet more in taxes.

This amounts to the abandonment of morality in politics as Cameron tries to buy votes with our money.

Not only is the scheme a state subsidy, it is a subsidy tomorrow – like jam tomorrow. If he was going to do it, why hasn’t he done it already?

Is Cameron really so cynical as to think that the public will fall for this trick?

Yes, he is. And we will.

21 Sep

The swag is mightier than the sword

Forty-nine Turkish hostages, including diplomats, women and children, have been released by the terrorists of Islamic State. The lavish scenes of jubilation on their safe return were prominent on Turkish TV. But did you see the earlier pictures of the fearless men of the Turks’ secret intelligence service, backed by special forces, charging across the borders into northern Iraq and Syria brandishing brown envelopes stuffed with lolly?

Ransom payments for the release of hostages is one of the main sources of Islamic State’s funding. How else? You didn’t think they held flag days did you or levied VAT on cut-throats? Though they probably make a packet out of sponsored mass public hangings. Another source of revenue is the sale of stolen antiquities from the ancient cities they have overrun. Colossally rich individuals with jihadist sympathies from the Gulf states have been observed delivering millions in sacks full of dollar bills. But IS’ main source of revenue is from the sheiks of Qatar and Saudi Arabia – who also backed Al Q’aeda – Sunnis, Wahabis who supported the fundamentalist rebels in the uprising against Assad.

The context of these untidy arrangements is the rivalry between the regional superpowers: the Saudis who are Sunnis and Iran which is Shia. These two states did not invent this sectarian rivalry: it is only the latest eruption of the thousand year old attrition between those two Muslim sects. The Sunnis don’t even believe that the Shias are Muslims at all. IS is also the creation of the western powers in the prosecution of the two Gulf wars in which Saddam Hussein’s regime was destroyed and nothing but chaos left in its place.

Now the West has no intention of fighting another war to wipe out IS and to clear up the chaos. Our leaders have repeated the message again and again: “There will be no boots on the ground.” IS knows this very well and that is why they are able to rampage, murder and destroy as they please.But IS is only the most recent and most dramatic – media savvy and filmable – of a fundamentalist Muslim insurgency which extends into Sudan, Somalia, Mali, all across North Africa and into Syria and Iraq. This insurgency is facilitated by the West’s imbecile policy of supporting the Arab Spring – thus compounding in North Africa the errors made in Iraq.

Europe will become the next victim of the Muslims’ imperialistic ambition and for two main reasons: first the Trojan horse of uncontrolled mass immigration and secondly the vastly superior birth-rate among Muslims in the European countries. As Bishop Michael Nazir Ali has warned, there are already no go areas for non-Muslims in many parts of Britain. We must expect these to increase exponentially.

One morning in the not too distant future, we shall wake up to discover that our country, our continent, our civilisation have all gone.

Western governments have no intention of scrapping their suicidal policies. Everything is done with the aim of appeasement and to avoid the suggestion of “Islamophobia” – whatever that might be. All the insurgents on three continents know this. Why shouldn’t they know it, since we confirm it every day by our actions, or rather our inaction?

Unless we discover the wit and the courage to change our policy, Europe faces a new dark age.

13 Sep

We are/are not at war

One day after John Kerry declared that the US is “not at war…that is the wrong term” with Islamic State, the White House and the Pentagon announced, “We are at war with Islamic State.” It is reassuring to see that the power with the greatest ability to defend the western world from barbarism has such a clear and unambiguous foreign policy. Two weeks ago President Blabbermouth said, concerning IS, “We do not have a strategy.” This week he set out what the strategy is and, in doing so, kindly let IS know precisely what the terms of his new-found strategy amount to: “America will do everything necessary to defeat IS, but we will not put boots on the ground in iraq or Syria.”

This announcement followed in a great tradition of such announcements – for example, the earlier announcement that the US was about to withdraw its military presence from Iraq; and the even earlier announcement which so considerately informed the Taliban of the exact date on which US troops would leave Iran. I suspect this crazy way of *waging war…*not waging war (delete as the whim takes you) is just the flip side of the west’s policy of appeasement and pre-emptive self-abasement. In the matter of prosecuting war, the west restricts itself to self-excoriation according to the canons of political correctness. We must not be Islamophobic which, being translated, means: first fail to see what the existential threat to the west is and then do nothing about it.

Yesterday a correspondent described US policy as “cowardly.” I agree and suppose that we should now re-phrase Clausewitz’s doctrine to read: “Cowardice is politics pursued by other means.”

President B’mouth merely contradicts himself when he says that the US will do all it takes to destroy IS but in the same breath declares, “But of course we’re not going to send in the infantry.” The truth is that the destruction of IS will most probably require a considerable ground force.

This stupidity will have dire consequences – indeed is entailing dire consequences already. Why else do you suppose most of North Africa, the Middle East, much of Saharan Africa, Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria have become places where Islamic terrorist uprisings have created hell on earth? It is simply because that policy of appeasement and pre-emptive self-abasement, coupled with starry-eyed wishful thinking, supported the so called Arab Spring and deposed the unlovely but useful dictators who were indeed bastards – but they were our bastards.

The scale of terror and the intensity of our present war will increase until the west faces up to the brute fact that we are suffering again one of the periodic eruptions of militant and barbarous Islamic imperialism which have occurred for the last fourteen hundred years. In the past the western world had the intelligence to understand this and the courage to to defeat the uprisings.

Our enemies understand very well that we are the first generation of westerners lacking both the intelligence and the courage required. And it will be the death of us.

08 Sep

IPSO is a Facto

Sir Alan Moses starts work this morning as chairman of the new Independent Press Standards Organisation IPSO and promises that it will not be “a sham.” Indeed it is not a sham: it is a political quango set up in response to campaigns by Hacked Off and Guardian journalists to abolish our free press. This must not be allowed to happen. The health of the nation depends upon the freedom of the press. Even that old Puritan John Milton understood this and argued vigorously in its defence in his 1644 speech, later printed as Areopagitica. Muzzling the press is the first act of all tyrannies. Just reflect on states such as the USSR under Stalin, Germany under Hitler and China ruled by Mao and his successors. Look at any dictatorship you fancy and ask yourself whether you would prefer to live there or here in Britain, with all its faults.

Newspapers are a pretty untidy business and actually their methods of news-gathering are often despicable. But not as despicable as the methods of all governments which control the mass media. These governments are thereby enabled to hide their own misdeeds and criminalise public scrutiny. The freedom of the press is what guarantees our liberty – or at least some measure of freedom. The free press can hold governments to account and this is ever more necessary given our current debased and corrupt political class.

There should be absolutely no regulation of the press. This does not mean that the papers and the broadcasters can do as they like. They must be subject to the law of the land as everyone else is so subject. If I break into your house, or even if by my words and writings slander you or libel you, then I have committed an offence and for which I can be arraigned. The same goes for journalists, newspapers and television companies.

There are enough laws and we don’t need further regulation. Control always works in favour of authority. Yes, and the basis of all authority is freedom.

07 Sep

Just war Justin?

On an aeroplane returning from Korea, the Pope was asked if he thought it right for the western allies to bomb Islamic State in Iraq. “Yes,” he said. The Archbishop of Canterbury was today asked the same question by Edward Stourton on The Sunday Programme. He answered in the usual Lambeth style: tread water and waffle. To begin with, he declared that the situation is very complex…”…military issues…socio-political issues..” and so on. Then he said something truly odd: “We don’t want to empty the Middle East of Christians.” You don’t have to, Justin. Islamic State are doing this already. Stourton pressed him but he still wouldn’t give a straight answer and excused himself with the cop out, “I’m not qualified…”

No, and you’re not qualified in economics either Archbishop – but that doesn’t stop you spouting endless advice to the government, to the nasty bankers, to the loan sharks. Not qualified? Funny things qualifications. Now I’ve never heard the Archbishop say anything substantial about theology. Is this because he lacks qualifications there too?

19 Jul

The religion of peace and love–part three

Muslim propagandists – ironically described as “scholars” – often put it about that the word Islam means “peace.” It doesn’t. It means “submit.” This is being interpreted very literally in Mosul in northern Iraq where those exceptional Islamic devotees in ISIS have ordered local Christians to convert to Islam. Like good representatives of peace and love, they have not left the Christians without options. If, for whatever perverseness of intellect and spirit, Christians decline this kind invitation to give up their faith in Jesus Christ and instead espouse barbarism, they must pay the ancient tax on infidels known as the jiziya. ISIS’ generosity of spirit knows no bounds. Those Christians who elect not to pay to this protection racket must give up their homes and all their possessions and leave. If they persist in their obtuse rejection of all these generous options, they will be put to death. ISIS’ official proclamation ends, “…or else nothing awaits you but the sword.”

Before the loving Muslims in ISIS took over in Mosul, there were 3000 Christians in the city. Most have now fled. All the churches as well as the shops belonging to Christians have been destroyed.

Truly, God is great!

29 Jun

Mind yer grammer

A BBC documentary informs us that Prince Charles has often tried to influence government policy. He was even courageous enough to talk sense to David Blunkett, telling him he should bring back grammar schools – those institutions sometimes referred to by The Times Educational Supplement as “grammer schools.” Blunkett comments:

“I would explain that our policy was not to expand grammar schools, and he didn’t like that. He was very keen that we should go back to a different era where youngsters had what he would have seen as the opportunity to escape from their background, whereas I wanted to change their background.”

Just the sort of remark you would expect from an old class warrior. Actually, it is indisputable that grammar schools did enable youngsters to rise above their origins. The opportunities provided by grammar schools were real and not fictitious, whereas Blunkett’s airy talk about “changing their background” is so nebulous as to be void of all meaning. What we have to understand is that socialists favour equality. They want to assign everyone to the same level. Unfortunately this always means levelling down: the perfect example of socialist levelling is the prison uniform. It is also indisputable that not everyone is suited to an academic education. There is nothing “elitist” about this. It’s horses for courses. Some people are not suited to a practical education. I wasn’t. The woodwork master slung me out of his class for creating a three-legged stool so palpably atrocious that I was not allowed (as the other lads were allowed) to stain and varnish it, but was ordered to paint it red as an awful warning. And I was held up to mockery and scorn for making a Horlicks of the paint job. Once, before one of my regular canings for truancy, the headmaster said, “You know, Mullen, I sometimes think you come to school only to play cricket and enter the poetry competition.” He wasn’t far wrong. Though I did like the girls in their candy stripes who used to sit around the field and watch us play cricket.

What a pity that Blunkett and all the other socialist ideologues were not permitted by their class prejudice to notice that grammar schools were a way – perhaps the only way – of improving the prospects of the poor. What is beyond doubt is that the system of universal comprehensive schooling has massively failed the poor. The department of Education’s own figures admit that, after eleven years of full time, compulsory education, 43% of our children leave school unable to read, write and count efficiently.

That is the consequence of the politics of envy.

24 Jun

Do the arithmetic, Your Grace

1 + 1 = 2; 2 + 1 = 3; 2 + 2 = 4…….

The Archbishop of York is outraged by the fact that there are so many of what he describes as “working poor.” He is talking about low pay. He says men should not live by the minimum wage alone but should instead receive 20% more than that basic stipend in the form of “a living wage.”

“Should” is an interesting word, necessarily implying a moral judgement. But morality, if it is to mean anything, must be located in the world of facts and practical results. Moreover, every “should” also implies a responsibi9ity: who should? In this case the responsibility is clearly with the employers, those who pay the wages. I am sure the employers are grateful for the gift of the Archbishop’s superior moral insights and to be elevated, if only temporarily, on to his higher ethical plane. But let us come down to earth just for a moment and consider likely consequences. These are far removed from what obtains on the Church of England’s socialist fantasy island.

The employer needs to balance his books and to make a profit in order to sustain his business. Thus he calculates costs – including the amount he can reckon economically to pay in wages. If, in accordance with Dr Sentamu’s blue sky utopianism and infinite kindness, he is suddenly required to pay 20% over the odds, then (I suggest) in the real world one of two sets of consequences will follow: either he will employ fewer workers or his business will become unprofitable owing to the additional costs and it will fail. Then all will be out of work

Does the Archbishop intend either of these outcomes? Is it not better that more are employed even on low wages than that some are sacked to increase the wages of some others? Is it not preferable, on the whole, that companies stay in business?

But I am talking about the real world and not the C. of E’s. economic neverland

22 Jun

Allah, the poor moderate Muslim house-slaves

What an affecting scene! The British Muslim woman on TV weeping over her psychopathic son who has gone to Iraq to kill reasonable people. She begged this “highly intelligent” son of hers who had aspirations, we hear, to be our first Muslim prime minister to come back to Britain. As for his becoming the first Muslim prime minister – well he could easily be an improvement on Cameron. But frankly. mother-under-the Halloween-costume, we don’t want your beloved son to come back and kill English children. We Christians – in the interests of interfaith dialogue – would much rather he stayed out there in Iraq and slaughtered as many other of his co-religionists as possible.

Is there any difference in meaning between the normal (I should say abnormal) word “Islamic” and the BBC hybrid term “Islamist” ? I mean, and I am only a philosopher, are there any Islamists who are not Islamic?

The civilised world is facing the biggest threat to its survival since the dark ages when this ministration of death conquering by the sword swept across Europe. This barbarism was put down then by Christian knights, by Charles Martel, by the papal states, by the heroes of Lepanto and Malta. This diseased affliction was three centuries ago at the gates of Vienna. It is inside these gates now, with the welcome of the EU nomenklatura and the bien pensant, wishful thinkers who are the real enemies of our civilisation. As T.E. Hulme said, “A civilisation is not defeated until it has taken into itself the beliefs of it enemies.”

Well said, Tom

We are all going to die from pre-emptive self-abasement and political correctness. Why are we so unconfident in our civilisation? Such moral and physical cowards?

Fire needs to be fought with fire. We are fighting fire by appeasement, that is by pouring oil on the flames

All Things Considered

Rev Dr Peter Mullen

Category Archives: politics