politics – Page 15 – All Things Considered

14 May

Invasion of the Body-snatchers

Picture the massed crowds turning out for Hitler at Nuremburg, vast, faceless, more like a geometrical object than a gathering of human beings. Ditto the parades for Mao and for the Great Leader in North Korea. It is the trademark of totalitarianism and its aim is the obliteration of personality and individuality. A people ceases to be a people and degenerates into “the masses” – something like a machine in which every cog is an identical, interchangeable unit. Nazism and Communism are what might be called “totalitarianism-heavy.” What we have in secular Britain and throughout the officially atheist EU is “totalitarianism-lite” I mean, citizens of this politically-correct hell-hole are not (or not yet) arrested without trial, thrown into prison and tortured for expressing a dissenting view. But be patient, we’re getting there. Commit the thought crime of “racism” or “sexism” or “homophobia” and you will be punished by denunciation and your opinions condemned by the politically-correct unelected elite by which we are governed: you will be excluded from the public realm, the metaphorical equivalent of being sent to the gulag.

Totalitarianism achieves its control by abolishing individuality and differentiation. Notice how “discrimination” is now only a dirty word used to describe a crime, whereas once it was a mark of honour to be thought “discriminating,” for it connoted good taste. Totalitarianism-heavy does this in a big way by arranging the masses in parades of choreographed sameness, by referring to what were once individuals by numbers rather than names, by corrupting ordinary language to make it serve the totalitarian ideology. The results are sometimes hideously laughable: for instance in the totalitarianism imposed by the reign of terror created by the French Revolution, the guillotine which toured the country executing thousands was operated by “the Committee for Public Safety.” Torture or exile in the USSR was described as “re-education.”

Our own totalitarianism-lite is getting good at this and we may be certain that, given time, we shall establish the full glory of totalitarianism-heavy. Only be patient.We can reclassify the murder of an unborn child as just “a termination.” Thus killing becomes, literally, demoralised and the most perfectly obedient member of the corporate state is the dead foetus on the slab: not a human creature at all, only a statistic. We have redefined marriage by compelling acceptance of the fantasy that this can be between two people of the same sex. Only we are further compelled to stop saying “sex” and say “gender” instead. So what were once persons are now only nouns, interchangeable like monads. And don’t think that in the aims of the social engineers it’s a case of job done. There is a long way to go yet and it will not be long before “marriage” will be a word to refer to any sort of shack up that any two – but why stop at two? – people say it is.

We know from the Revolution in France that when we hear the fine-sounding new words, symbolising Enlightenment perfection “liberty, equality and fraternity” that the next sound we shall hear is that of the tumbrels. And so our present totalitarianism-lite has given us “diversity,” “equality,” “rights,” “liberation” and “inclusivity” – words which are meant to suggest an agreeable atmosphere of live-and-let-live, but which only serve to institute a conforming sameness. Deny the validity of those new words in their new context and you are on your way to becoming a non-person. In the interests of “inclusivity,” you will find yourself excluded: like the traditional Christian who cannot accept “gay” “marriage.” You may lose your job for wearing a crucifix. Last week one man was sacked for playing a cheerful popular song composed in 1932 and played thousands of times without earning any disapprobation: until now.

Another tiny step has just been taken along the everlasting path to our perfectly enlightened society. Feminist academics, scenting “sexism,” have declared that pupils should not address their teachers as “sir” and “miss” but employ their first names – or else, as one of these feminist apparatchiks said – “Address both male and female teachers as ‘sir’.” By such little absurdities our fate is settled. Wittgenstein said, “Create a language and you create a world.” Yes, and destroy a language and you destroy a world. An added sweetness has been imparted to this satanic folly by the fact that the academic who made this recommendation is a professor of English!

Did you ever see the 1956 black and white film Invasion of the Body-snatchers. I can vouch for it as the very parable of the way totalitarianism becomes established and progresses until it achieves its final paranoid inertia of utter dehumanised sameness and compliance. In the film, individuals are visited in their sleep by the alien power and their normal bodies and minds are replaced by carbon-copy but perfectly compliant specimens. This doesn’t happen all at once: the process is gradual. But it is ineluctable. Fall asleep and that’s the end of you.

We are all asleep.

13 May

Christianist Terrorism?

Yesterday I wrote about the media’s use of two words – “Islamic” and “Islamist” – and asked if they were in any way related. I apologise to coming back to the same subject so soon but it is, I believe, important and there is another aspect to it which I had not thought of yesterday.

Terrible things are happening in the Central African Republic. For instance, a Christian woman had her hands chopped off by a gang of Muslims. This provoked horrific reprisals. It was not an isolated confrontation: such atrocities, and worse, are happening in the CAR every day. The way these events are usually described gives pause for thought. In every report I have read, the Christians’ bloody acts of savagery are described as having been perpetrated by Christians. I think this is fair enough, for Christian is what they are. I decided to broaden my enquiry further and so considered other areas of conflict in which Christians have resorted to violence: in Sudan, for example, and in Somalia – and even in Kenya. In every case the reporting is distinguished by its accuracy and respect for the plain truth. The atrocities were committed by Christians and the reports said exactly that, neither more nor less.

There was no mealy-mouthed attempt at camouflage by euphemism. No use of a spurious and dishonest neologism such as “Christianist.” So when acts of terror are perpetrated by Muslims – something which is not unknown – may we be allowed to say so, and so abolish this lying evasion “Islamist”?

Regrettably, this will not happen. For while, as we know, all religions are equal, some religions are more equal than others.

12 May

Merci Boko

The Archbishop of Canterbury honed his negotiating skills by successfully inaugurating talks with terrorist predecessors to Boko Haram in Nigeria. This would have set him up nicely for his discussions with the warring factions in the Church of England over women bishops and sexuality. Justin Welby says Boko Haram are “irrational” but “many-layered” and that some layers might be a little more amenable to talks than others. I have no idea whether he is right about this, but perhaps it’s worth a try if it increases the likelihood that the captive girls might be released.

But I would not describe the terrorist group as “irrational.” They are perfectly rational according to their own lights: and these lights – the lights of experience – have told them that terrorism works. A more accurate description would be “evil.” Unfortunately, that word is not often to be found on the lips of senior churchmen these days who tend to be Enlightenment Progressives and the only sins they recognise are Islamophobia, Homophobia and In equality. All this is well-known and I won’t harp on it. But I do have a question:

The whole of the mass-media refers to this terrorist group (and other such groups) as “Islamist.” What I should like to know, please, is whether there is any connection at all between being “Islamist” and being a devotee of the Muslim ideology? The usual answer given is “Of course not: these terrorists are not representative of Islam which is a noble religion of peace and love.”

Really? Well, if that is the case, then what practical – and, as the Archbishop might say, rational – purpose is served by the neologism “Islamist”? It appears to be meaningless. Or is it being used as a way which helps us not to notice that the members of these terrorist groups are, in fact, Muslims?

09 May

Murder? It’s Killing Innit?

Perhaps to demonstrate that it’s not so dumbed down after all, the BBC is making one of its periodic incursions into the realm of intelligence. There is to be a programme in which it is asked whether there should be a connection between the law and morality. The presenter previewed this item by giving the example of Holland where, he said, there is no connection between law and morality – because the Dutch judiciary takes a liberal line on incidences of illegal drug use and prostitution.

The BBC discussion is to be presented by “experts.” Don’t need ‘em mate. Any first year philosophy undergraduate who couldn’t spot the flaw in that argument should be chucked off his course and advised to try something else: media studies, perhaps.

For the plain truth is that any attitude towards illegal drug use is bound to be a moral attitude. The particular moral attitude which the Dutch take just happens to be a liberal, permissive attitude. It is a moral attitude nonetheless. As strict enforcement of the law against prostitution and illegal drug use would also be a moral attitude. What is it like, this BBC expert’s argument and to what shall I liken it? It’s as if I should say, “Because this wren is not a sparrow, it’s not a bird.” But that’s to put the matter in plain language, such as we speak in the street. Let me translate it into academese, so that the philosophers on Radio Four might better understand it: there is the set called morality; and then there are the subsets called permissive morality, strict morality, utilitarian morality, deontological morality and so on; and all the subsets are parts of the whole set.

I looked a bit further into this unhappy relationship between the BBC and philosophy – did a bit of research, as they say – and found that the Corporation offers full coverage of philosophical ethics. But things don’t get any better. For example, there is an introduction to subjectivist ethics. Here the subjective view is said to entail the opinion that there are no objective moral values. So far, so good. That is an accurate description of the subjectivist view. But the example the BBC gives us is: “So a subjectivist could never say that murder is wrong.”

Oh yes he could. In fact he must. Because “murder” means “wrongful killing.” Murder is thus distinguished (by its wrongness) from other forms of killing – in warfare, for instance – which might not be considered wrong. This has nothing to do with whether you take a subjectivist ethical stance or some other. “Murder is wrong” remains true in virtue of the meaning of the words themselves.

To relapse into the academese again: “Murder is wrong” is a tautology. And tautologies are always true (for everyone) “on pain of contradiction,” as they say

In future, better stick to the Tellytubbies

08 May

Government-sponsored Nihilism

Russell Brand, Caitlin Moran and Dizzee Rascal are to be added to the A-level syllabus. Brand’s 2012 testimony on drug use to a House of Commons committee will be in an A-level in English language and literature course in a development dreamed up by the exam board and the educational charity, The English and Media Centre. It will sit alongside Caitlin Moran’s Twitter feed, the BBC Newsnight interview with rapper Dizzee Rascal and the work of former Guardian columnist The Secret Footballer. News of these innovations has already provoked members of the Department for Education to denounce the new syllabus: “It is immensely patronising to young people to claim that they will only engage with English language and literature through celebrities such as Russell Brand”, said a senior source in the department.

I read about all this in The Guardian which, in a spot of dumbing down all of its own, asked its readers to email and tweet to say whether they think these additions to the A-level are “a rubbish idea or a total genius.”I’ve no doubt that the journalist who “wrote” that phrase would defend himself by claiming he was being “ironic.”

The Guardian went on to say that accusations of dumbing down are “hysterical.” (I wonder if they meant that word to be taken in the ironic sense too?) Of course there has been relentless dunbing down for forty years and more. The A-level examining boards know it. I have some experience: some years ago when I was commissioned to write an article for The Times Educational Supplement on the subject, I had the very devil of a job trying to get the various boards to let me – purchase, not borrow – past papers for comparison. That was twenty years ago. I thought things were bad then but, to imitate The Guardian’s faux-proletarian “irony,” the syllabus was “total genius” in those days, but now it is “a rubbish idea.” If I may go back to the olden days, when I was studying for English literature A-level, we were required to have detailed textual knowledge of three Shakespeare plays – and if you were after top marks, you had to show a background acquaintance with the whole canon. Candidates were expected to be able to quote poetry from memory. And we were asked to read the whole of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall as well as verses by the metaphysical poets John Donne and Andrew Marvell.

Standards were incomparably higher all across the curriculum at primary as well as secondary stages. I attended a sort of Bash Street junior school in Leeds in the 1950s. There were forty in the (working class) class and we were learning clause analysis at the age of ten. In O-level maths we studied the binomial theorem and the beginnings of the differential calculus. In O-level RE we had show an understanding of the synoptic problem involving the first three gospels

Most teachers couldn’t do this stuff nowadays, let alone the pupils.

The government and the mass media go in for dumbing down for two reasons. First, they are pretty dumb themselves and know nothing of the intellectual tradition of the West – and what little of it they have stumbled across (in the interstices between pop music and fashion) they despise: “Shakespeare not ‘accessible’ to ‘kids.’ Eliot ‘elitist’ and so on.” Secondly, they have a vested interest in doing as little as possible to sharpen the critical faculties of the barbaric drones who constitute the underclass. Nobody has described the chronology of our demise better than R.G. Collingwood:

“From Plato onwards, Graeco-Roman society spent its life in a rear-guard action against emotional bankruptcy. The critical moment was reached when Rome created an urban proletariat whose only function was to eat free bread and watch free shows. This meant the segregation of an entire class which had no work to do whatever; no positive function in society, whether economic or military or administrative or intellectual or religious; only the business of being supported and being amused. When that had been done, it was only a question of time until Plato’s nightmare of a consumers’ society came true; the drones set up their own king and the story of the hive came to an end…”

07 May

Job application

To whom it may concern…

I should like to apply for the post of Chairman of the BBC following the retirement of Lord Patten. You will want to know why I think I am the right man – sorry, “person”! – for the job. I must confess that I am motivated partly by fear – the fear that the BBC’s character and reputation – described by Chris Patten as “precious and wonderful” – might be lost. Particularly, I fear that right wing politicians will use this time of crisis, precipitated by the vacancy at the top, fundamentally to alter the historic and humane socialist ethos of the Corporation. The BBC has a long and proud record of vigorous opposition to Conservative governments and leaders: who can forget the brilliant hatchet job editors and presenters performed on Margaret Thatcher, especially the coverage of her death and funeral? Let us not forget that it was the BBC alone that transformed the image of Tony Benn from loony commissar to national treasure. I fear that this great tradition in political broadcasting might be lost. And of course the BBC is the last remaining champion of the NHS – “envy of the world” – and state education

The BBC is the most reliable and respected news service in the world. For decades It has relentlessly told the truth about Israel: that it is a pariah state operating a system of apartheid against hard-working and peace-loving Palestinians whose only “crime” is daily to fire Kyatusha rockets into Israeli towns and villages. This accurate picture could change overnight if the forces of the right were to use the present interregnum to influence the BBC’s highly ethical foreign policy. And Israel is not the only example of where such a catastrophe could occur. For example, BBC coverage of events in South Africa since the glorious liberation under St Nelson Mandela in 1994 has always offered to the world a true picture of that admirable rainbow nation, with its new-found equality among all races and classes, increasing economic prosperity and remarkable reductions in crime, violence and political corruption. And one of my greatest fears is that, without the BBC’s unbiased “telling it as it is” portrayal of Muslims in Britain, there would be a rapid rise in incidents of Islamophobia. Also the BBC has a noble record of “doing what it takes to stop UKIP.” This must not now be compromised by political interference from the right.

But my concerns are not confined to politics. Art and culture are what define a nation and its people. Again, the BBC has long represented truly democratic and popular taste and resisted a growing trend towards a savage, out-dated and exclusivist elitism. The welcome introduction of pop music into the Promenade Concerts is particularly praiseworthy – though I admit this has not proceeded as quickly as many would like. Nevertheless, there is thankfully never a half hour on Radio Four which does not include its cheerful blast of pop music; and presenters are to be commended for their ingenuity in managing to do this regardless of the subject matter of the news story. The greatest cultural achievement of the BBC over long years of struggle against the reactionary tide of opinion has been the way it has transformed the cultural language itself. For example, in all BBC programming, the word “music” now means “pop music.” And “art” chiefly features the outstanding work of pioneers such as Damien Hirst and Lord Saatchi’s generous sponsorship of the best in modern art. “Poetry” too has been democratised and, although there are still occasional and regrettable mentions of elitist snobs such as T.S. Eliot, poems on the BBC are now almost exclusively and properly used to promote and support a humane socialism. Terrific strides have been made – if not quite, or not yet – in the actual provision of bread and circuses, then at least the Corporation can hold its head high for that it continues to commit vast amounts of effort and money into coverage of such cultural gems as Red Nose Day, The Eurovision Song Contest, the Oscars, the BAFTAS and of course the Glastonbury Festival.

I look forward to discussing these and many similar matters with you at interview. I will close for now by saying that Lord Patten himself is “precious and wonderful” and by re-echoing his characterisation of the BBC as the same.

PS Above all we must ensure there is strong resistance to all moves to abolish the BBC’s income from the universal tax…I mean of course the “licence fee.”

30 Apr

Pre-emptive self-abasement

I don’t complain about Muslim attempts to Islamify schools in Birmingham. They are acting in their own perceived interests. Their desire is a Muslim Britain as part of a global Caliphate. Fair enough. I know what they want because they have stated it on numerous occasions. Should I be surprised, therefore, to discover that they are working to achieve their aims? Of course not. I expect to have ideological opponents in this world; and I expect these opponents to oppose my wishes. I expect them to use deception, trickery, smoke and mirrors, spin and all manner of means in their cause. Muslim tradition allows them to behave quite differently towards non-Muslims from the code they employ in dealing with their co-religionists. No use complaining about this. It is a fact of life and I should just get used to it. And, when Muslims are criticised and reproached, they will play the race-card and make accusations of “Islamophobia.” Of course they will and they do. All the time.

What I do complain about is something else I have come to expect: the pathetic weakness of non-Muslim response to Islamic ideological imperialism. Our authorities handicap themselves by their creed of political-correctness. They cave in. They roll over. They accept the Muslims’ version of events. For the authorities and the “liberal zealots” in the press and the BBC, the prospect of being dominated by an alien culture is preferable to the consequences of being regarded as “racist” or “Islamophobic.”

Incidentally, “Islamophobia” is a word to which I can attach no meaning at all. A phobia is an irrational fear. But there is nothing irrational about a natural apprehension in the face of the prospect of Sharia and all the other aspects of an alien cultural and ideological imperialism. I do not want my country to be dominated by that culture and that ideology.

But it will be – because we are betrayed by our own side in these culture wars. A century ago, T.E. Hulme explained how our defeat comes about:

“We have been beaten because our enemies’ theories have conquered us. We have played with those to our own undoing. Not until we are hardened again by conviction are we likely to do any good. In accepting the theories of the other side, we are merely repeating a well-known historical phenomenon. The Revolution in France came about not so much because the forces which should have resisted were half-hearted in their resistance. They themselves had been conquered intellectually by the theories of the revolutionary side. The privileged class is beaten only when it has lost faith in itself, when it has been penetrated by the ideas that are working against it.”

29 Apr

The New Laodiceans

Archbishop Justin Welby has contributed to the discussion about whether Britain is a Christian country. He says, “The influence of a moderate and careful and generous Christian faith has enabled us to be welcoming to other faiths.”

“Careful” and “generous” I can understand and wholeheartedly support. But what does he mean by “moderate”?

I recall the old joke by Jonathan Miller when he said: “I’m not really a Jew – just jew-ish. Not the whole hog.” Is the Archbishop suggesting that Christians should not be fully-fledged but, as it were, just Christian-ish? What about all those exhortations in the New Testament which tell Christ’s followers to be fervent, to be prepared to suffer and even to give one’s life for the faith? St Paul wrote to the Corinthians:

“Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.”

Did St Paul really suffer the thirty-nine lashes five times – and all those other privations – for being “moderate”?

Also with characteristic moderation Jesus said, “Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”

I suppose the prophets were stoned for their being so “moderate”? And the martyrs – crucified, thrown to the lions, burned at the stake, strangled, drowned? No doubt on account of the fact that they were all:

Civilised men of moderate religion; Of flexible principle and estimable pragmatism; Unrestricted by the petty syllogism; And as easy in agreement as our Justin himself.

Oh how nice it is to be “moderate”! Admittedly, it wasn’t very nice when men such as Bishop Polycarp, Thomas More, Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley and countless other immoderate men were put to the death for their beliefs. But at least these things happened in an age when Christianity had not yet been emptied of serious content.

“And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write, ‘These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot; I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth’.”

Spew thee out of my mouth. Oh dear, I do wish the Holy Spirit would learn not to use such immoderate language!

28 Apr

There’s none so blind…

US secretary of state John Kerry is nearly as good at talking as his puppet-master Barak Obama. And he has been talking about Israel again over the weekend, saying, “A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative. Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second class citizens – or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state. Once you put that frame in your mind, that reality, which is the bottom line, you understand how imperative it is to get to the two-state solution, which both leaders, even yesterday, said they remain deeply committed to.”

Being interpreted, this prolix gibberish means, I think, that unless Israel agrees to a two-state equality with the Palestinians, then it will be inaugurating regional apartheid and deserve to treated as a pariah.

Why is the US secretary of state oblivious to the fact that Israel has offered the two-states solution over and over again since 1998? That was at the Camp David talks – an event noted for Yasser Arafat’s duplicity and final treachery. His behaviour so appalled Hillary Clinton that, by all accounts, her language turned the air blue over the White House lawn. This is what happened… Arafat agreed to the two-states settlement, then returned to Ramallah and declared the second intifada, a murderous terrorist uprising against Israeli civilians.

Israel does not operate an apartheid system to the detriment of Palestinians. For years, until Arafat’s criminal and disastrous intifadas, the state of Israel was the only place in the region where Palestinians could find gainful employment – their own disgusting regime being so shambolic and economically moribund. Israel took the extreme step of closing its borders to Palestinians only when Arafat’s gangs resumed their pastime of blowing up buses in Jerusalem – the open-air fruit and vegetable market twice – and firing rockets from Gaza at Israel’s southern towns. Many were the days that schoolchildren in Sderot spent more time in air raid shelters than in the classroom. Gaza, ruled by Hamas, is Lord of the Flies with Katyusha rocket launchers.

Israel is the only democratic, civilised state in the region and four times since 1948 has been forced to fight defensive wars against the surrounding barbarians who for sixty-six years have been bent on its destruction. Ben Netanyahu has been excoriated by Obama and Kerry, the Arabists in the British Foreign Office, the BBC and The Guardian endemic for calling off the current round of peace talks. What else was a responsible statesman supposed to do when his conversation partners across the table last week declared their merger with the terrorists of Hamas?

Why does John Kerry find it so hard to understand these things? Mr Kerry: we have a saying in these parts, “There’s none so blind as will not see.”

25 Apr

Frisk the thrifty, punish the prudent

I’d really like a £180K sports car but I couldn’t attempt the monthly repayments, so I shall have to cut my cloth. Perhaps I’ll buy a cheap second had motor, or maybe just hire a vehicle when I feel like going on a trip. Imagine the following scenario… A bloke on £22K pa gets ideas above his station and signs up to buy that Lamborghini. He pays the first instalment but then defaults permanently. Should we expect the dealer to say, “No probs – I’ll just reduce the monthly payments to next-to-nothing. Keep the smart motor, mate!”

Well, of course not.

But this is effectually what has happened in the mortgage market. In 2008 it became clear that mortgage lenders were being irresponsible on an industrial scale, lending purchasers as much as eight to ten times their annual salary. Result: house price crash as part of the general economic slump. What to do about this emergency? The government did something similar to the crazy Lamborghini salesman and reduced interest rates to next to nothing so that irresponsible borrowers could afford their recently-acquired houses.

This had a catastrophic effect on the income and long term financial prospects of savers, especially pensioners and others on low incomes. Thus the profligate were rewarded at the expense of the prudent.

Today we learn that the Financial Conduct Authority is to make new rules concerning mortgage applications and lenders will have to take into more realistic account the income and outgoings of prospective borrowers. Naturally, this has been greeted with squeals of outrage. But irresponsible borrowers don’t need to worry: the scheme will prove unworkable as lenders will find a way to continue lending – because, in most cases, it is in their interests to do so.

So injustice is institutionalised and excessive usuriousness celebrated. I call to mind some words of C.H. Sisson:

“What Ezra Pound exposed in The Cantos is the monstrous aberration of a world in which reality is distorted, down to a degree never so comprehensively indicated before, by the pull of a fictitious money. It is a noble subject and may be the only possible one for a long poem in our age.”

All Things Considered

Rev Dr Peter Mullen

Category Archives: politics