Have you noticed that no one is really talking much about the election?
Is it me, or has there been kind of a dearth of commentary?
Is everyone still just stunned?
Heloooooo...? (echo of "hellooohellooohellooo...")
Gerald?
Peter?
(...crickets chirping...)
Did we have an election on Thursday or did I just dream that?
James?
Melanie?
Anyone?
Helloooo?
Why aren't the pundits telling me what to think?
How can I figure out how to make outrageous jokes if no one is going to tell me what will offend the most?
Come ON people!
Showing posts with label Political Theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Political Theory. Show all posts
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Monday, June 15, 2009
While the British National Party is seen as a far Right group some of its policies are more akin to the Left.
Its stance on immigration, Europe and law and order is firmly rooted in the Right but pledges on nationalisation, the NHS and income equality sit just as comfortably at the opposite end of the political spectrum.
It shows two things, I think. First, most of the British press (and political establishment) don't know very much about political theory. They've got the new paradigm firmly in place: "Gay pride, abortion, European Union, Nationalized medicine, unlimited immigration = left = good; immigration restrictions, pro-life, family values = right = bad."
And anything, (like the old fashioned proto-feminists who vigorously opposed abortion, or the pre-Thatcher Labour MPs who voted to retain the death penalty and restrict easy divorce) that doesn't fit the paradigm, simply doesn't exist.
Easy enough to fit the BNP into the category if you read nothing about them but the Guardian's hysterical rants. Read their actual policy sheets and you get a slightly more, dare I say it, nuanced view.
And second, that the entire political spectrum, everywhere in the world but particularly in European politics, has moved so far to the left that the term "right-wing" has simply become meaningless. All it means now is, as Mark Steyn put it, slightly to the right of the extreme radical left. For which another name is: the Left.
As I said, if the BNP were really right wing, I might support them, but they're just a little to far on the squishy socialist side for my taste. And I've not got much time for British republicans.
Long Live the Queen!
Friday, November 28, 2008
So, I've been reading a bit about Gramsci's theories:
ummm...
Dude, hate to burst your bubble, but
have you met the working class?
Further recessions and contradictions would then spark the working class to overthrow capitalism in a revolution, restructure the economic, political, and social institutions on rational socialist models, and begin the transition towards an eventual communist society.
ummm...
Dude, hate to burst your bubble, but
have you met the working class?
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
What is Toryism?
Gerald Warner says that Dave has the right idea:
I continue to reserve judgment.
"a properly regulated society, but without excessive state intrusion, in which the government creates the legal context and families and communities function harmoniously within that social consensus."
I continue to reserve judgment.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
What is conservatism?
Living in Britain, I soon realised that the English, even those who work in their "pro-life" "movement", have been so brainwashed for so long that they cannot recognise ordinary conservatism and automatically regard any political or economic idea that is anything other than the Maoist playlist they are used to hearing from the BBC as "fascism".
So, in the interests of public education, I offer a short lesson in what a coherent conservative political and economic position looks like:
Thanks Kathy
So, in the interests of public education, I offer a short lesson in what a coherent conservative political and economic position looks like:
Thanks Kathy
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Important Political Terms 101
"Useful Idiot" (from wiki):
The term is attributed to Vladimir Lenin, sometimes in the form "useful idiots of the West", to describe those Western reporters and travelers who would endorse the Soviet Union and its policies in the West.
...
"Useful idiots" would be literally translated from Russian "poleznye idioty". Taking into account possible imprecise translation from Lenin's native Russian into English, other similar quotations exist, such as his assessment of US President Woodrow Wilson in a speech delivered at a meeting of activists of the Moscow Organization of Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (RCPB) on December 6, 1920, first published in 1923 according to the verbatim report in V.I. Lenin Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1966, page 449 (translated from Russian):[5]"Nowhere has the Versailles Treaty been analyzed so well as in the book by Keynes, a British representative at Versailles. In his book Keynes ridicules Wilson and the part he played in the Treaty of Versailles. Here, Wilson proved to be an utter simpleton, whom Clemenceau and Lloyd George twisted round their little fingers. Thus everything goes to show that America cannot come to terms with the other countries because of the profound economic antagonism between them, since America is richer than the rest."
Stalin said "They must be idiots" when his envoy came back from a tour of England during the 1930s depression and said "Your recruiting grounds for party-members will not be in the factories, but in the universities."
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Political Compass
I'm told so often that I'm an evil far-right fascist that I occasionally take a moment or two to re-take the Political Compass test. It's like checking my pulse or blood pressure because people keep telling me I look pale and wan.
Of course, every time I take it, I get the same result. I get "moderate conservative". Less "authoritarian" than Mrs. Thatcher.
But taking the test is a good way to give some thought to various aspects of the political and social realm.
Economics
I've noticed that my economic answers have grown more towards the rightist side, but they remain pretty wishywashy in general. There's a good reason for this: I really don't know enough about the current economic state of things to have an opinion. I realise that this is a huge gap, but at least it has the effect of allowing me to keep a relatively open mind. But what I have seen is that governments trying to take over the running of people's daily lives, and taking their money by force, is nothing but destructive to society. Socialism is bad. Government isn't bad, in theory, but government that thinks it can tell people what to do with their money seems inevitably to become very bad.
But I remain somewhat softer on these things than most of the evilrightwingfascists of my acquaintance. I guess I'm just not trusting enough of the private sector to look after the poor, any more than the government. At least not the "private sector" of our times and in our current economic condition, in which it appears there is not a great deal of difference between these heavily subsidized mega-corporations and the governments propping them up.
As I've said, being pretty mystified by contemporary economics, my opinions are developing only very slowly and tentatively. I wish I knew more but it seems nearly impossible; even the people called experts by the press can't agree. But I do have a few basic principles: the rights of private property, subsidiarity, and a firm conviction that government paying for everything with money they take by force from private citizens to redistribute to officially sanctioned "needs groups" has worked very badly.
Over the years, I've developed a method of figuring out complex and difficult things that I like to call the "Laws of Rational Thought". I've applied it pretty succesfully to religion and philosophy and various areas of politics and it has stood me pretty well. Principles and evidence. I'm betting that starting with a few principles that we know are true, and examining the evidence and data available to us, we could probably figure out more or less the arcane economic mysteries as well.
I suspect that the reason none of the experts seem to know what is going on is that most modern academics don't have principles. They, being in the postmodern academic world where there cannot be anything certainly true (except the idea that nothing is certainly true...) don't have a solid idea about human nature, about how the world is supposed to work, about what is good for people. But again, that is simply an extrapolation from a combination of principles and the available data. I've never met an academic economist, so maybe I'm wrong. It is certainly true of the political class. At least the ones I've met. The Laws of Rational Thought are nowhere more scorned than in Houses of Parliament. (Which is why their speeches are so dull).
I suppose that in today's parlance, being against socialism; thinking that "the poor" are a largely imaginary subclass invented by social workers and politicians; that people should be responsible for themselves and their families; that the state, if it has anything to do with the private lives of its citizens should concern itself with bolstering and protecting the family and should thereafter leave them alone; that all attempts to have government seize private property for redistribution in order to "eliminate poverty" have failed to eliminate anything but social stability...
makes me economically firmly on the right.
But what qualifies as "far right"?
Obviously it is unwise to expect journalistic slogans and bafflegab like "far right" to hold up to rigorous examination, but perhaps it is useful to explore the question a bit.
Anyway, here is today's outcome for my Political Compass test:
slightly higher on the authoritarian scale than the last time, but still pretty firmly "moderate conservative".
Oh well. I suppose much depends also upon whom one is standing next to. In Britain, with a population so completely brainwashed and it having been such a long time since anyone has actually met one, I might look like a "fascist".
To give a little perspective, and to give you an idea whose company one is keeping, the P.C. site gives us an estimate of some public figures:
Next up: more on Socialism
Of course, every time I take it, I get the same result. I get "moderate conservative". Less "authoritarian" than Mrs. Thatcher.
But taking the test is a good way to give some thought to various aspects of the political and social realm.
Economics
I've noticed that my economic answers have grown more towards the rightist side, but they remain pretty wishywashy in general. There's a good reason for this: I really don't know enough about the current economic state of things to have an opinion. I realise that this is a huge gap, but at least it has the effect of allowing me to keep a relatively open mind. But what I have seen is that governments trying to take over the running of people's daily lives, and taking their money by force, is nothing but destructive to society. Socialism is bad. Government isn't bad, in theory, but government that thinks it can tell people what to do with their money seems inevitably to become very bad.
But I remain somewhat softer on these things than most of the evilrightwingfascists of my acquaintance. I guess I'm just not trusting enough of the private sector to look after the poor, any more than the government. At least not the "private sector" of our times and in our current economic condition, in which it appears there is not a great deal of difference between these heavily subsidized mega-corporations and the governments propping them up.
As I've said, being pretty mystified by contemporary economics, my opinions are developing only very slowly and tentatively. I wish I knew more but it seems nearly impossible; even the people called experts by the press can't agree. But I do have a few basic principles: the rights of private property, subsidiarity, and a firm conviction that government paying for everything with money they take by force from private citizens to redistribute to officially sanctioned "needs groups" has worked very badly.
Over the years, I've developed a method of figuring out complex and difficult things that I like to call the "Laws of Rational Thought". I've applied it pretty succesfully to religion and philosophy and various areas of politics and it has stood me pretty well. Principles and evidence. I'm betting that starting with a few principles that we know are true, and examining the evidence and data available to us, we could probably figure out more or less the arcane economic mysteries as well.
I suspect that the reason none of the experts seem to know what is going on is that most modern academics don't have principles. They, being in the postmodern academic world where there cannot be anything certainly true (except the idea that nothing is certainly true...) don't have a solid idea about human nature, about how the world is supposed to work, about what is good for people. But again, that is simply an extrapolation from a combination of principles and the available data. I've never met an academic economist, so maybe I'm wrong. It is certainly true of the political class. At least the ones I've met. The Laws of Rational Thought are nowhere more scorned than in Houses of Parliament. (Which is why their speeches are so dull).
I suppose that in today's parlance, being against socialism; thinking that "the poor" are a largely imaginary subclass invented by social workers and politicians; that people should be responsible for themselves and their families; that the state, if it has anything to do with the private lives of its citizens should concern itself with bolstering and protecting the family and should thereafter leave them alone; that all attempts to have government seize private property for redistribution in order to "eliminate poverty" have failed to eliminate anything but social stability...
makes me economically firmly on the right.
But what qualifies as "far right"?
Obviously it is unwise to expect journalistic slogans and bafflegab like "far right" to hold up to rigorous examination, but perhaps it is useful to explore the question a bit.
Anyway, here is today's outcome for my Political Compass test:
slightly higher on the authoritarian scale than the last time, but still pretty firmly "moderate conservative".
Oh well. I suppose much depends also upon whom one is standing next to. In Britain, with a population so completely brainwashed and it having been such a long time since anyone has actually met one, I might look like a "fascist".
To give a little perspective, and to give you an idea whose company one is keeping, the P.C. site gives us an estimate of some public figures:
Next up: more on Socialism
Monday, June 23, 2008
Capital Punishment
So far from disrespecting [not a verb! urg!] human life, capital punishment asserts the sacred character of innocent, as distinct from guilty, life..
The objections of whey-faced liberals are infantile, in the context of grim reality. Capital punishment is not “un-Christian”: Saint Paul awarded the “jus gladii” to Christian princes. It is not “barbaric”: perfectly civilised people endorse it, as has always been the case, as well as many distinguished philosophers – the true barbarism is sanctioning the collapse of society. When no judge has at his disposal the supreme penalty which every thug carries in his pocket, then power has departed from legitimate authority and resides with the forces of anarchy.
It does not “make us the same” as the murderers: we shall only become the same if we mutilate and eat children
I have noted elsewhere that our societies are intrinsically disordered. We have inverted the natural order of the state by allowing private citizens to murder the totally innocent without even public scrutiny, let alone intervention; and we have removed the right of the state to take the life of its guilty citizens. It is absurd to think that such a society could re-adopt any kind of systemic respect for human life until it corrects this basic inversion.
It is absurd to think, in fact, that such a society can even survive.
Thoughtcrime of the day: Nazi eugenics was a movement of the left
and still is.
...and it is also significant that Canada, a country in which the public information systems are entirely controlled by the left, voted recently voted Tommy Douglas "Greatest Canadian". Nothing could have been more appropriate in the socialist state he helped to create in which there is no such thing as a free press and thoughtcrimes are now being prosecuted in courts in which there are no rules of evidence of procedure.
The philosophical origins of the Eugenics movement are not widely known of course, because they have been so thoroughly buried in the simplistic political sloganeering that has replaced serious debate and investigation. But the evidence is clear enough for those willing even to do a little Googling, that the modern eugenics movement (free abortion for "defective" children up to birth, Planned Parenthood "clinics" in every black neigbourhood in America, pre-natal hunter-seeker technology for Down's syndrome babies, pgd, the work to "improve" the human race through monkeying with IVF) that all of its tools continue to be fought for on the southpaw side of Parliaments.
When I started doing research into this ten years ago, I thought what everyone thought: that "conservatives" were evil and if you pushed them just a little, they turned into jackbooted brownshirts. It was my look into the history of the Eugenics Movement that made me realise I had gone my whole life blindly accepting a bunch of slogans that had been formulated specifically to prevent me from thinking clearly about this subject.
it was not thoughtless right-wing thugs as much as writers and scientists, the intellectual elite, who led the movement.
The exhibit is important, accurate but, regrettably, long overdue. It also fails to stress just how much the socialist left initiated and supported the eugenics campaign, not only in Germany but in Britain, the U. S. and the rest of Europe. Playwright George Bernard Shaw, English social democrat leader Sydney Webb and, in Canada, Tommy Douglas were just three influential socialists who called, for example, for the mass sterilization of the handicapped. In his Master's thesis The Problems of the Subnormal Family, the now revered Douglas argued that the mentally and even physically disabled should be sterilized and sent to camps so as not to "infect" the rest of the population.
It is deeply significant that few if any of Douglas's left-wing comrades in this country or internationally were surprised or offended by his proposals. Indeed the early fascism of 1920s Italy, while unsavoury and dictatorial, had little connection with social engineering and eugenics. The latter German version of fascism was influenced not by ultra conservatism in southern Europe but, as is made clear in the writings of the Nazi ideologues, by the Marxist left.
...and it is also significant that Canada, a country in which the public information systems are entirely controlled by the left, voted recently voted Tommy Douglas "Greatest Canadian". Nothing could have been more appropriate in the socialist state he helped to create in which there is no such thing as a free press and thoughtcrimes are now being prosecuted in courts in which there are no rules of evidence of procedure.
The philosophical origins of the Eugenics movement are not widely known of course, because they have been so thoroughly buried in the simplistic political sloganeering that has replaced serious debate and investigation. But the evidence is clear enough for those willing even to do a little Googling, that the modern eugenics movement (free abortion for "defective" children up to birth, Planned Parenthood "clinics" in every black neigbourhood in America, pre-natal hunter-seeker technology for Down's syndrome babies, pgd, the work to "improve" the human race through monkeying with IVF) that all of its tools continue to be fought for on the southpaw side of Parliaments.
When I started doing research into this ten years ago, I thought what everyone thought: that "conservatives" were evil and if you pushed them just a little, they turned into jackbooted brownshirts. It was my look into the history of the Eugenics Movement that made me realise I had gone my whole life blindly accepting a bunch of slogans that had been formulated specifically to prevent me from thinking clearly about this subject.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Evil old me - Bump up
Update: This just in from a pro-life person of my acquaintance. She says, "Good analysis of the pro-life situation here. You are certainly right about SPUC and the attitude of others to it."
Aren't I clever? And I figured it out using only my All-Powerful Brain, the evidence and past experience...just like Sherlock Holmes.
* ~ * ~ *
Another reader writes (sympathetically) "You'll probably find that any positive comments about the BNP take up an awful lot of your time and energy dealing with the reaction."
To Which Aitchdubya replies: S'ok. I've been disgusted with the incredible stupidity and childishness of British politics for some time and I'm interested enough in trying to force people to think rationally (using their brains! What an idea!) that I'm willing to put up with some irritation. The BNP is like a claxon, just talking about them at all get's people's attention. Once we have their attention, we apply the rod of Rational Thought with a firm and unyeilding hand.
...and besides, all my life I've been told that one of my main faults is that I do not suffer fools. This will help me practice.
* ~ * ~ *
I'm really quite mad.
I think I'm going to keep this one on top for a while. Scroll down for highlights of the MPs debate on the HFE Bill. Frankly, with the quality of thinking displayed therein, I am beginning to think we might be better off if the conspiracy theorists were right and we are being governed by a small cabal of moneyed interests and space aliens.
* ~ * ~ *
Warning: This is going to be a very long post about my personal beliefs. If you are like me, you will see this disclaimer, realise it is now going to get very boring around here and move on to the Daily Dilbert or to Hansard or some other more amusing thing. But if you are the obsessive type who has no life or if you are a humourless, pinch-faced female representative of the British All Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group, you might want to heed my caution that I am going to become very personal and very personally insulting in a few moments.
Continue at your own risk.
I noted a few months ago that I am normally fairly reticent about letting people know what I really think.
I shall wait until the laughter has died down and people have resumed their seats.
...
...
Perhaps on the Last Day when all things are revealed, it will amaze both friends and enemies that, despite having blogged for years, I have become progressively more private and have learned not to be forthcoming about my personal beliefs and especially about my political positions. There will be, I predict, genuine wonderment at the number of times I have refrained from telling people what I really think, of their clothes, their jokes, their politics, their intelligence, the size of their feet, noses and egos alike.
It is also true that I keep my actual political and religious opinions to myself and share them only with intimates. Partly because they are works in progress, and partly because they are simply none of your damn business. Normally when someone demands to know what my position is up front, I’m inclined to tell them to go to hell.
I know that my ideas would be decidedly odd to most people and I’m not interested in going to a lot of trouble to defend or explain them. But the oddness of my thought processes has led me in some very interesting and unexpected directions and have made for an interesting life, both inner and external. So I am generally pleased with them. I do not keep my ideas to myself because I am unsure of their rightness, trust me.
But it must be said that there is no political party on earth that represents them fully. This is an important point to keep in mind as you slog through this tedious and dreary post. So important that I will say it again. There is no political party in this country or any other that fully represents my ideas about how I think the civic secular order should be run.
As I’ve just said in a different context, I'm terribly chary of climbing on board anyone's bandwagon. I’m not a joiner, in general.
In truth, and all facetiousness aside, my politics is informed by my Catholicism, particularly by my Traditionalist (that is, pre-Vatican II) Catholicism that posits the necessity of the Catholic Confessional State to create a social order conducive to human happiness and eternal salvation. I have found that in neo-conservative Catholic circles, (among the very, very few who know what the terms mean) this position is even more reviled than paid-up membership in the BNP would to wishy-washy quasi-pro-life British Parliamentary activists...but I’m getting ahead of myself.
There, I hope you’re happy. I’ve just admitted Something Real about what I think. It won’t happen again soon.
In fact, I don’t think there is a word in the mainstream political lexicon to describe my position. Perhaps “Catholic feudal paleo-conservative” might come close, but these terms have become so fluid as to be almost useless. Perhaps simply “Rightwing” (alloneword) will have to suffice, but only for the same reason Cardinal Ratzinger was and is regarded as an “archconservative” by his media detractors.
It may be interesting to some that I have occasionally taken political compass tests and found that the Catholic feudal paleo-conservative political view for which there is no name, comes out when tested as officially “moderate” centrist-conservative. I’ve had this result several times on different tests so maybe it means something.
But of course, these terms are subject to interpretation by the beholder. How Rightwing one is nearly always depends upon who is doing the observing and I believe that the “traditional” divisions of modern-era politics are becoming increasingly useless as the painful realities of our world continue to press in upon us and crowd us all together in some unexpected ways.
Needless to say, I harbour no hopes whatever that my ideas will become mainstream or that the world will come sufficiently to its collective senses to adopt any of them. At least, not until the Parousia and the Restoration of All Good Things.
Most of what you read here of my opinions is not particularly serious and what I write here is largely meant to force an alternate viewpoint from the mainstream into the consciousness of my readers. I also have a great deal of difficulty taking politicians or their works seriously. I’ve met them. I’ve read the unbelievably stupid things they say in Parliament, and I’ve learned that there is no way to support the great majority of them.
For the most part I like a joke and enjoy misdirecting, tweaking, and sometimes even deliberately irritating those around me. I especially enjoy the undoubtedly perverse pleasure of poking my stick into the hornet’s nest of British religious politics to watch the tiny impotent fury of the insects as they bounce off my fully functioning Rational Thought Shielding.
Some years ago, I amused a friend by telling him my method of dealing with readers, politicians, lobbyists and bishops who especially annoy by a carefully structured bloggers’ method. Step one: ridicule, mockery and public humiliation; Step two: vicious personal abuse; Step three: banishment to the outer darkness.
The people who like this sort of thing are generally the people at whom the joke is never pointed. They come back a lot and have read me for a long time. It’s like a small but very snooty club in high school. And that is precisely how I like it.
My gleeful enjoyment of the squirming discomfort of the humourless and pedantic is probably something about which I ought to speak to a competent spiritual director. I’m sure it comes under the heading of sins of Pride and possibly of uncharity, but for the moment it is enough to understand that this, for good or ill, is just a part of my character, whatever childhood trauma or deprivation may have induced it. (And if this is the case, I have to say it is an argument for more of that particular type of trauma and childhood deprivation; the humour of the world may be improved thereby.)
On all of this, I am willing to receive criticism from authorised sources. Just this weekend I was given the opportunity to hear some of this from just such a source and am happy to have done so. But I caution that if a random reader thinks that he may now jump in with his tuppence, I can almost guarantee that he is not on the list and will receive what such people receive at this site according to the above policy. As I have said in the commbox rules, “My blog is my universe,” of which I am the petty tyrannical dictator.
You’re wondering why I’m telling you all this.
It is all to preface a rejoinder to what was no doubt a hasty and ill-considered notice I received third hand at someone else’s blog. This notice was in the way of a denouncement from someone who identified herself as “Anastasia” and claims to be a spokesman for the All Party Parliamentary Pro Life Group, thus:
Allow me to put on my official hat for a moment and say that, for reasons given below, there is little danger of me asking any of the All Party Parliamentary Pro Life Group for a job. Or even an interview. As far as I have seen, they have distinguished themselves only by their abject failure, and, if we really want to know my personal opinion, would serve best by being formally disbanded. In various conversations, I have learned that many other pro-life advocates and private persons with pro-life views in this country feel much the same, though in some cases it would do damage to their work to admit it publicly.
Politicians do not impress me. Still less do lobbyists who cannot lift their heads out of the inane political prejudices of their immediate environment.
I did not think it polite at the time to fill up Someone Else’s commbox with the kind of flame war against which I have a prohibition at home. Nevertheless a response is required, I believe. And besides, I can’t resist such a golden opportunity to test my Howizters. It’s been such a long time since I’ve come out and really said What I Really Think; I’m past due for a little stretch of the legs.
Allow me to begin by presenting some home truths about the success of the pro-life movement in this country and particularly in Parliament:
I have a little running contest going with my editors about which country is ahead in the Let’s-Kill-Everyone-In-The-World sweepstakes, Canada or the UK and I admit it is sometimes difficult to detect which is going to take the prize, but for the moment, I’m going to claim the title for Britain on points.
Britain currently leads the western world in the Culture of Death and nowhere is this more evident, or more ideologically committed, than in Parliament. The only countries with worse reputations are former Soviet nations and current communist regimes. So, congratulations to the All-Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group on a job well done.
Last week, a Conservative backbencher MP, Nadine Dorries, who is not “pro-life” but has a reputation for saying what is on her mind, called Britain the “abortion capital of Europe”.
The attitude of the British public is that a “termination” is simply a regrettable but necessary medical procedure. I have posted some thoughts on why the British situation is the worst in the western world and I stand by them.
Britain was the first large industrialized country in the western world to make abortion effectively legal, in 1967.
Here, I wrote that Britain has surpassed the wildest dreams of the Moloch Movement by adopting the most progressive attitude anywhere towards abortion. The British position surpasses that of the Canadians who still cling to some vestige of morality by trying to deny the existence of a child, and therefore disclaim that abortion is murder. In the British medical, academic and political world, the pretense is entirely dropped and there is no disagreement: there is a child, and we are going to kill her. This is the most forthright acceptance of the abortion logic in the world outside the former Soviet bloc, more even than most abortion lobbyists will admit to themselves.
Recently released statistics show that there are nearly 200,000 abortions a year in Britain. Parliament is currently trying to remove the last token restrictions to abortion, while at the same time working to increase “access to contraception”. It is also pushing to have this murderous freeforall imported into Northern Ireland.
The egregiously ignorant and self-contradictory idiocies spewing from the mouths of the Parliamentarians this week on the HFE Bill debate has also shown that the All-Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group has done a topping job of educating their immediate constituents, their fellow- MPs.
The Health Department was recently forced to admit that hundreds of under age girls are getting their children killed at public expense. And Britain has fully embraced eugenics in its laws allowing abortions up to the point of birth for those children suspected of being defective.
Rumour has it (from the Telegraph) that there is an instruction for doctors who fail to murder a child in the womb: they are authorized to kill the child with a lethal injection, should it accidentally be born breathing and not in pieces.
Britain is proud of the fact that it has led the world in the pursuit of the Fountain of Youth and Immorality by creating and tearing apart human beings at the earliest stages of life for stem cells.
The National Health Service now routinely allows patients to be dehydrated to death against their wishes and the wishes of their families. A legal challenge that attempted to give patients the right not to be killed by medical fiat failed, and failed and failed in the British courts, all the way to the European Court of Human Rights who said that Britain’s “legal safeguards” are sufficient. Patients in this country thus have no right to override a doctor’s decision to murder them when they are helpless.
And probably the most damning of all, is the observable fact that the pro-life movement in this country, with the gleaming exception of SPUC and John Smeaton up there alone on their hill, is the most philosophically compromised, inefficient, disorganised, and moribund I have yet to come across in ten years of close worldwide observation.
So, to the Parliamentary All-Party Pro-life Group, all I can say is, “I’m surprised you’re not being paid by Planned Parenthood. You should ask them, since the worker is worthy of his hire.”
I am not an activist. I tried lobbying for a while and found that I was simply not constituted to deal all day long with people who can’t exercise basic principles of rational thought without flying into a rage. The wear and tear it took to refrain from telling politicians, and frequently other activists what I really think, became too much. I’m much better constituted to be a journalist, a blogger, a maker of snippy one-line comments on blogs. All my life I’ve stood slightly to the side and watched other people doing things. There is a proper place for everyone and I’m an observer and a recorder.
That being said, trust me Anastasia, if I were to suddenly come over all activist-minded again, the phone number of the Parliamentary All-Party Pro-life Group would not be the first one I would reach for in the Rolodex. When you’ve got something to show that indicates some kind of dedication to the cause, some kind of energy, initiative, creativity and professionalism, I might take you up on your kind invitation to be told to get lost.
I have noted in my travels that the one thing the pro-life movement excels at is backstabbing their friends. Particularly those people on their side who are judged by the world’s standards as being “too extreme”.
I am now going to shock the uninitiated: there are divisions in the pro-life movement.
My observation has been that these are based on one thing, the desire or lack of desire, to be thought “normal” and “mainstream”, “reasonable” or “a team player.” Something the traditional spiritual writers used to call “human respect”.
I have seen that frequently the worst enemies we have are other pro-life groups who want to be seen as “normal and mainstream” by the pro-abortion world of politics and media.
I’ve sometimes called this Pro-Lifer Stockholm Syndrome, in which the desire to be liked becomes so strong that the person or group ends up joining the enemy. This is especially popular in Canada among the so-called “educational arm” of the pro-life movement that wants above all to be seen as warm, fuzzy and approachable. So much so that it has in many cases abandoned the wildly and almost universally unpopular pro-life position entirely. This may seem like a nasty thing to say, but it is based on years of observation and interaction.
The most egregious example of this was one I met in Nova Scotia several years ago. I had been put in charge of some things for Campaign Life Coalition and had arranged to make a presentation at the monthly meeting of Nova Scotians United for Life, an “educational” group funded by the Catholic Archdiocese of Halifax.
I put it to them that it would be useful for our two groups to work more closely together, respecting our proper roles as the educational and political wings of the same movement.
I was thanked for my offer of keeping them informed but was told quite bluntly that they did not want to work with us.
I was told, “You see, we’re not actually working towards the same goal”.
“We’re not?” said innocent naive I, rather alarmed. “I thought we are all working to make abortion illegal and unavailable.”
“Nono, of course not. You see, we believe a woman does have a right to choose. We just feel that our work is to encourage her to choose an alternative to abortion.”
At this point, I was looking around to see if the exits were clear.
“But that seems to imply,” said I somewhat shakily, “that abortion is an acceptable choice.”
“Of course it is.”
“But, forgive me if I’m being combative here, you are funded by the Church aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s the teaching of the Church that abortion is always and in every circumstances well...wrong. And that it is our duty to try to stop it.”
I was then assured that this was not the teaching of the Church.
You see, since Vatican II, the Church is understood not just to be the priests and bishops, and especially not just the Vatican, but the entire people. And since not all the people in the Church agree on abortion, actually there is no Catholic teaching on the subject of abortion.
This group had gone all the way over to the other side in its desire to be seen as “reasonable”, “moderate”, “approachable”. (Yes, I reported it to the Archbishop, more than once. I believe Nova Scotians United for Life continues in its opinions and continues to receive the bulk of the annual diocesan pro-life collection.)
This phenomenon is only too familiar to those who have spent any length of time in the pro-life movement, and I believe it is universal (that is, not confined to one country). I do not know any member of the “extreme” (ie: pro-life) end of the movement who has not observed it.
Now, about the BNP. One of the things that has struck me as weird in this weird country is the bizarre shrieking hysteria in certain political circles and in the media over the existence of the BNP.
I have this to say in response: “Are we six?”
Is this the schoolyard? Am I being excluded from the cool kids group because I have a funny nose? Can we please grow up a little? Can we stand for a moment to make some clear headed observations? And can we please do it without the ritualistic spitting on the ground that so many believe is the necessary opening to talk about them?
The BNP are interesting and an important political phenomenon, they are the canary in the political coal mine and are taken seriously as such even by Labour (“British jobs for British workers”...sound familiar?) There are a lot of people, people without a personal stake in being liked by the mainstream parties, who have been giving the BNP some thought, and I’m one of them.
I’ve read their manifesto, and I’ve spoken to some of their leadership and they are a genuinely grassroots political movement. All the more interesting since such a thing is nearly impossible in the current situation in which political parties exist only at the sufferance of the Two Big Ones and their friends in the financial world and media.
Lots of people, few of whom are “BNP supporters” have noted this. The party’s success is getting them quite a bit of airtime lately and where there was once a concerted effort to ignore them out of existence, their popularity with the public has forced media not only to acknowledge their existence but to air their views. It was noted recently that the BNP’s website is the most visited of all the party websites put together. People are interested in them and for good reason.
The simple fact is that the BNP is a backlash party. A result of the “mainstream” Conservative party abandoning its traditional political positions. If Toryism had not followed the current fashion for “re-branding” itself as the warm fuzzy left to try to attract Labour voters, the BNP would never have come into such a position of prominence.
It is also the result of people getting fed up with being told patent untruths by mainstream politicians. When Labour, Conservatives and Lib Dems all tell the people of, say, Blackbourne, that mass immigration from the seething hellholes of the Third World is the best thing to ever happen to their community, it is natural that they would turn to the party that refuses to deny what everyone can plainly see.
It is also as refreshing as a cool swim in a sultry Toronto summer, to hear them say out loud what nearly everyone outside Westminster is really thinking. That alone is probably explanation enough for a great deal of their growing popularity.
It is interesting to note that recently an experimental poll was taken on BNP policies, but without telling those polled whence the policies originated. The support for the BNP’s policies was overwhelming when the people were not hampered with the weird hysterical loathing of the party itself.
But the effect of the anti-BNP hysteria is to create a frightened atmosphere of politically correct silence. People refuse to say anything about any of these issues for fear of getting slapped with exactly what I’ve been slapped with.
I am not the only one to have noted the deleterious effect this self-censorship has had on democratic freedoms in this country. I have observed that the people who might otherwise have been spending the last 30 years or so developing a strong comprehensive conservative political movement, have instead spent the time back-pedalling as fast as possible from any genuinely conservative positions for fear of being branded as “Enoch Powell” followers.
Well, as of this month, those days are gone and it is time for the wretchedly ineffectual conservative movement to get off its collective rear ends.
One of the first things I noted as extremely telling was that the shriekers hurl exactly and precisely the same epithets at the BNP as they do at pro-lifers in general. This meant there had to be something interesting in there. Because of my constitutional inclination to curiosity and observation, it is this very hysteria that first made me interested in the BNP as a significant British political phenomenon. That they exist at all, is an important indicator of what is going wrong in this country, and particularly with the Tory party.
What Anastasia’s shrieking denouncement reminds me of most is the frantic back-pedalling of an insecure sophomore trying to get accepted by a posh college fraternity but who has friends or relatives who might be seen as unacceptable to the desirable cool kids. Having been a somewhat isolated and bullied child in school, I’m only too familiar with the experience.
This denouncement told me pretty much everything I needed to know about the Parliamentary All-Party Pro-life Group. Actually, it more or less just confirmed what I had surmised by other circumstantial evidence. Terrified of being seen as “extreme” (meaning genuinely pro-life), these are company men who will do anything, denounce anyone, stab any friend or colleague in the back, commit character assassination, calumny, detraction or libel to avoid being tarred with the ‘conservative’ brush.
All pro-lifers are accustomed to being called “fascists”, “racists”, “Nazi’s” etc. It is part of the fun actually. But Anastasia, (and all the detractors both of the BNP and the pro-life movement) has forgotten that there is one rule in political debate:
The first person who screams “racist” has conceded the argument.
Or, as someone recently said, (I can’t remember where I read this), “It is not intolerance to say the truth. In actual fact, it is intolerance to yell 'bigot' or 'racist' when you disagree with someone because you have no logical argument to offer in response.”
What “truth” am I saying that has garnered this hysterical and rather imprudent denunciation from our friends in the Parliamentary All-Party Pro-life Group? That the pro-life position is at the same time, both naturally conservative and ‘extreme’.
Now it is simply an uncomfortable fact that is seen by many “pro-lifers” who like to be liked, that the genuine pro-life position (which I like to sum up as “you can’t kill people to solve your problems) is, in our current political climate, a naturally “conservative” one. And the media oracles tell us that conservative = bad. It is “fascist”, it is evil, it is racist, it is any number of awful things, because it clings doggedly to the notion of objective reality and does not admit of the now-standard liberal fantasies.
“Liberals” in our time do not hold a pro-life position. Cannot hold it for reasons too complicated to go into here and having much to do with their fundamental denial of the Principles of Rational Thought. But Liberals rule the world. Their thought is the “mainstream” of politics, media, academia, the professions, the medical world and the Churches. So to dissent from that is to be a de facto radical and to leave oneself open to the charges and punishments normally meted out to anyone outside the mainstream. And no one likes to be out of the cool kids club.
This is the price one has to accept for being a pro-life person in our times. It cannot be avoided. People will hate you. You will not be invited to the right parties.
Sorry, Anastasia, but it’s true. I submit that the sooner the members of your little club accept this, the sooner they can start being more effective.
Some groups around have accepted this.
In Canada, Campaign Life Coalition has been on the receiving end of attacks from within and without the pro-life movement for its entire history.
In the US, American Life League is frequently denounced by the “cool” and “mainstream” pro-lifers as too “extreme”.
In Britain, though I am not familiar with the details, I am given to understand that the pro-life position doggedly held by SPUC is regularly backed away from by those who like to be liked.
Pro-lifers learn early to suck it up and get on with the task.
They also do not ally themselves to the fashionable political trends or parties. It is necessary to choose a side and to make common cause with anyone who is on your side.
Now, just in case anyone is interested in my own political beliefs, I will say that I am a Tory. Literally. I am a paid up member of the Tory party. And one who is delighted by their recent amazing electoral success. Joining the party was one of the first things I did here. In fact, it was even before I got my phone line installed.
That being said, I must thank Anastasia for making for me a point that I have been trying to get across for some time.
The pro-life movement in Britain welcomes everyone...except anyone who openly and objectively examines the political assumptions of the day without giving the politically correct nod to hating the people we are all supposed to hate.
It is not the first time I have observed the existence of a rigid pro-life political correctness. We are allowed to think only certain thoughts, yes? Accept and support certain memes and assumptions or you have stepped outside the magic ring.
My alleged support for the BNP is a case in point, and the knee-jerk fury it apparently engenders is also very interesting and very telling. It indicates a pro-life movement that has been hopelessly compromised by political expedience and that has therefore lost any hope it has of exercising moral authority. It has joined the group whom it was charged with educating and evangelizing.
Of course, to a combative personality like mine, such hysterical screeching of this kind is too tempting a red flag. So, let's just break a few taboos, shall we, and talk openly and dispassionately about what we're so afraid of.
On the pro-life obsession with stabbing their friends in the back: I asked an old pro-life campaigner, John Muggeridge, once why pro-lifers are so addicted to petty squabbling, backbiting and finger-pointing.
It is, he said, simply because they have no power. It's human nature in any political or even social situation for the powerless group to amuse itself by fighting amongst itself.
But it does make a person rather tired.
Aren't I clever? And I figured it out using only my All-Powerful Brain, the evidence and past experience...just like Sherlock Holmes.
* ~ * ~ *
Another reader writes (sympathetically) "You'll probably find that any positive comments about the BNP take up an awful lot of your time and energy dealing with the reaction."
To Which Aitchdubya replies: S'ok. I've been disgusted with the incredible stupidity and childishness of British politics for some time and I'm interested enough in trying to force people to think rationally (using their brains! What an idea!) that I'm willing to put up with some irritation. The BNP is like a claxon, just talking about them at all get's people's attention. Once we have their attention, we apply the rod of Rational Thought with a firm and unyeilding hand.
...and besides, all my life I've been told that one of my main faults is that I do not suffer fools. This will help me practice.
* ~ * ~ *
I'm really quite mad.
I think I'm going to keep this one on top for a while. Scroll down for highlights of the MPs debate on the HFE Bill. Frankly, with the quality of thinking displayed therein, I am beginning to think we might be better off if the conspiracy theorists were right and we are being governed by a small cabal of moneyed interests and space aliens.
* ~ * ~ *
Warning: This is going to be a very long post about my personal beliefs. If you are like me, you will see this disclaimer, realise it is now going to get very boring around here and move on to the Daily Dilbert or to Hansard or some other more amusing thing. But if you are the obsessive type who has no life or if you are a humourless, pinch-faced female representative of the British All Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group, you might want to heed my caution that I am going to become very personal and very personally insulting in a few moments.
Continue at your own risk.
I noted a few months ago that I am normally fairly reticent about letting people know what I really think.
I shall wait until the laughter has died down and people have resumed their seats.
...
...
Perhaps on the Last Day when all things are revealed, it will amaze both friends and enemies that, despite having blogged for years, I have become progressively more private and have learned not to be forthcoming about my personal beliefs and especially about my political positions. There will be, I predict, genuine wonderment at the number of times I have refrained from telling people what I really think, of their clothes, their jokes, their politics, their intelligence, the size of their feet, noses and egos alike.
It is also true that I keep my actual political and religious opinions to myself and share them only with intimates. Partly because they are works in progress, and partly because they are simply none of your damn business. Normally when someone demands to know what my position is up front, I’m inclined to tell them to go to hell.
I know that my ideas would be decidedly odd to most people and I’m not interested in going to a lot of trouble to defend or explain them. But the oddness of my thought processes has led me in some very interesting and unexpected directions and have made for an interesting life, both inner and external. So I am generally pleased with them. I do not keep my ideas to myself because I am unsure of their rightness, trust me.
But it must be said that there is no political party on earth that represents them fully. This is an important point to keep in mind as you slog through this tedious and dreary post. So important that I will say it again. There is no political party in this country or any other that fully represents my ideas about how I think the civic secular order should be run.
As I’ve just said in a different context, I'm terribly chary of climbing on board anyone's bandwagon. I’m not a joiner, in general.
In truth, and all facetiousness aside, my politics is informed by my Catholicism, particularly by my Traditionalist (that is, pre-Vatican II) Catholicism that posits the necessity of the Catholic Confessional State to create a social order conducive to human happiness and eternal salvation. I have found that in neo-conservative Catholic circles, (among the very, very few who know what the terms mean) this position is even more reviled than paid-up membership in the BNP would to wishy-washy quasi-pro-life British Parliamentary activists...but I’m getting ahead of myself.
There, I hope you’re happy. I’ve just admitted Something Real about what I think. It won’t happen again soon.
In fact, I don’t think there is a word in the mainstream political lexicon to describe my position. Perhaps “Catholic feudal paleo-conservative” might come close, but these terms have become so fluid as to be almost useless. Perhaps simply “Rightwing” (alloneword) will have to suffice, but only for the same reason Cardinal Ratzinger was and is regarded as an “archconservative” by his media detractors.
It may be interesting to some that I have occasionally taken political compass tests and found that the Catholic feudal paleo-conservative political view for which there is no name, comes out when tested as officially “moderate” centrist-conservative. I’ve had this result several times on different tests so maybe it means something.
But of course, these terms are subject to interpretation by the beholder. How Rightwing one is nearly always depends upon who is doing the observing and I believe that the “traditional” divisions of modern-era politics are becoming increasingly useless as the painful realities of our world continue to press in upon us and crowd us all together in some unexpected ways.
Needless to say, I harbour no hopes whatever that my ideas will become mainstream or that the world will come sufficiently to its collective senses to adopt any of them. At least, not until the Parousia and the Restoration of All Good Things.
Most of what you read here of my opinions is not particularly serious and what I write here is largely meant to force an alternate viewpoint from the mainstream into the consciousness of my readers. I also have a great deal of difficulty taking politicians or their works seriously. I’ve met them. I’ve read the unbelievably stupid things they say in Parliament, and I’ve learned that there is no way to support the great majority of them.
For the most part I like a joke and enjoy misdirecting, tweaking, and sometimes even deliberately irritating those around me. I especially enjoy the undoubtedly perverse pleasure of poking my stick into the hornet’s nest of British religious politics to watch the tiny impotent fury of the insects as they bounce off my fully functioning Rational Thought Shielding.
Some years ago, I amused a friend by telling him my method of dealing with readers, politicians, lobbyists and bishops who especially annoy by a carefully structured bloggers’ method. Step one: ridicule, mockery and public humiliation; Step two: vicious personal abuse; Step three: banishment to the outer darkness.
The people who like this sort of thing are generally the people at whom the joke is never pointed. They come back a lot and have read me for a long time. It’s like a small but very snooty club in high school. And that is precisely how I like it.
My gleeful enjoyment of the squirming discomfort of the humourless and pedantic is probably something about which I ought to speak to a competent spiritual director. I’m sure it comes under the heading of sins of Pride and possibly of uncharity, but for the moment it is enough to understand that this, for good or ill, is just a part of my character, whatever childhood trauma or deprivation may have induced it. (And if this is the case, I have to say it is an argument for more of that particular type of trauma and childhood deprivation; the humour of the world may be improved thereby.)
On all of this, I am willing to receive criticism from authorised sources. Just this weekend I was given the opportunity to hear some of this from just such a source and am happy to have done so. But I caution that if a random reader thinks that he may now jump in with his tuppence, I can almost guarantee that he is not on the list and will receive what such people receive at this site according to the above policy. As I have said in the commbox rules, “My blog is my universe,” of which I am the petty tyrannical dictator.
You’re wondering why I’m telling you all this.
It is all to preface a rejoinder to what was no doubt a hasty and ill-considered notice I received third hand at someone else’s blog. This notice was in the way of a denouncement from someone who identified herself as “Anastasia” and claims to be a spokesman for the All Party Parliamentary Pro Life Group, thus:
I don't think any of the major Pro-Life groups would welcome
any political association with a supporter of the violent, racist BNP.
Pro-Life affirms the dignity of all human persons regardless of their ethnic
or religious background. Support for or membership of parties with explicitly
racist policies such as the BNP is thus incompatible with any official role
in a Pro-Life organisation.
Putting on my official hat, I can categorically state that the All Party
Parliamentary Pro Life Group has no interest whatsoever in working with
Hilary White for the above mentioned reasons.
You yourself would do well to examine a person's political views before
inviting them to organise Pro-Life activists so as to avoid bringing the
movement into disrepute, or causing yet another damaging split.
Allow me to put on my official hat for a moment and say that, for reasons given below, there is little danger of me asking any of the All Party Parliamentary Pro Life Group for a job. Or even an interview. As far as I have seen, they have distinguished themselves only by their abject failure, and, if we really want to know my personal opinion, would serve best by being formally disbanded. In various conversations, I have learned that many other pro-life advocates and private persons with pro-life views in this country feel much the same, though in some cases it would do damage to their work to admit it publicly.
Politicians do not impress me. Still less do lobbyists who cannot lift their heads out of the inane political prejudices of their immediate environment.
I did not think it polite at the time to fill up Someone Else’s commbox with the kind of flame war against which I have a prohibition at home. Nevertheless a response is required, I believe. And besides, I can’t resist such a golden opportunity to test my Howizters. It’s been such a long time since I’ve come out and really said What I Really Think; I’m past due for a little stretch of the legs.
Allow me to begin by presenting some home truths about the success of the pro-life movement in this country and particularly in Parliament:
I have a little running contest going with my editors about which country is ahead in the Let’s-Kill-Everyone-In-The-World sweepstakes, Canada or the UK and I admit it is sometimes difficult to detect which is going to take the prize, but for the moment, I’m going to claim the title for Britain on points.
Britain currently leads the western world in the Culture of Death and nowhere is this more evident, or more ideologically committed, than in Parliament. The only countries with worse reputations are former Soviet nations and current communist regimes. So, congratulations to the All-Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group on a job well done.
Last week, a Conservative backbencher MP, Nadine Dorries, who is not “pro-life” but has a reputation for saying what is on her mind, called Britain the “abortion capital of Europe”.
The attitude of the British public is that a “termination” is simply a regrettable but necessary medical procedure. I have posted some thoughts on why the British situation is the worst in the western world and I stand by them.
Britain was the first large industrialized country in the western world to make abortion effectively legal, in 1967.
Here, I wrote that Britain has surpassed the wildest dreams of the Moloch Movement by adopting the most progressive attitude anywhere towards abortion. The British position surpasses that of the Canadians who still cling to some vestige of morality by trying to deny the existence of a child, and therefore disclaim that abortion is murder. In the British medical, academic and political world, the pretense is entirely dropped and there is no disagreement: there is a child, and we are going to kill her. This is the most forthright acceptance of the abortion logic in the world outside the former Soviet bloc, more even than most abortion lobbyists will admit to themselves.
Recently released statistics show that there are nearly 200,000 abortions a year in Britain. Parliament is currently trying to remove the last token restrictions to abortion, while at the same time working to increase “access to contraception”. It is also pushing to have this murderous freeforall imported into Northern Ireland.
The egregiously ignorant and self-contradictory idiocies spewing from the mouths of the Parliamentarians this week on the HFE Bill debate has also shown that the All-Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group has done a topping job of educating their immediate constituents, their fellow- MPs.
The Health Department was recently forced to admit that hundreds of under age girls are getting their children killed at public expense. And Britain has fully embraced eugenics in its laws allowing abortions up to the point of birth for those children suspected of being defective.
Rumour has it (from the Telegraph) that there is an instruction for doctors who fail to murder a child in the womb: they are authorized to kill the child with a lethal injection, should it accidentally be born breathing and not in pieces.
Britain is proud of the fact that it has led the world in the pursuit of the Fountain of Youth and Immorality by creating and tearing apart human beings at the earliest stages of life for stem cells.
The National Health Service now routinely allows patients to be dehydrated to death against their wishes and the wishes of their families. A legal challenge that attempted to give patients the right not to be killed by medical fiat failed, and failed and failed in the British courts, all the way to the European Court of Human Rights who said that Britain’s “legal safeguards” are sufficient. Patients in this country thus have no right to override a doctor’s decision to murder them when they are helpless.
And probably the most damning of all, is the observable fact that the pro-life movement in this country, with the gleaming exception of SPUC and John Smeaton up there alone on their hill, is the most philosophically compromised, inefficient, disorganised, and moribund I have yet to come across in ten years of close worldwide observation.
So, to the Parliamentary All-Party Pro-life Group, all I can say is, “I’m surprised you’re not being paid by Planned Parenthood. You should ask them, since the worker is worthy of his hire.”
I am not an activist. I tried lobbying for a while and found that I was simply not constituted to deal all day long with people who can’t exercise basic principles of rational thought without flying into a rage. The wear and tear it took to refrain from telling politicians, and frequently other activists what I really think, became too much. I’m much better constituted to be a journalist, a blogger, a maker of snippy one-line comments on blogs. All my life I’ve stood slightly to the side and watched other people doing things. There is a proper place for everyone and I’m an observer and a recorder.
That being said, trust me Anastasia, if I were to suddenly come over all activist-minded again, the phone number of the Parliamentary All-Party Pro-life Group would not be the first one I would reach for in the Rolodex. When you’ve got something to show that indicates some kind of dedication to the cause, some kind of energy, initiative, creativity and professionalism, I might take you up on your kind invitation to be told to get lost.
I have noted in my travels that the one thing the pro-life movement excels at is backstabbing their friends. Particularly those people on their side who are judged by the world’s standards as being “too extreme”.
I am now going to shock the uninitiated: there are divisions in the pro-life movement.
My observation has been that these are based on one thing, the desire or lack of desire, to be thought “normal” and “mainstream”, “reasonable” or “a team player.” Something the traditional spiritual writers used to call “human respect”.
I have seen that frequently the worst enemies we have are other pro-life groups who want to be seen as “normal and mainstream” by the pro-abortion world of politics and media.
I’ve sometimes called this Pro-Lifer Stockholm Syndrome, in which the desire to be liked becomes so strong that the person or group ends up joining the enemy. This is especially popular in Canada among the so-called “educational arm” of the pro-life movement that wants above all to be seen as warm, fuzzy and approachable. So much so that it has in many cases abandoned the wildly and almost universally unpopular pro-life position entirely. This may seem like a nasty thing to say, but it is based on years of observation and interaction.
The most egregious example of this was one I met in Nova Scotia several years ago. I had been put in charge of some things for Campaign Life Coalition and had arranged to make a presentation at the monthly meeting of Nova Scotians United for Life, an “educational” group funded by the Catholic Archdiocese of Halifax.
I put it to them that it would be useful for our two groups to work more closely together, respecting our proper roles as the educational and political wings of the same movement.
I was thanked for my offer of keeping them informed but was told quite bluntly that they did not want to work with us.
I was told, “You see, we’re not actually working towards the same goal”.
“We’re not?” said innocent naive I, rather alarmed. “I thought we are all working to make abortion illegal and unavailable.”
“Nono, of course not. You see, we believe a woman does have a right to choose. We just feel that our work is to encourage her to choose an alternative to abortion.”
At this point, I was looking around to see if the exits were clear.
“But that seems to imply,” said I somewhat shakily, “that abortion is an acceptable choice.”
“Of course it is.”
“But, forgive me if I’m being combative here, you are funded by the Church aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s the teaching of the Church that abortion is always and in every circumstances well...wrong. And that it is our duty to try to stop it.”
I was then assured that this was not the teaching of the Church.
You see, since Vatican II, the Church is understood not just to be the priests and bishops, and especially not just the Vatican, but the entire people. And since not all the people in the Church agree on abortion, actually there is no Catholic teaching on the subject of abortion.
This group had gone all the way over to the other side in its desire to be seen as “reasonable”, “moderate”, “approachable”. (Yes, I reported it to the Archbishop, more than once. I believe Nova Scotians United for Life continues in its opinions and continues to receive the bulk of the annual diocesan pro-life collection.)
This phenomenon is only too familiar to those who have spent any length of time in the pro-life movement, and I believe it is universal (that is, not confined to one country). I do not know any member of the “extreme” (ie: pro-life) end of the movement who has not observed it.
Now, about the BNP. One of the things that has struck me as weird in this weird country is the bizarre shrieking hysteria in certain political circles and in the media over the existence of the BNP.
I have this to say in response: “Are we six?”
Is this the schoolyard? Am I being excluded from the cool kids group because I have a funny nose? Can we please grow up a little? Can we stand for a moment to make some clear headed observations? And can we please do it without the ritualistic spitting on the ground that so many believe is the necessary opening to talk about them?
The BNP are interesting and an important political phenomenon, they are the canary in the political coal mine and are taken seriously as such even by Labour (“British jobs for British workers”...sound familiar?) There are a lot of people, people without a personal stake in being liked by the mainstream parties, who have been giving the BNP some thought, and I’m one of them.
I’ve read their manifesto, and I’ve spoken to some of their leadership and they are a genuinely grassroots political movement. All the more interesting since such a thing is nearly impossible in the current situation in which political parties exist only at the sufferance of the Two Big Ones and their friends in the financial world and media.
Lots of people, few of whom are “BNP supporters” have noted this. The party’s success is getting them quite a bit of airtime lately and where there was once a concerted effort to ignore them out of existence, their popularity with the public has forced media not only to acknowledge their existence but to air their views. It was noted recently that the BNP’s website is the most visited of all the party websites put together. People are interested in them and for good reason.
The simple fact is that the BNP is a backlash party. A result of the “mainstream” Conservative party abandoning its traditional political positions. If Toryism had not followed the current fashion for “re-branding” itself as the warm fuzzy left to try to attract Labour voters, the BNP would never have come into such a position of prominence.
It is also the result of people getting fed up with being told patent untruths by mainstream politicians. When Labour, Conservatives and Lib Dems all tell the people of, say, Blackbourne, that mass immigration from the seething hellholes of the Third World is the best thing to ever happen to their community, it is natural that they would turn to the party that refuses to deny what everyone can plainly see.
It is also as refreshing as a cool swim in a sultry Toronto summer, to hear them say out loud what nearly everyone outside Westminster is really thinking. That alone is probably explanation enough for a great deal of their growing popularity.
It is interesting to note that recently an experimental poll was taken on BNP policies, but without telling those polled whence the policies originated. The support for the BNP’s policies was overwhelming when the people were not hampered with the weird hysterical loathing of the party itself.
But the effect of the anti-BNP hysteria is to create a frightened atmosphere of politically correct silence. People refuse to say anything about any of these issues for fear of getting slapped with exactly what I’ve been slapped with.
I am not the only one to have noted the deleterious effect this self-censorship has had on democratic freedoms in this country. I have observed that the people who might otherwise have been spending the last 30 years or so developing a strong comprehensive conservative political movement, have instead spent the time back-pedalling as fast as possible from any genuinely conservative positions for fear of being branded as “Enoch Powell” followers.
Well, as of this month, those days are gone and it is time for the wretchedly ineffectual conservative movement to get off its collective rear ends.
One of the first things I noted as extremely telling was that the shriekers hurl exactly and precisely the same epithets at the BNP as they do at pro-lifers in general. This meant there had to be something interesting in there. Because of my constitutional inclination to curiosity and observation, it is this very hysteria that first made me interested in the BNP as a significant British political phenomenon. That they exist at all, is an important indicator of what is going wrong in this country, and particularly with the Tory party.
What Anastasia’s shrieking denouncement reminds me of most is the frantic back-pedalling of an insecure sophomore trying to get accepted by a posh college fraternity but who has friends or relatives who might be seen as unacceptable to the desirable cool kids. Having been a somewhat isolated and bullied child in school, I’m only too familiar with the experience.
This denouncement told me pretty much everything I needed to know about the Parliamentary All-Party Pro-life Group. Actually, it more or less just confirmed what I had surmised by other circumstantial evidence. Terrified of being seen as “extreme” (meaning genuinely pro-life), these are company men who will do anything, denounce anyone, stab any friend or colleague in the back, commit character assassination, calumny, detraction or libel to avoid being tarred with the ‘conservative’ brush.
All pro-lifers are accustomed to being called “fascists”, “racists”, “Nazi’s” etc. It is part of the fun actually. But Anastasia, (and all the detractors both of the BNP and the pro-life movement) has forgotten that there is one rule in political debate:
The first person who screams “racist” has conceded the argument.
Or, as someone recently said, (I can’t remember where I read this), “It is not intolerance to say the truth. In actual fact, it is intolerance to yell 'bigot' or 'racist' when you disagree with someone because you have no logical argument to offer in response.”
What “truth” am I saying that has garnered this hysterical and rather imprudent denunciation from our friends in the Parliamentary All-Party Pro-life Group? That the pro-life position is at the same time, both naturally conservative and ‘extreme’.
Now it is simply an uncomfortable fact that is seen by many “pro-lifers” who like to be liked, that the genuine pro-life position (which I like to sum up as “you can’t kill people to solve your problems) is, in our current political climate, a naturally “conservative” one. And the media oracles tell us that conservative = bad. It is “fascist”, it is evil, it is racist, it is any number of awful things, because it clings doggedly to the notion of objective reality and does not admit of the now-standard liberal fantasies.
“Liberals” in our time do not hold a pro-life position. Cannot hold it for reasons too complicated to go into here and having much to do with their fundamental denial of the Principles of Rational Thought. But Liberals rule the world. Their thought is the “mainstream” of politics, media, academia, the professions, the medical world and the Churches. So to dissent from that is to be a de facto radical and to leave oneself open to the charges and punishments normally meted out to anyone outside the mainstream. And no one likes to be out of the cool kids club.
This is the price one has to accept for being a pro-life person in our times. It cannot be avoided. People will hate you. You will not be invited to the right parties.
Sorry, Anastasia, but it’s true. I submit that the sooner the members of your little club accept this, the sooner they can start being more effective.
Some groups around have accepted this.
In Canada, Campaign Life Coalition has been on the receiving end of attacks from within and without the pro-life movement for its entire history.
In the US, American Life League is frequently denounced by the “cool” and “mainstream” pro-lifers as too “extreme”.
In Britain, though I am not familiar with the details, I am given to understand that the pro-life position doggedly held by SPUC is regularly backed away from by those who like to be liked.
Pro-lifers learn early to suck it up and get on with the task.
They also do not ally themselves to the fashionable political trends or parties. It is necessary to choose a side and to make common cause with anyone who is on your side.
Now, just in case anyone is interested in my own political beliefs, I will say that I am a Tory. Literally. I am a paid up member of the Tory party. And one who is delighted by their recent amazing electoral success. Joining the party was one of the first things I did here. In fact, it was even before I got my phone line installed.
That being said, I must thank Anastasia for making for me a point that I have been trying to get across for some time.
The pro-life movement in Britain welcomes everyone...except anyone who openly and objectively examines the political assumptions of the day without giving the politically correct nod to hating the people we are all supposed to hate.
It is not the first time I have observed the existence of a rigid pro-life political correctness. We are allowed to think only certain thoughts, yes? Accept and support certain memes and assumptions or you have stepped outside the magic ring.
My alleged support for the BNP is a case in point, and the knee-jerk fury it apparently engenders is also very interesting and very telling. It indicates a pro-life movement that has been hopelessly compromised by political expedience and that has therefore lost any hope it has of exercising moral authority. It has joined the group whom it was charged with educating and evangelizing.
Of course, to a combative personality like mine, such hysterical screeching of this kind is too tempting a red flag. So, let's just break a few taboos, shall we, and talk openly and dispassionately about what we're so afraid of.
On the pro-life obsession with stabbing their friends in the back: I asked an old pro-life campaigner, John Muggeridge, once why pro-lifers are so addicted to petty squabbling, backbiting and finger-pointing.
It is, he said, simply because they have no power. It's human nature in any political or even social situation for the powerless group to amuse itself by fighting amongst itself.
But it does make a person rather tired.
Wish List
Since I'm in a sharing kind of mood, I thought I would give you my wish list for immediate improvement of the general scene in Britain.
Whatever party these ideas belong to, I will allow the reader to decide.
After this, it's back to reticent I promise.
I, like anyone who spends a lot of time paying attention to politics, have a few things I'd like to see changed. These are only purely political things, open to tinkering by legislative and regulatory changes. I do not believe that politics is the only thing, or even the most important thing, that makes a society. That's socialist thinking. I do not think, contrary to Mr. Brown, that "Britishness" is something that can be created,promoted or enforced by government decree.
But inasmuch as we are talking specifically about political matters, things that can legitimately be dealt with by parliaments, I have a few items on my list that I do not think are terribly off the mainstream conservative beaten track, however much they may be ignored by those who currently rule the parties. Off the top of my head, these include (apart from the obvious like the immediate recriminalization of abortion, the abolition of artificial means of contraception, IVF and other artificial methods of procreation):
- an end to Britain's membership in the EU, or at least a significant re-configuration of our treaty commitments. It would be nice to see British people governed by laws made by British parliamentarians at Westminster.
- an immediate halt to or at least radical reduction (90%) of immigration and a significant increase in border security.
- automatic deportation of illegal immigrants convicted of crimes.
- the systematic re-patriation of illegal immigrants and "failed asylum seekers" who are not convicted of crimes.
- a complete reform of the police force with emphasis on putting a stop to the "managerial" style of policing with its politically correct dumbing down and rule by pencil-pushing bureaucrats. cf: Baroness P.D. James.
- automatic sentencing for violent offenders.
- a reform of the welfare system that favours payments to single mothers and discourages families from staying together.
- a reform of the school system and a return to traditional teaching methods and subjects.
- the abolition of systems like the student's "appeal" process that make it impossible for teachers to discipline disruptive students. (Or how about just bringing back corporal punishment?)
- the cracking open and exposure to a bright light of the festering marxist hive of crawling moral and political corruption that calls itself the National Union of Teachers.
- the re-institution of laws prohibiting public indecency and the promotion of same.
- the abolition of all current "sex education" programmes in schools.
- the reform of the religious ed curriculum in schools to emphasize Christianity and teach it as the official religion of this nation.
- immediate deportation of Islamic extremist imams who publicly advocate the overthrow of the democratic system, the imposition of Sharia law, the suppression of civil rights, or violence, or the concept that Muslims should "take over" Britain.
- a country-wide moratorium on planning permission for the building of any new mosques.
- re-nationalizing the railways and getting the damn trains to run.
- the abolition of TV licensing fees. If the BBC can produce good products, let them compete fairly in the market to sell them like everyone else.
- the removal of about 90% of the nation's CCTV cameras and an inquiry as to the legality of the government spying on citizens.
- a legal definition of marriage that clarifies its meaning and purpose as the procreation and raising of children.
- abolition of inheritance tax on estates worth under £1 million and stamp duty for first time home buyers. (Given the indecently inflated housing values, however, I think this limit is too low. In some areas, even a very modest home can be valued at close to £1 million and the idea of inheritance tax that forces anyone, rich or poor, to sell a family home just to pay the government is an inherently unjust law that violates the rights of private property.)
-the creation of tax incentives and rewards for homeowners who keep a house more than ten years.
- re-instate the stringent divorce laws that were in place before 1949. I hold to my belief that it was easy divorce, not contraception, that started the snowball.
- unequivocal affirmation by Parliament of the Christian nature and origin of British society.
- the repeal of the fox hunting ban.
- the repeal of the smoking ban.
- the abolition of the Health and Safety Executive.
- the decentralization of control of local councils. There was a time, not too long ago, when the local council did not merely exist as the means of enforcement of edicts from Westminster.
- the repeal of most of Tony Blair's 'reforms' of the House of Lords...
and probably quite a bit more in this vein that I can't think of off the top of my head.
Now, I know from reading the papers and following blogs and generally keeping my ears open, that these are some pretty mainstream conservative opinions. Some or all of them are represented by individuals in the Conservative party. Some of them are even official party policy. I agree wholeheartedly that holding these opinions makes me Rightwing. But the last time I checked, being Rightwing is not, not yet at any rate, a crime. Some may find it odious and I'm fine with that.
Whatever.
Whatever party these ideas belong to, I will allow the reader to decide.
After this, it's back to reticent I promise.
I, like anyone who spends a lot of time paying attention to politics, have a few things I'd like to see changed. These are only purely political things, open to tinkering by legislative and regulatory changes. I do not believe that politics is the only thing, or even the most important thing, that makes a society. That's socialist thinking. I do not think, contrary to Mr. Brown, that "Britishness" is something that can be created,promoted or enforced by government decree.
But inasmuch as we are talking specifically about political matters, things that can legitimately be dealt with by parliaments, I have a few items on my list that I do not think are terribly off the mainstream conservative beaten track, however much they may be ignored by those who currently rule the parties. Off the top of my head, these include (apart from the obvious like the immediate recriminalization of abortion, the abolition of artificial means of contraception, IVF and other artificial methods of procreation):
- an end to Britain's membership in the EU, or at least a significant re-configuration of our treaty commitments. It would be nice to see British people governed by laws made by British parliamentarians at Westminster.
- an immediate halt to or at least radical reduction (90%) of immigration and a significant increase in border security.
- automatic deportation of illegal immigrants convicted of crimes.
- the systematic re-patriation of illegal immigrants and "failed asylum seekers" who are not convicted of crimes.
- a complete reform of the police force with emphasis on putting a stop to the "managerial" style of policing with its politically correct dumbing down and rule by pencil-pushing bureaucrats. cf: Baroness P.D. James.
- automatic sentencing for violent offenders.
- a reform of the welfare system that favours payments to single mothers and discourages families from staying together.
- a reform of the school system and a return to traditional teaching methods and subjects.
- the abolition of systems like the student's "appeal" process that make it impossible for teachers to discipline disruptive students. (Or how about just bringing back corporal punishment?)
- the cracking open and exposure to a bright light of the festering marxist hive of crawling moral and political corruption that calls itself the National Union of Teachers.
- the re-institution of laws prohibiting public indecency and the promotion of same.
- the abolition of all current "sex education" programmes in schools.
- the reform of the religious ed curriculum in schools to emphasize Christianity and teach it as the official religion of this nation.
- immediate deportation of Islamic extremist imams who publicly advocate the overthrow of the democratic system, the imposition of Sharia law, the suppression of civil rights, or violence, or the concept that Muslims should "take over" Britain.
- a country-wide moratorium on planning permission for the building of any new mosques.
- re-nationalizing the railways and getting the damn trains to run.
- the abolition of TV licensing fees. If the BBC can produce good products, let them compete fairly in the market to sell them like everyone else.
- the removal of about 90% of the nation's CCTV cameras and an inquiry as to the legality of the government spying on citizens.
- a legal definition of marriage that clarifies its meaning and purpose as the procreation and raising of children.
- abolition of inheritance tax on estates worth under £1 million and stamp duty for first time home buyers. (Given the indecently inflated housing values, however, I think this limit is too low. In some areas, even a very modest home can be valued at close to £1 million and the idea of inheritance tax that forces anyone, rich or poor, to sell a family home just to pay the government is an inherently unjust law that violates the rights of private property.)
-the creation of tax incentives and rewards for homeowners who keep a house more than ten years.
- re-instate the stringent divorce laws that were in place before 1949. I hold to my belief that it was easy divorce, not contraception, that started the snowball.
- unequivocal affirmation by Parliament of the Christian nature and origin of British society.
- the repeal of the fox hunting ban.
- the repeal of the smoking ban.
- the abolition of the Health and Safety Executive.
- the decentralization of control of local councils. There was a time, not too long ago, when the local council did not merely exist as the means of enforcement of edicts from Westminster.
- the repeal of most of Tony Blair's 'reforms' of the House of Lords...
and probably quite a bit more in this vein that I can't think of off the top of my head.
Now, I know from reading the papers and following blogs and generally keeping my ears open, that these are some pretty mainstream conservative opinions. Some or all of them are represented by individuals in the Conservative party. Some of them are even official party policy. I agree wholeheartedly that holding these opinions makes me Rightwing. But the last time I checked, being Rightwing is not, not yet at any rate, a crime. Some may find it odious and I'm fine with that.
Whatever.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
How to Improve the Roads, Drains and the Quality of Debate
I've decided to add something to my plan for world domination. I mentioned below that when Dave and Boris put me in charge of things in Cheshire, I would convert Liverpool into a vast re-education camp to try to teach certain groups of people things like the Laws of Rational Thought ("Repeat after me: you cannot both be in the room and not in the room at the same time") and how to cook traditional English food. They will be set to work making Liverpool a nicer place. The asphalt will be replaced with sandstone cobbles; all the houses will be equipped with gargoyles; every building put up in the last fifty years of the 20th century will be torn down and replaced with English Gothic churches and quadrangles...etc...
But one thing that I'm going to do that is very important and I think will catch on. I'm going to make sure that no one is allowed to speak in public unless he can do so in spontaneous iambic pentameter. I will put forward a bill in the House of Commons that no person may be elected to Parliament who cannot speak in rhymed heroic couplets.
This will improve nearly every aspect of British life and make Hansard much more interesting and fun to read.
But one thing that I'm going to do that is very important and I think will catch on. I'm going to make sure that no one is allowed to speak in public unless he can do so in spontaneous iambic pentameter. I will put forward a bill in the House of Commons that no person may be elected to Parliament who cannot speak in rhymed heroic couplets.
This will improve nearly every aspect of British life and make Hansard much more interesting and fun to read.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Day Dreams
Still slightly giddy from last week's politics. It's just that it's been so long since my team has won a major game.
-----Original Message-----
From: Hilary White
Sent: May 7, 2008 3:28 PM
To: Canadian political buddy
Subject: BTW
Hilary:
From: Hilary White
Sent: May 8 2008 3:28 PM
To: Canadian political buddy
Subject: BTW
and sanity will be restored.
-----Original Message-----
From: Hilary White
Sent: May 7, 2008 3:28 PM
To: Canadian political buddy
Subject: BTW
I know someone in London who was also a member of the Bullingdon club
who told me last night that the reason he is happy that Boris and Dave are
shortly going to be running this country, is that they will absolutely for
sure bring back the fox hunt.
I LOVE this country!
Hilary:
Went to see Mark Steyn perform, er, speak last night here in Toronto.
Wonderful, wonderful speaker. He said but did not elaborate much on Tony
Blair defending British values abroad but not quite getting it at home. I
used to blog that Tony Blair had no authority to wage a war in defense of
western civilization in the Middle East while deconstructing it at home; no
rhetorical defense of liberty while robbing Englishmen of their right to
hunt fox. Very, very few of my readers seemed to appreciate the point but I
find it all part of a whole. One normally conservative correspondent asked
what I had against foxes; I asked what he had against fox hunters. Banning
something simply because you don't like it sounds so Islamic too me --
Taliban on the Thames was briefly my name for Blair's Labour government. --CPB
From: Hilary White
Sent: May 8 2008 3:28 PM
To: Canadian political buddy
Subject: BTW
When order is restored, and Dave and Boris have put me in charge of cleaning things up in Cheshire, I've got a detailed plan to turn Liverpool into a re-education camp for southpaws, homosexuals, vegetarians and people who are sentimental about animals. One of the things they will be taught is that foxes are bad for farmers. They will be forced to attend the horses at the Tarpoley Boxing Day hunt, a few miles from here.
and "John Lennon" airport is going to be changed to the Admiral Lord Nelson airport.
and sanity will be restored.
Saturday, May 03, 2008
Now, I know what you're thinking
"How can she back Boris? What about that thing in the Telegraph last year about his backing Hillary Clinton. Doesn't she know that he's just another neo-Tory, Euro-phile" blah blah blah...
OK, two reasons.
First: the alternative was worse. After a few years of watching Canadian politics, I've learned to embrace the notion of the Least Bad.
Second: because, despite Boris' shortcomings, he's quite a bit better than Least Bad. He is, in many ways, Somewhat Good.
About as enthusiastic endorsement as anyone is ever going to get from me in politics.
Third reason is this:
And for Pete sake! Doesn't anyone realize how much brains it takes to be funny? How often can we say that a politician has enough between the ears to be as amusing as this?
OK, two reasons.
First: the alternative was worse. After a few years of watching Canadian politics, I've learned to embrace the notion of the Least Bad.
Second: because, despite Boris' shortcomings, he's quite a bit better than Least Bad. He is, in many ways, Somewhat Good.
About as enthusiastic endorsement as anyone is ever going to get from me in politics.
Third reason is this:
And for Pete sake! Doesn't anyone realize how much brains it takes to be funny? How often can we say that a politician has enough between the ears to be as amusing as this?
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Manichees, Cigarettes and Hung Pheasant
Vegetarianism, as a philosophy and a religion, has always been something of which I have been naturally suspicious. It could be simply its association with the hippie cults of my youth and childhood. It could be that most of the vegetarians I've met (OK, all of them) have been hopelessly self-absorbed neurotics who seem dedicated to their fantasies.
It could be the arrogance implied by the decision to ignore what is plainly ordered by God, and supported by scripture.
It is also nearly always accompanied by a noxious, dripping sentimentality towards animals and a general dislike of human beings.
John Muggeridge told me that vegetarians, like their near-cousins the animal rights activists, are nearly all utilitarians of varying degrees of fanaticism and that obsessiveness over food is a common trait among liberals. (He also noted that they tend to be petty thieves...liberals, I mean, not vegetarians necessarily. cf: Svend Robinson and the ring. Which stands to reason, come to think of it, since they have little concept of private property or moral restraint.) Liberals are materialists, so it makes sense that they would idolize food.
John noted that liberal vegetarianism is often connected in various ways with a highly ritualistic kind of behavior. Some of them will, for example, eat only the whites of eggs. John's father, he said, refused to buy eggs during the war, insisting on keeping chickens and feeding them a special diet. The upshot was, he said, that in 1945, the family was paying the equivalent of a pound an egg. John's mother Kitty, he said, would not let the children eat the eggs since it was only their father's obsession.
John also noted that this sort of faux-ascetic food obsession is a common feature of certain branches of Protestantism and the esoteric cults that grew from it (notably Mormons). He told me that one of the things that put St. Augustine back onto the right track was his meeting with the leader of the Manichees who insisted on some kind of strict dietary practices that were patently absurd, but I have not looked it up.
The closest thing I have seen anywhere among the modern Christian apologists on the vegetarian heresy is C.S. Lewis, writing long before the ascendancy of hippie culture, who wrote about the type of gluttony identified by Thomas as the gluttony of delicacy. As such it falls into a much broader category of vice that would have to include any behavior, such as dieting, that grows to replace and contradict true religion. It is, in short, making an idol of both the body and food. An obsession that will, if allowed to grow, finally encompass every aspect of one's life.
This has largely been effected by concentrating all our efforts on gluttony of Delicacy, not gluttony of Excess. Your patient's mother, as I learn from the dossier and you might have learned from Glubose, is a good example. She would be astonished - one day, I hope, will be - to learn that her whole life is enslaved to this kind of sensuality, which is quite concealed from her by the fact that the quantities involved are small.
But what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness, and self-concern? Glubose has this old woman well in hand. ... She is always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demure little sigh and a smile "Oh, please, please ... all I want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast."
You see? Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before he, she never recognizes as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others. At the very moment of indulging her appetite she believes that she is practising temperance ...; in reality ... the particular shade of delicacy to which we have enslaved her is offended by the sight of more food than she happens to want.
The real value of the quiet, unobtrusive work which Glubose has been doing for years on this old woman can be gauged by the way in which her belly now dominates her whole life. ... Meanwhile, the daily disappointment produces daily ill temper: cooks give notice and friendships are cooled. ...
Now your patient is his mother's son. ... Being a male, he is not so likely to be caught by the "All I want" camouflage. Men are best turned into gluttons with the help of their vanity. They ought to be made to think themselves very knowing about food, to pique themselves on having found the only restaurant in the town where steaks are really "properly" cooked. What begins as vanity can then be gradually turned into habit. But, however you approach it, the great thing is to bring him into the state in which the denial of any one indulgence - it matters not which, champagne or tea, sole colbert or cigarettes - "puts him out," for them his charity, justice, and obedience are all at your mercy.
Although Uncle Jack does not specifically mention it, it is easy to see how vegetarianism falls into this category, both with the "all I want" camouflage and the vanity of being a knowing fellow with both superior knowledge and virtue to the ordinary meat-eating run of man. An easy door, come to think of it, into the particularly noisesome vice of gnosticism.
What made me think about it today?
Reading a thin book by Alice Thomas Ellis, Unexplained Laughter, in which one of the characters, Beuno, is studying for the Anglican ministry. He brings the two ladies who are the main characters a pheasant that has been killed by the side of the road.
Betty, the sweet, ordinary and rather silly one who lives in London but dreams of rural idylls and wants to be a vegetarian, takes it and strokes its beautiful plumage and mourns. Lydia, the caustic journalist, wants to hang it for a week then eat it:
"Betty regarded it with a mixture of pity, admiration, mistrust and disgust. 'Poor thing,' she said. 'It was so beautiful. How do you know a car killed it? It might have died of disease.'
Beuno [the real Welsh countryman] swung it up to eye-level. 'It doesn't show much sign of injury,' he said...
Lydia took it from him. 'It doesn't look ill to me,' she said. apart from being dead. Its feathers look remarkably healthy.' She jiggled it up and down. 'Nice and heavy for the time of year.'
...
'I think you should just bury it,' said Betty, and Lydia did see what she meant, for human death was attended with such ritual and dispatch that for an instant it seemed cruelly perverse to deny something similar to this helpless creature.
'If you like, I'll bury his bones,' she said. 'After I've boiled them for stock of course.'
...
'People turn to vegetarianism when the spirit fails,' said Beuno, not to anyone in particular. Nevertheless Betty looked hurt.
'They are in search of purity, perfection,' he continued, '-the perfection of the body - while within the spirit rots and withers from neglect, and without the threat of doom trembles on the edge of possibility. Exercised, massaged, bathed and pampered, carefully fed as a prize marrow, the body is an empty shell flaunted in the face of catastrophe.'
...
Later, discussing Beuno's natural talent for preaching with his beautiful Welsh voice, Lydia suggests that he could "revive revivalism" and that "People might come to hear you from all over the world".
She says Beuno
"can feed he hungry and comfort the oppressed and visit the sick and bury the dead. And give good counsel, and do it all with feeling, and people will be so amazed they'll positively flock to you. Now, as most of the country's vicars are mad, and waste all their time falling demetedly in love with middle-aged lady parishioners...none of them do anything constructive and that's probably why they're all going mad. And all the bishops do is deny the existence of God and fool about trying tosettle stirkes and infurate absolutely everyone...you could have a lovely time bouncing up and down in the pulpit screaming hellfire."
"So could you," Betty reminded her. "You could go into the Church and fight for the ordination of women."
But it is to be remembered, of course, that Alice Thomas Ellis was a Catholic of a particularly choleric disposition.
Friday, March 28, 2008
How to be lured into the vast right wing conspiracy.
Did I ever mention how I became a full-blown social conservative?
When I first arrived in Halifax in September 1997, I quickly found a small apartment but had no furniture. So, after rising and saying my morning prayers, I would start my day by going to the Trident Cafe (now sadly defunct) on Argyle street to sit on their chairs, use their tables, drink their peculiar and extremely caffeinated blend of Earl Grey tea and read the newspapers and magazines they had there for customers.
The Trident was run by a pair of aging hippies who had come to Halifax years before, in one of those strange twists of the 60's, to help found a Buddhist retreat centre. (If you don't know Halifax, this is a very strange and unlikely sort of thing for a place like that. Halifax is now and always has been a military town...really not the sort of place you'd think would attract a lot of hippies and white "Tibetan" Buddhists).
Which is why I was all unsuspecting when they had a magazine on the rack called The National Review. At the time, I didn't know the first thing about politics, having been more interested in philosophy and religion for several years. I had never heard any of the names that are now a normal part of my daily card-readings and rune-tossings.
Even less did I know anything about US politics, above what I heard on the news. I certainly had no clew who W.F. Buckley was. But, despite that quite a lot of it went over my head, I did notice two things about NR that I liked right away: Buckley's columns about grammar and English usage and the cartoons page. Very soon, I was going to the Trident specifically to read the National Review, even after I got tables and chairs of my own.
The jokes I was able to get were really funny. Funnier by a long stretch than anything I had read in (what I am now able to identify as) the leftist rags I was used to. I found myself often barking with unexpected laughter, much to the annoyance of my fellow Trident regulars who relished a quiet morning's cuppa.
So, many years later and several time zones away, when John Muggeridge sr., John Jr., Matt M. and Cecelia M. were invited by Buckley down to Wheaton College to the 100 centenary do for Malcolm, I asked Matt (who doubtless forgot) to mention to WFB, that there was at least one Canadian he had directly helped to dredge out of the mire of thoughtless unexamined liberalism with his magazine; specifically by the cartoons page of it. And to thank him for having saved a soul.
PJ O'Rourke, is one of those funny American conservatives who have a knack of making even liberals bark out loud with laughter and think twice about their brainless assumptions.
When I first arrived in Halifax in September 1997, I quickly found a small apartment but had no furniture. So, after rising and saying my morning prayers, I would start my day by going to the Trident Cafe (now sadly defunct) on Argyle street to sit on their chairs, use their tables, drink their peculiar and extremely caffeinated blend of Earl Grey tea and read the newspapers and magazines they had there for customers.
The Trident was run by a pair of aging hippies who had come to Halifax years before, in one of those strange twists of the 60's, to help found a Buddhist retreat centre. (If you don't know Halifax, this is a very strange and unlikely sort of thing for a place like that. Halifax is now and always has been a military town...really not the sort of place you'd think would attract a lot of hippies and white "Tibetan" Buddhists).
Which is why I was all unsuspecting when they had a magazine on the rack called The National Review. At the time, I didn't know the first thing about politics, having been more interested in philosophy and religion for several years. I had never heard any of the names that are now a normal part of my daily card-readings and rune-tossings.
Even less did I know anything about US politics, above what I heard on the news. I certainly had no clew who W.F. Buckley was. But, despite that quite a lot of it went over my head, I did notice two things about NR that I liked right away: Buckley's columns about grammar and English usage and the cartoons page. Very soon, I was going to the Trident specifically to read the National Review, even after I got tables and chairs of my own.
The jokes I was able to get were really funny. Funnier by a long stretch than anything I had read in (what I am now able to identify as) the leftist rags I was used to. I found myself often barking with unexpected laughter, much to the annoyance of my fellow Trident regulars who relished a quiet morning's cuppa.
So, many years later and several time zones away, when John Muggeridge sr., John Jr., Matt M. and Cecelia M. were invited by Buckley down to Wheaton College to the 100 centenary do for Malcolm, I asked Matt (who doubtless forgot) to mention to WFB, that there was at least one Canadian he had directly helped to dredge out of the mire of thoughtless unexamined liberalism with his magazine; specifically by the cartoons page of it. And to thank him for having saved a soul.
PJ O'Rourke, is one of those funny American conservatives who have a knack of making even liberals bark out loud with laughter and think twice about their brainless assumptions.
"At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child - miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosphy of sniveling brats."
"You can't get good chinese takeout in China and cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba. That's all you need to know about communism."
"I can understand why mankind hasn't given up war. During a war you get to drive tanks through the sides of buildings and shoot foreigners - two things that are usually frowned on during peacetime."
"The free market is ugly and stupid, like going to the mall; the unfree market is just as ugly and just as stupid, except there is nothing in the mall and if you don't go there they shoot you."
"Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and illiterate sport fishermen."
"There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as "caring" and "sensitive" because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money -- if a gun is held to his head."
"The second item in the liberal creed, after self-righteousness, is unaccountability. Liberals have invented whole college majors--psychology, sociology, women's studies--to prove that nothing is anybody's fault. No one is fond of taking responsibility for his actions, but consider how much you'd have to hate free will to come up with a political platform that advocates killing unborn babies but not convicted murderers. A callous pragmatist might favor abortion and capital punishment. A devout Christian would sanction neither. But it takes years of therapy to arrive at the liberal view."
"Worshiping the earth is more fun than going to church. It's also closer. We can just step off the sidewalk. And sometimes we can get impressionable members of the opposite sex to perform sacramental rites with us. "Every drop of water wasted is a drop less of a wild and scenic river, Jennifer. We'd better double up in the shower."
Friday, February 29, 2008
"The Totalitarian Temptation From Hegel to Whole Foods,"
I always laugh when someone calls me a "fascist".
"We're all fascists now"
"We're all fascists now"
An interview with conservative pundit Jonah Goldberg, who argues that fascism is left-wing, not right-wing, and that contemporary liberals are fascism's intellectual offspring.
By Alex Koppelman
Jan. 11, 2008 | Jonah Goldberg is not a popular man among liberals. The son of Lucianne Goldberg, the literary agent who played a pivotal role in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he already had that as a strike against him when he began his career as a conservative political commentator in the late 1990s. A writer and blogger for the National Review and a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, he's now a frequent target for the mockery of liberal bloggers.
But nothing has inspired the ire of liberals quite like Goldberg's new book, "Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning." There was the provocative cover, which adds a Hitler mustache to the familiar yellow smiley-face icon. Then there was the book's ever-changing subtitle. Originally "The Totalitarian Temptation From Mussolini to Hillary Clinton," it became "The Totalitarian Temptation From Hegel to Whole Foods," before landing on bookstore shelves in its current form.
In the book, Goldberg attempts to convince readers that six decades of conventional wisdom that have placed Italy's Benito Mussolini, Germany's Adolf Hitler and fascism on the right side of the ideological spectrum are wrong, and that fascism is really a phenomenon of the left. Goldberg also attributes fascist rhetoric and tactics to Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and describes the New Deal's descendants, modern American liberals, as carriers of this liberal-fascist DNA. In a sense, "We're All Fascists Now," as Goldberg puts it in one of his chapter titles. Salon spoke with Goldberg by phone.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Grounds for Dismissal
I don't see why there can't be a law that says if a government refuses to fulfill its election promises this ought to be grounds for a non-confidence motion.
What's so hard to figure out?
If circumstances make some things impossible, maybe we could cut them some slack, but the outright reversal and refusal to consider actually doing the thing you were elected for having promised to do ought to be grounds for dismissal.
If I were hiring someone and he agreed to perform particular tasks for a wage and when he showed up to work on the first day and announced he would not be doing the things agreed upon, why shouldn't I sack him?
What's so hard to figure out?
If circumstances make some things impossible, maybe we could cut them some slack, but the outright reversal and refusal to consider actually doing the thing you were elected for having promised to do ought to be grounds for dismissal.
If I were hiring someone and he agreed to perform particular tasks for a wage and when he showed up to work on the first day and announced he would not be doing the things agreed upon, why shouldn't I sack him?
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Something I like about the French
well, it's not much, preferring as I do Stilton and beer to camembert and wine, but
the Froggies do have a knack for making interesting political slogans and buzzwords. They have a talent for summing up entire cultural phenomena in little bitty pithy expressions.
I think I'm going to use the term "soixante-huitards" quite a bit from now on.
Equally amusing I thought was the auto-translated version of the Wiki entry on it:
The list, in the Babelfish translation becomes:
Some slogans sixty-huitards representative:
* Ne travaillez jamais. Never work.
* Fin de l'université. End of the university.
* On ne revendiquera rien, on ne demandera rien. There is no claim, we can ask anything.
* On prendra, on occupera. It will, it will occupy.
* Soyez réalistes, demandez l'impossible. Be realistic, ask for the impossible.
* On achète ton bonheur. We buy your happiness. Vole-le. Vole it.
* Le réveil sonne : Première humiliation de la journée ! The alarm clock rings: First humiliation of the day!
* Imagine : c'est la guerre et personne n'y va ! Imagine: it is war and nobody will!
* Élections, piège à cons. Elections, trap cons.
* Il est interdit d'interdire It is forbidden to forbid
* Sous les pavés, la plage Beneath the cobblestones, the beach
* Jouissez sans entraves Enjoy unhindered
(I'm particularly fond of "vole-it". I hope to vole-it quite a bit when the spring volunteering season comes for the Cheshire Wildlife Trust.)
Ah, echoes from my happy (miserable) hippie childhood. I recall being inculcated from a very early age in these tenets of envy, perpetual griping, and despair. Nice way to live, with every day, no matter how sunny, being enclosed with the black and dripping doctrine of 'what's in it for me?"
This one
"It is forbidden to forbid"
really does encapsulate the entire cultural malaise we have suffered since 1968. It is a perfect non-statement of unreality that is the heart of our modern "liberalism". It is the un-doing, the un-world these people, with varying degrees of conscious intention, seek to bring into un-being.
the Froggies do have a knack for making interesting political slogans and buzzwords. They have a talent for summing up entire cultural phenomena in little bitty pithy expressions.
I think I'm going to use the term "soixante-huitards" quite a bit from now on.
Equally amusing I thought was the auto-translated version of the Wiki entry on it:
Soixante-huitard
Un article de Wikipédia, l'encyclopédie libre.
Aller à : Navigation, Rechercher
Un soixante-huitard est un individu désigné ainsi en regard à sa participation aux Événements de Mai 1968, ou même simplement par ses idées apparentées à celles qui ont trôné au sein de ces évènements.
Ce terme peut prendre un aspect plus ou moins péjoratif selon les milieux dans lesquels il est utilisé. Dans ce cas d'utilisation, le terme regroupe les idées les plus utopistes qui ont eu cours dans les milieux révolutionnaires, notamment celles s'approchant de l'anarchisme considéré comme anti-progressiste, ou bien celles apparentées à un humanisme vu comme entièrement détaché des réalités de l'humain, animal social.
Face à cette difficulté descriptive, les slogans issus de la période paraissent mieux représentatifs de l'allusion liée au terme.
Article détaillé : Mai 1968 (France)#Quelques slogans soixante-huitards.
* Quelques slogans soixante-huitards représentatifs :
o Ne travaillez jamais.
o Fin de l'université.
o On ne revendiquera rien, on ne demandera rien. On prendra, on occupera.
o Soyez réalistes, demandez l'impossible.
o On achète ton bonheur. Vole-le.
o Le réveil sonne : Première humiliation de la journée !
o Imagine : c'est la guerre et personne n'y va !
o Élections, piège à cons.
o Il est interdit d'interdire
o Sous les pavés, la plage
o Jouissez sans entraves
The list, in the Babelfish translation becomes:
Some slogans sixty-huitards representative:
* Ne travaillez jamais. Never work.
* Fin de l'université. End of the university.
* On ne revendiquera rien, on ne demandera rien. There is no claim, we can ask anything.
* On prendra, on occupera. It will, it will occupy.
* Soyez réalistes, demandez l'impossible. Be realistic, ask for the impossible.
* On achète ton bonheur. We buy your happiness. Vole-le. Vole it.
* Le réveil sonne : Première humiliation de la journée ! The alarm clock rings: First humiliation of the day!
* Imagine : c'est la guerre et personne n'y va ! Imagine: it is war and nobody will!
* Élections, piège à cons. Elections, trap cons.
* Il est interdit d'interdire It is forbidden to forbid
* Sous les pavés, la plage Beneath the cobblestones, the beach
* Jouissez sans entraves Enjoy unhindered
(I'm particularly fond of "vole-it". I hope to vole-it quite a bit when the spring volunteering season comes for the Cheshire Wildlife Trust.)
Ah, echoes from my happy (miserable) hippie childhood. I recall being inculcated from a very early age in these tenets of envy, perpetual griping, and despair. Nice way to live, with every day, no matter how sunny, being enclosed with the black and dripping doctrine of 'what's in it for me?"
This one
"It is forbidden to forbid"
really does encapsulate the entire cultural malaise we have suffered since 1968. It is a perfect non-statement of unreality that is the heart of our modern "liberalism". It is the un-doing, the un-world these people, with varying degrees of conscious intention, seek to bring into un-being.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
A Primer on the Movement of Our Times
(I'm busy digging up stuff about the N.I.C.E. today so I'm not around much. You'll have to keep yourselves entertained.)
It is not, as it is often thought, a natural development of human history, still less a development of Christian thought (as an extrapolation of the Christian virtue of charity) but a specific, and specifically anti-Christian ideology that has been imposed by a small number of clever men.
The History of Political Correctness
This film is by a man of whom I'd never heard until today, William S. Lind, an American expert in military issues.
It is not, as it is often thought, a natural development of human history, still less a development of Christian thought (as an extrapolation of the Christian virtue of charity) but a specific, and specifically anti-Christian ideology that has been imposed by a small number of clever men.
The History of Political Correctness
This film is by a man of whom I'd never heard until today, William S. Lind, an American expert in military issues.
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