What I wrote

we sar a littall lef gro

2005-09-07T22:30:00.000+01:00

My six year old son's "Plant Diaree" us reproduced below:

My Plant Diaree

Be Ethan

Ritide and ilstrated

Conteens

1 Wat yooy need
2 Choosday
3 Wensday
4 Therthday
5 Fridday
6 Munday

What yow need to grow a sunflowa.

Plant
Pot and
Saucer

Sunflow seed
soil

twowl
worthwing can

On Tuesday we plrntid some sunflowor seds in a pot. Finlee we warted the sunflowers seeds.

On Wensday we sor a stem and mor levs.

On Chousday we sar a littall lef gro.

On Friday I sare my plarnt wilting.

On Munday my plrnt did.

When is a war not a war?

2005-07-29T20:13:00.000+01:00

Answer: When The Spectator* says that it isn't.

In an edition that displays all the virtues of this great publication (that is, it contains completely contradictory opinion) The Spectator comes down firmly on the side of the comforting line: "There is no war - what you have here is a radical Islamic crime scene."

The Spectator asserts that we are not at war, mainly because if we were at war, then the government would be right to seek emergency powers. But we don't want the government to seek emergency powers. So we can't be at war:

"To call this (Islamic violence against the West) war may send a surge of adrenalin through the neocon bloodstream...but the worst single consequence of allowing governments to prosecute a nebulous "war on terror"...is that it encourages them to think that they may behave like all governments in time of war, not just by eroding the liberty of the citizenry, but also by lying to them."

I've read tightly written editorials by The Spectator before, but this is not one of them. You know a writer is all over the place when, rather than coming to his point, he wastes time lashing out at imagined adversaries - in this case, the proverbial "neo-cons" so beloved of the liberal left.

The editor doesn't bother to examine the widespread scale of Islamic violence, its indiscriminate targeting of civilians of every creed and colour, its impact on Western politics and culture, it's ideological aspect. The fact that the United States, Great Britain, and the Iraqi democrats may, indeed, be defeated by the Islamic fanatics, doesn't get a mention. Instead, The Spectator worries that if you call it a war, the government might seek the powers that would help to win it. The war, according to the Spectator (remarkably similar to the line taken by the American Democrats), is something got up by the government to destroy our civil liberties.

Has Cherie Blair joined the Spectator's editorial board?

A couple pages into the magazine, after the excellent article by Peter Sookhdeo who explains that a "moderate" Islam is a myth constructed by Western multi-culturalists, Peter Oborne returns to his tired theme - Islamic violence is "all about Iraq."

Peter has been regurgitating this line for so long that he only has to change the first paragraph to make his latest essay timely. It still reads like spit-up. This one bemoans the fact that after Muslim fanatics bombed London, British politicians have rallied to defend the country and are trying to present a united front. Oh, the shame of it.

Oborne warns, gravely, of the dangers of such a political consensus. He conter-intuitively warns that the British elite, in finally finding a collective political backbone, is suffering from too much consensus, not too little. Peter remembers, fretfully, the consensus of British politics "before the first world war, the economic depression of the 1930's, the appeasement of Hitler." No mention of the Welfare State consensus here.

I'm not exactly clear how the sight of the three leaders of the main democratic parties in Britain, standing outside Downing Street to condemn suicide bombers, compares to any of the three examples of consensus politics that Oborne cites. Is it not just possible that the timid, fragile, consensus of the democrats, is the first sign of a reply to the Islamist challenge, and to the appeasing of it, as exemplified by the Oborne's of this country?

Peter can't imagine why a suicide bomber might encourage political consensus among his victims. But he's very good at imagining how reasonable are the political aims of the Islamists. Here is just one quote that is worth dissecting:

"Al Qa'eda and its associates may indeed be deeply disturbed by aspects of Western civilisation - who isn't? - but they have no interest at all in changing Western society either for good or ill. Their objective is far more specific: to change US policy towards the Islamic world, and in particular to remove US and allied forces from Arab soil."

Note the way Oborne dismisses the stated aims of the Islamists - that they are fighting a war of religion against a decadent culture. Hey, they may be disturbed by aspects of Western civilisation, but no more than is a toffy-nosed tory at the sight of an over-weight woman wearing pink lycra in a shopping centre. I'm deeply disturbed every time I see that (or even think about it). But I would never even dream of blowing her up.

Why concede that the Islamists are right to be "deeply disturbed" by Western civilisation anyway? What a loathsome culture we are: Super-rich, super-tolerant, intelligent, fair-minded, open, interested, non-racist, engaged, productive, offering almost unlimited potential to the individual, concerned for the world, troubled by what it is to be human. Oborne thinks that a mention of the excesses and foolishness of Western culture must always appear alongside any analysis of Islamic inspired violence. This is the ubiquitous cultural cringe. If Oborne was still in university one might overlook it. But he's not. He's a grown-up, this is a war, and he is writing for The Spectator.

But that's not the end of my quoted paragraph. The next sentence comes from a place so safe, and so comfortable, that one wonders which club Oborne was in on July 7, and whether someone had to call him a taxi:

...they (Al Qa'eda and it's associates) have no interest at all in changing Western society either for good or ill.

Now that is comforting. I suppose this explains why so many of the three million Muslims who live in Britain are not interested in integrating with British society. They're just biding their time 'til they can return to an emancipated Arabia. But I think it is Oborne's statement: "they have no interest at all in changing Western society" that takes the biscuit. I've written things that have embarrassed me - I've deleted posts that weren't up to scratch and hoped that no one noticed. But I have never, in all my life, written anything that stupid.

In Oborne's world, we are confronted with an enemy of reasonable political demands - the Islamists want to free their homeland from Western imperialism:

Their objective is far more specific: to change US policy towards the Islamic world, and in particular to remove US and allied forces from Arab soil."

Notice how Oborne pulls together two very distinct political aims and pretends that his readers won't notice. The Islamist objective it to "change US policy toward the Islamic world" and to remove the infidel from Arab soil. If we remove the infidel from Arab soil, the Islamists still will have a problem with the US. The Islamists will always have a problem with democratic nations.

That apology for Islamic terror and violence was written by an Englishman in a magazine that pretends to carry mainstream conservative opinion in Britain. And you wondered how civilised Europe watched as six million Jews died? Oborne thinks that the policy of the Islamists is to "change US policy toward the Islamic world." So this must explain their global strategy. It explains why Islamists are killing Hindus and Bhuddists in Malaysia and Indonesia. That would explain why Muslims are blowing Africans to smithereens in Dar Es Salaam. Or killing Muslim Turks in Turkey. Or massacring Ossetian children in Beslan. Or killing Shiite children in Iraq. Or Phillipinos in the Phillipines. Or Londoners in Russell Square. Or Kurds in Northern Iraq. Or Hindus in India. Or Christains in northern Nigeria. Or Africans in Darfur. Or Jews in Israel (Oops, that one isn't allowed.)

I don't think I've read a more inept sentence in a political journal for many years. The above paragraph simply falls below acceptable standards. Oborne has just asserted that the Islamist have no ambition beyond the purity of the house of Arabia, an assertion that is in itself obnoxious and implicitely hateful of the non-Muslim inhabitants of that region. This charlatan of a writer then dares to invoke the appeasement of Hitler in the same essay...well...

...I am shocked, and dismayed, of Hertfordshire.

________________________

*The Spectator won't let you read these articles online unless you are a subscriber. It won't let you read them online, even weeks after the magazine is out of print. But if you want to read them, buy The Spectator. It is very good.

******

Mark Steyne, of course, buries Oborne's arguements, and that of the Spectator's editorial line, in the same edition of the magazine (which is why it is such a great magazine).

Madrid and London - along with the other events such as the murder of Theo Van Gogh - are, in essence, the opeining shots of a European civil war. You can laugh at that if you wish, but the Islamists' often-stated goal is not infidel withdrawal from Iraq (or Arabia) but the re-establishment of a Muslim caliphate living under Sharia that extends into Europre: and there's a lot to be said for taking these chaps at their word...

He has also decided that the British taxpayer, who's housing benefit pays the rent for the young Muslims who are trying to kill them, is now being taxed under a new P.A.Y.E scheme - Pay As You Explode. Unmissable - at your local newstand, now.

Denial

2005-07-27T23:52:00.000+01:00

Britain has suffered the most deadly attack against civilians in the homeland since the Blitz. We now know that British society has produced at least eight men who were willing to kill themselves while trying to murder their fellow citizens.

Three weeks have now passed. Not one hate preacher has been expelled from the country. New laws are promised, but the old ones are scrupulously ignored. No immigrant is supposed to get a passport if they have a criminal record. Muktar Mohammed-Said got one. (In fact, everyone gets one - being British is nothing special).

The Prime Minister's wife, on her family fundraiser to Malaysia, urges Britain to do nothing to harm civil liberties. But the civil liberties of the commuting public are already rather harmed. The country is not safe - at least four suidical men are at large - the police, so long concerned with being inoffensive to everyone, including criminals, have not a clue who these people are. They shoot panicky Brazilians instead, and then offer long, drawn out and contradictory excuses. The one about tracking the poor sucker from his flat is typical British public service claptrap. They did no such thing. They were chewing on their bacon rolls and panicked at the tube station, just like everyone else.

The fanatics aren't stupid. They can sense the cultural and political insecurity of the British elite. And they know how deep the cringing culture of apology runs in Britain. I had dinner with a Guardianista couple tonight. He said, in reference to the London bombings and the part played by Iraq in this: "They're not bombing Helsinki, are they?"

In that one sentence lies the Islamists' hope of success. The implication is that there are blameless populations, like those in Helsinki, who the Islamists will not target. This is a deeply immoral and frankly offensive belief (and one I wouldn't rely on if I lived in Helsinki). It certainly implies that the victims of 9/11 were not blameless - but most Brits believe this anyway. It implies that the Hindus and Bhuddists in Bali helped to bring the carnage on themselves, even if only for offering package holidays to Australians. And we know that the Islamists will bomb East Africans because they are relatively easy to bomb, and anyway, Africa is the continent of suffering. And I guess they bombed the UN out of Iraq because they didn't want the wonderful UN to be associated with American imperialism. They bomb Turks because the Turks have, almost uniquely in the Muslim world, secular democratic tendencies. And they bomb Londoners trying to go to work because Tony backed George.

"They don't bomb Helsinki." This statement is a perfect summary of a widespread assumption in British culture that makes appeasement of terror a very definite policy option for the government.

The British are so infected with a culture of self-loathing that some continue to explain the tactics of suicide bombing in rational political terms - even after they are victims of this terror. Everyone is guilty. The Islamists hate us. I guess we'll just have to learn to live with it.

British liberalism backed up by cultural cringing. I'm still trying to be an optimist. But it's a lethal combination in fighting a cultural war.

A British national identity

2005-07-15T23:38:00.000+01:00

My best English friend happens to be Irish. There is nothing wrong in this. This same Irish friend happens to be English, on his father's side, but he may just as easily be Irish by way of his mother from Galway. He doesn't get confused about who he is (except perhaps on St. Partick's Day), because he is British.

The British have one of the least self-conscious national identities of any modern people. They are as racially mixed and immigrant a people as any country in the world. This sense of identity has been so taken for granted, that the ideology of multi-culturalism has grown unchallenged, and not been perceived as the threat that it is.

The Yorkshire suicide bombers have pushed national identity back into the national conscience. If the British people manage to rediscover their national identity, they will make mince-meat of the provocation of the Islamic radicals.

British national identity is not determined by ethnicity. Even at the height of supposed English ascendency - the Victorian age - it was Scottish Celts who advanced the interests of this nation most enthusiastically. A rediscovery of Britishness will not lead to racism. But a failure to redicover a sense of Britishness will lead to communal violence.

A British national identity recognises heroes of both left and right. A national identity that fails to embrace such mutually agreed, and sometimes contradictory, heroes, will not be durable when put under pressure.

In British history, for every Tolpuddle Martyr, there is a Robert Owen, building decent housing for the first industrial workforce. For every Cromwell, there is a Wilberforce, shaming the nation to repent its racist ways. For every warrior Churchill, there is a struggling, miserable, Indian law student, studying away in a damp, cold London in the 1920's, learning the skills to peacefully unpick the locks of Empire. At one time, the notion of "Britishness" was so great as to encompass its enemies. Now, the British are so lacking in cultural confidence, that the appeal of a British identity does not extend to Beeston.

The British national identity is one of the richest, and most inclusive, in the world. It's more than a match for Islamic fanatics. But it will not prevail if those who are British fail to celebrate it, or even to recognise it.

An end to Islamic violence

2005-07-11T23:10:00.000+01:00

David Frum, former speech-writer to President Bush, and co-author of An End to Evil, was exceptional on BBC's Newsnight, tonight. He kept returning to the question: Why is Arab and Muslim society so ready to use violence to deal with political problems?

This question does not, at all, suggest that the political problems of the Arab and Muslim world are not severe. But it asks how four bombs planted in London are the answer to those problems.

Opposing Frum was an Egyptian commentator who once "met Osama Bin Laden." He asserted that the root cause of Islamic violence was the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Frum refused to defend the Israeli occupation, but asked why such a political problem results, in the Arab world, in an enthusiasm for blowing the arms and legs off of fellow human beings.

Frum asked why a country such as India, with a massive population of Hindus and Muslims (and a million other faiths) is managing to wrestle with the problems produced by rapid modernisation, gross inequality, and ethnic diversity, without producing a lethal political culture. Frum's conclusion is that India is achieving this because it is a democracy. India is not a perfect society, and not without violence - no where on earth is. But India's experience stands in stark contrast to the experience of the Arab and Islamist world.

No doubt Lefties, anti-Semites and Islamists will join tonight's Egyptian commentator in condemning Frum's analysis as "very simplistic." But explain to me, you political sophisticates: How is a craven reaction to Islamic violence - the one that always seems to blame the victims - going to lead to the development of an Islamic culture that is no longer psychotic? How, but through the development of a democratic culture, will Islamic societies stop locating the source of all their grievances in the failures of others.

In the glorification of violence, modern Islamic fanaticism is akin to the murderous ideologies that democracy has defeated in this century. Its kinship to these ideologies should give all democrats hope, for it, too, will be defeated.

I wish Frum's thoughts on this subject would get an airing every evening on my tele. Unfortunately, his moderate voice is only invited on the screen when the Islamists do their worst. Check out his site, hopefully, he will post a transcript of his Newsnight piece there. And if he doesn't, his other essays are worth a read.

Old time religion

2005-06-24T09:21:00.000+01:00

I see that the Yankees are going to replace their stadium.

When I was a boy, travelling down from Vermont in the back of my Dad’s busted-up station wagon, we would cross into the foreign land of NYC at Yonkers, and I’d start my look-out for Yankee Stadium. It was a big, round, ugly thing; easy to spot, and impressive to a small mind. But I never once considered it to be a "real" ball park.

I hear the Yankees are to build a “retro-stadium” in the Bronx. They know that the no matter how grand the new stadium, the template for Baseball is still found at Fenway Park.

The soufflé collapses

2005-06-02T18:49:00.000+01:00

I wrote this in November, last year:

Given the chance, I have to hope that the British people would reject a European Union whose motivating force was anti-Americanism. There is every reason to be nervous at the steady undermining of British independence by the EU. But I still think the most likely outcome of the French President's blustering aspirations for Europe is that his hopes will collapse like an undercooked soufflé.

Today I realise that far from being undermined by the EU, Britain is poised to redirect Europe, once more, upon the path of political and economic righteousness.

I am so often wrong in my political predictions that I must celebrate my success at punditry when it happens to happen. And in the past week, it as happened for me.

In "The Withdrawal Method" last June, I wrote:

"If Britain were to leave the EU there would be no civil war in Europe. In fact, the effects of such a decision would be almost completely benign. Germany and France would continue their mutual love feast until such time as Germany began to complain about paying for every meal. The “two speed” Europe would not happen – Britain would have redefined the future of an enlarged Europe, as it has done many times in the past. Intellectuals in Paris would splutter into their coffees, but French, German and other European peoples, on the whole, would breathe a sigh of relief that they could retain their national identity and customs. There might be the risk of a Euro collapse, but it is more likely the currencies would return to their national homes, only now they would be called “Euro-Marks” and “Euro-Liras.”

Last year, a friend argued that the single European currency amounted to no more than a bureaucratic rationalisation of exchange value in a Europe where the national economies were already united. I thought this attitude toward the Euro was a bit glib at the time, but I did not have the arguements to refute it. And, frankly, I still don't.

What I knew instinctively, along with millions of other European people, is that the Euro represented political overstretch by a European Union that was out of touch with its presumed supporters.

Whether the Euro survives depends on the pig-headedness of the EU elite. Listening to Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European commission, instructing national referendums to continue for a Constitution that has been rejected by two founding nations, I fear that they are stupid enough to administer a revolution.

It appears that France has succeeded in exporting political fantasy and economic inflexibility to the very heart of Europe. The EU is likely to dissolve into French inspired bloodshed, before it finally is refashioned by British-led reform.

This week, I have experienced the satisfaction of being proved not wrong. This is as much as one who is frequently wrong can hope for. I credit my few successes as a pundit to the observation of this little Island's shrewdness and pragmatism. The best defense against the foolishness of the French, is the pragmatism of the British. I'll be annoyed with myself if I ever forget this, again.

Kamikaze editorials

2005-05-17T14:25:00.000+01:00

Oops, I did it again. I clicked the link to my old town newspaper, the Rutland Herald and read an editorial.

Today's editorial is about Iraq (again):

"The closest relative to the suicide bomber in Iraq, psychologically speaking, is the kamikaze pilot off the coast of Japan in the final months of World War II. Perhaps another example would be the monks who set fire to themselves in Vietnam.

"There is a strong need on the part of the public in the United States to understand this sort of psychology — not just to realize that it exists within the Iraqi mind-set, but to understand why it exists, and encourage action to offset it. So far the Bush administration and the Pentagon have come nowhere near approaching that sort of realization."

Did I really just read that? The Herald editorialist has managed to put the self-immolating Vietnamese priest in the same moral category as the suicide bomber.

Is the editorialist morally confused, or just confused? You choose. The Vietnamese priest kills himself to prove his devotion to the cause and to protest the world's injustice. The suicide bomber kills himself and innocent people to prove his devotion to the cause and add to the storehouse of the world's injustice.

The Herald editorialist helpfully informs us that unlike "normal" people who kill themselves, suicide bombers are usually not "depressives." That should cheer everyone up. In fact, in an editorial devoid of practical advice, the editorialist offers Bush and the Pentagon what every New York liberal reaches for in times of personal stress - psychiatry.

But is there really a "stong need on the part of the public in the United States to understand this sort of psychology?" Is it really that difficult to understand the psychology of suicide bombing? (As a dimwitted member of the public, not as a cerebral Herald journalist, I mean.) I grant that with editorialists wringing their hands in response to the bombings, the tactics of the bombers are more easily comprehended than is their psychology.

In fact, the "strong need...to understand" is in the editorialist's own mind. Psychologist call this sort of thing "transference." There is a strong need on the part of the editorialist to wring his hands in the face of the unnerving violence of the suicide bomber. The editorialist then transfers his hand-wringing to the American public.

And who has not wrung his hands in the past couple of years? Yet, on reflection, The Herald's comparison of Iraqi suicide bombers with Japanese kamikaze pilots is rather comforting. The mostly non-Iraqi Arab men (be they depressed or euphoric) who are blowing themselves up in Iraq in a desperate attempt to score a victory against their enemy are not unlike the Japanese kamikaze. At least on this I can agree with the Herald.

But I don't remember reading that General McArthur spent too much time trying to understand the "mindset" of suicidal Japanese pilots.

I do remember this:

To their victims, the kamikaze were terrifying. But equally, their terror was inconsequential to the War's outcome.

Dear Rutland Herald editorialist: Find your backbone. Failing that, borrow one from somebody else.

Those "horrid" Christians

2005-04-05T22:08:00.000+01:00

Anglicanism is fast becoming the last refuge for English liberals who are unable to cope with the fact that some human beings continue to believe in something.

In this week's Spectator, Matthew Parris tries to explain "Why the Church of England is our best defence against religious enthusiasm."

Like many well educated Englishmen, Matthew Parris can be an amusing writer. But when he is in earnest, he turns into a provincial bore. Take this introductory paragraph:

"It couldn't happen here, they say. We are unlike the Americans. The English are viscerally sceptical of religious enthusiasm - always have been. Waves of evangelism in our history - the Nonconformist movemement for example - have been comparatively mild affairs, broadly benevolent. It is inconceivable that a religious Right in Britain could ever coordinate the muscle and confidence to bully prime ministers in the way its American counterparts bully presidents."

Oh dear. Where to start?

First of all, Parris is most definitely not a historian. What on earth did Parris study at Cambridge that would allow him to utter the breathtaking sentence: "The English are viscerally sceptical of religious enthusiasm - always have been." Along with Empire, most English elitists have long accepted that Cromwell was a bad joke. But whatever Cromwell was, even an irreligious Parris presumably still believes that God's Englishman once existed.

At the very least, Parris might acknowledge that when England did eventually reject Cromwell's religious enthusiasm, it exported the religious nutters to the New World as Mayflower Pilgrims and Quaker Pennsylvanians. It's difficult to take Parris's writing on religion and culture seriously when he misses such a cheap, but relevant, potshot at American religiousity.

Instead, Parris mentions the Noncomformists, though he is quick to dismiss them as both mild and "broadly benevolent." Notice how this sentence implies that modern Christians in America are neither mild or benevolent. This unsubstantiated slander then sets up the sentence about the "religious Right" bullying American Presidents.

Only an Englishman who has buzzed around the Westminster village most of his adult life would presume that the president of a continent-sized country such as the United States, with a complex federal government, an independent judiciary, and a restless and ever changing society, could be bullied by a religious clique.

At the very least, Parris can't deal with the fact that the President he refers to is, in his own view, a religious nutter himself. So who is bullying whom in America? This is silly writing and goofy political analysis, though very popular among Europeans at the moment.

Parris is lazy and glib in his political analysis, but also amazingly clumsy when using the English language to express his horror of religious faith.

For those who don't know the Matthew Parris story, here's brief summary via Wikipedia. His autobiography, Chance Witness, is a jolly good read. For the purposes of this analysis, and for the sales of his autobiography, it is important to note that Matthew Parris is gay.

Here is how a gay Matthew Parris, who has written rather well about his own experience of overcoming prejudice, writes about Christians:

"Some time ago I was part of a skiing holiday in Switzerland in which a couple of our group were those Alpha people. They were not among Nietsche's distressed: they were young, they were rich, they were confident and pretty; they had careers and sports cars. They were a perfectly sophisticated young couple - and pleasant company with it. They were genuinely nice people.

"But they were Saved. Something had gone wrong in a small part of their brains, and it made their demeanor slightly yet potentially odd..."

Is Parris writing about a Christian couple or an American Christian couple here? I'm confused, as I suspect Parris is. But if I were uncharitable (and a fabricator of anecdotes) I might write something like:

"Some time ago, I met the charming Matthew Parris by chance at a Conservative Party Conference. Matthew was articulate and passionate about the direction the Conservative Party needs to take to regain public support.

"But I found Matthew unnervingly overgroomed. He seemed just too nice. Something seems to have gone wrong in some small part of Matthew's brain. He is gay."

How quickly do the formerly oppressed embrace oppression.

The Pope's death is smoking out the secular fanatics. You won't find a better statement of cultural bewilderment and panic as the one that issued forth from Parris's pen this week. Let's leave the last adjective to Parris:

"Faith unchained is a horrid thing."

"Horrid." What a sweetie.

*****

Welcome Expat Yank readers and thank you Robert for the link.

In his latest post, Robert points out that politics is now going on in Iraq and that this is something new and it's "a good thing."

I find it amusing that the tone of Western reporting on Iraq is now shifting to how the political parties in the Iraqi Parliament are "horse trading" and how different groups are "jockeying for position." Oh dear, where did we go wrong?

Helloooo! This is called politics. The alternative is... well, it's what went on befor.

Growing Stones

2005-03-14T22:48:00.000Z

With some relief I have turned away from the Rutland Herald's editorial pages and instead found this item among the letters (If you're a new visitor to this site, Rutland, Vermont was my childhood town, and I can't stay away from the Rutland Herald's website):

C. J. Frankiewicz of East Clarendon asks whether the field he tills will ever stop producing a spring crop of stones.

Mr. Frankiewicz theorises that if frost heave brings these rocks to the surface, by removing the smaller rocks diligently each year, and burying the really big boulders below the frost line, he'll eventually cure his spring backache.

Chuck Wooster explains why Vermont's most reliable crop is stones, and I think he implies that Mr. Frankiewicz may be actually encouraging his stones to crop by digging big holes in his field and disturbing the bedrock:

The...reason we harvest so many stones in New England is because of winter's frost. Without frost, all those stones would stay right where the glaciers left them, safely tucked in the ground. Instead, the freezing and thawing of winter works the stones loose and brings them to the surface, meaning that, no matter how well you cleaned the fields last spring, you're likely to have a fresh crop waiting this year.

"If your pitchfork brings up a stone that's in any way rounded or smoothed, chances are good that it was left there by the glaciers. If your fork hits something sharp and angular, you're probably digging up a piece of the bedrock itself, and you can thank the glaciers for that, too, since they scraped off everything else."

Read the whole thing. You'll be glad that you did.

Latter-Day Liberals

2005-03-13T23:47:00.000Z

The more I read the Rutland Herald's editorials, the more obvious it is that they are written by one, recently-graduated, male. The style is unmistakable - reminding me of my own rants written for a Texas student newspaper, all of 20 years ago.

Being a preacher's son and having grown up listening to the sermons of Martin Luther King Jr., I'm a sucker for the soap-box style of writing featured below..

The Herald's prophet is still bemoaning the failure of Senator Kerry to defend himself against the "liberal" label. (How satisfying to see Democrats return, again and again, to the battlefields of their recent defeat). This, according to the editorialist, is how the Senator should have replied:

"If by liberal you mean a belief that government must secure our freedom by protecting us from the capricious cruelties of unemployment, illness and old age, then I am a liberal.

"If by liberal you mean a belief that people must have the opportunity to work for fair compensation, then I am a liberal.

"If by liberal you mean a belief that people ought to do their share without special breaks and loopholes, then I am a liberal.

"If by liberal you mean a belief that government must be a strong enforcer of lawful behavior by our corporate citizens, then I am a liberal.

"If by liberal you mean a belief that the Constitution guarantees equal rights for all without regard to race, gender, religion, sexual orientation or ethnic origin, then I am a liberal.

"If by liberal you mean a belief that government ought to take a leadership role in addressing threats to the natural world, including the climate, and in protecting our health and environment, then I am a liberal."

As I read this charge sheet, I composed a reply to each sentence in my head: "Yes, you are a liberal because you believe in big government; Yes, you are a liberal because you indulge in envy politics; Yes. you are a liberal because you try to fly the flag of social experimentation under the banner of social progress." Interestingly, the only statement I stumbled over was the environmental one. Once a Vermonter, always a Vermonter, I say.

But it's always more interesting to listen to what the preacher does not say, than what he does say. Why, amongst all these fine reasons for being a liberal, is there not the slightest mention of the historical conflict that we are living through? Why does this editorialist, who cannot write a paragraph elsewhere without mentioning Iraq, fail to mention the war?

The Herald editorialist can refer to President Franklin Roosevelt as often as he likes. But he will never be able to assume that great liberal's political mantle. Today's liberal is not a liberal that my father's generation would recognise.

Should the Herald editorialist ever wish to compose a simple sentence extolling the virtues of national allegience for himself and his Party, this is how he would have to finish his sermon on the modern liberal:

"If by liberal you mean someone who won't defend democratic values against murderous enemies because he's so busy promoting a frivilous political agenda that he can't recognise a national emergency, then yes, I am a latter day liberal."

Expat Yank sees the future - and it is good

2005-03-10T23:46:00.000Z

Robert Tumminello, the Expat Yank, has time-travelled to the year 2043. Once there, he met U.S. President Susan Fernandez and Britain's Prime Minister Harold Singh. They were dedicating the "Ayad Allawi Institute for the Study of Democracy at Baghdad University."

Time travel has had an unfortunate side-effect on Robert. In 2043, he is no longer a blogger, but a CNN reporter. But it seems that in 2043, even CNN has changed. The network has finally stopped reporting that Iraq is a "quagmire." The Network stopped reporting this in 2025 - 15 years after the last US troops departed Iraq.

Here's an excerpt from Robert's report (If you want to study the future in much more detail, and hear it from a man who's been there, visit Expat Yank. (You need to scroll down to find the entry: "What Might Be:")

Updated: 05:14 a.m. EST (10:14 GMT) March 20, 2043

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- U.S. President Susan Fernandez joined Britain's Prime Minister Harold Singh and Iraq's newly elected prime minister at the dedication ceremony yesterday of the Ayad Allawi Institute for the Study of Democracy at Baghdad University.

The newly opened research center is named in honor of the man scholars have often termed the Hubert Humphrey of Iraq. The post-war Iraqi interim prime minister spent over two decades in parliament. Although he never won the top job, it is widely acknowledged Allawi's political courage was instrumental in the creation of today's democratic Iraq.

The Tooth Fairy

2005-03-09T21:06:00.000Z

I nearly blew it with my daughter, yesterday. She finally lost the wobbly tooth that had been dangling in the front of her mouth for the past two weeks. I suggested tying a string to it and slamming the door, but this didn't go down too well. Today, a friend dislodged it in the playground. Apparently, they spent fifteen minutes searching for it on the ground.

At bedtime, as she retrieved the tooth from her school bag, she suggested that she wash it before wrapping it in a note she had written to the tooth fairy. Her note thanked the fairy for the money and asked "What do you do with all the teeth?"

Fearing that in washing the tooth, she would lose it down the sink, I blurted out: "Oh, mommy won't care about whether it's washed."

I realised my blunder at once. She gave me a knowing smile. But the damage was done. Despite my assurances that mommy had nothing to do with the pound coin under the pillow, she quickly got to the heart of the matter:

"If mommy is the one who takes the tooth, what does she do with it? Does she just throw it away?"

"Of course, not," I replied consolingly. "If it is mommy, and I'm not saying it is, she would keep it in a special place." But there were tears at bedtime.

When mom returned home, I confessed my parenting incompetence. My wife salvaged the situation by writing a note, in tiny writing, as if from the tooth fairy:

"Can you keep a secret? I give the teeth to someone who thinks they are precious, but she doesn't know that you know, so don't tell her."

There are people who think this kind of thing is ridiculous, and some think it's actually harmful to the child. I'm not sure if my clever little girl, aged 8, really does believe in the tooth fairy. But she wants to believe. In the morning when asked if the tooth fairy had visited, she said yes, but she didn't mention the letter.

This is called childhood, and it should last as long as it can.

Vermont and Iraq

2005-03-06T01:57:00.000Z

I borrowed the above headline from the Rutland Herald. At first glance, the headline seemed to confirm the Lilliputian self-regard of my home town's newspaper. But one would not wish to argue or belittle this statement:

"Vermont has lost more service men per capita than any other state, and the present mobilization is the most extensive since World War II."

This does not surprise me. The National Guard and the Reserve draw their ranks from men and women from working class communities who have born the burden of military service disproportionately for generations.

The Herald reports that "Vermonters on Town Meeting Day sent a message that they remain deeply skeptical of the war in Iraq." I can't find this story in the Herald's news section, but I presume the editorial is referring to a real event. But rather than report anti-war feelings in Vermont, the Herald picks up a theme beloved of the anti-war brigade:

"Abu Ghraib prison occurred in part because the prison was inadequately staffed by Reserve personnel."

The implication is that these distinguished Vermont reservists are also intellectually subnormal sadists and rapists; as are most US Army volunteers. And if this isn't the implication, why bring up the Abu Ghraib scandal when writing an editorial that pretends to salute the brave and blameless volunteers of Vermont?

Iranian teenagers behave like teenagers: Shock report!

2005-03-04T22:32:00.000Z

Apparently, the Muslim clerics of Iran are having trouble controlling the teenagers.

Via Discarded Lies.

"Outraged by scenes of young boys and girls using Shi'ite Islam's most sacred mourning day as an opportunity to flirt in public, Iran's religious hard-liners are calling on authorities to stamp out such "vulgar displays." Failure to do so, some newspaper commentators said, would force pious citizens to take matters into their own hands."

This reminds me of my own childhood growing up in Vermont. I used to catch the school bus to summer camp. On that bus a religious minder would apply a "six inch rule" to the girls and boys. This pious citizen would walk up and down the bus with his little ruler, making sure that no boy or girl was sitting less than six inches from eachother.

This was happening on a schoolbus taking us to an evangelical Christain summer camp in 1970's New England. The madness of the Iranian Mullahs is not that far removed from American culture.

But I do wonder how the Mullahs of Iran expect to retain authority over a youthful population when the religious minders of New England could barely control a school bus. I don't think they can.

My home town

2005-02-22T13:08:00.000Z

My home town is the best home town in the world. But it really is. Nestled in the Green Mountains of Vermont, balanced finely between being a small town and a small city, Rutland, Vermont has called me back periodically for short, nostalgic, visits ever since I left it, aged 13.

Throughout the years, I've made many more cyber-visits to Rutland's newspaper website: The Rutland Herald. It's taken the Paper some time to produce a decent online edition, but they're getting there.

The Herald displays all its editorials going back a full month. The editorial line follows the liberal slant of Northeastern politics - and it's enough to make an ex-Vermonter groan into his blog.

In this one, the writer is hopeful for a breakthrough in the Middle East peace process, applauding the Iraqi election, and the recent meeting between the Palestinian and Israeli leaders. President Bush merits a mention only to score a political point:

"Bush...has an insurgency on his hands that far exceeds the insurgency of Hamas or the other Palestinian groups...ultimately there is no solution except the exit of American troops."

The positive developments in the Middle East are listed, but the editorial suggests that they have all come about because of chance events, such as the death of Arafat. Bush's role in history is merely to "have an insurgency on his hands." American troops aren't fighting murderous anti-democratic ideologues in the Arab world: Bush is fighting a war in Iraq, while at the same time chasing peace in the Middle East.

According to the Herald, the only solution to "Bush's insurgency" is the "exit of American troops." But in the next sentence, the Herald argues that the US must build a viable Iraqi security force. So which is it? Withdraw now to save the troops, or fight on to win the war?

The Herald, like the Democrats, continues to hedge its bets on Iraq, even when it is obvious that all democrats should be supporting the free people of Iraq. And as soon as Iraq is a success, the Herald and the Democrats will stop calling the freedom struggle there "Bush's war."

This editorial concludes with the line: "It's worth hoping that we have reached a historic turning point." The Democrats have become practiced at watching the world turn around them. To paraphrase Rumsfeld: "Things happen." But would it be so difficult for the Herald to acknowledge that one of history's agents might be a Republican President? Apparently so.

The Herald has an even more delusional take on the Democratic Party's recent sorry history. They enthusiatically endorse Howard Dean as Democratic National Committee chairman.

The Herald wants more of Dean, despite the voters' verdict in the last election. The Herald acknowledges that Dean has his critics, but the Paper suggests that it is Republicans, rather than fellow Democrats, who would most like to see the back of him:

"Republicans will chortle, dusting off jokes about The Scream, and trying to portray the Democrats as captive of latte-drinking, Volvo-driving elitists from the Northeast. But those jokes will wear thin if Dean succeeds in bringing new life to the Democratic Party."

They will indeed, but it's an awfully big "if."

According to the Herald, the new DNC chairman merely needs to be "enthusiastic" to rebuild the shattered Democratic Party:

"Of all the things that the Democrats need at the moment, enthusiasm is at the top of the list."

And I thought the Democrats needed to figure out why a majority of Americans regard them as an anti-American party. And I also thought that the Republicans rather enjoy Dean as a Democratic Party bogey-man. The lazy political introspection of the Rutland Herald will make Republicans chortle all the way to the next victory.

At times, the Herald seems to suggest that it is the Republicans that have most to fear from the results of the last election - it was, after all, a pretty close call.

"Since the defeat of John Kerry and their losses in Congress, centrist elements in the party have been consumed with the idea that they needed to create an image that would appeal to Southerners. Maybe they needed to soften their stance on abortion. Maybe they needed to talk about moral values."

This is just crazy talk, writes the Herald:

"That view is based on the erroneous notion that the Democrats now exist at the margins. But the Democrats almost won; their strength in the Northeast, Midwest and West is a strength, not a weakness. The Republicans' reliance on the South and the interior West came close to losing."

Would someone send the Herald one of those Red/Blue maps and remind them that the red districts keep filling up with people fleeing from the blue districts. I reckon Republicans would rather be "close to losing" than "close to winning."

I realise that neither the appointment of a hysterical left-wing Vermonter to the chairmanship of the DNC, nor the opinions of the Rutland Herald, matter much,nationally. But I'll continue to read my local paper, and to comment on it from time to time. It's fun to go home once in a while, even if via the Internet.

And even if you don't agree with my politics, check out this classified ad via the Herald.

Can you believe that you can purchase a beautiful Victorian home in Vermont for less than 129,000? This one looks like the house I grew up in. But keep quiet about it, or more of those New Yorkers will hear and want a piece of it.

Those New Yorkers are the ones either writing the Herald's editorials, or nodding their liberal-addled heads in agreement. Let's keep Vermont cheap for those poor ex-Vermonters who might want to buy a piece of it one day.

Songs in the Key of Life

2005-01-20T23:10:00.000Z

Can you remember when you first heard a lyric that made you shiver? Perhaps you never have. You might not be a lyric person. I am sad about that, but please carry on reading anyway as I try to explain my own obsession.

I can carry a tune quite nicely, even if the people closest to me beg to differ. But for me, music has always been the scaffolding for hanging lyrics on. I like lyrics and I like thinking about them. The only poetry I enjoy has a lyrical tone. I am aware that I lack both musical appreciation and a classical education. Poems that allude to Greek mythology pass me by. That's not to say that I don't admire Greek literature. But my exposure to the classics is rather limited. In Amarillo College, Texas I read five Greek plays (in English, of course) in a world literature class. Since then, I have read and reread Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus and each time, arriving at the closing line "Oh holy Mother Earth, O air and sun, behold me. I am wronged," I experience one of those shivers that I just mentioned.

As a teenager, I rather typically got excited by lyrics that evoked loss or despair, like Dylan's folk hymn: Hard times (come again no more); and Neil Young's Helpless, a song that millions of self-absorbed teenagers have enjoyed wallowing in.

Such a dreamy way of bumbling through life is easy to mock - I get plenty of eye-rolling from the wife. She is most definitely not a lyric lover. She likes songs that she can dance to - preferably from the period 1980 to 88. My wife's idea of a great lyric is "Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole ...Feeling HOT, HOT, HOT" and she'll start jumping around the room to "Oops uside your head, said, Oops upside your head." I can just about hear the attraction of these songs, though my biggest failure in my wife's eyes is that I usually resist all encouragement to get on the dance floor and shake it all about.

I'm not so musically deaf as not to realise that unlike poetry, lyrics without music, lie lifeless on the page. Yet, I've always thought it rather odd that poetry purists hold this against songs. It seems to me that the talent to combine a tune with a lyric is at least as great as it is to compose a decent poem. We all know songs that fail, musically, to convey the meaning of their words. If I can pick on a hymn as an example, does "Count Your Blessings," actually encourage anyone to count their blessings? Am I the only one whose mind wanders to suicidal ideation when I hear this hymn sung?

A poem that doesn't work is soon forgotten. A bad song lingers in the mind. Perhaps this is one reason why the poets are sniffy about songs.

As a dreamy young man, I narrated my daily existence through lyrics. I would compose a da-ti-da-ti da, do-ti-do-ti-do, lyric to describe a morning coffee. Thankfully, those days have now passed. Either the muse has left me or I have grown tired of her inablility to articulate my thoughts in iambic meter. Yet, lately I've been thinking about where my love of lyrics comes from, and whether this passion is something I should continue to be embarrassed about.

I was (almost literally) raised in a church. So I've heard hymns all my life. But I only started to pay attention to the lyrical power of hymns once I discovered other, less reverent, songs.

My first religious experience with a piece of music was Stevie Wonder's double album Music of My Mind and Talking Book. (For the lyrics to one of Stevie's great love songs from this album, go here.) Stevie Wonder opened my eyes to pop music. And Stevie's songs from the 70's and 80's still stand up.

After Stevie Wonder I discovered Bob Dylan through an evangelical back door. The first time I listened to Bob he was singing Slow Train Coming, Covenant Woman and Saved. It amuses me now, after I have spent years obsessing over every scrap of song the Minnesota Bard ever wrote, to remember that Every Grain of Sand first opened my eyes to Dylan's lyrical prowess. (It's a gem, by the way.)

Looking back on Dylan's career, I'm tempted to think that he made a personal visit to my cultural backwater to pick me up as a fan. I'm grateful for his "Christian phase" and as predictable as it was that he would move on, he left behind some pretty good material for the evangelical guitar strummers to unpick around the campfire (Do they do that kind of thing anymore, and is Kumbaya still the wearysome favourite?)

I'm not trying to tie a lyricist as dexterious as Dylan to a biblical anchor. Anyone with a lyrical range as wide as his won't be boxed in for long. That's why, despite what was a brief, if deeply-felt, conversion experience, his music and lyrics moved on.

In any case, Dylan didn't discover biblical imagery through his "born again" experience. He had already picked this up much earlier. As his recently published autobiography, Chronicles, reveals, he was a voracious reader as a young man. Instead, when Dylan found religion, it was I who discovered his wide-ranging imagery, including his career-long use of Old Testament imagery in his lyrics.

Dylan's intense period of religious introspection, through the "born again" albums to Infidels, has been treated by some critics as a hiatus before he resumed normal service. Apparently, by going religious on us, Dylan became more confused than normal.

But what I thought at the time was that the intensity of Dylan's "born again" experience was evidence of his lack of exposure to the cultural treasures of the New Testament. I sensed that Dylan was discovering New Testemant scripture for the first time. I may be wrong about this. But I think Dylan probably missed out on Sunday School.

And after Dylan, an American Jew, passed through Christian evangelicalism, he embarked on a personal revival in which he explored "Jewish" themes in his songs. On Dylan's Infidels album, the Old Testament reasserts itself. If Dylan was a confused Christian evangelical, he does not seem confused when describing the modern state of Israel in the song "Neighbourhood Bully." (As a polemical poem, it reads rather well without the music.)

The greatest lyrical artist of my generation to include whole passages of the Bible in his songs was Bob Marley (excellent site that links Marley's lyrics to bible passages).

Marley's songs allowed me to be both a teenager and to enjoy my cultural canon. As a mildly rebellious youth, I smoked pieces of floor-lino passed off as Lebanese ganga and sung along to Marley's Exodus as if I shared the West Indian slave history and its affinity to the Jewish story of the escape from Egypt. Marley, Peter Tosh, Gregory Isaacs, and many more West Indian artists unknown to me, revisited the Old Testament stories in their music, and in doing so revived the West Indian cult of Rastafarianism sufficiently to entice young white middle-class potheads to a renewed interest in at least some passages of the Bible.

The inverted cultural snobbery of white European and American youth found it easy to respect and enjoy Judeo-Christian imagery when used by a West Indian artist. Their widespread ignorance of this cultural legacy merely made the West Indian artists' mastery of its symbolism more exotic.

At the same time I was discovering these artists, I was introduced to biblical lyricism through a British textbook entitled Literature and Criticism. This textbook made the unstartling point that poetry exists in the Bible. I say it is unstartling, but it was a new concept to me at the time.

In my religious tradition, the poetic power of the Bible was not much to the fore. Reading the text, and then complying with it, was the main point. I don't denigrate this view, though I do think that the doctrinally obsessive overlook the emotional and intellectual impact of Biblical passages, and forget that the words often make converts of the casual listener.

Before reading my textbook, I was of course aware that poetry formally exists in the biblical canon - the Song of Solomon was the most interesting example to a schoolboy. But my textbook was referring to examples of poetry (and specifically poetic rhythm) found throughout the King James Version of the Bible. The examples it cited were as follows:

"And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin;
And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."
(Matthew 6. 28,29).

And, from Job, 41:1-4,

Canst thou draw out Leviathan with an hook?
or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?

Canst thou put a hook into his nose?
or bore his jaw through with a thorn?

Will he make many supplications unto thee?
will he speak soft words unto thee?

And the passage continues, gently mocking human frailty.

The reason I remember these textbook examples so well is that they were the doorway into a rediscovery of the biblical passages that I had spent most of my childhood reading.

Year in, year out, my family plodded through the Good Book: Leviticus and Dueteronomy were given as thorough a going over as David's exploits in the much more exciting history books. Around the room we went, each family member reading ten to 15 versus, until that night's quota was filled. By the time I studied Shakespeare's Julius Caeser and King Lear as a teenager in an English high school, I had such a natural advantage in reading Elizabethan English that I once overheard my teacher excitedly discussing my essay with another teacher. Yes, this gave me a big head, and it earned me an "A" in English Lit, but I've long since realised that every essay I wrote on Shakespeare was co-written by King James.

Do I think, now, that this family Bible reading was a worthwhile pastime? That's like asking me if I enjoyed the air I breathed as a child.

Later on, bored by the sermons, I sat in church leafing through the Bible discovering countless examples of lyric poetry. No-one complained. I was, after all, reading the Bible. I absorbed the tender passages of Ruth, the Proverbs, the Psalms of course, Isaiah's spine-tingling pre-figuring of the Christ, Ecclesiastes' unarguable truths, the Revelation's apocalyptic grandeur, and by way of an example that you can read here, David's "How are the mighty fallen" lament for Saul and Jonathon.

Until the secular world pointed it out to me, I didn't recognise that this writing was great literature. My parents had rejected the cultural mainstream - so I presumed that the literature they were forcing me to read was culturally peripheral, too. And of course, this literature was and is, increasingly culturally peripheral in modern Europe. But a child's mind is apt to mistake this unpopularity for a lack of value and import.

This could not have been my parent's intention. Nevertheless, the consequence of small church evangelicalism when reinforced by a post-Christian state education, was to increase my feelings of cultural isolation. So in this sense my parents achieved what they presumably set out to do: They taught me to be uncomfortably disconnected from mainstream culture.

Yet they did not quite succeed in driving out the profane. For another practical consequence of my lyrical obsessiveness and cultural background is that when, for example, I'm filling the dishwasher, I am likely to suddenly burst into a rendition of:

I woke up on the roadside, daydreamin' 'bout the way things sometimes are
Visions of your chestnut mare shoot through my head and are makin' me see stars.
You hurt the ones that I love best and cover up the truth with lies.
One day you'll be in the ditch, flies buzzin' around your eyes,
Blood on your saddle.

And as I rinse the pans, my daughter is looking at me even more quizzically than usual. So I switch to singing:

These are the words of my master
Keep on tellin' me,
no weak heart shall prosper.

And whosoever diggeth a pit,
Shall fall in it - fall in it.
Whosoever diggeth a pit
Shall bury in it - bury in it.

By now, my daughter is leaving the room. But I rescue my reputation (at least in my own ears) with a baritone:

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Why do I inflict such torture on my family? Why couldn't I sing Nat King Cole songs like my father-in-law does (very loudly) on Christmas day?

Well...I suppose I could stop singing entirely. But, so far, I have managed to resist this temptation, despite many polite requests that I do so.

My inadequate answer is simply that I did not choose my culture. These are the songs that I know.

Believers should be banned from politics

2005-01-18T13:23:00.001Z

The usually sensible Anthony Howard, writing in the Times, questions Tony Blair's political judgement in appointing Ruth Kelly as Secretary of State for Education and Skills. Kelly is the mother of four school-age children, and she happens to be a Catholic. She is also, as reported by Howard, connected to the Opus Dei sect.

Howard worries that, as a Catholic, Kelly will be incapable of properly overseeing a state-funded budget for stem cell research, as her new duties require. Howard wonders whether Kelly will be able to "disregard the Church’s teaching and decide her attitude purely in the public interest." (No mention of Opus Dei in this sentence. It's Catholicism itself, that Howard distrusts.)

Howard reports that: "By some accounts, she has already told the Prime Minister that one of the things she could never personally sanction is the use of public money to fund stem-cell research."

In mainstream-journalist fashion, Howard won't tell us who has provided this "account" of the new Minister's views on stem cell research. But even if this "account" is true, what does it amount to? Blair has appointed a believing Catholic to a Department where, as Minister, she will have to make judgments on stem cell research funding. The choices she makes will be influenced by her religious faith. People of personal integrity and religious faith have always faced this quandry when acting politically. It's the old Thomas More dilemma. When and if Kelly faces a personal crisis in choosing between political expediency and her faith, she will be faced with the modern version of the More dilemma: She may resign her office; or she may renounce her faith.

What Howard really dislikes is that Kelly brings to her office a certain kind of ethical baggage. Kelly takes seriously mainstream Catholic teaching about the sanctity of human life. She has a view on stem cell research that she relates to her own beliefs. Is Howard suggesting that he somehow knows what is "purely in the public interest" regarding stem cell research? Does anyone? Is the public interest merely what the scientific community says it is? Aren't scientists an interest group, too? Isn't the democratic process supposed to discover the public interest by allowing human beings with different points of view to contest such questions peaceably?

Howard's attack on Kelly's Catholicism extends beyond her views on stem cell research to a general suggestion that her religious beliefs clash with her responsibilities as education minister. Howard questions Blair's judgement in appointing her, and suggests she might only be fit for a lesser office:

"There were all sorts of jobs she could have done in the Government that would not have presented her with this sort of personal dilemma. But Education does precisely that — and it is Blair’s decision to place so zealous a Catholic there that has to raise questions about his judgment."

So a Catholic can be a Minister for Sport, but not a Minister for Education. For Howard, it is religious faith itself that is the problem He is not troubled to debate whether the Minister's political views are popular, or whether they can be supported by argument, or whether they produce effective education policies.

My guess is that a Catholic such as Kelly will be equally disturbed by her Department's "just say yes to sex" campaign that has contributed to the explosion of teenage pregnancy and abortion. If Kelly decides to challenge the failed social and educational policies of the 1960's, will this also be politically illegitimate, because Kelly is a Catholic?

To Howard and other secularist ideologues, religious freedom is fine as long as one's beliefs do not challenge the aggressive secularist values of the political and cultural elite. This is the drift of modern European secularism as I have described it before. Howard attacks Kelly's (unsubstantiated) views on stem cell research because she is a Catholic. Why stop there? Why not challenge the Minister's views on fostering discipline in Britain's chaotic secondary schools on the grounds that, as a Catholic, she will have a faith-based belief in an orderly society?

In fact, the new minister has been quiet about her religious views, unlike the aggressive secularists who have, like Howard, attacked her personal beliefs. All Howard can come up with is an unattributed "account" of Kelly's views on stem cell research. His reference to the Minister's connection with Opus Dei is a cover for an attack on religious faith in general.

In the modern world, more and more people have religious faith. If believers are banned from serving secular democracy, then why should they be expected to support secular democracy?

Where's the Global Blogger?

2004-12-15T23:36:00.000Z

I check in with Instapundit most days, and I never leave Glenn Reynold's blog without finding a link to something that is new and interesting.

But where is the global blogger?

Today, in Britain, one of Tony Blair's first ministers has resigned. David Blunkett is both an interesting man and a fascinating politician. His resignation weakens Blair's pro-American government. I suspect that Glenn Reynolds is interested in that. But with so much to cover, the story fails to get a mention.

Perhaps I misunderstand what blogging is. Maybe all of us have the time to stumble around the Internet looking for something interesting to read. But does no one else find it tedious to scroll down a list of 200 blogroll entries? Nice people like Michelle Malkin put a little star against London Calling, to alert her readers to new post on my site. I'm grateful for the exposure. But that little star does not reveal what my post is about, or tell the browser why he or she should be remotely interested in it.

Instapundit is more sophisticated. Glenn Reynolds knows how to write a simple sentence with a link that hooks the browser. But Glenn is busy blogging the United States. He carries stories about the world, when he can. But when he does, his audience isn't really that interested in following him, is it?

I like the Tennessee blogger and I'm grateful for the 6000 hits his three-word-link gave me last year. But blogging is starting to catch on around the world. I'm looking forward to Britapundit, Francopundit, Europundit, Russopundit, Afropundit, and Asiapundit. And I hope someday there will be a Globalpundit who will provide a link to all those blogs that none of us have the time to read.

Homelessness and Immigration

2004-12-13T19:30:00.000Z

With Christmas coming, the British media turns its attention, briefly, to the "homeless." Figures show that there are 100,000 families living in temporary accommodation in Britain.

The Labour Government has been quick to point out that more than three quarters of these families are living in decent temporary accommodation, though the other quarter are still stuck in grotty "hotel" rooms.

At the same time, mass immigration to Britain will create more than 1.2 million new households in the next 20 years, according to Migrationwatch UK. Britain is adding a quarter of a million new residents every year (or more than 150,000 taking account of emigration figures). The government if finally having to admit that there is a link between increased competition for housing and mass immigration.

The government can't blame immigration for the homeless figures because the government's own "open door" immigration policy has contributed to the pressure on housing. The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, famously declared last year that he could see "no obvious limit" to the number of immigrants who could settle in the UK. The "obvious limit" was always the limited number of homes in this crowded country.

For a traditional special interest response to the homeless issue, you can rely on that "leading homeless charity," Shelter to sound suitably indignant. A spokesman, Adam Sampson, describes the number of homeless households as a "damning indictment" of the fourth richest country in the world.

Adam is right. One hundred thousand homeless households is a damning indictment of the government's policy - but of the government's "open door" immigration policy, not its housing policy. In fact, only 100,000 homeless families in temporary accommodation is a rather good record for a country that has experienced six years of unmanaged mass immigration. The wonder is that the figures of homeless households has remained more or less constant in the past five years. If anything, the standard of temporary housing that families are being placed in, has improved slightly.

Last week a YouGov survey for The Economist found that 75% of British people believe that the country has taken in too many immigrants. Public disquiet with mass immigration crosses party lines, and perhaps more importantly, crosses racial lines.

So the Shelter spokesman shouldn't be surprised if his compatriots respond to his outrage over the homelessness figures with a bit of a shrug. More and more fair-minded Britains seem to be thinking: "What did the government think would happen when they allowed millions of newcomers into a country that doesn't have enough houses in the first place?"

I salute your indefatigullibility

2004-12-02T20:25:00.000Z

George Galloway has won his libel case against the Daily Telegraph. They had accused him of being in the pocket of Saddam Hussein. The judge has declared that the worst thing they could find against him is that his knees knocked together when he stood before the great Iraqi dictator.

Everyone knows that George Galloway saluted Saddam's "indefatigability." Now they know it afresh, and know that he is 150,000 quid richer and forever Saddam's stooge.

The Telegraph has failed to prove that George was in the pocket of Saddam Hussein. George has won a great victory. He has proved that he supports Saddam, even though he was not directly in his pay. How sad is that - to have supported Saddam without receiving any benefits. Even Kofi Anan's family did better than this.

The most discomforting thing about Galloway's fascist antics is the level of support he can count on in Britain. Having been thrown out of the Labour Party he now intends to stand as a candidate for something called the Respect (For Tyrants) Party in an East London constituency. He's not likely to win, but he might help Labour to lose the seat.

He's kicked off his campaign by calling the sitting Labour MP a "stooge" of Tony Blair. I think I can see a way to counter this spectacularly clumsy attack. Perhaps a slogan something like: "Choose Tony's stooge over Saddam's stooge."

Despite being "cleared" by a high court judge of personally taking money from Saddam, the word "indefatigability" will forever define George Galloway. Last night the BBC ran the clip of the Scotland's premier fascist windbag curtseying before Saddam. (Galloway's pronounciation of the tongue-twisting word was syllable perfect. One can see him in front of his hotel mirror in Baghdad, rehearsing his speech, preparing for his proud moment before the great Iraqi leader.)

I would expect to see a campaign leaflet or two featuring this Galloway performance in the coming weeks.

Israelis are Nazis

2004-11-26T11:27:00.001Z

This in The Daily Telegraph today:

“A young Palestinian was forced to play his violin to pass through an army roadblock in the West Bank as Israeli soldiers laughed, according to Israeli human rights activists yesterday.

The man arrived at the roadblock north of the West Bank city of Nablus carrying a violin case. An officer ordered him to take out the violin and play as part of a security check.

Horit Herman-Peled, a volunteer for the Israeli human rights group Machsom Watch, took a video of the Nov 9 incident and posted it on her website.

“She said the scene reminded her of images from the Holocaust when Jews were forced to play for Nazi officers to save their lives.”

"Anyone who has lived here and is part of the Jewish cultural landscape can't escape the allusion (to the Holocaust)," she said.”

What’s wrong with this sentence?:

“She said the scene reminded her of images from the Holocaust when Jews were forced to play for Nazi officers to save their lives.”

Answer: The Palestinian was not playing the violin in order to save his life.

As much as Horit Herman-Peled would like us to think so, Israeli border guards are not Nazi officers.

The Palestinian was playing the violin to prove he was who he said he was. He was trying to get through a checkpoint, not to save himself from the gas chamber.

Am I under whelmed by this “human rights” violation? Yes. Do I think the Israeli border guards were behaving badly and seeking to embarrass or even humiliate the Palestinian. Yes, again. Prolonged occupation is debasing to both the occupied and the occupier. There should be no occupied territories. The Palestinians should have their own state.

But to return to Horit's image of the German Jew playing his violin for the Camp Kommandant. Unlike Horit, I find myself unable to complete the historical analogy. Where are the suicide Jewish bombers slipping into the centre of Berlin to blow the arms and legs off German shoppers? Where are the Jewish ideologues, the year 1939, hysterically threatening to drive the Germans into the sea?

Put another way, instead of the image of Jewish people forced onto cattle trucks for transport to the death camps, we have the image of a Palestinian, at an Israeli road block, playing a violin.

As wearisome as it is to say it again and again, there is no comparison between the State of Israel and German Nazis.

Wildly inaccurate, not to say glib, historical comparisons like the one made by the befuddled Horit are evidence of something worse than liberal stupidity. Horit’s analogy is morally perverse. Asserting moral equivalence between Israeli border guards, under the fear of attack, with German Nazi officers, ordering Jews to their death at their leisure, reveals a one-sided analysis of the conflict that infects the thinking of Western liberals.

Does it matter that Western liberals like Horit have lost their moral compass and perhaps related to this, are incompetent at drawing historical analogies?

I think it does. Not only does Horit’s analogy, in some indeterminable way, give encouragement to terror by excusing the moral culpability of the terrorists; it attacks the very hope that there can ever be peace between the two peoples. For if self-defence (and bad behaviour by Israeli border guards) is equivalent to systematic genocide, then how can we condemn Palestinians who walk on to buses and blow the arms and legs off themselves, and fathers, mothers and children who ride on them? Only evil as great as that of the Nazi’s could justify such a terror strategy.

There is a perfectly moral response to the actions of the border guards and it is provided in the same article and comes from the mouth of a left-wing Israeli MP.

"I am shocked beyond words," said Zahava Galon, a legislator for the Left-wing Yahad party. "On the face of it, it is a bizarre, incomprehensible incident. Yet it is a blatant example of the harsh reality of the Israeli occupation."

It is pointless to argue with this – it is a statement of fact. While not seeking to justify inexcusable behaviour by Israeli soldiers, one can pose the following, essentially political, questions: Will the occupation cease while Palestinians continue to embrace an ideology that demands that Israel is driven into the sea? Will checkpoints come down while suicide bombers blow up civilians in Israeli cities? How can Israel support the creation of a Palestinian state and at the same time ensure its own survival?

If securing Israel is equated with Nazi genocide then why should there be any limits to the terror strategies adopted by the Palestinians? If Palestine is the Warsaw Ghetto, then every Israeli is a Nazi pig. This is the dead end of Horit’s historical analogy.

Americans don't want to be Europeans

2004-11-25T14:42:00.002Z

I came across a rant about American society published on the Time Magazine site in January 2003. It was written by Brian Eno, whom I rediscovered today because he is currently trying to impeach Tony Blair, a plan that is some way short of succeeding. Mr. Eno is a singer songwriter. His website declares that he is also an "artist, professor and thinker."

As an American resident in the UK, with a certain ambivalence about where I belong, I find myself almost unconsciously monitoring the stereotypes that I hear about both Americans and Europeans.

On occasion, for example, I have had some sympathy for the European view of "American Way capitalism." The Europeans assert that they have chosen to protect the weak and poor in society, compared to the let-it-rip capitalism of the United States which abandons life's losers to their fate. I'm aware that Americans can and do reply to this stereotype with: "How are you European's going to carry on paying for this ever-growing welfare bill (now that we aren't willing to pay for your defense)?"

I had always presumed that this debate between the European and American economic and social models was a fairly academic one. Comparing the two approaches was useful only in terms of studying the healthy and inevitable convergence of the European and American systems as they wrestled with the contradictions of managing a modern economy.

But the ball of doubt about whether Europe or America has the right answers, or attitudes, to meet the challenges of the modern world, is now firmly in the European court.

A glance at Mr. Eno's fairly typical Euro-centric rant about America helps to explain why:

"Europeans tend to regard free national health services, unemployment benefits, social housing and so on as pretty good models of human progress. We think it's important — civilized, in fact — to help people who fall through society's cracks. This isn't just altruism, but an understanding that having too many losers in society hurts everyone. It's better for everybody to have a stake in society than to have a resentful underclass bent on wrecking things. To many Americans, this sounds like socialism, big government, the nanny state. But so what? The result is: Europe has less gun crime and homicide, less poverty and arguably a higher quality of life than the U.S., which makes a lot of us wonder why America doesn't want some of what we've got."

Mr. Eno wrote this in January 2003. Just a year on, these statements look even sillier than they did then. Europe's civil tranquility looks rather less stable than America's urban mayhem. Would Mr. Eno still write this today? Probably. Mr. Eno isn't troubled by reality, that's why he is indulging in the student-level "impeachment" politics (as are a number of Tory MP, incidently, to their shame and to their Party's growing reputation for not being serious.)

Given that it's not difficult to recognise the fault lines of the next European civil war, let's lob one of Mr. Eno's lines back to his "European" side of the court:

"It's better for everybody to have a stake in society than to have a resentful underclass bent on wrecking things.

I'll take America's shrinking underclass over Europe's growing underclass, any day. You can keep your "free" health service with its queue of patients longer than a Soviet breadline, your unemployment benefit which in France and Germany has replaced waged employment, and your social housing that no one can get into because there aren't enough houses to provide shelter for the massive number of new arrivals to Europe.

Which of the two continents currently has the most "resentful underclass bent on wrecking things," Mr Eno? Which of the two continents offers a way for this underclass to participate politically whilst retaining their religious values, and has a history of successfully assimilated minorities? Which continent has a history of dissolving into civil war at the drop of a hat? You really shouldn't be surprised, Mr. Eno, that the people of the United States don't want what you've got.

Thanksgiving

2004-11-24T16:50:00.000Z

Thanks to James S. Robbins for explaining the origins of the national observance of Thanksgiving.

American liberals are self-righteous racists

2004-11-19T18:42:00.000Z

Quite a few bloggers have noticed the latent and blatant racism of liberals who have criticised the appointment of Condoleeza Rice as Secretary of State. Countrystore has a couple of good examples of this. But Michelle Malkin has the best essay I've read so far on the hypocrisy of liberals when they confront black politicians who refuse to conform to Left-wing stereotypes.

Now a radio host has called Rice an "Aunt Jemima." I was naive enough to presume that this kind of labelling of a black politician in the United States could only be made by another black person. I can't even remember who "Aunt Jemima" is, and why Condi might be insulted by being associated with her. I presumed that this was a "black on black" political insult.

Imagine my surpise when I discovered that the radio man who made this remark is a white guy. His name is John Sylvester and he has also called the outgoing Secretary of State, Colon Powell, an "Uncle Tom."

What most surprises me about this is not that Lefties are racists - I've understood this for some time. But I grew up in the United States in the 1970's, and one of the lessons that I learnt was that commentary by white America on the social and political life of black America was neither sought nor appreciated. I think this was a sad state of affairs and evidence of a racially polarised society. I am glad this is beginning to break down. Yet I am bewildered by the assumption of today's Lefties that they can decide for black Americans who that community's "Uncle Tom's" are.

In my generation, whites learnt that they could not speak for blacks, having persisted in this paternalistic habit for generations. And a fine lesson in political equality this was, too. So how, in 2004, can white liberals still presume to label black politicians according to terminology that owes its vehemence and poison to the experience of black people? How come American liberals are now the ones who are labelling black people, whilst those backward middle-Americans have learnt both political correctness and good manners?

My headline: "American liberals are self-righteous racists," is entirely accurate.