Positive Discrimination

In an article forwarded from the Boxing Day Mail on Sunday the Archbishop of Canterbury warned: ‘The Victorian distinction between the deserving poor and the rest is very seductive.’

He added: ‘Even if there are those who are where they are because of their own bad or foolish choices in the past, that doesn’t mean they are any less in need in the present.’

The consequences of such an attitude, that the poor should be absolved of any responsibility for their own circumstances, whilst motivated by the most sympathetic of motives are actually destructive of the poor, not of poverty.

Dr Williams’ argument means that even if poor people are dishonest or irresponsible in their lifestyles the rest of society should support them in their choices. He ignores the equally destructive corollary that nothing different should be done to aid those who despite hard work and honest endeavour are still poor.

The idea that the immoral and irresponsible should be treated in exactly the same way as those whose behaviour has been irreproachable is itself profoundly immoral and damaging to society.

No one deliberately chooses poverty. But many deliberately choose lifestyles which lead to poverty. Those who, like Dr Williams, are ‘non-judgemental’ negate the importance of such choices and the concept of personal responsibility.

The view which holds that it is odious to hold any responsible for the consequences of their behaviour is common. It owes a great deal more to Marx than to the Bible.

Marx taught that people are not responsible for their own circumstances but are instead helpless in the face of an exploitative economic system. The individual’s behaviour and its consequences were deleted from the discussion. The Bible teaches us that we are, as individuals, responsible for our own actions and their consequences.

Many are poor through lack of ability, illness or other circumstance. But others ­contribute to their poverty through their own deliberate choices. Yes, there are single mothers who are the innocent victims of desertion or violence. There are also women who choose motherhood without a permanently committed father around. By doing so they commit themselves and their children to poverty and a myriad of other disadvantages.

Reducing poverty depends to a large extent upon restoring the distinction between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor. Not because it is motivated by an absence of compassion, as Dr Williams implies, but by its opposite, a deeply principled desire to end the trap of permanent poverty.

The way to do that is not to disperse large amounts of money indiscriminately, but by encouraging behaviour that will end poverty. To do this we must not condescend to the poor but rather view them as being governed by the same impulses as everyone else.

As Dooyeweerd points out what distinguishes humanity from the animals is that we make responsible choices. Dr Williams unwittingly treats the poor as less than human, incapable of making responsible moral choices.

If those who make immoral or amoral choices benefit from those choices through an undifferentiated welfare system we have created a fundamental injustice within society. Those who refuse to cheat the system and live lives of self-restraint are demoralised and their positive influence over their children undermined. An undifferentiated welfare system which rewards irresponsibility leads to the moral degradation of society.

Look back to the Hanoverian period, a time when crime was rampant throughout Britain, when illegitimacy was common and drunken squalor was the norm. A strangely familiar scenario. Then look to Victorian Britain where there was order and the beginning of social mobility, the family was the bedrock of society, and there was a public acknowledgement of morality.

There were huge flaws, social, economic and moral, in Victorian Britain which must be deplored, but it was a significant improvement upon what went before. It is fashionable to look at the hypocrisy and bewail the patronising attitude of the Victorians to the poor. What is still in the process of replacing them is worse, it is a condescending attitude which cares little for the poor other than as counters in a political struggle and is prepared to sacrifice them on the altar of supposed equality.

During the era of Victoria evangelical Christians transformed this country. Slavery was abolished, industry was regulated, drunkenness was curtailed, crime was opposed, orphans were sheltered, the poor were fed, educated and given a route out of poverty. All because evangelical Christians taught the dignity of every human being and believed that people could take responsibility for their own lives.

It is these effective Christian actions which embarrass Dr Williams. Unfortunately the commitment of the Church to the moral code and understanding of humanity revealed in Scripture has been eroded drastically. Expediency has replaced morality, the social work department has replaced the church, and the holy war against sin replaced by political struggle.

Just Get On with It

Tomorrow is Hogmanay and many will be making resolutions for the new year. The problem with making resolutions is not that we inevitably fail to keep them and end up with a feeling of failure and lowered self worth. The problem with new year’s resolutions is that we make them in the first place.

We embrace the fallacy that if we set goals, work out a plan and commit ourselves to achieving it then we are likely to succeed. “To fail to plan is to plan to fail” goes the trite mantra. Unfortunately planning doesn’t work.

Here, in one of the most deprived parishes in the country, our local library is not particularly well stocked. There are, however, two types of book well represented. Escapist literature, and self-help books of the How To Become A Millionaire In A Month type. These are well used yet the condition of the parish and its people force me to conclude that either the books are exceptionally useful and all the new millionaires and successful entrepreneurs have moved out which is why there are so many boarded up tenements; or, and this is more likely, the books and the principles behind them are crap.

Detailed planning doesn’t work in international politics or national economies, just think of the EU Common Agricultural Policy, on second thoughts just think of the EU. Detailed planning especially doesn’t work in the lives of individuals. As any military man will tell you, the best made plans fly out the window as soon as contact is made with the enemy. Reality insists on intruding.

Resolutions don’t work because they go against our created nature. Kant and Grotius both pointed to a more feasible method of facing the future. Grotius spoke of natural law and Kant of the categorical imperative; rather than laying down goals which our actions must achieve and the steps by which we reach them, both approaches establish constraints upon our actions.

Knowingly or unknowingly they recognised a principle revealed in Scripture. God does not lay down a detailed plan, and despite the interpretations of lazy preachers, He does not lay down a set of steps by which we can achieve His goals for us. Instead God gives us a set of moral standards by which to live and sets us on our way to make responsible choices in the midst of that life. Any guidance beyond Scripture which we do receive comes one step at a time.

There are reasons why spontaneous responses to a given situation are shunned. Spontaneity demands knowledge of self, this is invariably uncomfortable. Spontaneity demands on the spot decision making which can only happen successfully when you have a clear moral framework already in place. Spontaneity demands taking personal responsibility for one’s actions, which is counter-cultural in a society divorced from its biblical roots.

In the new year what we require are fewer resolutions, goals and plans, and greater wisdom. As Calvin told us “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists in two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”

Mocking The Afflicted – Again

Perhaps Hollywood operates a quota system whereby each studio has to employ a certain percentage of those who might charitably be termed intellectually or morally challenged.

Another Trough, Another Snout

I know its unfair to bring up actors and their inanities, they can’t help being dim. Those who should be criticised are the incestuously self-promoting media who keep asking them questions beyond their abilities in an effort to publicise their latest films; and the ever gullible public who seem to think that the view of an actor is of any greater consequence than the view of a plumber, taxi-driver or sheep shearer.

In an interview earlier this week the film actor Ben Affleck  informed us all that in his opinion bankers, “shouldn’t make such a giant profit off just moving money back and forth. And CEOs’ pay shouldn’t be 200 times the average worker. It used to be nine times.”

Now I happen to agree with Mr Affleck about banker’s remuneration and the way that upper management can’t seem to keep their snouts out the trough. It is difficult to see how such staggering sums should be paid to those who a couple of years ago brought the Western economy to its knees.

But Ben should realise that there is an economic system called capitalism which controls our industries, including the entertainments industry. In capitalism those who supply goods and services are entitled to ask for and receive whatever the relatively free market will bear. There is also something called original sin which teaches us that none of us are all we should be. We are prone to temptation, including the temptation of greed. And the reason its called temptation is because it is tempting. There are very few so altruistic that they would turn away from the legitimate opportunity of pocketing large wodges of cash.

Bankers are different from the rest of us only in that their opportunities for filling their pockets are greater than those of plumbers, taxi-drivers or sheep shearers; but not film stars.

I wish the interviewer had asked Mr Affleck what he thought about film stars being paid $250,000 merely for turning up at the opening of a new casino. A quarter of a million dollars for clocking on at work. This is the sum which avid poker player Affleck was paid for gracing the opening of the new casino in the Greenbrier resort, White Springs, West Virginia on 2^nd July this year.

Stones – glass houses. More appropriately specks of sawdust and planks of wood.

RIP Multiculturalism

We can breath a sigh of relief, the impeccably left wing Prospect magazine has told all “right on” people that multiculturalism has had it’s day. In the latest issue it has at last recognised what most have always known, that race and culture should be de-coupled.

For decades we were assured that differences of language, custom, values, religion didn’t matter as these were part of the varied tapestry of life which enriched us all. To disagree with the progressive mantra that all cultures were equally valuable was to invite accusations of racism; and by implication be associated with some of the most horrendous crimes in modern history.

Race and culture are not the same thing as any examination of cultural history, anthropology, or religion would testify. To entwine race and culture and say or imply that to ask for a degree of cultural uniformity is to demand the dominance of a single race is to propagate a pernicious lie.

Once race and culture are decoupled we then can acknowledge that not all cultures are to be valued equally or can co-exist amicably. We are able to enjoy the varied cultural expression available in Britain today, from Caribbean carnival to Chinese New Year. Fireworks, loud music and gaudy costumes, what’s not to like? However, what progressives are loath to admit is that not all cultural differences enhance our common life, that some cultural differences may actually endanger our common life.

The forced marriage of teenagers to their cousins is not racial it is cultural. Genital mutilation of young girls is not racial it is cultural. The creation of ghettos in the UK where women are still unable to speak English despite living here for decades is not racial it is cultural. How, in the name of diversity, can we bend over backwards to accommodate those who refuse to recognise diversity?

It is not even religion which demands such conduct. Islam, whilst it demands appalling punishments such as the death of apostates, does not require the activities outlined above.

Ordinary folk have been aware for years that cultural activities such as these have no place in any society with pretentions to being enlightened. Now our progressive intellectuals are beginning to acknowledge reality.

There are certain cultural expressions we have valued, the Bible, Greek philosophy, Roman law, Shakespearian drama and the novel as a literary form are a few. We do not value these out of cultural imperialism as the products of dead white males. We value them (and should teach them in our schools) because they are the cultural expressions which have shaped our society, they give us a common identity.

Every society depends upon a shared culture and set of values. We don’t all need to have the same faith, I wish everyone was a Christian but acknowledge that all stand before God as freely responsible individuals. If someone wishes to celebrate Hanukah, Eid, Wesak or even the Winter Festival beloved of secularists, let them get on with it and enjoy themselves. As long as they don’t frighten the horses, and I can tell them about Jesus.

We do though require certain customs and values to be shared if society is to cohere. We have a shared language, a shared set of moral values, a legal inheritance built upon shared ideals. Britain has been shaped by the values drawn from Scripture. Christianity tells us to love one’s neighbour, that strangers and family deserve equal standing before the law, equal respect for their freedom and privacy. We have not always done this terribly well but to deny this is to allow ideology to blind us to reality.

A Social Attitudes survey recently concluded that Sikh and Hindu immigrants wish to uphold those very values progressives wish to discard and which are consequently disappearing fast from the British landscape. Hard work, aspiration, diligence, education and family life are what they value. At the same time they abhor the degradation and moral squalor fast becoming accepted features of our modern urban landscape.

Sikhs and Hindus are able to remain Sikhs and Hindus whilst making a valuable and welcome contribution to British society. They are doing what countless immigrants have done throughout centuries, they have entered into our culture.

Unfortunately this wasn’t enough for the multiculturalists. They demanded we make room for opposing cultures alongside our own and that  aspects of ours be discarded in order to make room for others. This is a recipe for cultural conflict and progressive muticulturalists should be ashamed of all they have done to foster the BNP.

If immigrants come it is not primarily to enrich the host nation’s culture, but because either politically or economically they felt disadvantaged in their home culture. The host culture has advantages for all, usually as a result of the ways in which it differs from their previous culture. They gain by immigration. For gain there is cost.  The cost for the immigrant is to accept the values of the host.

That’s What Worries The Marines

Sorry, I couldn’t resist this.

Reaction to the repeal of DADT (Don’t Ask Don’t Tell) legislation in the US Senate which allows homosexuals to serve openly in the US military has its interesting aspects.

Pfc. Alex Tuck, a 19-year-old from Birmingham, Alabama., a Marine serving at Camp Geiger, speaking to the New York Times said he had no doubt that gay Marines would not only perform well in combat but would also be accepted by a vast majority of Marines.

“Showers will be awkward,” Private Tuck said, expressing a worry mentioned by just about every Marine interviewed. “But as long as a guy can hold his own and protect my back, it won’t matter if he is gay.”

Alex; that is just what worries many Marines.

The Nativity

I watched the first episode of The Nativity last night on BBC 1, well it made a change from the increasingly dreary and magazine-like Channel 4 News. It is difficult to bring freshness to a story so well known and Tony Jordan the scriptwriter has managed this well. The Nativity was sensitively written, well cast and acted, and a gently moving rendition of the story. If you missed the first episode the second is on tonight at 7.00 pm.

The preview of the series in The Times by David J Chater told us that the story is “a timeless love story between Joseph and Mary.” It seems that Tatiana Maslany, the actress who plays Mary, thinks “It isn’t so much about belief in God but the enduring power of love.” An understanding of the story which seems to avoid the best biblical summation of the nativity, John 3:16. It does not, however, detract from an affecting interpretation of Mary.

However, even more intriguing is Chater’s description of the origins of the story. To quote Chater “The Nativity was adapted by Tony Jordan (of Life on Mars fame) from an original story in the Bible.”

That he assumes that readers of The Times need to be told that the “original story” of the nativity comes from the Bible tells us something about either the TV critic of The Times as a representative of our media interpreters, or something about the readers of The Times as representatives of our ruling establishment. Or perhaps it tells us something about both.

It does tell us something about the failure of the Church in the UK. It indicates that we have allowed ourselves to be pushed so far to the cultural margins that it is assumed that even supposedly educated people have to be told that the story of the birth of our Lord and Saviour comes from the Bible.

Don’t allow my comments regarding Chater to put you off the programme itself. The first episode of this dramatisation was so good it bodes well for the rest of the series to be broadcast each evening until Thursday. Give Jon Snow a rest a yourselves a treat.

Freedom of Information

A Crusader For Open Information - Except For His Own

Unfortunately I can’t get worked up about Wikileaks, the leaks themselves and the celebrity posturing around Julian Assange are just too amusing.

The leaks are hardly the stuff of vital public interest which might cause empires to topple. Nations spy on each other, diplomats think Ghadaffi is a few sandwiches short of a picnic, this is news? If so it has about the same impact as the rumours that Benedict XVI is thinking of coming out in support of the Roman Catholic church.

The bail hearing for Assange on Thursday produced one of the classics of unintentional satire when his lawyers asked that when released on bail his address be kept secret. This is hardly surprising given that it is also an attitude prevalent amongst his supporters. Jemima Khan who put up part of his bail, is no stranger to the courts. She has been there demanding a gagging order to prevent release of information regarding her own private life.

The Wikileakers and their celebrity supporters believe in the completely free availability of information, except when it is information regarding themselves. If Assange thinks that information which keeps him secure should be kept confidential then why does he think that information which the American government thinks keeps their nation and its people secure should be broadcast to the world?

Even Alastair Campbell has been moved to point out how the Wikileaks team have ‘spun’ the release of their stolen information. How bad do you have to be before Alastair Campbell notices the hypocrisy of tightly controlling the release of information with regard to the tight control of the release of information?

The barely veiled threat last night from Assange that he has only released about 2000 of the quarter million stolen documents does little to help his reputation for openness. “Back off or I’ll release even more of the material I’m keeping secret.”

Then there is a group currently hacking into those corporations denying services to Wikileaks because “We now know that Visa, Mastercard, Paypal and others are instruments of US foreign policy.” And what do these crusaders for freedom of information call themselves? “Anonymous.”

There is something about their attachment to conspiracy theories which makes me suspect that the Wikileakers own a lot of anoraks. Even Assange’s solicitor claimed in court that the charges of sexual assault were the result of a “vendetta by the Swedes.”

Perhaps all this is why the star struck Jemima Khan sees Assange as “the new Jason Bourne.” That’s it, our boy is now hiding out in a safe house in a Suffolk mansion checking the action of his .4 calibre Glock 24, and making sure his numerous passports are in order as he prepares to go back into deadly danger to face the evil machinations of those dastardly freedom hating Swedes.

Assange and his celebrity supporters such as Ken Loach, John Pilger and Michael Moore have one thing in common, an anti-American animus. Wikileaks have not mounted an assault on closed government they have mounted an assault on the American government and its foreign policy. If that is their position fine, that is their perrogative and it is a view shared by many, but why not be open and honest about it. Or is that demanding too much freedom of information?

Their basic anti-American stance has led to the distorted response of his supporters with regard to the sexual assault charges; any opponent of the American government cannot possibly be guilty of wrongdoing. Mostly we would be appalled if someone was declared guilty of any criminal charge merely because of his or her political opinions. Why then do so many declare Assange innocent of the charges basically because of his political opinions? Ultimately because he is fashionably anti-American.

I have no idea whether Assange is guilty of the charges or innocent, although I do suspect that at most he is guilty of sexual adventurism and callous disregard for women whom he apparently sees as sexual objects to be used and discarded. However, to witness the parade of feminist celebrities such as Naomi Wolf proclaiming that she “has a hunch” that he didn’t do it does go a long way to tarnish the amusement factor. Was it not such feminists who redefined messy sexual encounters as sexual assault or rape by ever predatory men? The sight of feminist icons now dismissing sexual assault charges as false based on the political views of the accused is somewhat unappealing.

I suppose I have to come to a conclusion. It is simply that if Wikileaks and their celebrity supporters claim to be championing an open society they should practice openness. Fighting for truth takes you wherever truth leads and demands that wrong be confronted, especially when that wrong is your own.

Feminist Fellow Travellers

George Orwell is an uncomfortable writer for progressives. The problem is that as a thinking left winger he was just too clear sighted to follow party lines. Orwell trenchantly criticised the right, for which he was lauded; he also trenchantly criticised the left, for which he was excoriated.

Animal Farm was rejected by many left wing publishers because it was so devastatingly anti-Stalinist. The publication of 1984, like Homage to Catalonia, was greeted with vitriolic reviews from left wing publications, and for the same reason. The reaction was “ We should overlook any slight deficiencies or teething pains in implementing the communist utopia. After all, Stalin and his fellow strivers for peace criticise the same Western democracies we criticise.”

Which was a fair reaction, much of Orwell’s work was about left wing dictatorships supported by liberal fellow travellers. More importantly it was also about any dictatorship, any movement or power which crushed the spirit of people and made them into obedient puppets of the state. Animal Farm has been banned in such bastions of freedom as Nkrumah’s Ghana, Kenya and the United Arab emirates.

One of Orwell’s most famous lines is found in 1984: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” If he were around today there are enough vicious dictatorships to keep Orwell’s pen busy, and no doubt progressives would still only be concerned when his writing could be seen to apply to their favoured causes.

Fascism is alive and well today, and being apologised for by left wing extremists. From George Galloway praising Saddam’s “indefatigability,” to Cambridge don Priyamvada Gopal writing in the Guardian claiming Afghan women would actually be worse off in a liberal democracy, they line up to fawn over Islamic fascism.

The boot still stamps on the human face, today the boot is still a policeman’s but the face is most likely that of a woman living in the Arab world.

The linked video is disturbing. It depicts a laughing Sudanese policeman brutally whipping a terrified woman. He is then joined by a second policeman who apparently wants to be filmed also. What crime has the woman committed to deserve such a vicious public punishment? It is reported that she has contravened the Islamic Legal Code of Sudan. She has worn trousers. Yet Western feminists continue to refuse to condemn the treatment of their sisters under Islamic domination.

Tariq Ramadan, poster boy for ‘modern’ Islam, is opposed to an outright ban on stoning women for adultery. Instead the Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University reckons there should be a moratorium whilst Islam jurists discuss the matter. This stance, reiterated during a public meeting at the Cooper Union in New York earlier this year, was supported by one of America’s leading feminist intellectuals Joan Wallach Scott.

New Yorker staffer George Packer, himself a progressive, reports her response to Ramadan thus: “Her answer came in two parts: first, she said, the whole question is just a distraction from the plight of unemployed Muslims in Europe. Second, who are we to criticize? Let them work things out according to their religion.”

For a moment try to imagine the furore in the progressive media if a black professor had said in a public forum that to condemn or even discuss Ku Klux Klan activities was a distraction from the plight of unemployed white bigots in the northern states and that we shouldn’t criticise the KKK but rather allow them to work things out according to their own beliefs.

Wherever Islam has power we find the subjugation of women. In Afghanistan Bibi Aisha a beautiful 18 year old girl was tried by a Taliban court and horribly disfigured. Her crime? Abandoning an abusive husband she was forced to marry when she was fourteen.

The plethora of ‘honour’ killings where young women are murdered because they have fallen in love with the wrong man, whilst not enjoined by the Koran, are indicative of the type of attitude towards women bred by those who teach and practice Islam in much of the world today.

George Orwell saw clearly that dictatorship was the great threat to his generation. Fascistic Islam is the greatest threat facing our generation. Unfortunately today, as in the past, we find supposedly enlightened progressives siding with, defending and apologising for the violent bullies.

Spot The Idiot

Please don’t think I have any personal animus against actors or those who work in the entertainment and cultural industry, it’s just that these sectors tend to contribute more than their fair share of idiots to the common pool.

Aaron Sorkin screenwriter of West Wing recently described Sarah Palin as an ‘idiot.’ She may well be, but I doubt that anyone subjected to such an onslaught of vitriol by the media over every slip of the tongue would emerge as a shining intellect. Obama apparently thinks that in Austria they speak Austrian – but that didn’t get wall to wall coverage. However, it is not Palin or Obama who interest me, it is Sorkin.

In the Huffington Post last week he wrote a column attacking Palin for a segment of her TV series Sarah Palin’s Alaska. He opened by quoting Palin on the hypocrisy of meat eaters who condemn those who hunt for food. His brilliant response was: “You’re right, Sarah, we’ll all just go f*** ourselves now.”

This non-sequitur was the intellectual pinnacle of the column. Most use expletives at some time or another, usually in uncontrolled outbursts, hammers and thumbs come to mind. It takes either the grossly undereducated or the cultural media elite to use them as a normal part of public discourse.

Although in the programme Palin made it clear that she was hunting for food Sorkin was of the opinion that she had committed an act of torture and murder.

To quote Sorkin:

“I don’t relish the idea of torturing animals.”

“I don’t watch snuff films and you [Palin] make them.”

“I get happy every time one of you faux-macho s***heads accidentally shoots another one of you in the face.”

“Sarah Palin is deranged.”

At this point I should admit that I don’t eat meat. Not from theological or moral conviction, I avoid meat simply on health grounds. I have found that I feel healthier not eating meat, it’s a purely personal decision. I have no problem wearing leather shoes or woolly jumpers, and if moleskin trousers were made from the skins of genuine moles that wouldn’t be a problem either.

Sorkin eats meat and wears leather. He does this despite knowing that in the West it is easy to eat a healthy meat free diet. He chooses to eat meat because he enjoys doing so. Nothing wrong with that. But what it means is that he is morally content with paying an abattoir worker to kill sentient animals for his sheer pleasure in eating their meat. However, when Sarah Palin kills a caribou with the intent of eating it’s meat he labels her a ‘torturer’ and ‘murderer.’

Now I’m a teuchter (country boy/yokel/redneck) and have a pretty good idea of how animals are raised, which is mostly humanely. I also have a pretty good idea of how they are slaughtered, which can be horrific, and the animals know it. Given the alternatives of factory farming and a trip to a massive abattoir where they are herded with other terrified animals to be slaughtered, and a free life in the wild to be killed in an instant without fear, which do you think preferable in a civilised society?

If there is any ‘torture’ involved in meat eating it is more likely to be in the production of the beef and chickens at our local butchers or Tesco.

‘Murder’ is a term we use for the deliberate killing of an innocent human being. If, like Sorkin, we apply the term to animals that makes him, as a meat eater, a mass murderer. It also trivialises the actual murder of human beings.

Only a bigot could compare film of Palin shooting a caribou to a ‘snuff film.’ You have to be beyond the verge of derangement to compare an innocent person hunting meat for the larder with film of the murder of a human being for the sexual satisfaction of sadistic perverts. Sorkin is apparently moved to anguish by the clean kill of a caribou but is ‘happy’ when a human hunter is accidentally shot. Who is deranged?

This ornament of the media elite who thinks Palin an ‘idiot’ is unable to discern a difference between hunting an animal for food, torturing an animal and murdering another human being. When we add to this the fact that he pays others to kill animals for him we find that he is not only intellectually challenged but that Palin is right, he is a hypocrite.

However, it is clear that he, and those who share his stance, are not concerned with reason or even with animals. They are so intent on attacking someone who portrays conventional tastes and principles that they are prepared to say anything in order to insult her.

Palin’s great crime is not that she is an ‘idiot,’ it is that she is reasonably normal and many people like her.

It is perfectly possible for people to disagree with Palin’s positions on various political issues. It is possible to think, as I do, that it would be a huge mistake for her to run for president in 2012. But what has she done to deserve such an outpouring of hatred? Has she ever done or said anything as infantile and morally repugnant as Sorokin’s bilious diatribe?

Our cultural and media elites live in a self-regarding social and moral bubble insulated from the world the rest of us inhabit. What most regard as irrational or immoral our intellectuals usually regard as a brilliant insight or courageous artistic expression. To compare shooting a caribou to torture, murder and a snuff film is, to most ordinary folk, the ranting of a deranged bigot.

Or perhaps to be charitable he is just a moral idiot.

Modern Chamberlains

So it’s happened in Sweden. A British educated radical Muslim has blown up a car, and himself, in yet another attempt to blindly murder Western citizens going about their business or pleasures. But why Sweden?

After the 2005 tube and bus attacks in London noted journalist Robert Fisk knew precisely where to put the blame for Islamic violence. Tony Blair had said that radical Islamists were attempting to destroy ‘all that we hold dear.’ Taking Osama bin Laden as his geopolitical guru Fisk responded:

‘To go on pretending that Britain’s enemies want to destroy “what we hold dear” encourages racism; what we are confronting here is a specific, direct, centralized attack on London as a result of a “war on terror” that Blair has locked us into. Just before the U.S. presidential elections, bin Laden asked: “Why do we not attack Sweden?” Lucky Sweden. No Osama bin Laden there. And no Tony Blair.’

Fisk seems to hold to the condescending, not to say racist, view that we really shouldn’t take what radical Muslims say seriously. They may condemn in the most forthright, not to say violent, terms much of what ‘we hold dear,’ things such as democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the emancipation of women, but we shouldn’t take what they say seriously. They may say that they want to murder Jews, homosexuals, apostates and basically just about anyone who disagrees with them, but hey, we shouldn’t take it to heart. Perhaps it’s just boyish exuberance and childish hyperbole.

Boys Will Be Boys

Instead of crediting them with being responsible adults who have a thought out ideology of their own Fisk and most ‘progressives’ with him patronisingly absolve them of responsibility by reckoning that slaughtering people going about their daily business is an understandable response to the provocations of the West.

When Western governments take security measures to protect their citizens this too is seen as a cause of reactive violence because it supposedly serves to ‘encourage racism’ by focussing on Muslims. The murderous riots which follow any perceived criticism of Islam are not violent childish hysteria but an outpouring of understandable anger following years of oppression.

According to Fisk and his fellow appeasers the foreign policy of the Western powers is what gives rise to Islamic violence, not the bare existence of our free culture.

Sweden, that most ‘progressive’ of democracies had given the family of Iraqi born Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly sanctuary. It’s government goes to extraordinary lengths to promote multi-culturalism and oppose racism. It is difficult to imagine a more tolerant Western democracy than Sweden. Nevertheless al-Abdaly thought that it’s citizens should be slaughtered and that he was the man for the job.

The truth is that fascist ideologies such as radical Islam have a visceral hatred for democracy and democratic values which are biblically based. That is enough for them. In the face of openly stated hatred for the West progressives follow a policy of appeasement and every time there is another outrage manage to place the blame on the victims.

Sweden has a few hundred soldiers in Afghanistan and its newspapers published drawings of Muhammed, those examples of freedom were enough to make them a target for indiscriminate murder. Unless we wish al-Qaida and the Taliban to make our foreign and cultural policies for us we need to take off our rose coloured spectacles.

Surely we who live in Western democracies should have learned that history teaches that appeasement of fascists just doesn’t work. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the progressives to wake up, it will take more than a few suicide bombers to make them rethink.