Kaplan's Thoughts

Disclaimer

2012-01-23T23:44:00.005Z

This blog isn't really a part of my life at the moment, which should be fairly obvious from looking at the dates of the most recent updates, but I realised that people might still find their way here and read this stuff long after I've written it. The traffic reports say at least a few people are every week. I thought it might therefore be good to point out that the posts, especially as you go further back, do not necessarily represent my current views, but rather my views at the time of writing. I have only ever edited them afterwards if it became apparent that they were poorly expressed; I have not sought to rewrite the history of my ideological development by altering the meaning of what I wished to say at the time. Who knows, maybe I'll be able to pick this up again after finishing my thesis in the spring.

I Want Him Back Before Ten, Young Man

2010-08-28T16:10:00.016+01:00

Social conservatives are often asked why they focus on gay marriage as a threat to the traditional family. Why don't they turn their fire on single parenthood or serial divorce, two much greater threats to the 'family values' that they care about so much? The implication is often that they are motivated to oppose gay marriage not so much out of genuine concern for the family as out of 'homophobic' bigotry.

'Homophobia,' like its sibling 'Islamophobia,' is an interesting term, and one that is similarly blatantly and persistently misused as a hammer against legitimate, or even illegitimate, but reasoned, critiques. There may actually be such a thing as genuine homophobia, although I have never encountered it in person. Presumably, a person exhibiting such a phobia would believe that you can get AIDS from touching 'a gay' or that they can turn your children gay by looking at them or something similarly irrational and ridiculous. Again, I have never encountered this sort of belief, but that's not to say it doesn't exist.

What I have encountered repeatedly is the term being thrown around with a wild abandon that it does not warrant, and one of the areas in which this happens is in highlighting the way social conservatives focus on gay marriage. This is not, usually, a manifestation of 'homophobic' bigotry. Social conservatives are, of course, also dead set against heterosexual threats to the family, in particular the encouragement and legitimisation of serial divorce and 'lifestyle' single parenthood. They simply believe that those battles are already lost, and that gay marriage is the only one of the three that they have a hope of stopping.

I, personally, have come to a somewhat different conclusion, both about the threat which homosexual marriage poses to the family and the extent to which the battles against serial divorce and single-parenthood-by-choice are lost causes. In fact, as far-fetched as this might sound to the seasoned culture-warrior, I have come to believe that the future of social conservatism lies in embracing homosexual marriage, and that this is a position of strength from which to strike at serial divorce and 'lifestyle' single-parenthood.

It seems clear to me, after much deliberation, that the chief hurdle to the acceptance of homosexuality by any social conservative who, like myself, is motivated not by the desire to impose God's law on others but out of simple concern for the stability and moral welfare of society, is not same-sex attraction or partnership per se, but rather the baggage that it carries with it from the sexual liberation movement.

This baggage is really of two types. The first, and by far the most straightforward, is the extreme promiscuity that has been associated with homosexuality not just from the first grand 'coming out,' as it were, of the modern homosexual-liberation movement, but also historically. This obviously has to do with the fact that embracing homosexuality has meant rejecting strictly Biblical morality. However, all people need to do to avoid extreme promiscuity following on from homosexuality as a matter of course is to realise there are more than strictly Biblical reasons to reject it, contributing as it does to the emotionally, mentally, and spiritually unhealthy divorcing of sexual activity from emotional investment and fulfilment, and, most damagingly, the degradation of people into objects. There is no reason why this should be any less true for homosexuals than for heterosexuals.

Promiscuity is very much a street-level consequence of the sexual revolution that can be dealt with in large part on a personal level, although there is some institutional encouragement of it that we could do without.

Much more difficult is the academic fallout, in the form of the insistence, derived from a particular strain of postmodern social theory known as 'queer theory,' that it is prejudiced and bigoted, not to mention mistaken, to even consider heterosexuality to be normal. Indeed, in the academic sphere, the acceptance of homosexuality has been tied up with the attempt to undermine the idea that any sort of relationship or sexual orientation can be considered 'normal,' much less that one should be held up as an ideal (or as such 'queer theorists' themselves might put it, with "the attempt to undermine the dominant heterosexist paradigm and the oppressive hegemony of binary conceptions of gender and orientation"). They even question the division into two basic sexes (that's the 'binary' bit). Essentially these theorists seek to subvert the idea that we we can or should treat anything--anything, even the idea that marriage is between two people--as normal. These are just some of the conclusions they have arrived at--to delve directly into the post-structuralist errors that fuel the discipline is beyond the scope of this piece. However, the reasonable fear of conservatives is that acceptance of homosexuality must necessarily entail the acceptance that our ideas of what is normal in terms of sexuality and gender roles are socially constructed, rather than biologically determined, and thus leaves an opening through which this pernicious 'queer theory' can insert itself into our national life, insisting that people abandon any sort of judgement about what sort of relationships or sexual practices are either proper or normal.

In the first year of my history course, we were forcibly acquainted with a number of the more theoretical and politicised approaches that have polluted the discipline in the last several decades. One of these approaches was gender history. Confusingly, and like so many of these approaches, it contains a useful corrective to previous historical practice smothered and overwhelmed by a mass of hostile, overextended theory and politicised rhetoric. In the case of gender history, it is useful indeed--not to mention fascinating--to examine how past societies came to construct their ideas of what it means to be masculine or feminine, as well of course to examine what those ideas were. No one who has studied the past, or other present societies for that matter, can have any doubt that different societies can have vastly different ideas about the proper roles of men and women. Analysing these is far from simple, because within these societies there are often many different acceptable archetypes for a masculine or feminine life, and these themselves are influenced or often subdivided by social status, location, or many other things. Then there is the further examination of to what extent the reality matched the societal ideal, which will not just be different across societies, but in the same society over time or across social class, and so on. It is interesting to note that homosexual attraction was sometimes integral to a society's conception of manhood. But this was not homosexuality as we understand it, as a distinct orientation, but rather as part of a normal, primarily heterosexual life, which would also include marriage and procreation.

In general, one of the great benefits of historical study is that it allows us to gain a greater understanding of what is specific to one time and place, including our own, and what tends to be constant across human societies and civilisations. By studying how people did things differently, moreover, we can learn what directions we might take our society in, and how some things which the more short-sighted take for granted as necessary or absolute are in fact transient or recent affectations. You can see how this might indeed undermine the very concept of normality and lead to to the subversive conclusions of queer theory detailed above.

Yet to embrace these conclusions is to be blind to the fact that determining something to be socially-constructed is not alone good reason to undermine and subvert it. As Burke argued, it is the hidden and unquestioned power relationships and taboos, what Gramsci would later term 'hegemony,' that keep society from devolving into a chaotic state, where the only thing that prevents violent disorder is not civil consensus, affection for countrymen and allegiance to cherished institutions, but simply fear of punishment. Speaking of the attempt by the revolutionaries in France to sweep away all the old attachments and superstitions that maintained civil society, Burke writes:

“...laws are to be supported only by their own terrors, and by the concern which each individual may find in them from his own private speculations, or can spare to them from his own private interests. In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows."

There was one gender historian we encountered, whose name unfortunately escapes me, and whom I have subsequently been unable to re-locate, who included in his introduction a caveat acknowledging that although he devoted great energy to analysing the structure of, in his case, the Tudor family, this did not necessarily constitute a critique. Indeed, his study equipped him rather to understand why these power relationships, however socially constructed, were needed for the maintenance of good order. At the time, I argued that the fact that he felt the need to include this caveat was a further indication of the overwhelmingly subversive orientation of his field. Yet he shows how politicised baggage may be shed even where it seems to be inextricably intertwined with prevailing thought.

For my part, I would point out that the study of history can shed light on how valuable some of our socially-constructed attitudes are. For example, it never ceases to amaze, and slightly scare me, how unique and fragile is the current western intellectual consensus and entente which condemns aggressive war, slavery, and genocide. These are things which the vast majority of societies throughout history were far more likely to celebrate than condemn, or simply regard as an unquestioned part of the human experience. This is to pick only the most vivid and striking example. On a more individual level, and one more directly relevant to the issue at hand, the idea that heterosexual marriage is first and foremost a loving partnership of equals, rather than an unequal and primarily economic, political, or procreatory relationship is very new indeed and still limited to only parts of the world. Does this mean our modern, western institution of loving partnership must be questioned and subverted?

I believe I have thus demonstrated that homosexuality can be divorced from both promiscuity and the genuinely and self-consciously subversive queer theory. I have shown that accepting that our masculine and feminine ideals are culturally-constructed does not mean we must accede to their subversion. Conservatives, at whom this argument is directed, will accept that these different masculine and feminine roles are vital to the proper functioning of society and particularly to the raising of children. That is something that, as a social conservative, I firmly believe. So how can I square that with endorsement of homosexual partnership, and with it the raising of children in homosexual couples?

The answer relies, as do so many of the answers, on probability, which allows us to make generalisations and subscribe to ideals without necessarily making judgements about any given individual.

Along with the belief that complementary masculine and feminine roles are vital to the functioning of society and the raising of children, it is also a tenet of conservatism that these male and female roles are not entirely social constructs but that men, on average, have a greater natural aptitude, on a biological level, for the male roles, just as women have, on average, a greater aptitude for the female roles. The key words here are 'on average.'

Men are, on average, stronger than women, for basic biological reasons. This is a statement that you would have to be crazy to deny. This makes your average man more suited for traditionally-male roles which require this ability. And yet this basic biological fact says nothing about the strength of any given man versus the strength of any given woman. And strength is only the most visible--the same is true of any other aspect where men and women biologically diverge. Establishing that women are, on the whole, more likely to be suited for the female role in the raising of children says nothing about whether any given woman is suitable for that role.

Feminists and the like need to understand that the biological nature of men and women means that given complete freedom to make our own lifestyle choices, there will be an uneven distribution of men and women in the roles society provides, and that this is not necessarily evidence of any sort of socially-constructed bias or current discrimination. But conservatives need to understand that men may not always fill the masculine role, and women may not always fill the feminine one. When gay couples successfully raise well-adjusted children, as they have been proven to do, this is necessarily the case.

The future I hope for, and intend to work towards, is one in which parents will raise their children to value stable, loving, committed sexual relationships of two complementary partners, constituted primarily for the raising of children, without any prejudice as to which combination of sexes comprise that relationship. It would be great if we could agree to call this marriage. When homosexuality loses its radical and subversive baggage, then will it really have come of age. Then it will reinforce, rather than threaten, the forces of morality and stability. For social conservatives, this is best result we could hope for, and I think it will ultimately strengthen, not weaken, the importance and centrality of the nuclear family in the raising of children.

In Your Own House

2010-08-28T16:06:00.006+01:00

Note: This was originally conceived as a short introduction to the following post, but both grew into their own distinct article

One of the recurring themes of this blog is how things that were once outlandish jokes all too quickly become dangerously close to reality. So it is with the oft-repeated quip that the way things are going, soon gay marriage will not just be permitted, but will be mandatory. This is a joke which is darkly muttered by some on the right, as well as being used by those on the left to mock the 'homophobic' fears of just such people. In its bumper sticker form, which, having grown up in Seattle, I am very familiar with, it goes, "Against gay marriage? Don't have one."

I can state with a reasonable amount of confidence that having a gay marriage will never be mandatory. But no one, absolutely no one, no matter how much of a religious-right stereotype, seriously fears that. That will remain, forever, a joke. What social conservatives really feared, and what has now become reality, is not that they will be forced into gay marriages themselves but that they will be forced to participate in the gay marriages of others. A Telegraph article from not too long ago reveals how two Christian registrars are being subject to an investigation not because they turned down gay couples, as did a previous registrar who made headlines, but because, by privately arranging to swap shifts with other workers, they contrived, without turning down a single couple or making any sort of a scene, to avoid having to personally register gay partnerships.

This seems to be to be the epitome of quiet tolerance, the very most they could do to accommodate both their own beliefs and the acknowledged rights of gay couples. And yet they were reported--denounced, really, in the finest Maoist tradition--at an 'equality seminar.'

This goes beyond the public sector. This article demonstrates how licensing laws have allowed the government to intrude on private business, even those run out of people's homes. And that is hardly the end of it. There need not even be the remotest government connection for 'civil rights' groups to reach out and try to stamp on Christians' exercising of their religious conscience wherever they find it, as was revealed in this disgraceful episode.

I have long believed that while anti-discrimination laws are vital to the fair and equitable operation of the public sector, they have no place in the private sector, which should be an arena for free choice, both the free choice of the business to serve and employ who they like, for whatever reason, and the free choice of the consumer to buy or boycott as they please. What these activists seem to forget is that the wonderful institution of the free market has this as a built in remedy. One of the very first articles I wrote on this blog was about how the boycott is the heart and soul of capitalism, allowing us to make our commercial choices not just on financial, but also moral grounds. If people remembered this, rather than always looking to legal action as a first option, society would be much, much better off. Unfortunately, a lawsuit for discrimination is often an easy way to turn your 'hurt feelings' into cash (I was shocked, although I really shouldn't have been, when I first found out that damages were actually awarded for 'injury to feelings'), while a boycott requires self-discipline and occasional sacrifice. It is clear which one most people will chose, especially because of the self-righteousness of a lot of the people who bring these lawsuits, finding it insufferable that there are simple householders somewhere who dare to disagree with them and their enlightened progressivism.

It is for this reason that, as in so many areas, the law needs not so much to step in to protect people as to step out. Remove the easy pay-offs for discrimination from private business owners and householders. The fact of the matter is that as objectionable as you may find it, private citizens should be allowed to be as bigoted as they please on their own time, on their own property, and with their own money, just as long as they are prepared to suffer the economic and social consequences of doing so.

Stay tuned for part two

In The 1930s, Would He Be Accusing Us Of Fasciophobia?

2010-08-19T10:50:00.013+01:00

I've got a couple other topics that I intended to talk about today, but the rantings of this unbearably pompous plastic-haired idiot demand a response. Although I am, as a rule, generally in favour of pomposity, being a determined practitioner myself, such overwhelming arrogance coming from such an intellectual peasant (hah! We'll see who's more pompous now, Olbermann; beat that phrase for arrogance) so prominently and disingenuously displaying his ignorance grates like nothing I have ever seen before.

I am not even talking here about Olbermann's embracing of that unhistorical myth of Tolerant Islamic Spain, which does not become any more true no matter how many times or with however much certainty it is repeated, or his emotive and--again--academically-wanting evocation of how this beacon of tolerance--actually more like the American South under Jim Crow, at best--was under attack from the mean and nasty Christians.

What I am talking about in particular is this infuriating and patently ridiculous comparison of those who oppose the fascistic aims of the jihadists today to those who supported Nazism in the 1930s. It is as if Olbermann had stood up against those who protested against Hitler and accused them of dangerous intolerance and fasciophobia. The support of the Islamist movement not just for fascistic and genocidal aims but actually for the moustachioed man himself (at 1:35 in this video clip and also here) should leave no doubt as to which side of the debate today's true anti-fascists are located.

Although I personally find it doubtful, it is just possible that Imam Faisal and his Cordoba Initiative are genuinely committed to interfaith dialogue, peace, and coexistence. If that is indeed the case, they are guilty of nothing more than incredible tastelessness and a massive misjudgement of the American public, many of whom, entirely understandably, view this as an act of Islamic triumphalism. If any of Faisal's numerous purported links to the Muslim Brotherhood are genuine, Americans are correct to view it as such. It is also doubtful that the Middle Eastern money which is being donated to build this Islamic Centre is being donated in the name of 'interfaith dialogue.'

The fact is that as frustrating as it might be to any Muslims who mean only good, non-Muslims have earned the right to be suspicious of possible duplicity and doublespeak. For example, there is no question that every Muslim in the world is in agreement that Islam forbids the killing of innocent people, and will state that outright. But some will, when pressed, point out that (to showcase one particular way this can be reasoned), as they understand it, if you are not a Muslim, you have committed a crime against God, and are therefore 'guilty' as in this infamous video of a similarly infamous individual. Obviously, this need to clarify will be frustrating and possibly seem insulting to any Muslim who genuinely believes that Islam forbids the killing of innocent people as we define them in the modern West, but the need for such clarity has been proven time and time again as Islamic scholars who Western governments and organisations have held up as moderate voices have time and time again been revealed to support everything from outright terrorism to the imposition, even if through political means, of oppressive Islamic law.

Imam Faisal himself, the mastermind of the project at issue, warrants further scrutiny, if nothing else, for the claims he has made about the U.S. government's responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, and his refusal to take the very basic step of condemning Hamas, an organisation whose founding documents, available here (scroll down for the full text), state quite clearly that their movement renounces forever any accommodation or even dialogue with Israel, and endorses the idea that the 'Zionist' plan is to conquer the whole Middle East, as set out, so they say, in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious anti-Semitic forgery which also details how the Jews drink the blood of non-Jewish children. This is not just some museum relic either, irrelevant to the Hamas of today. Hamas-produced children's TV programmes regularly educate the young on the need to kill all the Jews--not the Zionists, or the Israelis, or any other thing that would give them at least the option of arguing that it was a political message rather than a call to religious genocide of the people that the Hamas Channel (Al-Aqsa TV) refers to as 'the enemies of Allah' and 'apes and pigs.'

Condemning Hamas would seem to be the very basic first step for anyone who wants to work on dialogue and coexistence in that troubled region, as Imam Faisal has said he wishes to do.

From my personal study of Islam, in particular what it says about how to treat unbelievers, I find it hard to believe that people are capable of taking a positive message of peace, tolerance, respect, and coexistence out of either the Qu'ran itself or the example of Mohammed. However, I am willing to accept that some people do. I can hardly doubt it, having met a few of them in person, and having read pieces by a number of others. Far be it from me to attempt to dissuade them from this admirable conclusion. But what they, and a large number of non-Muslim leftists, need to realise, is that a whole lot of Muslims--almost certainly the majority of Muslim men world-wide, if not of women or those in the Western world--don't seem to agree with them, whether that be the wild-eyed Jihadi in a cave plotting to blow up a disco, or the generally decent man in Riyadh, who goes to work every day, cares about his duty as a husband and father, wants only the best for his family just like billions of people around the world do, and who nevertheless, in the same way that we take for granted the most basic things, such as that race is irrelevant to moral worth or that we won't be arrested for reading a newspaper, takes for granted the most basic things, such as that according to Islam the Jews are hated by God and that it would be completely unacceptable for his wife to leave the house without a male relative accompanying her. Just as it is unthinkable to us that we would prohibit someone by law from converting to Islam, so it is unthinkable to him that someone would be allowed to convert from Islam.

If even the majority of Muslims do not agree that Islam is a peaceful, tolerant, respectful, freedom-loving faith, as we understand those concepts in the West, how can non-Muslims be expected to conclude that it is those things? Sure, all Muslims are in agreement that Islam is good, but that is different from agreeing that it is something that non-Muslims would consider to be good and would be happy to welcome into their countries. Of the billion Muslims who praise Islamic tolerance, most will, by 'tolerance' mean that people of other religions are allowed to practice their religion under Islamic rule, provided they pay the jizya, don't proselytise, keep a suitably low profile, and otherwise humble themselves before Muslims, as it was in the 'Golden Age' of Islamic Spain. To them, this is as it should be, because although a limited tolerance is good, Islam, as the truth, should reign supreme. This however, is not the 'tolerance' that we praise and respect in the West, or mean when when we use the word.

Like it or not, and any truly moderate Muslim will not like it one bit, the actions of the al-Qaida terrorists who destroyed the Twin Towers were not so far outside of normal, mainstream Islamic thinking, either currently, or historically. The particularly modern Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood and its siblings and offshoots may be a relatively new phenomenon, but the broader Jihad is not.

Ultimately, the Jihad, as perpetrated by the enemies of our freedom and our way of life, is very real, and it is something that lovers of that freedom need to stand against, whether they think it is a false Jihad that goes against the teachings of Islam, and thus must be opposed, or whether they think it is in the finest tradition of an evil religion, and thus must be opposed.

But it will do none of us any good, especially not Islamic moderates, to deny that what those moderates mean by Islam is very different from what a lot of very powerful, very vocal, very numerous Muslims across the world mean by Islam, and that it is this other Islam, the one that talks at its most radical about killing infidels, but even at its most mild about placing all other religions below Islam in an ostensibly multi-faith society, that most people, Muslim and non-Muslim, are acquainted with, and that when a Muslim or a non-Muslim refers to 'Islam,' it is to this thoroughly unpleasant ideology, not to Islam as the genuine moderates understand it, that he is almost certainly referring. If moderate, or as the moderates themselves would put it, 'true' Islam, is to be welcomed in the West, it is not just Westerners that will have to be told about it, shown it, convinced of its status as the authentic form of the religion, it is, above all, Muslims.

Until they are convinced, there is not much point in the moderates trying to convince non-Muslim Westerners that the Muslim Brotherhood and their varied ilk do not represent Islam--there are too many Muslims willing to contradict them.

I'm Back! And The World Is Still Infuriating

2010-08-09T07:25:00.020+01:00

It's interesting the sorts of things that can and cannot spur one to action, action being, in my case, the action of writing down words. This blog, intended as an archive for my musings and a vent for my outrage, has lain dormant for almost a year. I assure you that this has not been due to a lack of opinions, informed and otherwise, on my part, regarding all these tiresome events with which our world seems to be plagued.

I suppose what happened was that, in devoting my energies to other activities, I fell out of the habit of writing here. After I had gone a couple months, and missed commenting on some significant developments, it seemed inapropriate to recommence on a minor note. Instead, I felt that it was important to come back strong with a major observation on something of importance: the nature of the political spectrum, the concept of racism, the Clash of Civilisations, or something similarly weighty. All of these aforementioned 'major' articles exist in a changing variety of draft forms, have for the past year or so, and may do so for quite some time.

Because of this unfortunate trap, gradually the entire year slipped away. I even missed the general election, which, looking back, might have made for a suitably major reintroduction. The problem was that each individual election outrage was itself minor, and thus did not seem to be appropriate for the grand re-entrance I desired. More on that travesty of an election, and the issues arising from it, in later posts.

What has finally drawn me back is not the brave new Age of Compromise (replacing the Age of Change), nor the continued antics of Bunglin' Barry and Sideshow Joe, but rather a positively infuriating sub-headline in the Telegraph, which reveals just how far we are from sanity in our tolerance--in the name of cultural sensitivity--of thoroughly barbaric foreign practices.

The sub-headline at issue features in the online version of the article titled "France's interior minister targets immigrants who practice polygamy," and reads:

France's lurch to the right continued after Brice Hortefeux, the country's interior minister, called for immigrants who practice polygamy or female genital mutilation to have their citizenship withdrawn.

Does it strike anyone else as odd that cracking down on polygamy and female genital mutilation is considered a lurch to the right? Of course it shouldn't seem odd, not really, not to anyone who has been paying attention to the way we ostensibly on the right of politics have become virtually the sole voice speaking against the greatest single threat to personal--including sexual--freedom, in the world, the global Jihad.

This particular article emphasises more than anything not so much the threat to native Westerners but rather how the left has particularly thrown immigrant women under the bus in the name of 'tolerance' and 'cultural sensitivity,' terms whose bland cheerfulness seems increasingly obscene as you realise the types of activities they excuse. The feminist and sexual liberation movements, to their enduring shame, while spending an inordinate amount of resources picking up on the slightest, often invented, hints of sexism in mainstream Western society, have acquiesced in the locking out from the barest semblance of freedom and equality a significant and ever-increasing minority of women, who are forced to live under medieval laws, right here, in our own countries, with the connivance of the institutional left.

This goes even beyond the idiocy and cognitive dissonance involved when leftists advocate for their executioners abroad, such as in the case of the self-parody of an organisation which goes by the name Queers for Palestine, a place where gays are persecuted and killed with the force of law and broad social sanction. But advocating for their executioners here marks a new and dangerous low. Again and again, I have been shocked at how quickly outrageous parodies become commonplace news stories. This article, "ACLU defends Nazis' right to burn down ACLU headquarters" is one of my favourite articles from the satirical newspaper The Onion. Obviously, it's way over the top. But in the general gist, it captures perfectly and frighteningly how the left deals with the Jihadist threat. We must tolerate those who have not the slightest tolerance for us, our values, and our way of life, and increasingly, as with the disgusting phenomena of 'honour' killing and female genital mutilation, we are asked to tolerate not just hostility, but real, measurable harm done to our fellow citizens.

The left doesn't yet act as if the terrorists' rights to blow up our buses supersedes our right to life. But they dance frighteningly close to the idea that a man's right to murder his daughter for wanting to exercise her Western freedoms supersedes not just her right to do so, but also her right to life. That is the sort of thing you might laugh at in The Onion, but when you then see it on the BBC, it stops being funny pretty damn quickly.

Now It's News?

2009-08-26T20:54:00.006+01:00

It seems to be a developing pattern in news commentary that all the nasty things that the left has been doing to conservatives and Republicans for years are "a worrying sign of debasement of political discourse in this country" only now that the ascendant Dems have had to face them themselves.

Take the complaints about speakers at these "town hall" meetings being shouted down. That sort of thing is uncivil, certainly, and being louder is no guarantee of being right. But lefties have been using volume, and in some cases force, rather than reason in the political arena for ages, and it was never even mentioned in the mainstream media with anything other than admiration for the spirit of those brave progressives. Now that Pelosi et al. have to face the same thing that they regularly unleashed on others, however, the whining is deafening.

In some cases you wonder if the writer denoucing this "new debasement" of discourse has actually had his head in the ground or is being deliberately misleading. This is the case with an article that I read just now in my cousin's local paper, "The Day" of New London in Connecticut. There are a number of things that really bother me about the article. First of all, the author--Tom Teepden--insists that he is taken aback by the comparasons of the president to Hitler currently popular among his opponents. After all, the Nazis represent an incalculable evil and the right should be ashamed of itself for bringing this into the nation's political discourse. In this sentiment he is joined by frequent star of this blog Leonard Pitts Jr., who has written a much similar column.

At first, the answer is obvious: Teepden must be deliberately sacrificing truth for his political goals. After all, there is no possible way that he could have missed the massive phenomenon of Bush/Hitler comparison. A number of choice sign examples are also available here (along with a lot of comparisons to Satan, although Churchill famously expressed ambivalence about which was worse). Or we have a lot of stuff like this, which all basically boil down to this.

I think it's safe to say that the "town hall" protesters aren't breaking any new ground here, if they're even doing it at all.

But some of the rest of what Teepden says leads me to believe that maybe he is genuinely so intellectually-challenged that he actually believes what he is saying. For example, take this comment from his article:

"For a while, this seemed puzzling. Just weeks ago any stab at universal medical coverage was denounced as socialist. Then suddenly health care reform was Nazism redux. But wasn't socialism always considered leftist and Nazism just about as far right as right could go?"

Is he actually citing the popular 21st Century conception of Nazism as an authority on the genuine content of Nazi ideology? It seems hard to believe, but I think he actually is. Of course, if he spent any time at all on the subject he would realise the innaplicability of the left-right political spectrum derived from the French Revolution to postmodernist ideologies such as Fascism, and that Nazism is composed of some elements that seem leftist, and some elements that seem rightist, but in reality has an intellectual genesis that is a revolt against that whole axis.

Instead of doing the most basic research, he chooses to to claim that:

"The Nazi Party was born and died a hard-right movement founded in, and run on, pathological anti-Semitism, racial purity and violence - a horrid Gotterdammerung of false gods preening. It was only the “national” in its name that ever counted."

This assessment--that part of it that can be deciphered into an intelligible thesis and isn't a confused Wagner reference--is so far from an accurate and complete description of Nazi ideology that it wouldn't even get him a good GCSE.

He does include a little blurb, gently worded and barely a few sentences long, which suggests that liberals (in the current American usage, I presume) might share a little of the blame for making Nazism a standard insult. In light of the links above, this is perhaps the understatement of the century.

It is easy to understand why the left, which has never been able to tolerate alternative viewpoints, should be in full panic mode when they finally become the target of mass public opposition. It is also clear why leftist columnists would try to paint their opponents as the creators of the uncivil discource that is their own great legacy.

The ongoing mystery is why papers give space to people who clearly have no clue what they are talking about.

This Man Confuses Me

2009-07-07T03:00:00.003+01:00

About a month ago I wrote quite unfavourably about Leonard Pitts Jr., a Miami Herald columnist who appears in my local Seattle Times. As I explained, some of his articles were so full of outrageous statements and twisted, backward thinking, that it gave the impression he was living in an alternate universe.

It was all the more confusing then that he subsequently came out with an article that was fantastic, not just because of the clarity of the writing, but because of the striking lucidity of the thinking and, above all, the demonstration of admirable priorities. Well aware that, in the wake of the most recent sex scandal to hit a high-profile politician, there would be plenty of people denouncing the scandalous behaviour itself, he chose to focus on something arguably even more important and certainly much neglected: the appalling substitution of 'mistake' for 'bad decision' in public apologies.

I cannot but admire a man who can look past infidelity, dishonesty, and hypocrisy, and get really angry about abuse of the English language. That man has his priorities straight.

In fact, the only really serous problem I have with this article is that the mob he proposes be formed to drag these politicians from the podium would be perhaps more profitably equipped with torches and pitchforks rather than the lanterns he suggests.

He does also seem to misdiagnose the reason why the roll of politicians caught with their pants down is conspicuously lacking female members. Rather than "arrogance, recklessness, self-delusion and lack of foresight" being common to men and not to women, it seems to me to be a more compelling explanation that is is more typically male to consider sex to be reward for success, as it has been for males since before people walked upright. Yet this is again a minor point when compared to the overwhelming justice of his outrage.

I wish I had written that article. All I can ask you to do is read it. And maybe help me figure out what's up with this guy.

'History' Revisions

2009-07-03T20:43:00.007+01:00

I may have to modify some of what I have said about my dear beloved subject of history, although mostly in terms of terminology rather than substance. I have previously declared, following the lead of Geoffrey Elton, that it is pernicious to think of the task of the historian in terms of creating, rather than discovering, history. In his book The Practice of History, he criticizes Carr for suggesting that history is what is written by historians.

Regrettably lacking an education in the classical languages, it had escaped me that of course 'history' derives not from a word meaning 'the past' but rather from one meaning 'enquiries.' This is something which I have doubtless read many times--now that I have gone back and looked it appears in the introdution to my copy of Herodotus--but it did not really sink in in terms of its application to the modern usage, not until I read it again just recently in Marwick's "The Nature of History." As he observes, in modern usage, 'history' can be used to mean simply 'the past,' to mean (to paraphrase him) 'the significant parts of the past that inform our understanding of the course of events,' or to mean 'writings which attempt to illuminate the past.' The third option is the original usage as employed by Herodotus.

If, keeping this in mind, we look again at Elton's claim, which I have echoed, we see that it is correct in sentiment but sloppily expressed with little regard for that most important step of defining your terms.

Using the original definition, the task of the historian is not to discover history but is indeed to write history, that is, to enquire into what happened in the past, and why it did (although a large part of this can indeed be discovering history--that written long ago). However, the important point remains that it is a process of discovery of unalterable facts. Nothing we do now can change what has already taken place. No amount of bias, misrepresentations, or shoddy scholarship can change the absolute truth of the events of the past. Past all the terminological clarification, this remains the heart of what I had tried to say previously. The practice of history must always be guided by the knowedge that there is one particular way that things happened, and it is our job not to search for the most useful version, the most interesting version, the most politically correct version, or any number of things other than the one which is actually the absolute unalterable truth.

Leonard Pitts's Alternate Reality

2009-06-19T18:01:00.014+01:00

I swear Leonard Pitts Jr. must be living in an alternate universe. This Miami Herald columnist, who appears regularly in my local paper (I'm back in Seattle for a bit), has come up with such an array of mind-bending statements in his last few columns that that seems to be the only possible explanation.

I initially noticed it in a piece which he opened with a number of quotes apparently demostrating the hate and bigotry still prevalent in America, which he then predicably goes on to denounce. They included one by a former NBA star saying "I hate gay people," and one from the infamous Jeremiah Wright talking about how the Jews were conspiring against him. He also brought up the messiah's new Supreme Court pick. That certainly makes sense. After all, she's quoted as saying that a Latina would be a better judge then a white man just because of her race and sex. That fits right into the bigotry parade.

But that's not what Pitts included. He included a quote about Sotomayor: "She's frightening, and she's racist." He then, as mentioned goes on to denounce them all as aspects of the same phenomenon.

That's right. Pitts chose not to equate bigotry with bigotry but rather to place in the same category as a man saying, "I hate gay people" a man speaking against racism from Sotomayor. What sort of inside-out world is this guy living in? On what planet does anti-racism equal racism?

It is ludicrously obfuscatory enough to claim that Republican opponents of various minority Democrats are only opposing them because of their race. We saw that with the O-tard's campaign partisans. We also know how full of shit that is, after the leaking of the Democratic memo which advised them to put special effort into opposing Bush's minority appointees so that people would not start associating Republicans with racial equality. But to claim now that opposition to Hispanic racism is racist? It boggles the mind.

Pitts lamented that the Holocaust Museum shooter "thought he was great because his skin was pale." But Sotomayor thinks she's great because her skin is sandy-coloured or whatever they call it these days. She said it flat out: because of it, she will come to better conclusions then us palees.

It gets even worse in the next column. In it he is defending his decision not to include David Letterman in his roll of bigotry for his joke about Sarah Palin's daughter getting raped. He displayes an epic disingenousness in making it through the whole column pretending that the outrage was because it was a joke about conservatives, and not because it was a joke about rape. Maybe on his faraway planet he doesn't know that all the big feminist organisation have sided with Palin on this one.

But the column gets even weirder. As he goes on about how conservatives see themselves as persecuted, we get this unbelievable paragraph:

"Your first thought is to reason them out of it, but it is notoriously hard to reason people out of victimology because it: a) feels good, b) demands deference, c) relieves them of any responsibility for their own fouled-up condition. Victimology is as addictive as crack -- and as mentally damaging."

Hold on a second. This is from a man whose entire career is based on being a black victim. Take a look at the opening of one of his other recent columns:

"I am your scapegoat. I am your boogeyman. Brown-skinned, kinky-haired, black man, me.
So I was not surprised (it was just another day at the office) last week when a white woman from suburban Philadelphia called police from her cellphone, claiming she had been locked in the trunk of a Cadillac by two black men. Nor was I shocked (it was just another day in the life) when police said Bonnie Sweeten was actually holed up in a luxury hotel at Walt Disney World, and there never was a kidnapping, much less by two black men.
I'm your scapegoat. I'm your boogeyman. So I'm used to these things."

The analysis of victimology is completely correct. It was a nice touch, likening it to crack. But it would be not crack but rather a serious hallucinogen that Pitts needs to be smoking to believe that the primary adherents to validation through victimhood are conservatives.

Hallucinogens, alternate universe, or distant planet: There's no other way he could come up with this stuff.

Barack Hussein Obama

2009-06-08T20:17:00.007+01:00

I have never been particularly moved by the new messiah's speeches to anything other than frustration and despair over the gullibility of those lapping them up. Furthermore, since his elevation to the world's highest office, it has become ever more clear that the rhetoric, often accurately described as trying to be all things to all people, bears little if any resemblance to what he will actually be doing. It is incorrect to say that there is no substance to the man, as there clearly is. Through his 'stimulus' plan he has pushed through a gigantic expansion of the welfare state, a massive windfall for leftist client groups, and substantial nationalisation, all quite consistent with a coherent socialist ideology. This will be the substance of Barack Obama's presidency, though his rhetoric has barely touched on it. I doubt we will see any set-piece speech setting out the case for socialism; most people will remain in the dark about the attempt to transform our republic into a European-style socialist disaster.

In contrast to his first few weeks when he "couldn't fake an interest" in foreign policy, Obama has been jetting around making bold pronouncements about America and its place in the world, especially in regard to Muslims. The main event was his appearance in Cairo, although his visit to Buchenwald should probably be seen as part of the same grand gesture.

I was not as upset by Barack Obama’s speech as I expected I would be. For its considerable length, it didn’t contain too many outrageous statements, and I was pleasantly surprised that he managed to declare that America has been a tremendous force for good in the world. The speech must not have been vetted by his wife. He also lifted a line from President Bush. You might remember Bush declaring that “Democracy is not America’s gift to the world, it is Almighty God’s gift to each and every one of us.” Barack Obama’s version was, "These are not just American ideas. They are human rights," which is essentially the same thing especially since, as we have established, ‘human rights’ is merely the new term for the inalienable rights endowed, according to the Declaration of Independence, by our Creator. Sure, he managed to attribute basically all of the innovations of classical antiquity, China, and pre-Islamic Persia to “Islam,” but the latter is so common among those whose experience with academia was largely an exercise in politically-correct indoctrination that I barely cringe anymore when I hear it. He did manage to correctly credit Arab scholars with the preservation of many works of classical Greek and Latin literature, which was fun because I just wrote about that in my Medieval Europe exam, but with that shotgun blast he could hardly have missed. I’m just glad he didn’t quote those Islamic ‘scholars’ who claim that Columbus encountered Arabic speakers among the Native Americans.

It’s not so much any particular statement that bothers me. Rather I have the overwhelming feeling that the whole thing is just part of a fundamentally incorrect approach. The left seems to hold two mutually exclusive positions in regard to the Muslim world. The first is that Muslims should not be expected to handle grown-up concepts such as democracy, free speech, tolerance, justice, etc. Either it will take an indeterminate amount of time for them to develop these things naturally, or perhaps they are not even the best system for Muslims. Maybe they want autocracy or theocracy. At the same time, leftists believe that we can talk to them as equal, reasonable, rational people. If only we make our case to people such as Ahmadinjihad in a respectful, logical manner, we can all get along.

These two attitudes originate in wildly different worldviews, and seem to have been welded together in the leftist mind with little regard for internal consistency. The first is a severely relativist viewpoint, which holds that there is no absolute truth, no best way of doing things. Democracy may be the best way for us, but it is not inherently superior to autocracy. We just don’t want that. But someone else might. We can’t judge other peoples’ cultures, as they are all equally valid.

The second, however, is a liberal viewpoint. Not ‘liberal’ as it is currently used in America as a synonym for ‘leftist,’ but classical Locke-style liberalism. It is universalist, holding that all humans have things fundamentally in common, and that we all share a fundamental rationality which bridges cultural difference. However, this means that that there is a single best way of organising human society (that which maximises freedom).

So which is it? If we can’t say that our way of freedom is better than their way of tyranny, we can’t assume that we have enough in common so that conversations will prove productive.

Although, as I have mentioned previously, I feel a certain affinity with classical liberal thought, I cannot wholeheartedly endorse the relevant position detailed above in this case. In part this is because of the few yet fundamental exceptions I take to the basic theory, but mainly it is because in dealing with the ‘Islamic world’ we are dealing with anything but a monolithic bloc. Obama spoke as if he was talking to a single group of people, all of whom have been expressing their genuine convictions over the past eight years. This is complete and utter lunacy. The countries and communities which make up the Islamic world are riven by a dozen different types of internal strife, and that number covers only the main fractures. Whether it is the struggle between autocratic regimes, Islamists, and student socialists, or the Iranian push for regional dominance, or centuries-old doctrinal conflict, or the fight to save secularism in Turkey, or even the continuation of tribal infighting which dates from before Mohammed started preaching, the place is being torn apart.

Who does Barack Hussein Obama, as he newly emphasised, think he’s speaking to? Is he trying to build bridges with Iran? The Saudis are going to have a problem with that. And who in Iran anyway? The regime? The student activists? He was speaking in Egypt, and mentioned that it is counterproductive for Israel to keep Gaza under siege. What does he think about the fact that the autocratic Egyptian government has been working with Israel to keep Hamas bottled up in Gaza because it is a division of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Iranian-backed Islamist group which has been trying to overthrow Mubarak in order to impose their own style of oppression on the Egyptians, who probably just want to be left alone? Sorting that out sounds sounds like a handful and is only the smallest taste of the seventeen-course banquet of Islamic internal rivalry.

And he can’t think that his overtures to whoever will be met with honesty and forthrightness. Ahmadinjihad may actually be the genuine nutcase he appears to be, but most of what the other heads of state say is more influenced by how they need to appear in order to keep on top of that seething mess than by what they actually think. And even if you convince them, good luck working for peace and coexistence with the inhabitants of countries where Arabic translations of Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are bestsellers.

This started out quite light-heartedly, but I’ve gotten more pessimistic the farther I’ve gone into this post, because that is the inevitable effect of spending any amount time delving into the situation in this region.

Obama is not actively working for the triumph of radical Islam in the region like Dhimmi Carter is now doing, but like Carter when he was president his blindess to the situation is giving time and room to maneuver to our enemies, and Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. No one sane wants that. The Arab governments really don't want that. His naivete in dealing with the Iranian regime must be absolutely terrifying to his host Mubarak who, as mentioned, is trying to combat Iran-backed terrorists in Egypt, and has described Egypt's border with Gaza as "our border with Iran."

By adressing 'the Islamic world' Obama is playing right into the hands of those who believe that the most fundamental division of humanity is between the Ummah and everyone else. If he doesn't recognise the real situation that faces us there, and keeps trying to juggle those two mutually-exclusive views mentioned above, he is not going to get anywhere. Meanwhile, Iran gets closer and closer to regional dominance, our 'allies' fund radicalisation across the west, and the populace keeps being educated in ignorance and hate. Yipee.

Celebrating Tragedy, Endorcing Degeneracy

2009-05-24T15:50:00.006+01:00

It's exam season at the University of London, and for the past few weeks, I've hardly been able to spare a thought for all the things going on in the world, being fully immersed in all the things that were going on in the world hundreds of years ago. For example, I know that something important and very violent is going on in Ceylon with the Tamil Tigers getting wiped out or something along those lines, but I really can't devote the time needed to come to an informed opinion. That naturally hasn't stopped my from forming an opinon, but not one that it is worth detailing here. However, I can do a pretty thorough analysis of the Indian Mutiny of 1857, if anyone is interested.

It is a particularly poor time to be out of the loop since there is so much going on at the moment, including the government's surrender over the Gurkha settlement issue and, more significantly, the massive expenses scandal engulfing Westminster, which is impossible to ignore, as it takes up about half of my morning newspaper. That said, I haven't felt particularly compelled to write about it, probably because absolutely everthing that can be said about it has already been said at least five times; just like after the budget only more so.

My exams aren't over yet--far from it--but I was forcibly dragged out of my happy sojourn in the distant past by a headline in today's Independent. There was no way I could ignore this. Apparently, next week has been designated Official Family Week. This is not the problem. The problem is that the Independent has decided to commemorate it with a 'celebration'--their words, not mine--of the non-traditional families of Britain. The paper featured profiles on a number of such families. One of them was a man whose wife had died shortly after the birth of their second child. That's not something to celebrate. It's a tragedy that he has been forced to raise his sons alone. It is a story of hope that he seems to have managed to raise them to be well-adjusted young men, as far as we know, but it was not presented that way. It was used to present single fatherhood as one of many equally 'valid' 'options.' It is obscene to put this unfortunate but apparently resiliant man in the same category as the single mother they featured, who has had four children by four different men as a shameful and degenerate 'lifestyle choice.' She claimed that, being from Jamaica, she understood that "it takes a village to raise a child" although apparently not a father. I suppose this is true to the extent that it takes a whole community of taxpayers to provide the benefits which fund her 'equally valid choice.'

Perhaps most sickening was the triumphant tone of the headline, proclaiming, "Nuclear Families? Not Us!" as if it was something to be proud of. You wonder if all of these people neccesarily even knew they were going to be used in such propaganda. The wistful comment of the man featured because he was juggling children from two failed relationships was, "Ideally I'd love to be in a traditional family and there's a bit of guilt that my sons don't have that, but the next best thing is for them to spend time together." Absolutely correct. But I suppose the Independent thinks he should drop this heteronormative bourgeoise prejudice and 'celebrate' his broken family.

Fountains of Idiocy

2009-05-03T19:18:00.017+01:00

In a recent seminar I, along with my fellow students, was challenged to come up with a list answering the question: "Why is Britain great?" This was a lighthearted approach to determining the reasons why Britain began to dominate the world stage toward the end of the period we were covering. Although it took me some time to get beyond the literal--that the 'great' in Great Britain is a reference to the island's unity--once I did I came up with quite a sizable list. I am, in general, quite a fan of this island. However I am also acquainted with its faults, some of which it shares with my native land, and some of which it does not. But every other stain on the good reputation of this country--the NHS, the Independent, SOAS--pales in comparison to the monuments to mind-numbing idiocy that are this country's sinks.

Why on earth would anyone design a sink with separate hot and cold taps? You can only hold your hands under one tap at a time. Either you get scalding hot water or useless cold water. I am reduced to trying to get all my washing done in the few seconds it takes for the hot water to get properly hot. If someone has used the sink before me and snatched that precious window, I must make the choice between boiling my fingers or not cleaning them properly.

The only even partially sensical reason I have heard for this moronic system is that you are intended to fill up the basin and scrub there. No one does this, mainly because it is unbelievably unhygienic in a public restroom, but it may also have something to do with the fact that most of the sinks so bitapped have no drain plugs.

As if that weren't bad enough, some absolute wanker has had the brilliant idea of combining this boneheaded system with another, that of the taps that must be continually held down in order to produce water. What sort of person would possibly think that it is acceptable to create a sink where you can only wash one hand at a time, and then combine it with a system where you can only have either extremely hot or extremely cold water?

Sometimes I swear they're just taking the piss. I was trying to use one of these impossible contraptions, and the management had handily provided hand-washing instructions, presumably for people who failed kindergarten. The illustration showed someone scrubbing his hands together. I understand how to wash my hands, you pricks! Apparently you don't because you have given me a sink where I need to use one hand to hold the tap down, and even if I didn't, I can't put my hands in that boiling water.

I don't know why people continue to make something so clearly idiotic when it would take the same effort and actually use fewer raw materials to craft a sink that one could actually use. It probably says something big and important about human nature or something, but I can't really be asked to figure out what it is. Too angry.

Can This Government Sink No Lower?

2009-04-25T15:06:00.004+01:00

The answer is that of course the curent Labour government will find a way to disgrace themselves even further. However, they have made a pretty good attempt at hitting rock bottom with their continued disdain for Gurkha veterans. Having been stymied in their attempt to prevent all Gurkhas who served before 1997 from settling in Britain by a High Court ruling, the government has made another attempt to exclude these valiant men, who--although they may have never set foot in Britain in their lives--are already far better Britons than any member of the government.

It makes especially little sense in light of the fact that people from Rhodesia, Ceylon, and other disloyal and ungrateful parts of the empire can just rock up, claim asylum, and expect that they and their descendents will be supported by the taxpayer unto the hundreth generation.

The government's new guidelines cruelly mock the Gurkhas by restricting settlement to those who have served for 20 years. The maximum a standard rifleman is allowed to serve is 15. This is in contrast to any other Commonwealth soldier, who only needs to serve 4 to be eligible for settlement.

The government claims that if all Gurkhas and their dependents were allowed to settle it would lead to a flood of 100,000 immigrants at a cost to the public purse of £1.5 billion. Tom says, and I agree with him, that they are a bargain at twice the price. An influx of loyal, hardworking citizens who have proved willing to fight and die for this country is a boon to this society, and may go some way towards counterbalancing the disaffected ethic enclaves that have sprung up thanks to appallingly lax immigration policy coupled with divisive 'multiculturalism.' It will also provide a ready pool of home-grown recruits to fill the ranks of the British army for the rest of its existence.

The real reason for the government's actions, as everyone knows, is not the unlikely idea that the Labour government is in any way apprehensive about spending billions of the taxpayers' pounds on growing the number of welfare dependents. Rather, they are afraid that this particular immigrant population might actually vote Tory. Since they have no respect whatsoever for military personnel and appear allergic to the concept of honour, it does not bother them at all to hang a huge number of this country's veterans out to dry for cheap and selfish political ends.

Things

2009-04-25T14:59:00.002+01:00

Some time ago, Auriol and I decided to tour Windsor Castle. The castle is fantastic, and I greatly reccomend a visit to anyone who happens to find himself in the southeast of England. Not only is it a magnificent and beautiful castle, but it is stuffed full of the most amazing collection of artefacts. It has cannons from pirate ships taken as prizes at sea, and the acoutrements of defeated eastern emperors. For those whose interests lie elsewhere, it has Queen Mary's doll house, which I'm told is quite spectacular by those so inclined, and a selection of paintings, sketches, and writings of which a number of pages from Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks are the highlight.

Despite all this, the thing in the Castle which made the biggest impression on us was a little ball of lead. They had there the actual bullet which killed Admiral Lord Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar.

Tom, a friend of ours who tends to be rather enthusiastic about military history, was nevertheless unimpressed. He put forward the view that all these artefacts are so much clutter and that what really matters from the past are the deeds and the ideas, or the creations which we still use, not the things behind glass cases.

This is a view to make the curator of any museum break down and cry. It certainly made me uncomfortable, having as I do a probably unhealthy attatchment to material items, not least my historical coin collection, and having plans to volunteer at museums in the near future. It also struck me as rather odd, since he adheres to a religion which tends to attach great meaning to physical objects, often much more meaning than they attach to the ideas.

Do these relics matter? Obviously they do to the extent that we can use them as evidence to discover things about the past. This is not disputed. The question is whether there is a purpose to keeping and displaying them for reasons other than academic study. Why museums instead of storehouses, especially when display might pose greater risk to the artefact than being locked away?

There are many possible reasons, but I would hold up one in particular as extremely important. The physical remnents of the past remind us like nothing else can of the solid reality of what came before. They confirm that history exists independent of any description of it; what happened really happened, and nothing we say or do can ever alter it. This is something which even the briefest exposure to historiographical debate can put one at risk of losing sight of. Historians are always revising and re-revising our view of the past, in the light of new or reinterpreted evidence. This is as it should be. However what must always underlay this is the absolute knowledge that the events of the past were real, and actually happened one specific way. The relics of the past keep us anchored to this notion, and serve as an all-important bulwark against the arrogant and harmful notion that 'history' is created by historians.

Budgets and Sandwiches

2009-04-24T17:31:00.009+01:00

There is not much that I can say about the budget that hasn't been said much better by Simon Heffer. The only flaw I can see is that he ends on an optimistic note, with a rare overly favourable comment about the prospect of a Cameron government. Since Osbourne has disavowed any intention to repeal the punitive and counterproductive new 50p tax band, there is less to look forward to under the Tories than Call Me Dave's admittedly stellar rejoinder to the budget suggests.

I intend to focus on a much more serious matter, from the same edition of the Telegraph in which can be found Heffer's commentary. I am reffering to the scandalously misleading article by some charachter called Harry Wallop (no joke) which appeared yesterday maligning the world's premier sandwich shop, Subway. These delicious, high quality, and pleasantly addictive sanwiches appear to have been the subject of a deliberate hatchet job.

The article purports to offer a comparison of the fat and salt content of sandwiches from several leading sandwich retailers, from purveyors of poncy excrement Prat a Manger to highly respectable sandwich crafters Subway. The chart shows the Subway sandwich as having the most fat and salt of all those tested. But something isn't right. All the other sandwiches tested were chicken, yet they've chosen to compare the Subway meatball marinara. No wonder it tests a little high when compared to chicken sandwiches. The Telegraph ought to be ashamed of itself for printing something this Independent-worthy.

The truly great thing about Subway is that you have complete control over what gets put in your sandwich. Store-bought sandwiches all come pre-packaged, usually with butter, mayonnaise, or cheese; sometimes all three. Most baguette shops are not much better, as the meat comes pre-soaked in immense quantities of mayonnaise. With Subway, you can do what I do, which is to get chicken or turkey, without cheese or mayonnaise. Or, you can do what the guy next to me in line yesterday did--ask for half the bottle of mayonnaise to be squeezed out over your already cheese-smothered bacon sandwich. It's up to you.

Perhaps the worst part of the article was the statement from Prat's unbelievably obnoxious spokesman speaking up after his company's fraudulent health claims had been exposed. In line with the outrageous pretentiousness of all Prat advertising, he actually claimed: "Prat customers are savvy and well-educated; they understand that good quality ingredients are nutritionally far superior to anything chemically-engineered." No, you insufferable twerp, Prat customers are easily-taken-in dolts who have fallen for your bullshit.

Down with Prat. Subway uber alles.

Seen To Be Done

2009-04-19T16:21:00.004+01:00

It is one of the basic principles of the legal system that justice must be done and justice must be seen to be done. This means that while partiality, impropriety, and other things that have no place in the judicial system must be avoided, the mere appearance of these things must be avoided as well in order to maintain public confidence. There is a similar principle in Judaism which, for example, would prohibit a Jew from going into a non-kosher restaurant, even to ask for a glass of water, because it looks wrong, and would lead people to believe that he was breaking the mitzvot. One of the most notable applications of this principle was the medieval prohibition on polygamy. One of the main reasons it was banned was that, although not intrinsically immoral, it would lead the Christians to believe that Jews were immoral. This was not a problem in Muslim lands, where Jews continued to practice polygamy until fairly recently.

Our politicians seem to have a firm grasp of the idea that justice must be seen to be done. What they cannot seem to understand is that in addition to this justice must also actually be done. Witness Gordon Brown's response to the uncovering of his plans to spread malicious rumours about senior Tories. He said that the most important thing is that "people believe that the utmost is being done to clean up government." No it isn't, you disingenuous fool! The most important thing is that government actually be cleaned up. The most important thing for one Gordon Brown may be that people believe government is being cleaned up, whether or not that is the case, but that's not something that people should let him get away with declaring to be the priority of the government. He's actually outright telling you he's planning to dupe you. Is anybody paying attention? Government ministers do this all the time. The execrable and downright incompetent Jaqui Smith is one of the worst offenders, always banging on about how everything must be done to "make people feel safe." That's all well and good, but how about actually making people safer, you twit? It's not much good if people feel safe to walk the streets, only to become the victim of a knife-wielding member of the criminal underclass whose 'lifestyle' the government is subsidising.

I don't actually know whether these people themselves actually realise what they are saying, and do in fact mean that the appearance is the most important thing, or if they are just too full of shit to even listen to what comes out of their own mouths.

Don't See This One

2009-04-10T16:50:00.011+01:00

Auriol has abandoned me with her mother, Fiona, for the week, which is fine because we get on quite well. Last night we went to see a small production at the local theatre. I glanced at the brochure before agreeing to go, and saw that it was a 'tragicomedy' about two people stuck in a rowboat: "sometimes funny, sometimes poignant." Sounded promising enough.

It was absolutely the most appallingly bad piece of theatre I have ever seen, and that includes the Hamlet where Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ran around in skeleton pajamas doing the robot (badly), Hamlet looked like he was in My Chemical Romance, and Ophelia had platinum dreads and a black tutu. That was the only play I've ever walked out of. The show last night, 'The River's Up,' was worse.

First off, the actors were saddled with two incredibly poorly-concieved characters, something that was not a problem with Hamlet. They were an old married couple living by the Severn near Worcester, the same place where their families had lived for generations, apparently. The writer had apparently been unwilling or unable to pin down their education level, so you got academic phrases alternating with or embedded into crude speech. In fact, it often seemed that they hadn't even developed coherent personalities for the characters, only voices. The actors didn't help, making sure that the conversation sounded as contrived and artificial as possible, helpfully waiting for the other one to finish his or her lines, and then a little longer, before making an interjection.

This was all evident before the end of the first half, which saw them stamping around the kitchen, unconvincingly bickering about how the river was rising. Eventually they went upstairs to sleep, waking up to find that the water was at the ceiling of the floor below. This apparently was not an emergency, as the woman, upon discovering this, made a cup of tea before waking the man. They ended the act with the man diving out the window to get the rowboat.

During the intermission, we had the chance to examine the brochure more closely. Oh dear. Apparently this play was about them "discovering the true consequences of global warming." Sure enough, the second act was them splashing around in the rowboat, realising the folly of their high-carbon lifestyle: "It's global warming, Tom. Why did we have to be so foolish? The warning signs were all around us. Did we really need to use all that petrol?" No joke. That's actually what she said. Cringe-inducing doesn't even begin to describe it. As they splashed around like idiots, the Malvern Hills, elevation about 1,300 ft., apparently disappeared under the water, less than 12 hours after the river had breached its banks. Remembering that even that world-class nutter Al Gore had only predicted a rise of 20 ft., simply omitting the bit where scientists said it would take place over several millenia, Fiona and I gazed in disbelief at the rest of the audience, wondering how anyone could take this seriously. The "true consequences of global warming," mind you.

It reminded me of nothing so much as the absolutely terrible short story I wrote when I was 11, about the travails of a Great War veteran wandering around encountering problems because of the millenium bug. Anyone remember the millenium bug? He got denied at the store because according to his card, he wouldn't be born until later that year. This play was about as plausible. Maybe I should dig that story out, and see if the writer wants to turn it into a script. For all I could tell, he got this one from a similar source.

Transatlantic Alliances

2009-04-07T20:56:00.014+01:00

Janet Daley can almost always be counted on to get it right. The other week was no exception, as her column in the Telegraph provided a rare friendly view of the Republican opposition back in the States. Simon Heffer occasionally provides the same, but he often approaches it from the position of unrelenting hostility to the new messiah--the same sort of hostility he more regularly deploys against anyone with the temerity to participate in British politics and not be Simon Heffer--rather than from a position of sympathy with the now-beleagured Republicans.
This is a rare perspective in Britain because of the extremely distressing views held by the majority of even educated Brits about American politics.

Before embarking for the first time for Merrie England back in 2006, I was warned about the amount of anti-Americanism that I would encounter. It was, as you may recall, the height of the Bush years, before his slide into irrelevance tempered lefty rage and the longest presidential campaign in American history monopolised world news coverage. People around the world were furious, I was told. The State Department's travel advisories warned Americans abroad to avoid political demonstrations, as they were likely to turn violent. Yes, apparently, even in Britain. This was a shame, because I rather like lefty demonstrations. I'm from Seattle, so they make me feel at home.

It may indeed have been like that in Europe, but in England the only real anti-Americanism I encountered came from the fellow Americans on my course, trying to ingratiate themselves with the natives. What I did encounter was quite a bit of misunderstanding.

You see, as shocked as I was to discover that 'the Tories' were an actual extant political party and not, as they teach us in American schools, the American colonists who remained loyal to Britain during the revolution and nothing else, I was equally shocked to discover that they, along with both other major parties over here, consider their natural allies across the pond to be the Democrats.

The Tories, for those in the States, are indeed a political party, now officially called the Conservatives, and the reason that we use the term 'tories' in the way that we do is that following the dissolution of the first incarnation of the party upon the accession of George III, 'tory' became a form of abuse for one considered to be too loyal to the King, and those so labelled were also associated with the advocacy of a hard line against the rebels.

These days the party occupies a position on the centre-right of British politics. It was the party of the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, Reagan's true soul mate, but they are rather less hardline than that now, with their friendly-looking but unimpressive leader David "call me Dave" Cameron attempting to project a softer, more accessible image after over ten years in the wilderness.

The reason that they, as the major right-leaning party in Britain, do not currently associate themselves with the Republicans is partly historical accident. While in America Republicans were in power during the attacks of September the 11th and so became identified with the resulting suppression of civil liberties and the institutionalised use of torture, in Britain the centre-left party, Labour, was in power under Tony Blair. Thus over here the analogues to the PATRIOT Act etc. are collectively known as 'Labour's anti-terrorism laws," and it is the Tories who generally speak out against them. Similarly, here the aforementioned former Labour Prime Minister and current public hate figure Blair is identified with Bush's foreign policy, as he was a loyal supporter of it.

While this may be the most important reason why the parties of Thatcher and Reagan have drifted apart, it is far from the only one. Republicans and Tories, indeed Republicans and all Britons, are genuinely out of step in a number of areas. There is general distaste here for the ostentatiously paraded 'happy-clappy' Christianity so characteristic of the 'Religious Right' part of the Republican base. In addition, there is widespread consensus in favour of the draconion firearms restrictions in place here in Britain, due apparently to the belief that it's so much more civilised for a helpless populace to live in fear of armed thugs, which rules out another pillar of the Republican party.

On top of this, there is a general perception that American politics are skewed to the right, and that the Democrats therefore line up with the Tories anyway. This 'skewing' may indeed be the case, at least in the level of state interference which it is acceptable to advocate. One of the most strikingly illustrative differences between the two countries may be that in America, one's opponent might accuse you of "trying to create a welfare state," a claim whic you would have to vociferously deny, while in Britain one might get accused of "trying to dismantle the welfare state," with a similar required response to retain electoral viability.

When these differences are all that are considered, you end up with the ebarrassing, infuriating spectacle of Boris Johnson endorsing Barack Obama, an ideological brother of Red Ken, on the grounds that he seems a decent, well spoken, black sort of chap. Oh, he also stands for hope.

Tories should should be extremely wary of allying with the Democrats, because although at the moment they may be advocating similar policy, they arrived at it by way of a very different route. For example, Hillary Rodenvious Clinton recently proposed a 'single-payer' healthcare system, the same system floated by the most visionary Tories some time ago. However, the Dems have proposed it as the first step towards the eventual imposition of socialist catastrophe in the form of an NHS on helpless Americans, while for Britain that same system would be a first progressive, free-market step out of the socialist nightmare of the extant NHS.

Just like the British left, the Democrats seek constantly increasing government intervention, more useless state sector workers, ever higher redistributive taxes, more power for union bosses, the destruction of the family, the excision of Christianity from society, massive, unregulated third world immigration, antiwhite discrimination, abortion up to 9 months, and the replacement of education with politically correct indoctrination. Just because they haven't gotten as far towards their goal as the left in Britain is no reason for any sensible conservative to give them a shred of support for this pernicious agenda.

The Saga Continues

2009-04-07T16:15:00.004+01:00

I have just returned from an extremely relaxing week in Rome, and the main thing that made it so relaxing was that I had extremely limited access to the news. There were newspapers all around, but they were all unnacountably written in foreign, so I remained oblivious to their contents. The IHT had maybe a page of news before getting to the useless arts section or whatever, and what with all the visiting and sightseeing I hardly had any time at all to boot up the computer and log on either, as it takes bloody ages on my Dad's machine.

Normally not knowing what is going on would make me extremely jittery, but for some reason I didn't feel that way this time. Sure, I knew that back in London anarcho-crazies would be trying to spoil everyone's week and that Bunglin' Barry would be making more ridiculous international relations cock-ups, but without it in front of me, and surrounded by fascinating ruins and mountains of pasta, it didn't seem real.

This was shattered on my last night when I heard over dinner that the O-tard had--after all the hullabaloo about using his visit with the Queen to make amends for his disgraceful reception of Gordon Brown--chosen to present Her Majesty with an ipod.

It's hard to really know where to begin with something like this.

I suppose you might start with the fact that the Queen already has an ipod, albeit not one of the gimicky 'touch' ones. This new one was also loaded with pictures of her last visit Stateside, allowing one poster on the Telegraph website to observe that perhaps Obama is under the impression that everyone likes to spend hours every day looking at pictures of themselves, as he does.

But perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of the whole story was that the messiah's team actually did rather well with gifts this time. They also gave her a songbook signed by Richard Rogers of Rogers and Hammerstein. This is extremely sweet, since it seems that the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh consider "People Will Say We're in Love" from the Rogers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! to be 'their song.' The ipod, it seems, was supposed to be a small extra. How they could have possibly thought that people would not latch onto the ipod after the DVD debacle is beyond belief.

The Queen's gift to the Obamas was even more worrying in a way: A signed photograph of herself and Prince Phillip, the same one she gives to the leader of every TPLAC that comes to call. On one hand, this was a welcome rebuke to the arrogant messiah and his insufferable wife. Who does this kid think he is? On the other hand, who his is, for better or for worse, is the President of the United States, and this is even more evidence that his immature conduct is doing great harm to the all-important, and more derided with every day, special relationship between these two countries. Not quite to the extent imagined by one poster on the New York Slimes website who postulated that if the song selection displeased Her Majesty, it could mean war, but still harm enough.

Hello Prison

2009-03-28T17:46:00.001Z

A housing association in Nottinghamshire has set up pink lights under a local overpass in order to drive away the scum that congregate in it. The idea is that they will both be well lit, making the area a poor choice for drug dealing/taking, and will find it difficult to feel 'hard' while bathed in a soothing shade of pink. So far, it appears to be working.

This move was doubtless inspired by the successful use of classical music to prevent scum from gathering at bus stops and outside stores. However, it approaches another, slightly more radical idea which Auriol and I have been developing for the reform of the penal system. Measures disigned to discipline and punish all too quickly lose their effectiveness as the criminal underclasses adopt them as badges of honour. This has been the case with the ASBO, as chavs have begun to collect them as if they were boy scouts' merit badges. Going to prison itself is seen as a right of passage on the most dire council estates. Even something as regrettably commonplace as saggy trousers has its roots in the glorification of prison, belts being prohibited as possible weapons.

The answer, it seems, is not to make prison harsher, as that merely feeds into the conception of prison as manly. It is rather to make it humiliating, that is to create an environment that is impossible to concieve of as manly. A scheme such as this would provide a golden opportunity for government/industry partnership. I am thinking specifically of the company behind Hello Kitty, which could become the official contractor for running our prisons. They could provide the jumpsuits, the decor, the food, everything down to the loo rolls, all in their signature style. They may have to subcontract out for the music, but there is a wide selection that would be appropriate. This would have the desired effect of compromising prison's masculine and tough image, even making prisoners a societal joke and thus providing a very clear incentive to avoid prison to those who otherwise see it as part of a normal life cycle.

There are several possible problems with this scheme's implementation, including the complaint that would doubtless be raised about awarding such a huge contract to a foreign company, so it may be neccesary to develop a homegrown alternative, although it is doubtful that another brand would be quite so perfect for the job. There is also the risk that the criminal underclass may be so determined and resilient that they adopt Hello Kitty as their new sign of manliness, although Auriol is dismissive of this possibility. Doubtless there would also be some frivolous human rights complaint, but as we have established previously, 'human rights' do not exist, and should not be relevant to the discussion. Any legal hurdles could be overcome by withdrawing from all of the ill-concieved human rights treaties and reasserting the much-eroded sovereinty of Parliament, which would have a number of other positive effects.

Naturally this would not work for womens' prisons, but then there is not the same culture which needs breaking. People would also be reluctant to stage prison-based television shows in the UK, as they would lack the dangerous edge which makes them so appealing, but this is precisely the desired effect. Ultimately, the criminal underclass is a very different culture, with a much more raw and physical conception of masculinity than the rest of society. In order to undermine the attitude that crime and prison are a way of life, this is precisely where they need to be hit.

Adventures in Safe Sex Awareness

2009-03-28T17:13:00.007Z

There is something more than a little creepy about the safe sex brigade and their latest campaigns. I am talking here specifically not about their attempts to impose sex-consciousness upon ever younger children, but about the campaigns targeted at me and my fellow university students, all over the age of consent (16 here in the UK). Recently I noticed a large poster on my hall's noticeboard which appeared to be a cross between a public health notice and a club promotion. It was titled, in letters which the designers must have thought of as being 'funkily' splayed across the top, "Wee to Win." That's right, you can enter to win either an ipod or nintendo wii (how the poster makers must have glowed at their pun). Sounds good so far. All you need to do is give these people a vial of your urine for them to test for chlamidya. Right. So do they pick the winners from those who have it or those who don't?

In keeping with what appears to be the trend, you don't need to go to the doctor's office at all, because, being hip and with it, they will text your results to you, which is definitely the way I want to find out if I have a serious illness. There's something a little weird about an organisation that is trying this hard, and this ineptly, to make STD screening a fun, funky, 'relevant' activity.

I can only assume that this is the continuation of a campaign which I ran into a week or so ago. On entering my halls, I saw a table set up. Attracted by the lure of candy, I was greeted by a pair of people in their mid thirties. They did indeed have candy, along with condoms and little jars to urinate into and give them to test. Their greeting was, "Hello, are you sexually active?" I'm sorry, but these people aren't doctors, and this isn't a private space. And they're about fifteen years older than us and their attempts to be cool and 'down' with what they seem to imagine is the teen promiscuous sex scene were rather pervy.

The table set up in college proper wasn't pervy at all, merely degenerate. It at least had hot girls our age and ditched the pee jars for the more straightforward candy 'n' condoms assortment. Their candy selection wasn't up to much, but it actually provided quite good entertainment as I sat and watched how the Muslims, which college seems to be full of these days, would react. No fiery outbursts, I'm sorry to say, but there were some pretty quality glares.

Condoms have featured prominently in the news lately, with the Pope taking his world-class comedy act to Africa and claiming that condoms 'make the AIDS crisis worse.' This is fairly low-key stuff for a continent which has seen the South African health minister claim that AIDS can be cured with lemons, and where there is a widespread belief that (presumably if no lemons are available) sex with a virgin will also do the trick.

Still, I am fairly sympathetic to the much-maligned (by me as much as anyone) pontiff. He has been celibate for his entire 80+ years, and must be genuinely frustrated that everyone can't bloody manage it for 25 or so--just a measly little 25! Unfortunately, it is a tragic fact that while once monogamy might have halted the spread of AIDS, now so many people are born with it that it would spread even with universal, faithful monogamy. All in all, I think Gil Hornby in the Telegraph had the best reaction to it, which essentially was: "Suprise! The Pope is Catholic."

A Ray of Light

2009-03-25T15:15:00.004Z

There was outrage here several weeks ago about the government's decision to deny entry to the UK to Geert Wilders, the Dutch MP, because he would 'inflame community tensions.' This is code for "Muslims who hate free speech would try to blow things up," which at first seemed to me to be a reason to ban them, not him, but I realised that it makes sense that the sensibilities of a core Labour voting bloc would come first.

This was all the more outrageous in light of the fact that the government appeared to be ready to welcome Ibrahim Moussawi, Hezbollah communications director, into the UK to lecture on the Modern Terrorist Operations vocational qualification at SOAS. Moussawi has described Jews as "a lesion on the forehead of history," a difficult-to-decipher but probably unfavourable analogy, while his boss Hassan Nasrallah has endorsed Israel's attempts to encourage Jewish immigration, saying, "It will save us the trouble of hunting them down all over the world."

This story, however, has a relatively positive ending. The government has refused Moussawi's visa application, due to pressure from the Obama administration. This is not quite as good as granting the visa and then arresting him on arrival, but I'll take it. Most heartening of all is the role of the messiah, now apparently batting 1-for-several thousand. But at least it's not a shutout.

Nonsense on Stilts

2009-03-23T15:44:00.009Z

Human Rights are back in the news again, with the government proposing a yet another bill protecting a new assortment of them which have been made, as usual, from whole cloth.

I don’t hold with the concept of Human Rights, which is the new name for the classical liberal idea of Natural Rights. These days, the acceptance of Natural or Human rights is almost universal in the West. The concept is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights. However, as much as I admire Locke, Jefferson, and the drafters of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (whose silly French names I am not even going to attempt), and feel an affinity with classical liberal theory in general, I cannot accept the concept of Human Rights. I am a firm believer in Civil Liberties, but not Human Rights.

The difference between the two is subtle but important. Human Rights, unlike Civil Rights or Liberties, are presumed to belong to every human purely because he is human. They exist independent of any state or social contract. Take as a setting what is one of the contenders for the most lawless place on Earth, Somalia. Suppose that a Somali warlord in Mogadishu shoots a man in the street as a show of power. Under Human Rights theory, he has not only committed an immoral act by killing an innocent, but he has also violated the victim’s Human Rights, specifically the Right to life (although presumably he has also violated his Right to liberty). Since Human Rights are a legal concept, it must be assumed that there is or should be a court of (Human Rights) law which will hold him accountable. But such a court would have to claim jurisdiction over all humanity, so where would its authority derive from? Remember, Human Rights theory sees these rights as applying to all humans, not just citizens of or residents in countries signatory to treaties affirming the Human Rights principle. If a government can opt its people out of Human Rights, they are not exactly universal, are they?

Approaching the concept by using the term 'Inalienable Rights' is also suspect, although I am as sentimental as the next American about the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (the pursuit of happiness being Jefferson’s qualified version of Locke’s ‘property’)” Yet clearly these Rights are not, nor should they be, inalienable. A person can be deprived of the Right to life by being found guilty in a court of law of a capital offence. European Union countries do not have capital punishment, but in them as well as in America, Canada, Australia, Israel, South Africa, India, and other countries which can be considered heirs of the Enlightenment Rights tradition, people are alienated from their right to life on a daily basis, as can be seen below.

When the United States, a country proclaiming that all men are endowed by their Creator with the inalienable Right to life, fought against itself in the American Civil War, there was no sense that the killing of members of the opposing army, although taking place on American soil under the jurisdiction of US courts, was in any way a litigable violation of the 'inalienable' Right to life. It was clearly alienable if the person was a member of the opposing army. It was not a matter of the victors protecting their own either, as it applied to the losing side as well. This is important because it is a war which took place entirely on soil (or in territorial waters) clearly under the jurisdiction of US courts, but zooming out it can be seen that to this day that no country on Earth holds the killing of enemy soldiers in battle to be a violation of Human Rights, despite the fact that the Right to life is supposedly ‘inalienable.’ It may seem an obvious point, but it serves to demonstrate that the right to life is not treated as inalienable by any country, and that it seems ludicrous to treat it as such, now or ever. Could you imagine Enlightenment era soldiers, lining up in big, pretty, colourful ranks and shooting each other, and then being prosecuted because they have violated the other soldiers’ inalienable Right to life?

The word ‘prosecution,’ tossed around above, also presents a problem for the concept of inalienable Rights. What are the results of a successful prosecution? The big three are execution (void where prohibited), imprisonment, or a fine, although there are now a host of other minor penalties such as curfew, house arrest, or community service. All of these punishments, from execution to community service, alienate one or more ‘inalienable’ Rights. Execution alienates the Rights to life and liberty, imprisonment, curfew, house arrest, and community service alienate the Right to liberty, and a fine alienates the Right to property. Even arrest without a conviction alienates the Right to liberty, as you can (in the States at least) be held for up to 24 hours before you must be charged or released. Similar systems operate in all Western countries.

One Right that might be held up as truly inalienable in a way that none of the aforementioned Rights are is the Right to be free from torture. I will not get into a discussion of Guantanamo/Abu Ghiraib/rendition, as it is irrelevant to the point I intend to prove, to the extent that we can assume, if only for the sake of argument, that any torture related to those places and practices is morally wrong and should be stopped. I intend to rely on a different example. Consider that an attacker has surprised you in an alleyway and put you in a headlock. Would anyone dispute that it is morally acceptable to deliberately cause the attacker extreme pain in order to secure your release? The Right to not be put in extreme pain by another individual should be alienable. There should not even be a right not to be intentionally permanently crippled. If a man is pointing a gun at your loved one, would anyone say that it is a violation of his inalienable Right to sever his arm (assuming that you have the means to do so)? This despite the fact that the Declaration of the Rights of Man holds up health as an inalienable right.

The conclusion that can be drawn from this is that it is absolutely absurd to treat any of these classical liberal Rights as ‘inalienable.’ It is even problematic to describe these Rights as inalienable without due process of law, as there is no due process of law when one soldier on the battlefield deprives another of life, nor when a man in an alleyway defends himself from an attacker. Any statement of these Rights must be heavily qualified. Unfortunately, any true attempt at codifying them will not have the eloquence of the Declaration of Independence, nor even the blunt simplicity of the European Convention on Human Rights. For example, if you were to state the circumstances under which men cannot be deprived of life, you would have to exclude: After due process of law, on the field of battle by a uniformed enemy, by someone acting in reasonable self-defence or reasonably in prevention of crime, by a doctor making a medical decision (in the case of PVS, Siamese twins, etc). There may be still other exceptions.

It should be clear by now that the protection and, more importantly, definition of these ‘Rights’ cannot be divorced from the law. They do not exist in a vacuum. They only exist when set within the context of a legal relationship between people and between the authority tasked with enforcing the Rights and punishing infringements upon them. The only recourse for Human Rights theorists is thus to claim that there is indeed a court of universal jurisdiction. But the only court that could possibly have jurisdiction over all humans just by virtue of them being human is the court of God. Many godless leftists who worship Human Rights in lieu of the Almighty seem strangely averse to acknowledging this. I, for one, have no problem agreeing that God is the ultimate Judge and that his writ is the ultimate Law. The problem begins when humans start attempting to dispense this divine justice themselves without a properly constituted legal framework. If the International Criminal Court claimed that it was excercising divine justice on people, people might realise how ridiculous the concept of any group of humans claiming to exercise this type of judgement over all others--willing and unwilling--is. No, the only judgement that a human court can make is that the defendant has or has not broken the law, created by humans within the framework of a particular legal order. The concept of Human Rights--enforceable in human law but definable by definition only by the Almighty, is patently ridiculous.

The Meanings of Words

2009-03-23T15:17:00.006Z

With mental retardation in the spotlight thank's to Obama's poorly judged joke, I have been thinking about how some previously widely-applicable words become tied to a specific concept. Consider the word 'retarded.' In converstion, this will almost invariably mean 'mentally disabled' (or whatever the current pc term is). But 'retarded' only means 'slowed or incompletely developed.'

I myself have a minor thyroid disorder which means I am stuck at just under six feet and will not attain the height I would have otherwise. In other words, my physical growth has been retarded. That's right, Auriol. You're dating a retarded person.

A similar thing has happened to the word 'choice' in the context of American politics. While one of the most widely applicable words in ordinary conversation, the term 'pro-choice' has been locked to the meaning of 'pro-having the right to choose to have an abortion.' This can be frustrating to those who are also pro-choice, but in a different area of politics, most commonly school choice. On the flip side, the tying of 'pro-life' to the anti-abortion movement must be frustrating to opponents of capital punishment.

Discrimination is yet another one of these words with wide application which has seen its usage shrink. To discriminate is merely to chose between options. However it is currently used to mean only one of its possible meanings, namely to chose between people on the basis of race, sex, or whatever other criteria the left have managed to attach to 'anti-discrimination' legislation. At the current rate, the distinction may well become irrelevant, as the left will have succeeded in legislating against discrimination on the basis of every possible criteria, including, ability, qualifications, etc.

One of the Arabs' most frequently-articulated points regarding Israel is also rooted in a shrunken meaning of this kind. They frequently claim that they cannot be anti-semitic since they are themselves a semitic people. This is disingenuous, since they know full well that 'anti-semitic' refers to hatred of a particular one of the semitic peoples, the Jews. They are thus being accused of hatred of Jews, and pointing out the fact that they are semites is an irrelevant and deliberate obfuscation.

Nevertheless, they have a legitimate point about the use of the term 'anti-semitic.' It is an exceedingly poor term to use to mean anti-Jewish hatred, but is so well-rooted it will be hard to change. Scholars of the phenomenon have acknowledged this, and have put forward the unhyphenated version 'antisemetism' as an imperfect solution.

We hear a lot of guff about the language evolving, and it being foolish to try to retain the meanings of words once they have evolved. The problem is that it is through words that we express concepts, and by losing words or losing alternate meanings we run the risk of losing concepts as well. If we wish English to be a language suitable for expressing all manner of concepts and ideas, we must retain words and phrases and all their meanings. The enemy of this is both laziness and the deliberate cleansing of the language carried out by the pc brigade. If we can show a bit of effort and counter the cleansers, we can just possibly retard the process by which our beautiful language is becoming a hollow Newspeak.

Obama and the Special Olympics

2009-03-21T23:30:00.005Z

In a decisive move to restore confidence in his judgement and soundness following an embarrassing start to his presidency, Bunglin' Barry decided to use the opportunity provided by the softest and friendliest interview ever provided to a president to mock the mentally retarded. Barry joked that his low bowling score was something that might be achieved at the Special Olympics.

Now forget the fact that he is technically wrong--Special Olympians tend to be savants in their sport--and focus on his use of the Special Olympics as a byword for humourous, bumbling incompetence. If you do, you find that what this incident illustrates above all is the divide between what everyone says in private and what you can say publicly. The fact is that the Special Olympics are a running joke, one which often takes a much crueler form than that used by our hapless messiah. Doubtless most people have heard some variation on "Why is [fill in activity] like the Special Olympics? Because even if you win you're still retarded!" Back in Seattle, the one I heard most often was, "Why is voting for Bush...etc." so it is not exactly something from which those sensitive lefties abstain.

Obama's mistake was to reveal on national television the hypocrisy of the left on this issue. He made the gaffe because he was relaxed and thrown off his guard by Leno's friendly approach. We therefore saw a glipse of the real Obama, the one who, like any other person, makes semi-offensive but basically well-meaning jokes on a regular basis, but who, like other lefty politicians, hides this behind a facade of insufferable sanctimoniousness in public.

Blaming the Victim?

2009-03-21T20:14:00.014Z

A survey published in a recent edition of the University of London's student newspaper, the London Student, purports to show that a large percentage of UL students hold women partially or wholly responsible for being raped if they have done certain things such as get irresponsibly drunk or wear provocative clothing. In keeping with the theme of the issue (it was the official feminism issue), this, predictably, was denounced as a shocking remnant of the patriarchical blah blah blah needing to be rooted out through 'rape awareness training,' which, judging from the way it has been carried out on other university campuses, will involve the demonisation of all males as 'potential rapists' (because they have penises, apparently).

To the extent that this survey accurately reflects the attitudes of UL students, it is probably above all a refection of the large number of Muslim students at UL, a worrying number of whom seem to be influenced by Wahabism, an ideology which holds that drinking, wearing revealing clothing, and indeed flirting all make women necessarily whores. But it seems to me that this survey was specifically designed to return this 'shocking' result in order to give the feminazis an excuse to subject us all to more politically correct indoctrination.

On the noticeboard in my University of London intercollegiate halls, there are a pair of posters which declare, "Don't lose it. Look after it," in reference to one's mobile phone and mp3 player respectively, although I suppose that in another day and age it could have as easily referred to one's virginity. The picture is of someone holding said device out in the open, and the smaller text reads, "Keep it safe. Don't advertise your mobile phone/mp3 player to theives."

Few would argue that if I walk down a dark alley at night in a sketchy part of town, quite inebriated, waving around my flashy new blackberry, I am at least partially responsible when it gets stolen. And yet if a girl walks back from the club arm in arm with a sketchy guy she met, not intending to have sex with him but quite drunk, it is abhorrent to say that she is even partially responsible for being raped.

The reason for this apparent contradiction is that neither the aforementioned survey nor any of the outraged responses to it take account of the different types of responsibility, or even addresses the possibility that we may therefore mean very different things by the same word.

In the two cases above, both of the theft and the rape, neither I nor the girl are morally responsible. A person should be able to walk the streets without fear of being preyed upon by any criminal, theif or rapist. Neither are we legally responsible. Under the law we are both totally innocent victims, and rightly so.

However the way in which we are responsible for our respective predicaments is that we have both behaved irresponsibly and have taken no precautions against the selfish and evil people that inhabit this imperfect world; indeed precisely the opposite.

Terry Pratchett captures the idea of this type of responsibility very effectively in the Discworld book Men-at-Arms: "There were very few murders in [the city of] Ankh-Morpork. There were a lot of suicides. It was suicide to walk through the Shades after dark. It was suicide to tell a short joke in a Dwarf bar. It was suicide to thieve without a licence from the Thieves' Guild. But there were very few murders."

The majority of people questioned for this survey almost certainly meant that some women were responsible in this latter sense, as any person with sense would. But they, and the student body in general, have been dishonestly portrayed by the radical feminist brigade as believing that there are circumstances under which it is okay to rape the woman. This is par for the course for a movement which has established a reputation for slandering innocent men.

The real tragedy may be that the feminist movement has a very real and important role to play in challenging the greatest threat to women today, the aggressive advance of Islamist ideology. This has facilitated the subjugation of women to a degree unimaginable in the West since time immemorial. This dangerous ideology is now making inroads into the very heartland of the liberal tradition, this island. We are seeing the effects in the disgraceful wave of 'honour killings' and the increasingly frequent sight of women pushing prams while fully swathed in heavy black sheeting. This is the true threat to the freedom of women, not some fabricated and/or exagerrated lack of 'rape awareness.'

No Taxation Without Representation

2009-03-20T14:40:00.002Z

Consider three states: The United States of America, The People’s Republic of China, and the United Arab Emirates. The United States is the country whose violent founding immortalised the phrase above, and it fulfils the principle, as it has both representation and taxation in the conventional model of modern Western states. China, which has a repressive one-party government, has taxation but not representation, in the conventional model of a modern authoritarian state. The UAE, however, also upholds the philosophy of No Taxation Without Representation. It has neither taxation nor representation, which is a technical fulfilment of the principle. The question then, is whether that is an equally valid means of fulfilment; that is, if it upholds the spirit as well as the letter of the slogan.

If we callously oversimplify vast tracts of history to arrive at what I still believe to be a legitimate conclusion, we see that the primary driving force behind the move towards representative politics was the need for the taxed to consent to the taxation. Property, although much maligned by those who usually harp on about ‘human rights,’ has been considered sacrosanct for far longer and to a greater degree than life, liberty, or, indeed, universal health care. Since taxation necessarily involves the deprivation of property, it is one of the greatest powers that government claims. The idea that taxation should only be levied with consent goes back far before it was expressed in the handy sound bite above. When foreign policy and religion were still included in the prerogative powers of the monarch, taxation required consent. This requirement should not be romanticised. Originally the king would have required not just the consent but the help of local notables in order to collect his taxes in the localities. A parliament was a handy way of getting them together to agree to it all at once, and only later did it become a matter of principle.

Over the course of several hundreds of years, representative institutions in Britain (on which the ones throughout the world are based) have gained increasingly large remits. This was once widely perceived as the result of self-conscious assertion on the part of parliamentarians and the natural and only course events could take, but is now regarded as far less inevitable and certainly less self-conscious. New evidence has turned some of the most celebrated examples of parliamentary power-grabbing on their heads. For example, the setting of parliamentary auditors over the money voted for King James I (1603-1625) to make sure that it was spent as intended was once considered to be an aggressive parliamentary intrusion into the king’s prerogative. It has now been revealed that the idea was suggested and insisted upon by James himself, in order to inspire confidence and make parliament more willing to vote him large sums.

There have also been innumerable other stimulants to the growth of parliament’s competence, for example the rise of nationalism, which historians of the eighteenth century like to claim as their exclusive property on spurious linguistic grounds but which began developing as early as the late sixteenth century in England and which fed into the idea, not always able to be articulated, that “we’re all in this together” and that the everyone had a stake in foreign policy, for example, not just the monarch.

Even so, the power of parliament over the flow of money to the king has been an essential anchor of its existence in times when monarchs would have seen it disposed of, and can thus be seen as underpinning all of the other competencies it enjoys. Is No Taxation Without Representation just a convenient shorthand then for everything from No Declarations of War Without Representation to No Regulation of Internal Commerce Without Representation? If this is the case, the UAE version of the principle, while a literal fulfilment, is clearly out of step with the sentiment behind it. For a significant portion of English history, however, it would have been considered fine. In the UAE, they have not abandoned the idea that the king should ‘live of his own,’ meaning off the incomes from his lands, feudal rights, etc., without taxation, and that the people did not need a say in the king’s decisions unless they were being taxed to pay for them. This idea died a gradual death over the course of several hundred years in early modern England, but was firmly clung to by many for as long as possible, mostly those on the taxpaying side. It is made infinitely easier in the UAE by the presence of oil, but the principle is the same.

So is taxation with representation a more complete and better fulfilment than no taxation and no representation? I suppose the answer lies in the fact that a modern government can inflict so much more than just taxation on its citizens. In the UAE, it might be elements of Sharia law such as those which fairly regularly give drunk or promiscuous British tourists a six- to twelve-month extension on their holidays. In Britain, it might be inane ’elf-n-safety fascism. In China it might be genuine fascism and in America, it might be floods of unassimilated immigrants such as those unleashed by Jorgé Bush’s abdication of the responsibility for enforcement. All of these are less objectionable if you are not paying for them with your tax dollars, but remain extremely so even if funded entirely out of the president’s, or king’s, or prime minister’s pocket.

The implications of accepting that taxation is the sole criteria for representation can also be quite worrying. In Britain, many citizens pay no tax at all. All their money comes in the form of government benefits (any taxes, such as VAT, which they pay out of this allowance, is not actually being paid by them, but by the government to itself). Do they not need the vote, since they do not pay taxes? It is an interesting idea, and hearkens back to the issues raised at the Putney Debates between Levellers and Grandees in the New Model Army. From these debates we get the famous Leveller slogan stating that “the poorest he” should have a say in how he is governed. The response, from those who passed for conservatives in the radical New Model Army, was that only those with property should have the vote, as they have a permanent stake in the kingdom. This is not quite the same as arguing that the franchise should be restricted to taxpayers, but is in a similar vein, since one might argue that only one who is paying for government decisions should have a say in them. The issue is further complicated because there are in all taxing societies a large number of non-citizens who pay tax, even if they are only visitors and paying sales tax. Even import duties are a form of tax. It would undermine the basis of sovereignty to allow non-citizens to vote, perhaps one of the reasons why leftists are so keen on seeing it happen.

When you consider the impact of all manner of government decisions on the ordinary citizen, it becomes clear that taxation is only one of many things which should require the consent of the governed. Similarly, linking the franchise directly to taxation opens up a can of worms which can lead at either end to a restricted franchise in ostensibly representative societies or an unacceptably extended one. It appears to be that fulfilling No Taxation Without Representation is only the beginning of an effective and fair representative system.

Wait, It Gets Worse

2009-03-19T12:57:00.003Z

I, like many others, believed that it was not possible for the story of Obama's 'welcome' to Brown to get any worse. However, I was convinced of the same after hearing each and every detail of the story, and have been proven wrong yet again, courtesy of today's Telegraph. It appears that Broon won't even get to watch the DVDs because they are--you guessed it--region 1. They only play on North American DVD players. This is beyond parody, so I'm just going to give up now.

Who Reads the Papers?

2009-03-17T20:30:00.013Z

According to the anthropologist Kate Fox and her wonderful book "Watching the English," the English are always bemoaning the state of the press, usually meaning the tabloids. The journalism is so irresponsible, you see, or, depending on how far down the tabloid scale you go, is lost amid the piles of breasts. This is a reaction with which I do not have the slightest sympathy. The British press is one of the greatest things this country has to offer, and I miss it every time I go back to Seattle. Mostly I miss the Telegraph, which gives me the news with just the right spin on it to comfortingly confirm my prejudices and assumptions. You see, in England, unlike in America, you have so many options, and they are so clear cut. Want to learn that British society is disintegrating among falling moral standards and EU meddling? You can have my copy of the Telegraph when I'm done (only because Auriol and I both bought copies--again). Want to be beaten over the head with the same conclusions and can only read at 8-year old level? Switch to the Mail. Would you prefer to learn that we are all going to suffocate in a sea of discarded food packaging? Pick up the Independent, although they may have switched to a new scare since I last checked. Need to search the job ads for a position as a diversity coordinator on a lavish taxpayer-funded salary? The Guardian was written just for you.

Those of you not in Britain may have trouble relating to that summary. For those of you in Britain, this description of the papers will likely come across as a very familar and unoriginal trope. This was not the intention. When I began, it was with the full intention of genuinely and unironically praising the British press, which I do adore, except for the Independent. It appears that this country, with it's delightful self-depreciation and insistence on humour, is infectious. Likely yet another one of those superbugs that the NHS is doing its best to spread around.

I love the British press. The thing is, that no matter what spin they take on it, no matter what they choose to put on the front page, and no matter how wrongheaded the Guardian's opinion page, you are still getting a decent glimpse of the day's news, and you know the spin going into it and expect and adjust for it. This is especially true of the tabloids such as the Mail, the Independent, or the Sun. There is no analogue in America. You have the local paper, which you don't get to choose, and then possibly a national such as the New York Slimes or the Wall Street Journal. These papers, both local and national, are all about the level of the Telegraph or Times. There is then nothing between these and "Aliens stole my husband!" Americans who don't want to read them (and what proportion of Britain reads a broadsheet?) just don't read the paper. They read magazines, and not the Economist. This is why the British tabloids are so great. They present the news in entertaining form alongside celebrity gossip and topless girls, with the result that the nation is, on the whole, decently well-informed. They also provide priceless juxtapositions for Private Eye, consistently the most reliable news source in the United Kingdom, as they denounce declining morals opposite a full page of scantily-clad schoolgirls.

As one goes down the scale, the proportion of breasts to news increases. The Daily Sport, which today featured some never-before-seen photoshoot with Lucy Pinder and some randomer, proudly proclaimed across the top that it contained "20 times more boobs than the Sun or Star!" Genius. If it works for chocolate chip cookie advertising (with chips, obviously, not boobs), why can't it work for newspapers, if that's how you chose to measure them? Truly, at the British newsstand there is something for everyone.

Obama's Insult to Britain

2009-03-17T13:32:00.012Z

Anyone following the the news of the past few weeks will be aware of the unbelievable insult that the new American administration paid to Britain on the occasion of Broon's first visit to the Obama White House, denying him a formal dinner, a proper press conference and fobbing him off with an outragously demeaning gift. Unbelievable is truly the word, since the facts of the affair beggar belief. Reading the article by Tim Shipman in the Telegraph, helpfully entitled "Obama 'too tired' to give proper welcome to Gordon Brown," I kept wondering how it could get any worse. The next paragraph of the article would then answer my question. It went something like this:

First we learn that Barack Obama has been feeling very tired and overwhelmed, and isn't really prepared for the job. He didn't realise the volume of work that would cross his desk, and isn't a capable enough leader to know how to delegate. This is a huge suprise to anyone who has been living in a cave for the past four years.

This exhaustion, which his press team insists is the result of his heroic efforts in the domestic sphere, is at the root of why he failed to extend even the most basic diplomatic courtesies to the Prime Minister.

However, the tragically overworked messiah's staff also seemed genuinely unfamiliar with the basics of how to handle a visit from the leader of a major country, much less with the specific protocol and expectations to do with visits from a British Prime Minister. More than that, they seemed not to care. British officials reported that their new American counterparts "seemed utterly bemused by complaints that the Prime Minister should have been granted full-blown press conference and a formal dinner." They don't have time to deal with what they referred dismissively to as the "diplomatic niceties of the special relationship." When faced with British complaints, they "didn't get what that was all about."

It gets worse. The Telegraph quotes a member of Obama's inner circle as saying that the new president had failed to "even fake an interest in foreign policy." Fake an interest. The president of the United States can't really be asked with foreign policy, but at least he can fake an interest, right? After all, it's not as if he ran on a promise to restore America's image in the world through 'intense, presidential diplomacy.'

Broon brought with him as an official gift a pen holder specially made for the new president out of the timbers of a Royal Navy warship which helped combat the slave trade, sister ship to the one that the Oval Office desk is made from. He also brought outfits and accessories handpicked by Sarah Brown for the females of the Obama clan, along with numerous other minor things. The O-tard, in contrast, presented Brown with a box of 25 Hollywood DVDs. Yes, DVDs. Ones you can get in any high street in Britain. It would have been less insulting to give him nothing at all. The Broon boys got models of the presidential helicopter, Marine One, which is quite cool, but you can get them in the White House gift shop. Broon was also, as mentioned, denied a full joint press conference, instead getting a second-rate Q&A session, and even that he had to beg for. It wasn't just thoughtlessness, it was premeditated thoughtlessness. We learned in an update recently that the administration hadn't just sent a staffer out to the mall to pick up the DVDs when they realised they hadn't got Brown anything; the banal assortment, in a unique box, was commissioned well in advance.

After Brown left, someone must have tipped the O-tard off that he hadn't quite handled it as well as he could have and he rang up to apologise, but too little, too late.

This would all be quite funny if it had merely been a personal insult to Brown, confirming once again that he has been put on earth to make Tony Blair look good. Brown certainly viewed it as a highly personal snub from his new best friend whom he had been counting on to save his premiership, and the resulting damage control operation by No. 10 can be credited with keeping the initial story off the front page and the subsequent updates on page 18 below the car insurance ads.

If your outrage at this treatment of Britain's proxy builds too much, it may be heartening to imagine that it was done in solidarity with the British public, most of whom would love to show Brown this sort of disdain, but whose next opportunity, the election, is still a ways away.

Unfortunately, this was not just targeted at Brown, but rather at Britain. This was revealed in the responses of Obama's aides to questioning after the event. As Shipman reported, an aide revealed the true attitude of the administration, becoming quite angry and snapping, "There's nothing special about Britain. You're just like the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment."

So we know that the administration of 'Constitutional scholar' Obama is ignorant both of the role of Britain in developing the rights, liberties, and institutions which Americans hold dear and of its role as our most important and loyal ally on the world stage today.

Maybe this visit was a success for Brown. It certainly makes him look good in comparison.

Boycotts

2009-03-16T17:58:00.013Z

The boycott is an essential tool of capitalism. It allows the consumers to control the market by making choices on moral grounds as well as on cost, quality, and the attractiveness of marketing. Admittedly, for the big players this would have to be done on a massive scale in order to be effective, and for big companies like Coca-Cola or countries like China with their hands in practically everything it is virtually impossible, so it is a far from perfect check. But one of the biggest hurdles is that people don't realise that it is an acceptable thing to do. When I have mentioned that I am boycotting the Greene King pub and brewery chain because they buy up historic pubs and turn them into flats, when there are plenty of people willing to run them as pubs, just to reduce competition, I often get confused responses. Peaple say, "but I thought you were in favour of capitalism/the free market?" Of course I am. But the boycott is not against capitalism, it is the heart and soul of it. It's your money. No one is forcing you to give it to someone you don't like (except, of course, the state).

I have a number of boycotts running at the moment, usually for less than high-minded reasons, but the principle is the same. I don't like them, therefore they're not getting my money.

I am boycotting Greene King for the reason stated above. They also buy up small breweries and stop making their beers, or move production out of the historic brewery to a central location and thus irrevocably change the flavour, often after making explicit but non-binding promises not to. This is unnacceptable.

I am boycotting Cafe Nero because they tried to shut down the most awesome coffee shop in Oxford, Combibos Coffee in Gloucester Green, owned and staffed by people who I did not know at first but who have become friends over the years that I have been a regular, and have recently turned out to be the cousins of another friend of mine. It's a wonderful, one-of-a-kind little place. Cafe Nero opened a shop next door to try to draw customers away from Combibos. Luckily, they've failed; Combibos is always full and the Nero is usually empty, but they are still bitches for trying. Also, their coffee tastes like gasoline.

I am boycotting Prat a Manger for their obnoxious and patronising advertisements and attitude. I had originally decided to boycott them for their advert that claimed that there were no "scary 'beep beep' noises" in the production of their food. I relaxed the boycott at the insistence of Auriol, who likes their granola, so I was in the shop to see the message which they had posted by the sandwiches. It read something like, "We asked over a hundred French and Italian women how English women can stop being so fat. We took their advice, and the result is these sandwiches!" Prat, go fuck yourself.

I am boycotting Krispy Kreme, which is not that difficult because their 'donuts' are awful. They must be brought down because they have usurped the name of donut with the proliferation of their sickly-sweet, textureless creations. Places which might once have offered proper donuts are now swamped with these unnaturally smooth abominations. Dunkin' Donuts manages to do terrific donuts and bagels, and yet the execreble Krispy Kreme cannot even manage the one. They are a stain on the face of the junk food retail market.

I am boycotting a number of psuedoacademics and political commentators such as Edward Said, Michael Moore, and Noam Chomsky. I still read and/or own their stuff, as you need to be familiar with whatever dangerous nonsense they're currently spewing, but I always make sure to get used copies or borrow them from the library or lefty friends so that they or their estates don't get any of my money.

American History X, Zakir Naik, and Leaps of Logic

2009-03-16T16:51:00.013Z

I remember that while watching American History X, I had the uncomfortable experience of agreeing with Edward Norton for the first part of his speeches before getting totally left behind. Anyone who has watched the movie might remember that speech that goes something like this, with my thoughts in parentheses:

The Mexicans are coming into our country illegally (fair enough). By working for lower wages they are driving down our wages through unfair competition. They are putting us out of jobs because we won't work for lower than minimum wage (all true, and kudos for getting beyond a simple "they're taking our jobs"). Therefore we must kill all Mexicans and black people (whoa! slow down! how did we get there?).

At the time, I assumed that the writer of the movie's script was taking a swipe at all those opposed to illegal immigration, implying that they were neccesarily neo-nazis. I have recently, however, had a remarkably similar experience in real life, while following the argumant of a man who is not a fictional character. His name is Zakir Naik, and he is a leading proselytizer of Islam. He writes and publishes a lot of the pamphlets which Muslims hand out to share the faith with us infidels, and gives regular televised lectures on his Indian tv channel. Thus it came to pass that I was reading one of the pamphlets given to me by the nice bearded fellows behind a table set up outside college, written by this Naik character. It was titled something like 'Anwers to Common Questions About Islam.' It was making a lot of sense, as I share the view that society is pretty immoral and permissive, and could do with some cleaning up. Therefore I was reading quite happily about sexual morality and was actually sympathetic to his puzzlement that Western countries tolerate mistresses but not polygamy, when I came to the section on why Muslims don't eat pork.

Now this would seem to be even less controverisial; I'm a Jew and don't eat pork either. But the last reason he gave just about bowled me over. After all the hygene stuff about pigs eating anything and being unclean and disease carriers (fair enough) and the spiritual stuff about keeping God in mind even while picking what to have for dinner (all true) was this little gem: Pigs share mates. Therefore if you eat pork you will go to wife-swapping parties (whoa! slow down! how did we get there?). I had to reread it to make sure I had got it correctly. Yup, that was what it said. I checked with the guys behind the table the next day. No, this wasn't a joke, he meant it. But "he's a bit controversial." You don't say.

Thought Experiment: Punishment Solely to Prevent Crime

2009-03-16T15:32:00.006Z

This is an attempt to explore the implications if it is considered that the penal system is not supposed to achieve justice but to achieve protection of the public. Therefore:

The primary purpose of the penal system is not the achievement of justice. Rather, it is protection of the public from criminal activity. This is achieved in two ways. The first is physical prevention of criminal activity, usually achieved through incarceration but also achieved through execution. The second is psychological prevention, commonly called deterrence. This is achieved through any punishment which makes a potential criminal hesitent to commit a crime through fear of the punishment. Thus flogging, for example, while physically preventing the criminal from committing crimes only for the half hour or so of the procedure, actually prevents further crime through fear of a repeat punishment, and deters those who merely know of the possibility from taking the risk. Under these assumptions, a punishment which does not physically restrain the criminal and does not inspire fear is utterly useless.

However, this ignores the possibility of rehabilitation. The criminal may be prevented from reoffending not just through physical restraint and fear but also through the changing of the criminal's attitude towards crime. If he becomes convinced that crime is wrong, he will not engage in it.

Another thing to consider is that a sizeable body of opinion holds that a large percentage of property offences are fueled by neccesity. Thus rehabilitation should take the form not just of changing a criminal's attitude so that he considers crime to be morally wrong but also of teaching him a trade so that crime becomes unneccesary. This includes retraining when one trade faces high unemployment, and supporting ex-criminals with legislation to prevent discrimation against them in hiring (referring to petty criminals only). This could be considered the Jean Valjean thesis of petty criminality. However, in today's Britain, and in most of the Western world, this is wholly irrelevant. Throughout the West, a pauper needs to try hard to starve among the proliferation of welfare benefits and private charities. It is not an exaggeration; the 'need to try hard to starve' line came from a street bum in my native Seattle, and has been seconded by one in Oxford. Although anecdotal, these are substantiated by an examination of the truly astounding range of benefits available to the destitute, in many cases including housing, medical care, and certainly food or enough money to buy food. (As an aside, while it is true that an unnacceptable number of people do starve or freeze to death on the street, these are almost invariably the mentally disabled and/or disordered, representing a tragic failure not of the penal or benefit systems but of the mental health system following the misguided dissolution of the asylums.)

Since it has thus been established that no one needs to committ crime to put food on the table, whether they are in possession of a table or not, does it then follow that job training is useless as a form of rehabilitation? Not neccesarily, as going to work, while under Labour's tax and benefit system often less lucrative than staying home and claiming benefit, provides that all-important something to do, keeping those who would otherwise make up the criminal underclass busy, productive, and off the streets. In the right job, they might even gain a sense of loyalty to wider society, and thus be more receptive to that other form of rehabilitation, the inculcation of the sense that crime is wrong.

Assuming then that the sole purpose of the penal system is to protect the public from crime, we see that there is a role for physical and psychological deterrence, yet also for rehabillitation, both in changing attitudes and in provision of education or training. This says little, however, about which of any of these methods should be dominant. Since all achieve the same end, the protection of the public from crime, it is left to the dictates of practicality, cost-effectiveness, and reliability to determine which one or which combination should be implemented.