Month: March 2025

It’s better to be right inadvertently than wrong deliberately. While escalating his trade war against Canada (and the rest of the world), Trump stumbled on an incontrovertible truth.

“The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State,” he wrote. “This would make all Tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear.”

Trump loves his capitals so much, he must know what the capital of Canada is, educated fellow that he is. It’s Ottawa, but what would happen if that status were transferred to Washington DC?

Trump put his finger right on it: everything would “totally disappear”. Canada’s sovereignty. Her position in the Commonwealth and NATO. Her national pride. Above all, whatever residual affection Canadians have for America.

Since neither the Canadian nation nor its government shows the slightest inclination to be incorporated into the US, the only way to achieve that result would be by military invasion. Is that what Trump has in mind? He has pointedly declined to rule out a military solution.

For the time being, Trump has hit Canada with additional tariffs and again regaled us with his elegant prose: “Based on Ontario, Canada, placing a 25% Tariff on ‘Electricity’ coming into the United States, I have instructed my Secretary of Commerce to add an additional 25% Tariff, to 50%, on all steel and aluminum coming into the United States from Canada, one of the highest tariffing nations anywhere in the world. I will shortly be declaring a National Emergency on Electricity within the threatened area.”

Quotes around ‘Electricity’ suggest that there is in fact nothing electrical about it, while capitalising Tariffs confers on them a sort of divine status. I feel strongly that any candidate for public office must pass an English test, command of language being a reliable indicator of intellect. As for a National Emergency, Trump is it.

Swinging like a yo-yo between imposing madcap tariffs and removing them, Trump has injected uncertainty and panic into the markets. Alas, he is finding them harder to bully than even Zelensky.

Markets react to personalities but they have none of their own. They respond in a dispassionate manner typical of computers. When they detect instability, their inner switch is flicked, they go down, and you can’t even send the boys over to make them toe the line.

Thus the stock market has dropped over 500 points, and there is (possibly premature) talk of recession. Especially worrying is the plight of the Nasdaq, a tech-focused index. It fell an impressive four per cent in one day, the first such drop since Covid.

Markets all over the world followed the US on its way down. They plunged in Europe, Asia and Britain, wiping trillions off the world’s wealth. China, Canada and the EU have retaliated with tit-for-tat tariffs, which among other things creates strong inflationary pressures.

Wall Street analysts are predicting that the US inflation rate may soon climb to as high as eight percent, followed by a similar rise in unemployment, with economic growth going in the opposite direction. Four out of five experts have a grim view of America’s economic prospects under Trump.

The latter relies on that time-honoured trick, blaming the previous administration. As Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, explained: “We are in a period of economic transition … from the mess created under Joe Biden”.

The first part of the statement is irrefutable: economic transition is indeed well under way. From what to what, however, is open to debate.

Yet the second part of Leavitt’s explanation is simply wrong, but then we don’t expect any members of the Trump administration to be responsible for what they say. “Like priest, like parish,” as the Russians put it.

Biden’s administration was indeed abysmally, some will say criminally, poor, but its economic performance was surprisingly not so bad. At almost three per cent, last year’s GDP growth in America was by far the greatest in the G7 group. Inflation stood at three per cent, and unemployment at four. The subsequent – and forthcoming – debacle in all these indicators is Trump’s doing and no one else’s.

The US president has been called all sorts of things over the past few weeks: “unprincipled charlatan”, “Putin’s agent”, “gangster”, “bully”, with many of these epithets accompanied by unflattering and variously unprintable modifiers. I’m sure he is all those things, although I think he is Putin’s agent only de facto, not de jure.

Yet none of those pejorative terms explains Trump’s concerted effort to destroy the US economy. I’m sure he’ll fail in this undertaking because America has many underlying economic strengths that can prop her up at a time of crisis. However, there is little doubt that a crisis is exactly what Trump is brewing.

Moreover, anyone with a modicum of economic education could have predicted the chaos into which Trump’s policies would plunge the economy. Incidentally, Trump’s fanatics point to his wealth as proof of his profound understanding of economics.

That’s a category error. A midwife doesn’t have to understand the origin of life. A car mechanic may not necessarily be well-versed in the nuances of thermodynamics. A cleaning lady doesn’t necessarily know the chemical composition of detergents. And a property developer, especially in Atlantic City, needs a grasp of economics much less than he needs the kind of interpersonal skills immortalised in The Godfather.

I’m a rank amateur in economics and investment, but I’ve read serious books by the yard. Yet even one inch, the thickness of Smith’s Wealth of Nations, would have sufficed to know that a trade war never claims any winners. Everyone loses, especially the aggressor.

Unlike me, Warren Buffett isn’t just a professional but one of the best in the business. Correctly anticipating that Trump’s ignorant bungling would crash the shares market, Buffett has quietly but resolutely moved much of his wealth into cash.

In the process, he presciently got rid of such blue chip assets as shares in Apple, Bank of America and Citigroup. And sure enough, the stock market plunged, with the only silver lining provided by a 44 per cent drop in the value of Tesla owned by hideous Musk.

(While Trump commendably attacks climate-change madness, his right hand has a vested interest in people driving not cars but electric appliances. I smell a contradiction.)

Trump’s pronouncements on economics show a primitive mind untouched by any educational, intellectual, cultural or civilising influences. However, he does vindicate Ralph Waldo Emerson’s aphorism, “A foolish consistence is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

For Trump is nothing if not consistent. The ignorant idea that all the world’s economies conspire to “screw” America has been cherished by him for decades. Thus in 1987, following his first visit to Russia, Trump began to toy with the idea of running for president.

To dip his toe into water, Trump took out full-page ads in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. Written as an open letter to the American people, the ads criticised the Reagan administration for wasting money to protect allies who “can afford to defend themselves”.

“There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure,” wrote Trump, implicitly accusing Ronald Reagan of lacking such spinal strength. Putting aside Reagan’s unwavering steadfastness that led to the collapse of what he correctly called the “evil empire” (you know, the one Trump is desperately trying to bring back to life), that view is economically illiterate.

No sensible person will argue against European countries arming themselves sufficiently to repel any aggression. It’s foolhardy to rely too much on the US, which Trump proves by leaving Europe to its own vices and devices. However, contrary to what he claims with his cracker-barrel public appeal, America’s investment in NATO isn’t a net loss — quite the opposite.

Her post-war position as the leader of the free world has entrenched the dollar (now being weakened by Trump’s policies) as the world’s reserve currency. This has allowed the US to run up a 34-trillion debt, which is after all denominated in the currency controlled by the Federal Reserve.

In plain terms, this has enabled America to consume much more than she produces. Hence it would be just as accurate (or rather just as inaccurate) to say that America is “screwing” the rest of the world, not the other way around.

All this is the economic primer, and it’s worrying to see the world’s greatest economy falling into the hands of an ignoramus who apparently hasn’t read even that book. Five gets you ten Trump played truant throughout his time at Wharton.

Some stained glass windows are beautiful, but others are offensive. One example of the latter is, or rather was, a window at St Mary Redcliff church in Bristol.

It depicted Edward Colston (d. 1721), a sea merchant and philanthropist who endowed numerous schools and other institutions. He was also a Tory MP, which was offensive enough by itself because, as we know, only the Labour, LibDem and Green parties confer moral rectitude on their members. You might say that those parties didn’t exist at the time Colston lived, but that’s a lame excuse. He should have anticipated modern politics centuries in advance.

More damning, he didn’t anticipate modern sensibilities either. That’s why Colston not only endowed schools but also engaged in a spot of slave trade, which outweighed all his philanthropy in the eyes of that church. Hence the window showing his likeness had to be removed, that went without saying.

But since leaving a blank windowpane would have been unsightly, it had to be replaced with an image more consonant with today’s morality. As a result, the window now shows the Holy Family in an inflatable boat carrying illegal migrants, contextually Muslim, across the Channel.

Yes, everyone knows that, like the Labour, LibDem and Green parties, Islam didn’t exist at the time (neither did inflatable boats, come to think of it). But since Jesus is part of the divine Trinity, he is outside time. Thus any chronological argument against him being, say, a Labour MP for Galilee South or, for that matter, an illegal Muslim migrant is irrelevant. Jesus belongs in that illegal boat metaphysically, as the term is misunderstood at that church.

If you think this is insane, brace yourself. For anything Somerset can do, Norfolk can do worse.

The Norfolk diocese ordered its parishes to strengthen their commitment to DEI and kindly issued an “anti-racist” toolkit to help vicars and lay communicants to steer clear of “Eurocentrist” prayers.

The toolkit states that clergy should “ensure that intercessions are aligned with the concerns of the congregation and are not entirely Eurocentric”. Now, Norfolk is a largely rural county whose population is 95 per cent ‘Eurocentric’, which here means white.

As for the concerns of Norfolk’s Anglicans, one assumes they are basically Christian. That is, they must be “aligned” with pleas for individual salvation, repentance for sins and intercessions on behalf of those in need of God’s help. If some parishioners cast their intercessory net wider, they may also ask God for less parochial assistance, but I doubt they highlight the race of those who deserve it.     

That, according to the guidance, isn’t good enough. Priests should lead and encourage prayers to “include different languages and topics”. One such prayer would ask God to “open our hearts, that we may be bold in finding the riches of inclusion and the treasures of diversity among us”.

We, the congregants, O Lord, continues the blueprint prayer, “come before you, a holy family, a rainbow people”. The toolkit also suggests a Sunday “Collect for Racial Justice”, kicked off with a prayer begging God Almighty to: “Stir the hearts of your people that, rejoicing in our diversity, we may repent of the wrongs of the past.”

Such as those committed by Edward Colston in another county and another century. Let’s not forget, continues the guidance, that Christianity was spread with the help of “racist European ideologies”.

Quite. Paul might have written “neither Jew nor Greek”, but what he really meant was “and especially not Muzzie-Wuzzies”. It’s that kind of implicit racism that accounted for the spread of Christianity.

And of course, during Ramadan, that equivalent of Lent according to the Archbishop of New York, Norfolk Anglicans should “pray for Muslims”. If parishes wish to have any pictorial representations of divinity, they should  “display images that reflect diversity in the Body of Christ”. Such, one assumes, as that of the Holy Family trying to evade British immigration services.

The toolkit enjoys episcopal support, with both the Rt Rev Graham Usher, the Bishop of Norwich, and the Rt Rev Dr Jane Steen, the Bishop of Lynn, endorsing it enthusiastically. The latter, that living argument against the consecration of women, wrote a foreword to the guidance, in which she explained that prayers should reflect DEI because “our counties are becoming more ethnically diverse”.

The aspiring sociologist in me rejoices: religious observance is now put on a solid demographic basis. Extrapolating on that logic, the dioceses of Leeds or Leicester, whose populations are much more diverse than Norfolk’s, should be chanting “there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet”, followed by a resounding “Allahu Akbar!”.

If you are still wondering why the pews in Anglican churches are empty, wonder no more. People don’t need to go to churches for a torrent of woke effluvia. They can get that sort of thing from profane sources whose name is legion.

What Christians expect in a church is a glimpse of the kingdom that is not of this world, certainly not of the ugliest manifestations of this world. Do Norwich parishioners realise that their diocese’s guidance isn’t just woke and stupid but also heretical? Or have they been sufficiently brainwashed already to think they celebrate mass to atone for the sins of “white supremacists” like Edward Colston?

One wonders if this is what Henry VIII had in mind when he tore the English Church away from the Roman communion. He was by all accounts an intelligent man, but evidently not enough to realise that, when a church becomes an extension of the secular state, it will sooner or later reflect its current policies – including those that are un-Christian or even anti-Christian.

I’d suggest immediate disestablishment, but that would have unpredictable social and constitutional consequences. In any case, the Church of England may be too far gone to be helped even by such radical measures.

Lest you think this is just confessional chauvinism speaking, that New York prelate who sees little difference between Ash Wednesday and Ramadan is Catholic. So perhaps it’s not establishment that’s to blame for the plight of the C of E.

It may be just something in the modern air, and let’s pray for those toxic miasmas to dissipate. Or else you can pray for DEI virtue, whichever you prefer.    

Such is the circuitous route I followed trying to analyse the cultish adulation of Donald Trump, which I find anthropologically more interesting than any of his policies. Some of them I like, others I don’t, but that’s not my subject today.

In any case, a real, especially religious, conservative may like or dislike a politician or, more common, tolerate or despise him. In some cases, the feelings may be stronger, encompassing such extremes as love or hatred.

But under no circumstances can such a man worship a politician, see him – or, for that matter, any political doctrine or method of government – as the cure for all of life’s ills.

That such quasi-religious veneration is widespread across the entire political spectrum of modernity proves yet again that real, especially religious, conservatives have no place in modern politics.

This brings us to Bléneau, a village in my neck of the French woods. Sitting in the middle of it is a medieval church that, like many other French churches, was converted into a Temple of Reason during the Revolution. That saved the building by tempering the destructive zeal of the revolutionaries who strove to erase every vestige of Catholicism.

Many of them weren’t atheists. Like most of their American revolutionary colleagues, they were deists who professed faith in some nebulous clock-winding deity and therefore detested apostolic religions preaching God’s continued interest in His creation.

Hence exhibited on the lovely façade of that Bléneau church is a directive issued by Robespierre: “The French People recognise the existence of the Supreme Being and the Immortality of the Soul.” Lip service thus paid, inchoate modernity could proceed undeterred to worship at the altar of a secular, political religion, following the precedent set by the American Founders and their precursors.

One such precursor was the Puritan lawyer John Winthrop, who in 1630 delivered an oration in which he alluded to Matthew 5: 14 by describing the new community as a “city upon a hill”. The full text of that verse left his audience in no doubt that the nation they had set out to build was ordained by God: “Ye are the light of this world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.”

The Mayflower Puritans believed in God and they also believed in the new nation they were creating. Their descendants conflated the two and eventually produced history’s first political religion that made perfunctory references to God while deifying their country, variously described as a republic, a democracy, a liberal democracy, but always serving as an object of neo-pagan adulation.

That inaugurated a widespread sacralisation of politics now divorced from traditional religious constraints. The development was revolutionary and, like all revolutions, it was claimed finally to have come to grips with the meaning and fundamentals of human life.

Though lacking God, the new cult possessed the outer aspects of a religion: scripture (the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Founders’ exegesis thereof), rituals, mythology, commandments, sacraments and symbols.

Moreover, already at that early stage the impression was conveyed, for the time being obliquely, that America’s founding documents were binding not just for the country but also for the unsuspecting outside world. If all those countries didn’t realise what was good for them, it was up to America to teach them – and chastise them if they proved recalcitrant.

(In 1895, for example, HMG had to remind US Secretary of State Richard Olney that the Monroe Doctrine fell far short of being international law.)

In the 1840s the journalist John L. O’Sullivan coined the term ‘manifest destiny’ to describe America’s messianic mission in the world. Said manifest destiny was according to him “divine”: it was incumbent upon America “to establish on earth the moral dignity and salvation of man”.

Never in the history of the world had there existed another nation so bursting with such sanctimonious arrogance. The world had to wait until the twentieth century for America’s antithetical doppelgänger to appear: Soviet Russia on her own messianic crusade.

The differences between the two are obvious enough, but the similarities are just as telling, if less commented upon.

To reinforce the quasi-religious aspects of their political self-worship both countries borrowed their iconography from various creeds, either pagan or faux Christian. In ghoulish mimicry of Christian relics, for example, the ‘uncorrupted’ body of Lenin still lies in its Red Square mausoleum.

Rumours used to be spread that Soviet scientists were working on ways to bring Lenin’s body back to life, and every Soviet city, town or village was adorned with posters screaming “Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will always live!”.

Many have commented on the perverse references to religion in Bolshevik iconography, but few have noticed that the same mimicry is just as robust in America.

Hardly any speech by American leaders from the eighteenth century onwards has omitted quasi-religious references to canonised historical figures, whose deeds are routinely described in Biblical terms. “Fellow citizens, the ark of your covenant is the Declaration of Independence,” pronounced John Quincy Adams, and he meant it exactly as it sounded.

Sacral visual imagery also abounds, as do the mock-religious shrines to past leaders. One such, Mount Rushmore with its 60-foot likenesses of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln carved in granite, is an obligatory site for American pilgrimages.

George Washington in particular is worshipped in a religious manner as ‘Great Father of the Country’. The interior of the Capitol dome in Washington displays a fresco entitled The Apotheosis of Washington where the sainted Father is surrounded by Baroque angels and also representations of other Founders in contact with various pagan gods, such as Neptune, Vulcan and Minerva.

In the same vein, the Lincoln Memorial is designed as a Greek temple and is actually identified as such in marble: “In this temple, as in the hearts of the people, for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.”

The Jefferson Memorial, not far away, is also a replica of a pagan shrine, with various quasi-religious references inscribed. Cited, for example, is a quotation from Jefferson’s letter to Washington preaching: “God who gave us life gave us liberty…”

To emulate the God of the Scriptures, the American political deity had to claim creative powers. God Mark I may or may not have created the world, but it was definitely up to God Mark II to recreate it. In that sense, America fulfilled the prophesy of one of her spiritual fathers, Thomas Paine.

In his revolutionary gospel Common Sense Paine thundered off his pulpit that, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand…”.

America and Russia signpost the two poles in politics elevated to a cult. It’s easy enough to trace both back to truly religious antecedents, Puritan Protestant in the US, Byzantine caesaropapist in Russia. But in reality such links have long since receded into a distant genetic memory, something of mainly antiquarian or, if you will, anthropological interest.

But the sacralisation of politics has survived this severance of its religious roots, and it’s noticeable throughout what used to be Christendom. The four principal post-Enlightenment political trends, socialism, communism, fascism and liberal democracy, converge in their propensity for making far-reaching eschatological claims – and eliciting similar cultish adulation.

One can’t escape the impression that modernity desperately seeks another conduit into which to channel the inherent human need for worshipping something higher than self. No longer able to worship God, it engages in the ghastly mimicry of worshipping politics.

From there, it’s but a short step to worshipping politicians – cults demand a figurine to sit at the top of the totem pole. At some point, the general political cravings demand a personalised expression – and find it in variously charismatic leaders.

Some of them may be downright evil, such as Lenin, Stalin or Hitler. Others, the Thatchers and Reagans of this world, may be rather virtuous. Others, like Gandhi or Trump, somewhere in between. But all are equally telling illustrations of the same idiosyncratically modern tendency: sacralisation of political power.

It’s only in this context that I can begin to understand the hysterical adulation of Trump evinced by even some people I know to be intelligent and well-informed. They all display symptoms that Gustave Le Bon described in his seminal book on crowd psychology as “impulsiveness, irritability, incapacity to reason, the absence of judgement of the critical spirit, the exaggeration of sentiments, and others”.

Arguing with them is as useless as trying to prove to a Muslim that there is a God other than Allah, and Mohammed isn’t his prophet. Cultish idols are there not to be analysed but to be worshipped. One can only hope that there is no apocalypse at the other end.

Yet again I’m going to act as a translator, not a writer. Two days ago, the French centre-right senator Claude Malhuret delivered a rousing speech that somehow escaped the attention of our press.

I hereby rely on my modest translating skills to correct this oversight:

Mr Prime Minister, esteemed ministers, dear colleagues, Europe stands at a critical crossroads of its history. The American shield is collapsing, the Ukraine risks losing her support, Russia is getting stronger. Washington has turned into the court of Nero: incendiary emperor, docile courtiers and a ketamine-befuddled buffoon responsible for purging the civil service.

This is a tragedy for the free world, but above all for the USA herself. Trump’s message is unequivocal: it makes no sense to be America’s ally because she won’t protect you, she’ll introduce tariffs against you in excess of those imposed on her enemies, and she’ll threaten to invade your territories while supporting the dictators attacking you. “The king of deals” is in fact practising the art of capitulation.

He thinks that, by kowtowing to Putin, he will scare China but, as he looks on this debacle,  Xi Jinping is definitely accelerating preparations for invading Taiwan. Never in US history has a president capitulated to an enemy. Never before has a White House resident supported an aggressor against an ally.

Never before has a president abused the Constitution so blatantly: illegal orders, sacking of judges capable of resistance, summary purge of high military command, undermining of all checks and balances, usurpation of control over social networks. This isn’t just an ‘illiberal slant’ – this is an attempt to usurp democracy. It’s good to remember that it took only a month, three weeks and a day to destroy the Weimar Republic.

I believe in the strength of American democracy, and protests have already begun in that country. Yet Trump has caused more harm to America in barely a month than he did in the whole four years of his previous tenure. We fought against a dictator – now we are fighting against a dictator abetted by a traitor.

Eight days ago, as Trump was patting Macron on the back in the White House, the US voted with Russia and North Korea – against Europe demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops. Two days later in the Oval Office, Trump the ‘draft dodger’ hectored Zelensky, the moral and strategic hero of the war, and then sent him away like an inept servant, saying: “Submit or get out.” Last night he went even further by stopping the supplies of weapons already promised.

How should we respond to this treachery? The answer is simple: by resisting. Above all, make no mistake: defeat of the Ukraine will spell defeat of all of Europe.

The Kremlin’s hit list already includes the Baltic countries, Georgia, Moldova. Putin’s goal is a return to Yalta, where half of Europe was delivered to Stalin. And the countries of the global south are awaiting the resolution of this conflict, to decide whether Europe is still to be respected or trampled on.

Putin strives to destroy the order introduced 80 years ago by the US and her allies, whose main principle was a ban on conquering territories by force. This principle lies at the foundation of the UN, but today’s America votes for the aggressor and against its victim because ‘Trumpism’ coincides with Putin’s view of the world. The idea is going back to spheres of influence, with great powers deciding the destiny of small countries.

“I’ll have Greenland, Panama and Canada; you can have the Ukraine, Baltics and Eastern Europe; he can have Taiwan and the South China Sea.” That’s what Mar-a-Lago oligarchs call ‘diplomatic realism’. In reality this means only one thing: we are on our own.

But insisting that it’s impossible to resist Putin is a lie. Quite the opposite, contrary to Kremlin propaganda Russia is getting weaker. In three years ‘the world’s second army’ has managed to grab only a few crumbs from a country that has a third of Russia’s population.

Interest rates of 25 per cent, depletion of currency and gold reserves, demographic collapse – Russia is teetering at the edge of an abyss. The US support of Putin is the greatest strategic error in the history of warfare. However, this shock has brought Europe to its senses.

Over just one day in Munich, Europeans realised that the Ukraine’s fate and Europe’s future are in their own hands. Now we face three urgent tasks:

1. To compensate for America’s treachery by accelerating arms supplies to the Ukraine, strengthening her defences, and insisting on European presence in all negotiations. This is costly but necessary. It’s time to abandon the taboo and use the frozen Russian assets, while also creating a coalition of resolute countries in defiance of the pro-Russian saboteurs within the EU.
2. Any treaty must include the return of all kidnapped children, the release of all POWs, and absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia and Minsk we know the true worth of ‘agreements’ with Putin. Therefore Europe must have enough military might to prevent another invasion.
3. To create European defence, abandoned after 1945 and further undermined after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is a giant task, but it’s on its success or failure that future generations will judge today’s leaders of Europe.

Friedrich Merz has said that Europe needs its own military alliance – this means France has been right all these decades in defending her strategic autonomy. Now it needs to be strengthened.

Large-scale investments, a European defence fund in excess of the Maastricht limitations on debt, unification of weapon systems, fast-tracked admission of the Ukraine into the EU, Europe’s greatest armed force. A new nuclear strategy based on French and British forces. Development of anti-missile defences and satellite systems. Ursula von der Leyen’s plan is a good beginning, but more will be required.

Europe can again become a military power only if she reclaims the status of an industrial superpower. Hence we need Mario Draghi’s plan, and this time we must act on it.

But the main factor of European rearmament is moral mobilisation. We must convince society to overcome fatigue, the fear of war and the resistance of Putin’s allies, both extreme right and extreme left. Yesterday, Mr Prime Minister, they again spoke at the National Assembly against European unity, against European defence.

They say they want peace. But what they are really working for is capitulation. Their ‘peace’ is defeat. It’s replacing Gaulle-Zelensky with a Ukrainian Pétain obedient to Putin. This is the peace of collaborators who have been sabotaging any aid to the Ukraine for three years.

The end of the Atlantic alliance? The risk is great. But over the past few days, the humiliation of Zelensky and a series of insane decisions have caused indignation within the USA herself.

Trump’s ratings are going down, Republicans face hostile crowds in their constituencies, even Fox News has begun to criticise the president. The Trumpists are still controlling the executive branch, Congress, the Supreme Court and the social networks, but those fighting for freedom have always emerged victorious in American history. And they are raising their heads.

The Ukraine’s fate is being decided in the trenches. But it also depends on those fighting for democracy in the US and also on us, our ability to unite Europe, create its defence shield and recover its status of a great power.

Our ancestors defeated fascism and communism at a cost of great sacrifices. Our task is to defeat the totalitarianism of the 21st century.

Glory to a free Ukraine! Long live democratic Europe!

I might have worded a few things differently, and my faith in the EU is less robust than Mr Malhuret’s. But by and large I have only two words to add to this inspiring message: hear, hear!

A young German man has been sentenced to two years and nine months in prison for incest with his half-sister.

I take my hat off and have to make a conscious effort to resist the urge to genuflect. It’s wonderful to see that modern Western states outdo the Bible in imposing moral strictures.

After all, the Old Testament is part of the Christian canon, and that book took a rather permissive view on what is a felony in Germany. For example, Abraham married his half-sister Sarah, and the Bible looks upon that union with benevolence.

Abraham’s brother married his niece, Lot did the dirty with his two daughters (he was the worse for wear at the time, but I doubt today’s German court would see that as extenuation), King David’s son had sex with his half-sister and, well, it’s a long list.

Eventually the Hebrews had enough, and the third book of the Bible, Leviticus, issued a compendium of prohibited relationships, providing for every permutation of kinship. However, perhaps in deference to Lot, sex between a man and his daughter was left out, which one has to treat as acceptance by omission.

As for marriage between cousins, something banned today in many Western countries, including 30 out of the 50 American states, rather than being proscribed that practice was actively promoted in Biblical times, and not just among Hebrews.

Part of the reason was endogamy, the desire to keep matings within a kindred group to hold outsiders at bay. But scriptural permissiveness also had a role to play in such social arrangements: what wasn’t explicitly prohibited was deemed to be implicitly condoned.

Still, before we go out of our way praising the Germans for their probity, we must consider its unlikely cohabitation with permissiveness. For, while holding the line on incest, German and other Western governments are firm in protecting, inter alia, the right of a man who used to be a woman to be impregnated by a woman who used to be a man.

It’s true that the Bible issues no injunction against that rather unorthodox possibility, but probably only because even God couldn’t envision anything quite like that. As for copulation between people of the same sex, it has now passed being accepted on its way to becoming compulsory.

Great pagan thinkers, such as Plato, saw nothing particularly wrong with homosexuality. But they saw plenty wrong with the family, as the concept is understood in Western tradition. Whenever private happiness was in conflict with public good, that latter had to prevail.

Plato described this pecking order with helpful honesty and unmatched mastery in his Republic and especially in Laws. The polis was everything; the individual qua individual, next to nothing.

The same went for that extension of the individual, his family, which was to be reduced to more or less the state’s breeding farm. For example, according to Plato, who can be credited with the invention of eugenics, it was up to the polis to pair off couples on the basis of the potential usefulness of their offspring to the common good.

Before Cleisthenes’s reforms created the polis around 500 BC, such views would have been unthinkable to the Greeks. Their society, like that of the ancient Hebrews, had revolved around the family, clan, kinship and other personal ties. But by Plato’s time the variably democratic polis had made the family redundant in every sense other than the good of the polis.

This is the first intimation in history of the relationship since then amply proved: democracy and family are at odds. They aren’t friends, nor even allies, but competitors: the stronger the one, the weaker the other.

Sensing this, John Locke, who laid out the groundwork for the liberal democratic state, countenanced not only divorce but even polygamy: “He that is already married may marry another woman with his left hand…” It is reassuring to see how solicitously our Lockean modernity is trying to make sure his prophesy can come true – if in Locke’s time hostility to marriage was still inchoate, by now it has grown to full maturity.

Inhaling the zeitgeist, society responds with alacrity. As late as in 1978, more than 90 per cent of British babies were born to married parents. Today, it’s only about half, which is over ten times less than the rate seen in the early parts of the 20^th century.

This is of course an outrage, but someone rummaging through the New Testament would find some justification for a dim view of marriage. St Paul’s injunctions against homosexual relations are well-known, but it’s less often mentioned that he wasn’t an enthusiastic advocate of straight sex either.

Marriage, especially when including a physical element, reduces man’s ability to serve God, according to Paul. “It is good for a man not to touch a woman,” he wrote to the Corinthians. Then, recognising the realities of life, he added: “Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.” Still, even if married they should refrain from how’s your father.

I’m not sure how Paul reconciled his views with Jesus’s implicit elevation of marriage to a sacrament. After all, it was at a wedding that he performed his first miracle.

Jesus also issued an injunction against divorce: “And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.”

Nevertheless, the church found Paul’s attitude to marriage to be a development of Jesus’s commandments, rather than their denial. Marriage is now a holy sacrament in the church, but due to vigorous rearguard resistance it acquired this status only in the late 12^th century.

However, having acquired it, marriage began to be treated with the deference befitting a sacrament. Even now most Catholic churches refuse to marry divorcees who dissolved their marriage in civil courts. In the eyes of the state they are free to remarry; in the eyes of the church they are still married to their original spouses.

All this goes to show that new morality is neither moral nor especially new. Mankind has done much trial and error, mostly the latter, and one can use that experience to make sense of the hodgepodge of facts I’ve thrown together.

Different civilisations had their own views on sex, marital or otherwise. All of them tended to be consistent and cogent on their own terms, although not necessarily on other people’s terms. All of them recognised the social, spiritual and religious aspects of marriage, although their relative weight varied from one epoch to the next.

You may like or dislike our epoch, but one thing is undeniable: consistency and cogency aren’t its most salient characteristics. Statism is, and it doesn’t sit comfortably with a strong family as the core unit of society.

The operators of modern states sense this viscerally even if they don’t perceive it rationally. That’s why everything they do in the area of intersex relations promotes licence as a weapon against the family.

Easy divorce, abortion on demand, pre-teen girls on contraception, obsession with sex, equalising all sorts of perversions in status with heterosexual marital sex – all these systematically undermine the family.

The family fights back by setting up a demographic catastrophe: the current birthrate in most Western countries is well below that required for population renewal. Totalitarian countries like Russia and China use dictatorial fiats for demographic control, but with little success.

Rather than offering resistance, most churches treat this moral, social and demographic disaster with acquiescence if not approval. Most governments pay lip service to family values while continuing to act according to their innate imperative of treating the family as an adversary.

In light of all that, sending a chap down for some hanky-panky with his half-sister seems illogical. But then if you can find logic in modernity, you are a better man than I am.

P.S. Speaking of churches, Cardinal Dolan, the archbishop of New York, has kindly elucidated the meaning of Ash Wednesday. The first day of Lent is, according to him, “a kind of our Catholic Ramadan.” Thank you, your Grace, for explaining this so that the general public can understand.

In 1794 the Polish military leader Tadeusz Kościuszko (who had earlier fought in the American War of Independence) led an uprising against the Russian Empire.

He and his fighters knew that it wasn’t just Poland’s freedom that was at stake. Had the insurgents won their battles, Russia herself and her other colonies would have had to become freer, if not exactly free. Moreover, the Damocles sword of an ever-looming Russian invasion would have stopped hanging over Europe’s head.

It was then that the Poles coined the proud slogan “For our freedom and yours”. Since then the slogan has been repeated whenever an enslaved nation rose against Russian tyranny. These days, every Russian and Pole knows it – these words are permanently emblazoned in the minds of every victim of Russia, including freedom-loving Russians.

For example, in 1968 eight dissidents unfurled that slogan in Red Square when protesting against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. They were thrown into concentration camps, and not all of them survived. However, they heroically accepted their fate because they knew Goethe was right when saying: “Of freedom and of life he only is deserving who every day must conquer them anew.”

Poland’s history of always being partitioned, carved, re-carved, subjugated and freed, with Russia invariably involved, has made both the letter and the spirit of that noble slogan about “our freedom and yours” an essential part of the national consciousness.

That’s why the Poles are the staunchest supporters of the Ukraine’s fight against Russian fascism (this though historically the relations between the two nations can’t exactly be described as cordial). They, unlike some Western politicians one could mention, know that the Ukrainians are dying not only for their own independence but also Europe’s.

Such is the context of an appeal issued to President Trump by the founders of the Polish Solidarity union and former political prisoners of the communist regime. Amazingly, not a single British paper I read has seen fit to mention this important document (the translation is mine, so please don’t shoot – I’m doing my best):

“Dear Mr President,

“It was with concern and disgust that we watched your encounter with Vladimir Zelensky, president of the Ukraine. We regard as offensive your insistence on respect and gratitude for the material aid provided by the United States in support of the Ukraine’s struggle against Russia. Gratitude is due instead to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers spilling their blood in defence of the free world’s values.

“It is they who for over 11 years have been dying at the frontline to uphold such values and defend the independence of their nation attacked by Putin’s Russia.

“We do not understand how the leader of the country embodying the free world can fail to see this.

“Our concern was also raised by the tone of the exchange in the Oval Office that resembled the atmosphere we remember only too well from interrogations at Security Services and hearings in communist courts. Then, at the behest of the omnipotent communist political police, the prosecutors and judges would also explain to us that they held all the cards while we held none. They too demanded we cease our activities because thousands of innocent people would suffer as a consequence.

“They took away our liberties and civil rights because we refused to cooperate with the authorities and express our gratitude to them. We are shocked that this is exactly how you treated Vladimir Zelensky.

“The history of the 20^th century shows that, each time the United States tried to steer clear of democratic values and her European allies, she exposed herself to danger as a result. President Wilson understood that, which is why he decided to take the United States into the First World War in 1917. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood that too, which is why, after the attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, he decided that the war defending America should be waged not only in the Pacific Ocean, but also in Europe, in alliance with the countries attacked by the Third Reich.

“We remember that the collapse of the Soviet empire would have been impossible without President Reagan and America’s financial commitments. President Reagan was aware of the suffering of the millions of people enslaved in Soviet Russia and the countries she had conquered, including the people who sacrificed their liberty in defence of democratic values. Reagan’s greatness, in addition to everything else, lay in the way he unequivocally described the USSR as an “evil empire” and called for resolute resistance to it. We emerged victorious, and today a statue of Ronald Reagan stands in Warsaw, outside the US Embassy.

“Mr President, material aid – military and financial – cannot be weighed against the blood shed for the freedom and independence of the Ukraine, Europe and the entire free world. A human life is priceless, and its value cannot be measured in money. Gratitude is due to those who are sacrificing their blood for liberty. This is obvious to us, Solidarity people and former political prisoners of the communist regime in the service of Soviet Russia.

“We are calling on the United States to honour the guarantees issued together with Great Britain in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum undertaking in no uncertain terms to protect the integrity of the Ukraine’s borders in exchange for her relinquishing nuclear weapons. These guarantees are unconditional: they contain not a single word about treating such aid as an economic transaction.

[SIGNED]

“Lech Wałęsa, former political prisoner, Solidarity leader, and President of the Polish Republic, along with 37 former political prisoners in communist Poland.”

The document is hardly a masterpiece of the epistolary genre, but it says things that every decent person knows are true, a category that evidently doesn’t include Trump and his MAGA zealots.

If he were still alive, Tadeusz Kościuszko would happily sign this appeal – even though he’d know it would fall on deaf ears.

When I was little, Allen Dulles was head of the CIA and hence much reviled in the Soviet press. When I left Russia in 1973, that organisation was run by Richard Helms, with James Jesus Angleton in charge of counterintelligence.

Somehow these three men stand out in my mind when I think of US intelligence, partly because their tenures coincided with landmark events in my own life. But not only for that reason.

All three were erudite, multilingual, highly intelligent and well-versed in the subtle arts of their profession. During the war Dulles, Helms and Angleton served in the OSS, precursor of the CIA, and amassed vast experience in international espionage and counterespionage.

All three went on to have distinguished careers in the CIA. They, especially Angleton, had their critics and detractors, but no one ever questioned their qualifications for the job. It would have been silly to do so.

The three men had something else in common, and here we approach my subject today. All of them occupied posts inferior to that currently occupied by Tulsi Gabbard.

Born in Samoa and raised in Hawaii, Miss Gabbard, 43, has had a military career followed by a stint as a Democratic congresswoman. In 2024 she switched her allegiance from the Democratic Party to… I almost wrote “the Republican one”, but then stopped myself. The statement wouldn’t have been accurate.

When in Congress, Miss Gabbard endorsed the candidatures of both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. One could argue that the latter was simply a demonstration of party loyalty: Biden was certain to become the Democratic candidate. Sanders, on the other hand, was strictly an outsider, firmly lodged on the leftmost margin of his party.

A woman who could find it in her heart to endorse Bernie may or may not have any principles, but whatever ones she does possess can’t possibly have anything to do with anything espoused by the Republican Party. No, the allegiance she pledged wasn’t to the Republicans. It was to Donald Trump.

Her reward for that principled stance was lavish. In spite of having no relevant education (not much of any education, truth be told) and not a day’s experience in intelligence work apart from a short time as junior officer in military police, she was appointed Director of National Intelligence. That put her in charge of not only the CIA but all intelligence-gathering agencies in the US.

Since Miss Gabbard is a woman and takes her oaths not on the Bible but on a copy of Bhavadat Gita, she’d definitely be described as a minority hire should her appointment have come courtesy of Biden.

But, to his credit, Trump doesn’t do minority hiring. His mental questionnaire demands different ticks. To his discredit, he doles out some vital posts to people whose sole visible qualification is canine devotion to him personally.

William Hague, former leader of the Conservative Party, has just returned from the US where he spent time with several members of the Trump administration, and it’s this feature that he highlights in his article.

Lord Hague writes about “an extraordinary level of loyalty, among Republicans in general and members of the new administration in particular, to Trump in person and every word he utters. It is part devotion, part fear of taking even a tiny step out of line, but it is intense.”

Trump runs a tight ship, and he brooks no disagreement, much less argument, as President Zelensky found out the hard way. Such docility seems to be his principal requirement and, on the evidence of Miss Gabbard, in some cases it may even be his sole one.

The other day she delivered a litany repeating word for word Trump’s mendacious diatribes against the Ukraine, which are in their turn verbatim reproductions of Putin’s propaganda. But let her speak for herself:

“You have the cancelling of elections in Ukraine. You have political parties being silenced or even criminalised or thrown in prison.

“You have the freedom of religion – churches being shut down. You have political opposition being silenced. You have total government control of the media. We could go down a whole laundry list of issues that are against the values of democracy and freedom.”

If she really believes that pack of lies, she is monumentally stupid and bone ignorant. If she simply parrots Trump by rote, she is even worse: suspending one’s own judgement negates the advantage of being human. In either case, she shouldn’t even be a typist to the DNI, never mind holding that post.

The three distinguished intelligence men I mentioned earlier were multilingual. By contrast, Miss Gabbard can’t even speak English properly, which too must have endeared her to her semi-literate boss. She continued in this vein: 

“So it really begs the question, as Vice President Vance said again in Munich, it’s clear that they’re standing against Putin. Obviously, that’s clear. 

“But what are they actually really fighting for, and are they aligned with the values that they claim to hold in agreement with us? The values that President Trump and Vice President Vance are standing for, and those are the values of freedom, of peace and true security.”

You might say that many illiterate people misuse ‘beg the question’ that way, and you’d be right. But this only proves that they are indeed illiterate.

What they are trying to say is ‘raise the question’. ‘Begging the question’ means something entirely different.

First described by Aristotle, begging the question is a rhetorical fallacy that usually goes by its Latin name petitio principii. It means assuming a premise that hasn’t been proved and using it to support a conclusion. One example of begging the question would be this sentence: “Because Tulsi Gabbard is intelligent, she deserves to be Director of National Intelligence.”

Even in Congress, Gabbard had form in regurgitating Putin propaganda, sometimes outdoing her future boss in that endeavour. Thus on the day Russia invaded the Ukraine (or was it the other way, Donald and Tulsi?), Gabbard declared that “this war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns.”

This is a line taken by the MAGA crowd and other Putin cheerleaders, including Trump himself. If I felt magnanimous, I’d describe it as ill-conceived (Russia has no ‘legitimate’ concerns in that area. She has evil designs to recreate the Soviet empire). As it is, I’d call it treasonous.

But in repeating Putin’s lies about the US running biological weapon laboratories in the Ukraine, Gabbard proved even more disingenuous than Trump: “I’m extremely concerned….,” she said. “The seriousness of this situation really can’t be overstated… We have these pathogens in the midst of a war zone [in] between 20 and 30 labs in Ukraine. This is a global crisis.”

The only global crisis currently unfolding is Putin’s criminal aggression against the Ukraine with Trump’s acquiescence and indeed support. As for Gabbard, if I were in charge of MI6, I’d think twice before sharing any intelligence information with any outfit she runs. It’s almost certain to be insecure.

In all my time of following American politics I’ve never seen the country so thoroughly dishonoured by its president. Nixon, Clinton, even Biden all look like moral giants compared to Trump’s performance yesterday.

It’ll take the nation a long time to live down the shame it must be feeling today. And if it’s not feeling any shame, it deserves nothing but contempt.

The way Trump (and his flunky Vance) treated President Zelensky has analogues not in diplomacy, nor even in politics, but in the gangster folklore fostered by blockbuster films like The Godfather.

However, if you insist on political analogies, all I can think of is Eduard Beneš being harangued by Hitler’s henchmen in 1938 or Baltic ministers curtly dismissed by Molotov a year later.

Don Trump has the mentality of Don Corleone, but he has none of the Godfather’s quiet dignity. As you remember, Don Corleone refrained from making threats, and he acted civilly even towards rivals he was planning to put down.

By contrast, Trump is a loudmouthed thug more in the vein of Al Capone than Carlo Gambino, the prototype for Marlon Brando’s character. Or perhaps Bugsy Siegel, Trump’s fellow casino builder for the Mafia, would be a tighter parallel.

Even if the US president had been right in his claims and gripes, his disgusting behaviour would by itself have been sufficient to bring the whole country into disrepute.

But his gripes were totally unjustified and his claims totally mendacious. For example, he again floated the lie that aiding the Ukraine cost the US $350 billion.

The actual number, as provided by Pentagon and State Department records, is $57 billion. There exists an aid commitment lower than Trump’s claim but in the same order of magnitude. However, it’s to be spread over 10 years, and none of it has so far been delivered.

Trump and his merry friends claim they want peace, but that too is a lie. They want Putin, with whom they feel inner kinship, to win and the Ukraine to lose. To that end, they are prepared to lie, cheat, blackmail, threaten, bully and in general do what thugs do.

The greatest lie, schizophrenic in its break from reality, is that somehow it’s the Ukraine in general and Zelensky specifically who are to blame for the war and its hundreds of thousands of victims (not millions, as Trump claims).

Every halfway decent country in the world has condemned Russia as the aggressor and Putin as a war criminal. International courts have issued warrants for his arrest, and that’s just for what he did to the Ukraine.

So far his turning Russia into a murderous fascist regime bristling with guns and hostile intent hasn’t attracted legal censure. The hostile intent, stated a thousand times if it has been stated once, is directed not just against the Ukraine but also the West in general, including the US.

On countless occasions, Putin and his stooges have threatened to turn the US into “radioactive dust” or else create the ‘American Strait’ between Canada and Mexico. Trump puts it all down to the misdeeds of the previous administration, but he either doesn’t understand or pretends not to understand the loathing Putin and his fascist entourage feel for the West.

Yet Trump has no problem with Putin. Putin, as he lied the other day, “keeps his word”. It would be tedious to list all the instances the Russian dictator has broken his word and reneged on the treaties his country signed, not to mention the ceasefire agreements ratified in 2014. Let’s just say that such behaviour is to be expected from a career KGB officer and, by the looks of it, his best Western friend.

Putin “respects me” said Trump at the end of the press conference, while both he and Vance repeatedly accused Zelensky of being “disrespectful”. The two chaps use ‘respect’ the same way Italian mafiosi use rispetto, as a synonym for servility and sycophancy.

There was Zelensky, a small man with a big heart, facing up to two big bullies with no hearts, saying reasonably – and respectfully, in the traditional sense of the word – that any peace without security guarantees is tantamount to surrender.

Yet every time he tried to get a word in edgewise, he was rudely shouted down by his two tormentors. “It’s disrespectful for you to come to the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media,” harangued Vance, normally more articulate than his semi-literate boss but evidently taking lessons in Mafia-speak.

“You don’t have the cards right now,” added Trump. “You’re gambling with World War Three, and what you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country that’s backed you.”

Right. It’s Zelensky who is “gambling”, not his fascist enemy threatening nuclear annihilation of the West every morning between brushing his teeth and having breakfast. Zelensky, who according to Don Trump, provocatively refused to capitulate when Putin’s hordes streamed across the border to murder, loot and rape, to turn his country into an enslaved province of Russia.

Trump then dismissed Zelensky like an inept servant who had failed to run the bath at the right temperature. “Come back when you are ready to talk peace,” he hissed. Meaning to surrender.

The denizens of the Kremlin were triumphant: their soulmate in the White House did them proud. “The insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office,” wrote Dmitri Medvedev, Putin’s perpetually drunk poodle. He too knows how to speak Trumpish.

To their credit, European countries disavowed the revolting behaviour of the so-called leader of the free world. Poland, Germany, France and Britain restated their commitment to stopping the barbarian onslaught in its tracks.

Will they put their money where their mouth is? asked several editorials. I have a solution: the money they can put where their mouth is doesn’t have to be theirs.

Currently, some $300 billion in Russian assets is frozen in the West, most of it in Europe. The solution proposes itself: this money should be confiscated and converted into armaments for the Ukraine.

This will be enough for that heroic nation to hold its own against Putin and his friend in the White House. (Always provided Trump doesn’t send 82nd Airborne to attack the Ukraine from the rear.)

At the same time, Trump must be told in no uncertain terms that America may be the bee’s knees, the land of the free, the home of the brave and all that. But she still needs reliable allies, and if Don Trump thinks Putin is it, there’s a bridge across the Potomac I’d like to sell him.

Trump doesn’t seem to realise that geopolitics is different from building and operating Atlantic City casinos. You can’t wing it by playing lickspittle to the strong and dumping on the weak, and there is hell to pay for betrayal.

Back in July Trump betrayed Taiwan by signalling he wouldn’t defend it from a Chinese invasion because the country had grown rich by “stealing” US microchip production. Now it’s the Ukraine’s turn.

Trump’s idea of making America great again seems to be based on the mental image of a world divided among communist China, fascist Russia and Trump’s US.

Wrong company for America to keep, Don Trump. That’s not how you make her great. That’s how you make her despicable – and those of us who have warm feelings for the US know the difference.

P.S. For your delectation, here’s an excerpt from Trump’s bravura performance: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cdel2npwe50o