Category: Blog

The other day I wrote a knockabout spoof of an interview given by Pope Francis to a Jesuit magazine, as it was reported in the press.

However, a highly respectable Catholic thinker took exception to my having based the spoof on newspaper reports and not on the full text. Since I do respect him highly, I was suitably contrite: it is indeed lazy and slipshod to ignore primary sources.

My friend kindly provided the full text of the interview. In the good Christian tradition he clearly expected me to atone for my sins by acknowledging how wrong I was. “You may still not like what you read,” he said, “but you will at least do him justice.”

Well, as far as the first part is concerned, my friend got it in one: I don’t like what I’ve now read. As to the second part, the only thing I can do is comment on the text. If my justice happens to be of the rough variety, then so be it. Dura lex, sed lex, as His Holiness would say.

At the very beginning, Pope Francis issues a disclaimer, “I have never been a right-winger.” Then he goes on to prove that he’s indeed exactly the opposite of that.

However, he reassures the readers that he’s no populist. Sorry, Your Holiness. It’s just that we were misled by such statements as, “The people itself constitutes a subject. And the church is the people of God on the journey through history, with joys and sorrows. Thinking with the church, therefore, is my way of being a part of this people.” 

I’m not sure I understand the denotation, but the connotation is clear enough, and if this isn’t populist, I don’t know what is. In general one has to go more by the overall tenor of the Pope’s pronouncements, rather than by what he actually says. For he doesn’t say very much.

Left-wing theologians, like left-wing politicians, seldom say anything of substance, right, wrong or indifferent. Their stock in trade is platitudes, truisms and bien-pensant generalities.

Some of the Pope’s truisms are indeed true, as when he says that, “The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you.”

Verily, a Christian is someone who believes he was saved by Jesus Christ. Similarly, a footballer is someone who kicks the ball and a musician is someone who plays an instrument. All of those things are true. So true in fact that none needs saying.

When asked a question demanding a meaty answer, the Pope sticks to marshmallows instead. For example, when ecumenism comes up, the Pope mentions the importance of ‘dialogue’.

“The joint effort of reflection, looking at how the church was governed in the early centuries, before the break-up between East and West, will bear fruit in due time. In ecumenical relations it is important not only to know each other better, but also to recognise what the Spirit has sown in the other as a gift for us.”

And specifically, Your Holiness? ‘The joint effort of reflection’ has been going on for over a millennium, and the two Churches still cordially loathe each other. If continuing dialogue ‘will bear fruit in due time’, when is the time due? Another millennium? Two?

Such shilly-shallying looks particularly lamentable by contrast to the way the Pope’s predecessor tackled such thorny issues.

Pope Benedict didn’t limit himself to ‘dialogue’. He extended a generous offer of the ordinariate to those Anglicans who’ve had enough of female lesbian priests and similarly progressive innovations. But then conservatives do tend to prefer talking in concrete terms.

Unsurprisingly the Pope is an enthusiastic supporter of Vatican II: “Vatican II was a re-reading of the Gospel in light of contemporary culture,” he says. “Its fruits are enormous. Just recall the liturgy. The work of liturgical reform has been a service to the people as a re-reading of the Gospel from a concrete historical situation.”

The Gospel, Your Holiness, doesn’t need to be re-read ‘in light of contemporary culture.’ Let’s identify the dog and the tail, and then we’ll know what should be wagging what.

The Gospel is there to shape contemporary or any other culture, not to be shaped by it. And yes, the fruits of Vatican II are ‘enormous’, in the sense in which the word is a cognate of ‘enormity’, especially if we ‘recall the liturgy’.

One such fruit is effectively driving out the ancient Tridentine and Latin mass. If in the past a Catholic could travel the world and always go to mass knowing it’ll be exactly as at home, now, unless he’s a polyglot, he’s lost when abroad. Rather than being all-inclusive, the new mass is all-divisive.

Also lost is the grandeur of the liturgy, its sublime beauty. Every vernacular into which liturgical Catholic texts have been translated since 1965 has only succeeded in rendering these texts mundane. Comparing the English of the Anglican 1662 mass to the French of modern Catholic liturgy tells us all we need to know.

And what was found to replace what was lost? Approval by proponents of ‘contemporary culture’? Most of them are atheists anyway.

Then on to homosexuality: “A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person. 

“During the return flight from Rio de Janeiro I said that if a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge… it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.”

If the living embodiment of the apostolic tradition is ‘no one to judge’, then who is? The rest is populist demagoguery at its most soaring. Of course, ‘a gay person’ must be loved – because he’s a person, not because he’s ‘gay’. God indeed loves repentant sinners, but He hates sin.

So the Pope yet again says nothing. He could, for example, have stressed repentance as a sine qua non of forgiveness. Does he think that a homosexual repents when insisting on the right to marry, march in public demonstration of perverse lewdness or flaunt his little predilection to offend traditional decency?

If not, what is the Church’s position on unrepentant sinners? Those seeking an answer to such questions, shouldn’t ask the Pope. He won’t say anything of value.

The same goes for the subject of women in church. Does the Pope’s receptiveness to ‘contemporary culture’ extend to potential acceptance of female clergy?

“It is necessary to broaden the opportunities for a stronger presence of women in the church…We must therefore investigate further the role of women in the church. We have to work harder to develop a profound theology of the woman.”

But such a theology already exists, certainly in the Catholic Church, where Mary’s status almost equals that of her son. What does ‘a stronger presence’ mean? Female priesthood? Female episcopate? If not, what then?

Oh well, what can one expect from a man who admits to admiring Caravaggio, Chagall and Wagner. I suppose we must be thankful that His Holiness didn’t go for Amy Winehouse and Damien Hirst instead.

For that’s what ‘contemporary culture’ is all about. Do let’s hope that under this Pope’s guidance the Church won’t gravitate towards the clerical equivalent.

If one listens to the commentators, American politics is going through so many splits it’s amazing her crotch muscles are still intact.

The temporary shutdown of most state business may well be followed by the country defaulting on her debts, with unforeseeable consequences for global economy. Gloom is here, with doom soon to follow.

Depending on who’s talking, this unfortunate situation is blamed either on Obama’s health policies, rightly perceived as going against the grain of the American ethos, or else on the bloody-mindedness of the American Republican Right.

The American Republican Right is thereby split away from the American Republican Left, both are split away from the Democrats of any description, who too are split up among themselves.

All commentators without exception are ascribing such fractiousness to minor transient differences or else to jockeying for electoral position. All these are no doubt a factor, but the problem may well be more fundamental than that. If so, America is yet again teaching us all a lesson, this time in how not to do things.

The fact is that the USA has rightwing politicians galore, but it has precious few conservatives. The difference between the two points at the crucial problem of today’s politics everywhere in the West.

Conservatism starts from an intuitive predisposition, which a man then relates to various aspects of life. In each case he must answer for himself the lapidary $64,000 question: “What is it that I wish to conserve?”

A conservatively inclined American can find cultural outlets for his inner inclinations without much problem. Even social life wouldn’t be unduly unreceptive. But what about political outlets?

Here America and France have the same problem: both are constituted from birth as revolutionary republics inspired by Enlightenment principles. An American who answers the crucial question with “the Constitution of the United States” thereby reaffirms his commitment to the destruction of every aspect of Christendom, including its political legacy.

A revolutionary republic suffers from a congenital, incurable defect: it doesn’t reach all the way up to heaven. It thus lacks, if you will, the eschatological legitimacy of a monarchy, which may claim it’ll end in heaven because it started there.

Burke, the guiding light of what passes for American conservatism, was unequivocal on this point: God willed the state. De Maistre put it more cautiously and possibly precisely: the origin of a monarchy goes so far back that we can’t trace it all the way to its inception. Therefore we may as well believe it’s willed by God.

The philosophical ambivalence of American or French conservatism explains its practical weakness. At least in France it’s possible to look back nostalgically at the glorious history of the pre-revolutionary state. Americans doing the same thing would in effect be denting the country’s sovereignty, which is no longer possible.

This explains why for all intents and purposes conservatism doesn’t exist in America, certainly not as a discernible political force. Filling the hole thus formed, various simulacra of conservatism step in. Alas, the hole turns out to be bottomless.

Falling into it are economic libertarians, the closest an American can come to conservatism. To justify his intellectual existence, a libertarian has to attach undue importance to commercial activity, relying on it as a be-all and end-all.

Yet we see time and again that what I call ‘totalitarian economism’, when it’s not underpinned by universally accepted metaphysical dicta, sooner or later begins to resemble a snake biting its own tail.

This is the true origin of both the 2008 crisis, the current one, and of the suicidal debt most Western countries have had to run up to keep up with their post-Enlightenment egalitarianism. Conservatively inclined Americans look to sound bookkeeping as a solution to their economic ills. Instead they should be looking to sound metaphysics – everything else will follow.

Other faux conservatives, the neocons, are simply frauds. Their politics is much closer to Trotskyism. Specifically, they are committed to the aggressive proselytising of the American secular religion of democracy – and only to that. Any such effort presupposes an increasingly powerful central state, which is about as unconservative as it’s nowadays possible to get.

In the process the neocons mouth utter gibberish along the lines of ‘conservative revolution, ‘conservative welfare state’ and so forth. They have neither the mind nor the taste to detect the oxymorons there. More worryingly, the public doesn’t possess such admirable qualities either.

The American, or any other, Left, on the other hand, has a coherent promise to make. It may be utterly stupid and subversive, but it is indeed coherent. Whatever wording leftwing politicians prefer, in effect they are saying, “Don’t worry. If your own efforts don’t enable you to keep up with the wealthy Joneses, we’ll look after you.”

Such promises are backed up with cash – hence the US national debt of $16.7 trillion. All those libertarians who call themselves conservatives react to this outrage churlishly by tossing their toys out of the pram. Deep down they know that promiscuous spending will always be popular with a large, and growing, part of the population.

Reducing the whole argument to dollars and cents means losing it. It also means that complete nonentities like Obama can not only win elections but justifiably claim high intellectual ground.

They are trying to help those who won’t help themselves, and what are the ‘conservatives’ doing? Courting economic collapse with their brinkmanship.

Hence all the acrobatic splits that so excite the imagination of commentators, who then propose all sorts of ad hoc solutions. None will work, not in the long term, in the absence of a proper conservative platform from which effective opposition can be launched.

Such a platform is impossible to build in a revolutionary republic, and it’s becoming increasingly unlikely even in what’s left of British monarchy. On this pessimistic note, I’ve got to split.

Just about every Tory activist begged Dave not to push through his flagship law on homomarriage. This abomination, they pleaded, would hurt the party.

Now they’ve been proved right, Dave says he’s sorry. Oh well, that’s all right then.

What exactly is he apologising for? According to the Tory activists at the receiving end of the apology, Dave “still believes that gay marriage is right.”

A man with the power of his convictions then? If so, why apologise? You see, Dave isn’t sorry about his commitment to this subversive law. He’s only sorry about the effect it has had on the party.

The effect is well-nigh seismic. Under Dave’s sage guidance the party has lost more than half of its membership, with thousands of lifetime Tories citing this law as the reason for leaving.

Many of them have defected to UKIP, enabling it to act as a wrecking ball in the next elections. Unless a highly unlikely agreement is struck, this practically guarantees that the Tories won’t win the election outright. Another coalition beckons, emasculating the party and hurting us all.

There’s no doubt that the new law has done much damage not only to Dave’s party but also to the country at large. But having a PM like Dave is even more damaging – while the realisation that the other lot are even worse makes one weep.

Dave’s apology confirms that things like intellect, integrity, conscience and morality play no part in his decision making. Political expediency reigns supreme, and he only regrets he didn’t realise that his fanatical support of homomarriage went against the grain of that sole desideratum.

How was I to know? Dave asks. That makes him sound both disingenuous and daft. It’s the former because every association chairman told him so, imploring him to desist. It’s the latter because a modicum of common sense would have sufficed to anticipate the highly predictable result of his faddish stupidity.

Dave, Dave, Dave, what are we to do with you? Well, here’s what I’ll do: I’m going to give you a sure-fire procedure for avoiding such mishaps in the future. Next time you decide to tout an asinine idea, say post-natal abortion, compulsory euthanasia of wrinklies or humans marrying other species, guide what passes for your thought through these steps.

Step 1. Remind yourself that many grass-root Conservatives are different from you and your cabinet. They don’t regard the name of their party as strictly a figure of speech.

Step 2. That being the case, ask yourself what it is that they are trying to conserve.

Step 3. You’ll find that, generally speaking, they wish to protect what’s left of Christendom – its moral, religious, social and political tradition. Irrespective of their personal faith, they are desperate to conserve what they regard as immutable values at the foundations of their party.

Step 4. Accepting this as an overriding principle, you may be able to figure out how it applies to each particular idea that may cross your mind.

For example, homomarriage defies not only the 2,000 years of Christianity but also the 5,000 years of known human history. That’s 250 generations in about as many countries – you must tell yourself that not all of them were inferior to the one you so ably represent. Maybe they were on to something.

If you can’t go through the requisite mental process yourself, ask someone who can. Specifically, when an issue of public morality is at stake, you may wish to ask the Church. Flawed as it has become, the Anglican Church is an essential part of the realm, and it’s constitutionally empowered to offer such advice.

Just to be on the safe side, also ask some Tory thinkers, preferably those who aren’t seeking a political office. The late Prof. Ken Minogue would have been a good choice, but even after his death there are quite a few others.

Had you sought the advice of such people before shoving this abomination through Parliament, they would have told you that you’d run the risk of leading a party that no longer exists.

Step 5. Listen to what they have to say. They are cleverer than you are and just as committed to the party’s political success. What would make their advice particularly valuable is that they are committed to a few other things as well.

Alas, something tells me Dave is incapable of going through such elementary steps. That’s why one has to compliment him and his staff on the fallback election strategy they seem to have adopted.

Rather than re-emphasising their conservative credentials, they expect to win the next election by simply not being Labour. All that’s missing is a snappy slogan encapsulating the party’s promise to the electorate.

May I suggest “The Tories. We are the lesser evil”? Such truth in advertising just may carry the day.

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

We always hurt the one we love, goes a popular song. Perhaps. But there’s hurt and there’s hurt.

One man may hurt his wife by forgetting their wedding anniversary, or by drinking too much and earning too little, or by neglecting to do the dishes. Another man may hurt his wife by regularly putting her in A&E with broken bones.

Both may claim love and beg forgiveness, and the first man may well be justified in his declaration and his entreaty. But the second man must be locked up for as long as the law allows. And if he still insists he loves his wife, he’s either a hypocrite or a madman.

A man doesn’t express love for a woman with his fists. Nor does a political activist express love for a country with lifelong efforts to bring about a Marxist revolution. Never mind their – or their relations’ – protestations. In both instances, it’s hate speaking.

Ralph Miliband was such a Marxist activist. He devoted his life to glorifying Marxism in theory and trying to help it vanquish in practice. So whatever his son Ed  says in response to the Daily Mail article, Ralph hated Britain – objectively, to use a term from the Marxist jargon.

“Britain had to start working towards building a viable alternative that would be genuinely revolutionary socialist in its positions,” he wrote – and then worked towards this goal with enthusiasm worthy of a better application.

To those who haven’t experienced it first hand, Marxism may look like an innocent intellectual pose. It isn’t. Neither is it a beautiful theory perverted by the Soviets.

In fact even at their most murderous the Soviets fell far short of the cannibalistic prescriptions swelling the tomes by Marx and Engels.

For example, their Manifesto prescribes the nationalisation of all private property without exception. Even Stalin’s Russia in the thirties fell short of that ideal. In fact, a good chunk, as much as 15 percent, of the Soviet economy was then in private hands.

Marx also insisted that family should be done away with, with women becoming communal property. Again, for all their efforts, Lenin and Stalin never quite managed to achieve this ideal either, much to the regret of those who could see an amorous pay-off in such an arrangement.

Then, according to the Manifesto, all children were to be taken away from their parents and raised by the state as its wards. That too remained a dream for the Bolsheviks. Their kindergartens and young pioneers’ camps weren’t compulsory, and those fortunate women who could get by without full-time employment were still free to read Pushkin to their children.

Modern slave labour, such an arresting feature of both Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, also derives from Marx – and again Lenin, Stalin and Hitler displayed a great deal of weak-kneed liberalism in bringing his ideas to fruition.

Marx, after all, wrote about total militarisation of labour achieved by organising it into ‘labour armies,’ presumably led by Marx as Generalissimo and Engels as Chief of the General Staff. Stalin came closer to this than Hitler, but again fell short: no more than 10 percent of the Soviets were ever in forced labour at the same time.

One aspect of Bolshevism and Nazism that came close to fulfilling the Marxist dream was what Engels described as “specially guarded places” to contain aristocrats, intelligentsia, clergy and other “noxious insects”, in Lenin’s heartfelt phrase.

Such places have since acquired a different name, but in essence they are exactly what Marx and Engels envisaged. Here Lenin and Stalin did come close to fulfilling the Marxist prescription, but they were again found wanting in spreading concentration camps to a mere half of the world. So where the Bolsheviks and Nazis perverted Marxism, they generally did so in the direction of softening it.

Genocidal or ideological mass murder widely practised by both the Nazis and the Soviets also derives from Marxism. Here are a few quotations from their works to give you a taste of exactly what Ralph Miliband tried to introduce to the country he supposedly loved: 

“All the other [non-Marxist] large and small nationalities and peoples are destined to perish before long in the revolutionary holocaust. For that reason they are now counter-revolutionary… these residual fragments of peoples always become fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution and remain so until their complete extirpation or loss of their national character… [A general war will] wipe out all this racial trash.”

“In history nothing is achieved without violence and implacable ruthlessness… In short, it turns out these ‘crimes’ of the Germans and Magyars against the said Slavs are among the best and most praiseworthy deeds which our and the Magyar people can boast in their history.”

“…only by the most determined use of terror against these Slav peoples can we, jointly with the Poles and Magyars, safeguard the revolution… there will be a struggle, an ‘inexorable life-and-death struggle’, against those Slavs who betray the revolution; an annihilating fight and ruthless terror – not in the interests of Germany, but in the interests of the revolution!”

“We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.”

Truer words have never been spoken. The Russians have never made excuses for the Marxist carnage they perpetrated. And now the Marxist Ed Miliband is trying to make excuses for his Marxist father.

Here we have another apple falling not far from the tree. Don’t pick it up – it’s poisonous.

Barack Hussein, Chairman and President of Oh bummer!, the world’s biggest chain of department stores, has written to shareholders, explaining why all outlets have suspended trading:

My fellow shareholders,

First let me thank you all for your continuing loyalty to the Oh bummer! project. Allow me also to assure you that this loyalty is reciprocated in my heart. However – and it pains me to have to say this – any more tangible reciprocity unfortunately has to be put on hold until further notice.

Starting today, Oh bummer! can afford to keep on only a skeleton staff of essential personnel, specifically our security guards and also the guys who turn the lights off and on.

This, I have to say, also means that no dividends will be paid to any of you for any foreseeable future, and Allah knows that this hurts me more than it hurts you.

Many of you will blame me for this unfortunate situation, and I am man enough to admit that, as President of Oh bummer!, I have to shoulder some – a teensy-weensy portion – of the blame.

The rest – most! – of it, belongs to the real vipers on the Oh bummer! board, who shall go as nameless as they are mindless, gutless and spineless. Oh well, if you insist, I am specifically referring to that boehner-headed viper John, who happily combines the mind of a cockroach with the moral sense of a skunk.

Still, in the good tradition of the Oh bummer! project, the buck stops with me, meaning that no bucks will flow in your direction. As this represents a most unfortunate situation, you are within your right to demand an answer from the board and specifically from me as its Chairman.

Why? I hear you ask. Why could you not carry out the inventory without having to shut down all the stores? This question, my friends, is best addressed to that boehner-headed viper John. For it was he who led the revolt against the product line I had proposed and spent all my adult life (along with some of my infancy) to refine.

This line of health products is guaranteed to ensure not only the physical wellbeing of our customers and shareholders but also their peace of mind. Allow me to reiterate for those of you with special needs what the Oh bummer! project is all about.

In a move never before attempted, if often dreamed about, in the history of retailing, all Oh bummer! customers will be obligated to buy our health products. Should they fail to comply, our security personnel and those guys who turn the lights off and on will force them to do so.

The derelicts’ charge accounts will be debited considerable amounts, and if even this measure fails they will be locked up in our warehouse. There they will stay until they accept that Oh bummer! only has their best interests in mind.

What can be fairer than this? Nothing at all. And yet that boehner-headed viper John persists in his maniacal insistence that this breakthrough retailing innovation somehow restricts the freedom of our customers and shareholders.

Nothing can be further from the truth. That boehner-headed viper John has forgotten the words of V.I. Lennon, the true inspiration behind the Oh bummer! project. Freedom, taught Comrade Lennon, is acknowledged necessity.

Therefore, all that our customers and shareholders will have to do is acknowledge the necessity of buying our line of health products. This will chisel their freedom in stone for generations to come – and let that boehner-headed viper John weep and wail and gnash his dentures.

In the spirit of openness and transparency for which Oh bummer! is so justly famous, I also have to share with you another problem – or rather another dastardly plot being concocted by that boehner-headed viper John and his co-conspirators.

As I am sure you realise, no business can operate without a bank overdraft. The bigger the business, the bigger the overdraft – to this universal law there are no exceptions.

Well, although Oh bummer! is the world’s biggest chain of its kind, our present overdraft stands at a paltry $16.7 trillion, barely $52,863.15 for every customer and shareholder.

This most reasonable overdraft is up for renewal in 16 days, which is a routine annual procedure. Yet that boehner-headed viper John, in cahoots with the bank manager, has colluded to deny our request to raise the overdraft ceiling to whatever amount I will deem necessary.

This means that a spectre is haunting Oh bummer!, the spectre of default. This creates the real and present danger of us having to shut shop altogether, not just for a temporary inventory, which is not an outcome any of you want.

So I appeal to you, my fellow shareholders: stop that boehner-headed viper John in his tracks, so the business can proceed as usual. Long live freedom, as I define it! Long live Oh bummer! Death to [fill in the blank]!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One reads staggering amounts of ignorant drivel written on just about any subject these days. But Russia takes pride of place, even in conservative publications.

They’re so desperate, for all the right reasons, about the way things are in their own country that they seek solace in Putin’s Russia – for all the wrong reasons. 

For example, a friend has asked my opinion of an article published on a rightwing blog. The very first sentence told me I was in for a rough ride: “On a trip to Russia earlier this year I learned a few things.”

You learn little on a short trip to any country about which you know next to nothing. There’s no harm in this – provided you don’t think you’ve gained valuable insights. If you do, it’s unfortunate. If you then communicate such insights, it’s subversive.

So what did the author learn? “Russia is very similar to Western countries; it’s a majority white Christian nation, so it has almost the same culture as us.” He should have saved himself the cost of the trip: such revelations could have been picked up from a school primer.

Anything else? “[Russians] love their country and they are proud of their history. They are not trying to stuff their country full of immigrants or apologise for the past. And they are united as a people.”

Well, patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel to Dr Johnson, and in Russia’s case this assessment is richly vindicated.

Let’s remember that in my parents’ generation, and partly my own, the Russian state murdered 60 million of its citizens. One would suggest that there’s little to be proud of and much to repent.

The author is confusing the pathetic apologies proffered by our leaders for ‘Britain’s colonial past’ with genuine repentance for things that any decent society should abhor. Germany, for example, has repented her sins and tried to expiate them.

But Russia hasn’t repented her murders, which is understandable. After all, she’s being run by the same organisation that did the murdering, ably led in the best KGB tradition by Col. Putin himself.

As to the Russians being ‘united as a people’, this is simple ignorance, curable by a few short conversations with simple folk in villages and small towns. One suspects the author’s fluency in Russian isn’t of sterling quality, and those chaps are unlikely to speak much of anything else. So the author’s embarrassing comment is understandable. One just wishes he kept it to himself.

“A person who refuses to work in Russia will have a very miserable time… One man…, a factory worker two years before,… [is] now a senior manager in an oil company. The secret to his impressive results? Hard work.”

Here the author shows a skimpy knowledge not only of Russian society but also of his own. The welfare state, which both he and I deplore, isn’t about helping people who can’t or won’t help themselves. It’s about increasing the power of the state.

When a state does much for individuals, it feels free to do much to them. Also, by steadily increasing the number of people owing their livelihood to the public purse, the state ensures its self-perpetuation.

It follows logically that when the state’s power is already absolute in perpetuity, it has no need for any welfare. That’s why all Russian children know the phrase “if any would not work, neither should he eat” even if they are unaware of its Pauline provenance.

To give credit where it’s due, the state practises what it preaches. Even people who genuinely can’t work are starving. To be fair, most of those who work hard aren’t much better off.

For it’s not ‘hard work’ that’s ‘the secret of impressive results’ but proximity to power. Russia’s economy is criminalised from top to bottom, being run as it is by an elite formed by the amalgam of the KGB and organised crime.

People outside this elite won’t get to run oil companies. Outside Moscow and a couple of other places those working hard regard £400 a month as a princely wage. Presumably the author noticed that prices in Russia are only marginally lower than in Britain – would he like to subsist on that amount or less?

“In many ways [the Russians] are more free than us; they can largely say what they want and do what they want as long as they’re not hurting anyone. However, I strongly advise against criticising their President.”

Hence the author’s concept of freedom is compatible with a ban on criticising Putin. By that criterion, Stalin’s Russia was even freer.

Why, Russia is so free that anyone who suggests she isn’t is quietly bumped off in a dark alley or, if he’s lucky, beaten within an inch of his life.

Putin has effectively suppressed free press, and those journalists who don’t get the message suffer a gruesome fate. Over 40 of them have been murdered on Putin’s watch, and God only knows how many roughed up.

The author’s admiration for such thuggery, even when aimed at Muslim ‘hate preachers’, makes one doubt his conservatism. He describes one such cleric being beaten up or killed (he doesn’t say which) by ‘two Russian men’: “Let’s just say that’s one ‘cultural enricher’ who won’t be speaking against Christians again. Ever.”

Much as one may find such things aesthetically pleasing, the author should read up on Russia a bit. Then he’ll find that the same ‘two Russian men’ could the next day do exactly the same to Orthodox priests and rabbis.

The hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church has been an extension of the secret police since the 1920s. The last patriarchal election was contested by three career KGB agents, one of whom, Kiril, codename ‘Mikhailov’, is the current Patriarch.

Priests who preach real Christian sermons often suffer the same fate as the mullahs described by the author. Two examples spring to mind: Fr Alexander Men, hacked to death, and Fr. Pavel Adelheim, stabbed through the heart.

And attacks, often murderous, on synagogues and rabbis far outnumber those on Muslim ‘hate preachers’. Is the author aware of this? Any of it? Probably not. 

That’s why he thinks Russia is “a strong Christian nation with a bright future”. It’s nothing of the sort, though I understand his frustration that neither is Britain.

The other day I suggested that Ed Miliband makes Dave look good. I was wrong. He doesn’t. No one can – not with the kind of policies Dave favours.

Actually, modern politicians don’t do policies. They do politicking. And they get away with it because voters don’t know any better.

Churchill once said that “the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Just so. There has to be something wrong with our voters, for otherwise they wouldn’t fall for our politicians’ knavish tricks.

Thus the Milibandits built up an 11-point lead in the polls on the strength of their promise to freeze energy prices. In the short term, this measure means introducing Nazi-style price controls. In the longer term it means a distinct likelihood of us all freezing in the dark. No matter. Voters liked what they heard.

Not to be outdone, Dave has unfolded two ‘policies’ that only charitably can be called ill-advised. In support Dave offered arguments that can only be charitably be called silly.

The first Conservative Party trick was introducing a £1,000 transferable tax allowance that will benefit poorer couples. In cash terms this means that a couple on the basic tax rate will be a whopping 54p a day better off. Half a Mars bar.

Even poor sods who have to struggle on £30,000 a year won’t notice the fruits of Dave’s generosity. But hey, it’s the thought that counts. Or, in Dave’s case, absence thereof.

If this sounds harsh, consider Dave’s rhetoric accompanying this latest exercise in spivery. It’s as manifestly bereft of logic as it’s full of solipsistic non-sequiturs. 

First Dave declared, “I am… a Prime Minister who is a modern compassionate Conservative.” He used to say it better: “I am the heir to Blair.” In either case, what on earth does this mean?

Then for the umpteenth time Dave shouted his love for The Girl with the Dolphin Tattoo.

“Alongside the birth of my children, my wedding was the happiest day of my life.

“Nothing I’ve done since – becoming a Member of Parliament, leader of my party or Prime Minister – would have been possible without her.”

Good. Now we know whom to blame.

As a rule, a man who keeps insisting in public how much he loves his wife probably beats her in private. And a woman who tells all and sundry how much she loves her husband probably sleeps around – which may be why he beats her.

But let’s say the Camerons belie this lifelong observation by actually being blissfully happy together. How does it follow that couples on the basic tax rate must be bribed to the tune of 54p a day?

Now suppose for the sake of the argument that the Girl with the Dolphin Tattoo did sleep around, and Dave did indeed beat her for it. Would he then decide against pulling the 54p ace out of his sleeve?

I get it. Dave wants voters to believe that he’s striking a blow for all happy families like his own. He’s a firm believer in the institution of marriage.

To wit: “There is something special about marriage: it’s a declaration of commitment, responsibility and stability that helps to bind families.” Right. So the 54p a day is the cornerstone of marriage.

Well, not quite. I mean, it is a cornerstone all right but, according to Dave, not just of marriage: “And of course this will be true if you’re gay or straight – and in a civil partnership or a marriage. This summer I was proud to make Equal Marriage the law. Love is love, commitment is commitment.”

True. And marriage is marriage, which neither a homosexual ‘marriage’ nor a civil ‘partnership’ is. In fact, a civil partnership is the cohabitation of couples who refuse to make a commitment.

A marriage contract, they say, is just an insignificant piece of paper. Of course it is. Then, if it’s so insignificant, why not just sign it and be done with it?

By equalising homosexual or heterosexual cohabitation with marriage, Dave debauches this institution the way no PM has ever done in the past. He seems to think that 54p a day will undo the damage. How stupid and/or subversive can he get?

Very, is the answer to that. Witness his other darling, the Help to Buy scheme whereby the government will underwrite 95% mortgages.

Dave, you see, “… will not stand by while hard-working people struggle to get a mortgage for a house. [He is] impatient to help young people get on the housing ladder.”

“I am not prepared,” continued Dave, “to be a Prime Minister of a country with caps on aspiration.”

Caps on aspiration are indeed pernicious. But he’s confusing those with caps on instant gratification, on the desire to feed at whatever cost voracious appetites that exceed income, present or realistically projected.

Most Parisians, Viennese and Milanese live in hired flats – without any noticeable lowering in the level of their aspirations. But most Americans and Brits are prepared to enter the bondage of unsustainable, and often ruinous, debt.

Does Dave remember the 2008 crisis? The one still with us today? To a large extent it was caused by a glut of painless mortgages proffered on demand.

The next time the housing bubble Dave is creating bursts (as it always does), it won’t be the present profligate generation that’ll bear the brunt. Courtesy of the mediation of government guarantee, it’ll be the generations to come.

There’s the rub. The impoverished generations will come, but after the 2015 elections. Whereas irresponsible home buyers, whose acquisitive itch will have been scratched, will vote for Dave out of gratitude.

QED.

 

 

 

Barack can rival Dave for the distinction of being the true ‘heir to Blair’.

In fact, just as all American literature, according to Hemingway, came out of Huck Finn, so has all post-Tony politicking come out of Tony.

What would you say is the most essential quality for political success? Intellect? Decisiveness? Patriotism? Honesty? Courage?

If you think it’s any of these, you’re as hopelessly retrograde as I am. A modern politician not only doesn’t need any of such qualities, but in fact they can hold him back terminally.

The most, nay only, important qualification for high office these days is ‘charisma’, that is superficial appeal to the lowest common denominator of the electorate.

And specifically? Well, a modern ‘leader’, whatever his social, educational or cultural background, has to come across as a ‘man of the people’. This doesn’t mean, as it used to, that he has to love the people, empathise with them, devote his life to their well-being.

Again, such things would today be at best irrelevant and at worst detrimental. No, being a ‘man of the people’ means acting and sounding like most of them. And since modern education is guaranteed to make most voters sound like ignorant louts, modern politicians know exactly what to do.

Hence, as politicians this side of John Prescott tend to be middleclass and reasonably well schooled, their success depends on their ability to do accents. This is more akin to the talent possessed by Rory Bremner or, in America, Kevin Spacey than to the gifts of a George Canning or a John Adams.

American political machines were the first to cotton on, which is why Ronald Reagan, a man of rather modest ability, had such a successful political career. Mind you, Ronnie didn’t have to work too hard to pretend to be a man of the people: he was just that, and where he fell short his B-movie talent was sufficient to correct the deficit.

Neither Tony nor Barack (nor certainly Dave) is a natural speaker of ungrammatical jargon, so they had to work at it. Tony showed the way by dropping the aitches he was born with, though sometimes he forgot. But he got top marks for trying.

Harvard-educated Obama had to take a seemingly opposite but in fact identical route to popular appeal. If Tony dropped his aitches at the beginning of words, Barack drops his gees at the end of them.

In his excruciatingly slow and typically meaningless speech, sharing and caring becomes sharin’ and carin’, ameliorating becomes amelioratin’, and socioeconomical disadvantaging becomes… well, you get the gist.

You can’t argue with success: Barack has won two elections on the strength of his impersonation ability (no other qualifications seem to be in evidence). But there’s a risk involved.

Some people who come from the groups to which such pathetic tricks are supposed to appeal are very sharp cookies indeed. They may not sound the way a Harvard professor or an Oxford don are supposed to sound, but they know a phoney when they see one.

The actor Samuel L. Jackson is one such man. Raised by a single, working-class mother, he picked himself by his bootstraps all the way up to higher education and a successful film career.

He grew up naturally speaking the way Barack is so desperately tryin’ to learn, which is why he can see through such offensive patronising with X-ray acuity.

In a heart-felt diatribe Jackson told Obama (whose two presidential campaigns he supported) to “be f*****g presidential”.

The star of Pulp Fiction pulled no punches: “Be a leader… Look, I grew up in a society where I could say ‘It ain’t’ or ‘What it be’ to my friends.

“But when I’m out presenting myself to the world as me, who graduated from college, who had family who cared about me, who has a well-read background, I f*****g conjugate.

“How the f*** did we become a society where mediocrity is acceptable?” asks the thespian somewhat rhetorically.

The problem, Sam, is that mediocrity isn’t just acceptable. It’s actively promoted as the essential precondition for nonentities like Tony and Barack or Dave and Dubya to grab the brass ring.

When we had statesmen rather than spivs, it was understood that prime ministers or presidents possessed superior qualities to those of your average lout. They’d then use such qualities to help the average lout have a more fulfilling life and ideally stop being a lout.

Similarly, an intelligent grown-up doesn’t baby-talk to children. Instead he sets an example of how they should sound when they grow up. This isn’t to suggest that politicians should be paternalistic – only that they ought to have respect for their office and their people.

Then there may be an outside chance that both the office and the people will be worthy of respect. Things being as they are, our spivs will continue to play their little games.

Perhaps Barack ought to take locution lessons from Jackson, or rather his character in Pulp Fiction. Why stop at dropping the gees?

Barack should go on TV and announce, “Ah be yo’ presi-dent, ‘n ah knows y’all gotta mainline into nationalised medicine, jes lahk de Brits.”

I can’t guarantee the phonetic accuracy of this recommendation, but something like this will go down a treat with the electorate. Barack still probably won’t do an FDR and get a third term, but he’ll keep democracy at the level where it now belongs.

 

I would have definitely bet my house against it. Probably my car. Possibly even my wife (admittedly she might have had a say in such a wager, and especially its payoff).

And boy, am I glad I didn’t – I would have lost them all. For Ed and his Milibandits bucked the odds to score the greatest feat in modern British politics. They made Dave look good by comparison.

Don’t get me wrong: Dave too is perfectly capable of talking, and proposing, utter nonsense when his focus groups tell him that’s what the public wants to hear.

He too happily introduces the most asinine policies imaginable if he feels this may gain a couple of percentage points at the polls. But Dave is restrained – ever so marginally, but still – by his party, especially its grassroots.

Under Dave’s sage tutelage, the Tory party has already lost half its membership – this to the accompaniment of Dave’s triumphant elation that the attrition isn’t even more severe. A few more gems like homomarriage unearthed by Dave, and he won’t have a party to lead.

Since for old times’ sake British politics is still conducted through a party system, Dave can defy the Tory DNA only to some, albeit growing, extent. At some point a steel shutter will come clanking down: thus far, but no farther.

The Milibandits’ DNA is different. Coded into it is hatred of everything that makes Britain British – or for that matter of everything that makes the West Western.

That’s why it’s important to cut through the bovine dung of their rhetoric and see the destructive animus lurking underneath every policy they’ve ever proposed or, when in power, executed.

They talk about equal education for all as a means of helping the lower classes to move up the social ladder – hence the rout of grammar schools and the proliferation of idiot-spewing comprehensives.

As a result, those with the dirty end of the stick stuck down their throats are the very lower classes the Milibandits allegedly set out to help. Devoid of the social hoist of decent education, they remain stuck at the bottom. Social privilege, rather than disappearing, becomes chiselled in stone. Social mobility grinds to a halt.

They talk about equal medical care for all – our hospitals turn into death traps never before seen in the West, and Britain boasts the distinction of being a first-world country with third-world medicine.

They talk about helping the poor – hence the mind-numbingly stupid and subversive welfare state, making sure that the poor will not only always be with us, but that their number will continue to grow.

So never mind the well-meaning rhetoric. By their fruits ye shall know them, and those reared by the Milibandits happily combine toxic qualities with rancid taste.

Now they prattle on about changing the economy in ways that go back to the 1970s, when Britain was known as the basket case of Europe.

We don’t have to go too deep into the details, for these don’t really matter. It’s the spirit that counts, and it has spilled out of its bottle.

Many commentators have suggested that Ed’s economic goals vindicate his nickname (Red Ed). I’d suggest that it would be more appropriate to use another colour: russet (half-red, half-brown).

Divest the pre-kristallnacht Nazi Germany of its racial desiderata, and its economy would look exactly like the kind Russet Ed sees in his mind’s eye. Unlike the Bolsheviks, real reds, the Nazis were not out to transfer the ownership of the economy to the state. All they wanted was to exercise control.

Similarly, Ed doesn’t even mention the possibility of nationalising, say, the energy companies. All he wants is to introduce the Nazi-style mechanisms of wage and price controls to shift the ownership of the economy statewards de facto but not necessarily de jure.

How else is he going to keep his promise of freezing energy prices? The state can freeze the taxes and duties it imposes on energy (which wouldn’t be a bad idea), but not its wholesale price.

This, as we’ve seen in the past, can skyrocket overnight, especially since much of our energy comes from politically volatile regions. If what the energy companies pay the producers exceeds what Russet Ed allows them to charge the consumers, they’ll go bust – it’s as simple as that.

For businesses operate to make a profit, not to conform to the madness of the loony left, be that of the national or international variety. As Adam Smith explained, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their self-love…”

Deprive businesses of the profit motive, which Ed clearly wants to do to the energy companies, and we’ll all freeze in the dark. But socialists, national or international, never care how much misery they’re going to cause.

What matters to them is power, with its concomitant means to stage yet another diabolical experiment on human beings. What the Milibandits unveiled at their conference is just that: a power-grabbing gambit.

What’s deeply worrying is that Dave doesn’t hold exclusive rights to focus groups. The Milibandits use them too, and their findings must suggest that there are enough people out there to whom Ed’s subversive drivel appeals.

Be afraid, be very afraid. A couple of years from now we may well be missing Dave. Can you think of a worse fate?

It’s easy to get the impression that the Muslims are less rigorous in upholding religious tolerance than we are.

First two suicide bombers murdered over 80 Christians and wounded 120 more in Peshawar. The explosions came as worshippers were coming out of the church after Sunday mass.

Then another Muslim gang took over a shopping mall in Nairobi and shot in cold blood everyone who wasn’t a Muslim – 62 people in all. Apparently the attack was led by the white widow of another murderer who had blown himself up (alas, along with many others) on 7/7.

To the credit of the Nairobi Muslims they didn’t decide who was and who wasn’t Muslim on looks alone. Instead they gave the eager participants a little quiz, not unlike what one sees on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.

The salient difference was that there were no lifelines on offer. Answer correctly, and you may live. Don’t, and you die.

We know that exams cause undue stress, but this one must have taken the notion to a whole new level. The questions were designed to test the examinee’s knowledge of Muslim trivia.

One question was “What was the name of Mohammed’s mother?” Clearly anyone who didn’t raise his hand and shout, “Please, Miss! Aminah bint Wahb, Miss!” didn’t deserve to live.

The second question was, “Can you recite any verses from the Koran?” Apparently 62 students failed to answer correctly, possibly because they were distracted by the sound of Kalashnikovs being cocked. Or else they had somehow overlooked this vital aspect of their education.

In case you find yourself in a similar situation, you must do your homework. Now you know the name of Mohammad’s mother, you must, just in case, learn a few verses from the holy book her son dictated. Here’s a random selection for your delectation:

“Slay them [unbelievers] wherever ye find them…” (2:91); “We shall cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve.” (3:151); “Take them [unbelievers] and kill them wherever ye find them. Against such We have given you clear warrant.” (4:91); “The unbelievers are an open enemy to you.” (4:101); “Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends…” (5:51); “Slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them captive, and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush” (9:5); “Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward.” (4:74); “…If they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them…” (4:89)

This should suffice to get you out of trouble – and perhaps explain why you could find yourself in that kind of trouble to begin with.

What’s also instructive is the reaction of our media to the two carnages. It’s conspicuous that much more prominence was given to the Kenyan carnage than to the Pakistani one. This even though the latter produced more corpses.

I’m sure there must be all sorts of possible explanations for this, but I can think of only one off the top. The Nairobi victims were slaughtered because they weren’t Muslims. The Peshawar ones lost their lives specifically because they were Christians.

In the eyes of our ‘liberal’ media – not that they’d ever say this out loud, not yet anyway – people who go against the grain of public opinion by obstinately sticking to their minority faith have only themselves to blame.

Religion, you see, doesn’t really matter to our ‘liberals’, and they can’t for the life of them understand how others may feel differently. You’re a Christian, I’m a Buddhist, he’s a Taoist, they’re Muslims, what’s the difference? All religions are equally good, which is to say equally irrelevant.

So if by ignoring Ramadan you put yourself in danger, don’t count on us to help you out. If you die as a result of worshipping Jesus Christ, it’s your own silly fault – see if we care.

Now the Nairobi victims weren’t murdered because they espoused a wrong religion. They were massacred because they didn’t espouse Islam.

That calls for much more empathy – after all, our ‘liberals’ don’t espouse Islam either. So the same thing could have happened to them. As to going to Sunday mass, they wouldn’t be caught dead doing that, as it were. So they’re on safe grounds there.

One wonders how many such crimes it’ll take for our opinion formers, and those whose opinions they form, to realise that the problem isn’t Islamist fundamentalism. It’s Islam, tout court.

Quite a few, would be my guess. And then many more for this lot to review their firm stand on multiculturalism and religious tolerance.

As it is, there’s a war to the death under way. Except that one side is fighting it and the other is making well-meaning noises. So who’s going to win? If you don’t know the answer, call a friend at one of our papers.