Conservative Commentary
"the blogger whose youthful effusions have won him bookmarks all over Whitehall ... horribly compelling" - The Guardian
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Conservative Commentary "the blogger whose youthful effusions have won him bookmarks all over Whitehall ... horribly compelling" - The Guardian |
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Friday, July 30, 2004
The consequences of the crown
The British monarchy is perhaps the ultimate demonstration of the superiority of the traditional and experience over the reasoned and the planned. As Gabb himself says, no one could have set out and designed the monarchy as it now exists, yet in its various unplanned and evolving forms, it has secured stability and liberty longer than any of the republics that were produced by the blueprints of history's many revolutionaries and philosopher-kings. It is a sign of the monarchy's strength that the man in the street takes it for granted that this country has a Queen, and we should not idly wish away this advantage. But certainly it is wise for intellectuals and politicos who are wary of staking the fate of the country on the insight and good sense of men like themselves to step back occasionally and reflect, as Sean Gabb does, on just how lucky we are to have the system we do. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Tuesday, July 27, 2004
1/7 of a life should mean 1/7 of a life
When the death penalty for murder was scrapped in this country, against the wishes of the great majority of Britons then as well as now, it was done with the promise that it would be replaced with life-long imprisonment - proper protection for those on the outside, and the maximum penalty save death for the murderer. That pledge has been broken ever since, and in case after case we see instead the punishment for the greatest of crimes drop ever further. Not in centuries has the price of life been so cheap. If those running Britain's criminal justice system aren't serious about enforcing the law of the land, punishing those who violate it and protecting those who obey it, why haven't the liberal elite the courage to scrap the term 'life sentence' completely? If they really believe that murderers should be out after a couple of World Cups, then why perpetuate this lie that they are getting life? What is it about these callous space cadets that gives them the courage to close their minds to all the weight of common sense, of reoffending rates, of the settled view of history and the basics of human decency that all say the punishment should be proportionate to the crime, but none of the courage to admit that is what they are doing by giving their derisory 'life' sentences a truer name? Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Quote of the Day
"Yes, every snowflake is unique, and no category will do justice to every one of its members. But intelligence depends on lumping things together that share properties, so that we are not flabbergasted by every new thing we encounter. ... The idea that stereotypes are inherently irrational owes more to a condescension towards ordinary people than it does to good psychological research. Many researchers, having shown that stereotypes existed in the minds of their subjects, assumed that the stereotypes had to be irrational, because they were uncomfortable with the possibility that some trait might be statistically true of some group. They never actually checked. That began to change in the 1980s, and now a fair amount is known about the accuracy of stereotypes. With some important exceptions, stereotypes are in fact not inaccurate when assessed against objective benchmarks such as census figures or the reports of the stereotyped people themselves. People who believe that African-Americans are more likely to be on welfare than whites, that Jews have higher average incomes than WASPs, that business students are more conservative than students in the arts, that woman are more likely than men to want to lose weight, and that men are more likely than women to swat a fly with their bare hands, are not being irrational or bigoted. Those beliefs are correct. People's stereotypes are generally consistent with the statistics, and in many case their bias is to underestimate the real differences between sexes or ethnic groups." - Steven Pinker It shouldn't need saying, but it apparently does, that just because a claim matches a stereotype does not make it wrong. The mere fact that a great many people have made a similar observation in the past is not by itself proof that a statement is true, especially when applied to individual cases. But nor is it proof that this observation is false. The intellectual quality of a great many debates would be improved if more people were exposed to the quotation above. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Monday, July 26, 2004
Two tomorrow!
I do plan to keep on going, but the restrictions of time and of professionalism are making it more and more difficult. I joined the South-East European Elections and Reading Local Elections campaign on 28 May, and - after popping back for a few days for an exam - stuck with it right up to 13 June. The moment July came, I was doing the same in Leicester South, and I put in two full weekends there. Now in Darlington, we have a council by-election next month, with which I am helping as much as I can, and no doubt I will be heavily involved too in the upcoming parliamentary by-election in Hartlepool, which is just 25 miles or so up the road. Besides all this campaigning, I am continuing to help a number of Conservatives with various efforts. I really like doing all of these things. Blogging has its advantages, almost instant reaction and commentary being chief among them, but I've never felt I was changing minds and making a difference politically. With the work I am doing now that is just how I feel. The other problem is that being deeply involved in politics in this way is leading more and more commenters to demand insider knowledge and explanations. I am clear that I will not be using the blog for this purpose. I don't want anyone to feel wary of trusting me or airing their views before me in case those opinions go up on the internet. My blogging will continue to be offer opinion and commentary on the news, not private gossip. There's a reason British Spin doesn't give his name, and it's the same reason I cannot give the sort of information some seek. What I would say about our results in the two by-elections on 15 July is that they must be seen in the perspective of national results that have given great reason for encouragement. Look at the map of Britain below, with areas in which the Conservatives picked up the most votes coloured blue.
The map is not of the 1983 General Election, or the 1987 General Election, but the June 2004 European Elections. Despite a shock turnout of nearly 40% - and of more than 2/3 the turnout at the last General Election - and despite UKIP's rise, we clearly established ourselves as the party of England, and as serious contenders in Scotland and Wales. Whatever view one takes after those two bad results this month, if the Conservative Party is moribund, on its last legs, slouching towards irrelevance and a dozen other things, then there is not a party in this country of which this cannot be said. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Sunday, July 25, 2004
Quote of the Day
"Special interest politics is a simple game. A hundred people sit in a circle, each with his pocket full of pennies. A politician walks around the outside of the circle, taking a penny from each person. No one minds; who cares about a penny? When he has gotten all the way around the circle, the politician throws fifty cents down in front of one person, who is overjoyed at the unexpected windfall. That process is repeated, ending with a different person. After a hundred rounds everyone is a hundred cents poorer, fifty cents richer, and happy." - David Friedman Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Saturday, July 24, 2004
What we're up against
Search in vain for much sign of this story in the British press: Yasser Arafat's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade this morning killed a 15-year-old Palestinian Arab boy "after the youth tried to stop them from setting up a Kassam rocket launcher near his family's home," the Jerusalem Post reports: And this is the Yasser Arafat the European Union continues to insist that Israel deal with. Perhaps decent people can at least take some comfort from the fact that these animals all get their come-uppance in the end. Joe Cahill, a founding father of the modern Irish Republican Army who once narrowly avoided the hangman's noose, has died, the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party announced Saturday. He was 84. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Friday, July 23, 2004
'And the problem with this is ... ?'
Harry Hatchet recently noted, quite rightly, that the defenders of the left's new-found coziness with Islam have so far been entirely unable to justify this stance, except by arguing against points no one has made. Jeremy Seabrook continues this tradition with an article entirely devoid of a counter-argument, of a reason to believe the stance is correct. What is the point of producing a column brimming with opposing arguments like "liberals argue that being Muslim is quite unlike ethnicity because people are free to embrace religion or set it aside", which any reasonable observer would recognise as objectively true, if you aren't even going to attempt to rebut them? It seems that for Mr Seabrook, merely to write that a great many people are uneasy about Islam and about such alliances of convenience is enough to prove their concerns unfounded. I'll leave you to judge whether actually saying why their concerns are wrong is something he considers beneath him, or something quite above his capabilities. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Thursday, July 22, 2004
Quote of the Day
"Labour continually tries to define down rape to the point where being in possession of a Y chromosome is grounds for arrest, yet look what happens when a no-argument, balaclava and combat knife rapist gets convicted: he'd be unlucky to miss more than one World Cup, while his time in jail will mainly be spent with other perverts in group therapy listing to some pencil-necked dweeb tell them they don't love themselves enough. Contradictory? Hardly - as ever, the demands of political strategy drive the administration of justice. The cultural Marxists have always sought to spin rape into some kind of justification for their ranting denunciations of those white males, who are clearly guilty of everything in the entire world. On the other hand, it is an article of faith amongst the Left that failure to immediately act on any impulse at all, especially a sexual one, leads to the psychological equivalent of gangrene." - DumbJon Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Wednesday, July 21, 2004
The double-bind could be to Bush's credit
In that spirit, I can even more fiercely recommend Rich Lowry's excellent piece in the National Review on America's 'double-bind President'. What a tour de force. Do read it all. Sometimes a political figure becomes so hated that he can't do anything right in the eyes of his enemies. President Bush has achieved this rare and exalted status. His critics are so blinded by animus that the internal consistency of their attacks on him no longer matters. For them, Bush is the double-bind president. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Monday, July 19, 2004
Perhaps not so confused
Oliver Kamm is circumspect about Ken Livingstone's recent choice of friends, noting how the Mayor of London has "ended up discrediting his office by confusing multiculturalism with genuflection towards bigotry". One of his commenters is sceptical on the degree to which this really is confusion: "Alas, it would seem that this is precisely what [multiculturalism] has become". Is this right? Certainly, whatever multiculturalism was intended to be in theory, it is more and more obviously the reality with every passing day. You show me a proud and prominent multiculturalist and I'll show you someone happy to call 'Islamophobic' anyone prepared to speak up for the rights of Jewish people, or at least a defender of those who do. I suspect the problem lies more in the way that we already had a culture that was tolerant and liberal (in the classical sense) long before multiculturalism, and that the compromise reached then has only been degraded and shifted in a negative way since. What England had prior to multiculturalism was a reasonable consensus that already took into account most points of view conducive to a free society and produced an outcome that then suited almost everyone. Multiculturalism's threat has been the way that, instead of encouraging newcomers to assimilate to that old liberal consensus, or at least to join a new one, it has encouraged those of foreign cultures to live apart from it and to separate themselves from its principles and values, and to take pride in the differences - "celebrate diversity" - irrespective of whether those differences are actually prideworthy. Indeed, it is a defining point for multiculturalists to label racist anyone who distinguishes between superior and inferior cultures. If, as many on the American far-left believe, the white man really were the cancer of human history and if all the world's evil really came from the West, then multiculturalism could mean something else. But the fact is that Western civilisation has produced the most free, tolerant and open societies in human history, and genuflection towards bigotry is exactly what is being advocated by those who demand we surrender some of our values and virtues in order to reach an accommodation with those to whom such principles are alien. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
'You're a liberal pussy!' 'You're a right-wing nut-job'
This link may not be to the taste of the purest Bush or Kerry enthusiasts, but I do like JibJab's contribution to the US Presidential Elections. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Friday, July 16, 2004
Doing Mill proud
"[For] backward states of society ... [t]he early difficulties in the way of spontaneous progress are so great, that there is seldom any choice of means for overcoming them; and a ruler full of the spirit of improvement is warranted in the use of any expedients that will attain an end, perhaps otherwise unattainable. Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end. Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion. Until then, there is nothing for them but implicit obedience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne, if they are so fortunate as to find one."
"Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings." Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Euro-Elections 2004
I can be seen campaigning for the Conservatives across the South-East in the Election 2004 photographs section of the homepage of Nirj Deva MEP. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Thursday, July 15, 2004
When immigration can benefit us all
With that in mind, I am very pleased to see how many would-be students from the ten new EU member states are expressing a desire to come to Britain to take their degrees. Every one of them who succeeds in doing so increases the competition for places, and at the margins gains a place at the expense of British school leavers who would be better taking vocational courses or entering the workplace. Our universities are then put far more to their proper use - educating those whom a degree will benefit in a course that actually means something - rather than what is increasingly their current use - a means of soaking up youth unemployment. If these students choose to stay in Britain, as some will, this benefits us still further, as they can then put their skills and knowledge to good use in this country, creating more jobs and wealth. That is the sort of immigration policy we should hope to apply to everyone - a way of enabling and encouraging the brightest and best from all over the world to come to Britain, to assimilate, and to build their lives and careers here. If we had an immigration policy that benefited not only would-be immigrants, but those who already live in Britain generally, we really could have the best of both worlds. What a far cry from our current system. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Why do government gags now fit us so well?
But that, of course, was in the early 1700s, before - with a little help from Mr Blunkett - we came to see just how destructive such simple liberties are. In yesterday's Telegraph, Mark Steyn used his column to issue a warning about the dangers he feels Islam poses to our society. I don't know if he's right or wrong, but I do know he should have a right to make such arguments - a right soon to be denied to us all. A couple of years back, I mentioned the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and received a flurry of lively e-mails. It was Valentine's Day 1989, you'll recall, when the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his extraterritorial summary judgment on a British subject, and shortly thereafter large numbers of British Muslims were marching through English cities openly calling for Rushdie to be killed. There's nothing entirely new about this situation. For a number of years now, we have seen innocent, decent people arrested, investigated by police and fired from their jobs for stating deeply held views that aren't politically correct. So one can only imagine how draconian the new legislation will be. What freedom of expression is left in this department to be scrapped? This law will finalise the arrangements we are already seeing, removing perhaps for ever any sense in which meaningful legal challenges to such authoritarianism are possible. By removing religious opinions from the realm of argument, the government is ensuring that the liberty enjoyed all those years ago can be counted on to disappear. Even ignoring all the abstract philosophical thinking behind the value of argument and free speech, am I alone in thinking there is something violently un-English about the events of recent years in these realms? When did we become a nation either of intolerant squealers who cannot abide difference of opinion or thoughtless conformists happy to oblige these fanatics? I always thought of England as a country proud to be a land of eccentrics and controversy, where people who speak out are seen almost as pillars of society and indeed where, as Rebecca Fraser puts it, "our favourite anecdotes concern the mighty being willing to stand corrected by the ordinary man or (in Alfred's case) woman in the street". Yet in a very short space of time, we seem to have collapsed into total conformity with whatever we are told to think. Just like that, any group of people with the imagination to invent a fake phobia to hurl at those who disagree with them get effective immunity to criticism for all their arguments, and no one raises an eyebrow, nor seems to care that free speech has been rolled up, and that it won't stop here. I doubt the free-thinking, free-speaking Englishmen of Lord Chesterfield's day would recognise us. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Monday, July 12, 2004
Quote of the Day
"The union of a man and woman in marriage is the most enduring and important human institution, and the law can teach respect or disrespect for that institution. If our laws teach that marriage is the sacred commitment of a man and a woman, the basis of an orderly society, and the defining promise of a life, that strengthens the institution of marriage. If courts create their own arbitrary definition of marriage as a mere legal contract, and cut marriage off from its cultural, religious and natural roots, then the meaning of marriage is lost, and the institution is weakened. The Massachusetts court, for example, has called marriage 'an evolving paradigm.' That sends a message to the next generation that marriage has no enduring meaning, and that ages of moral teaching and human experience have nothing to teach us about this institution. "For ages, in every culture, human beings have understood that traditional marriage is critical to the well-being of families. And because families pass along values and shape character, traditional marriage is also critical to the health of society. Our policies should aim to strengthen families, not undermine them. And changing the definition of traditional marriage will undermine the family structure." - President Bush Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Wednesday, July 07, 2004
No blogging until next week
Heading back to Leicester soon. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Monday, July 05, 2004
The meaning of the life of the Life of Brian
Nor can I believe anyone seriously thinks it an indictment of Christianity. It certainly had offensive moments, but only someone as moronic as "Brian's" followers could believe that people of those days were as stupid as they had to be for the film's plot to work. But as Stuttaford points out, it was a clear attack on a certain sort of religious attitude, if not exactly a groundbreaking and original victim. To be sure, Life of Brian is unlikely to make it very soon into the Vatican's video collection but, unless the Pythons' secularism is of itself "offensive," there really ought to be little in their film to annoy most people of faith — so long as they have a sense of humor, that is. The real target of the movie's satire is not religion as such, but the unholy baggage that too frequently comes with it — the credulity, the fanaticism, and that very human urge to persecute, well, someone. But the broader significance twenty-five years later of this attack is in how much more relevant it is now than then. What must in 1979 have seemed like a parting wave to medieval religious fanaticism looks in 2004 like a contemporary commentary on the most important issues the world faces. [T]he return of militant Islam and its encroachment once more on the people and the territories of the West force us to face, yet again, the horrors of religious war, this time an onslaught from Arabia's seventh-century darkness, in which the promise of heaven will be used as a justification for true believers to create a hell on earth for all those who oppose them. In a time when young men fly planes into office buildings in the hope of earning themselves an eternity with 72 virgins, it's difficult to look at those parts of Life of Brian in which the movie played on the baroque cruelty of (what then seemed) ancient history without as much unease as amusement. The long and originally very funny sequence that culminates in John Cleese being stoned for blasphemy now conjures up images of the Taliban's bestial Kabul. Later on, we see the Judean People's Front planning to kidnap and then behead the wife of Pontius Pilate, and the bloodiness of the scheme only serves to underline the utter incompetence of the conspiracy. We laughed then, back in 1979. Beheading? Ridiculous. We don't laugh so easily in 2004. Not after Daniel Pearl. Not after Nick Berg. Not after Paul Marshall Johnson. A perspective as depressing as it is undoubtledly correct. But Stuttaford ends his own piece on an optimistic note, and I would add one of my own. For many who have watched the film, the rather arrogant, superior attitude within is probably rather more difficult to stomach than the accompanying jokes and jibes. There was just a little too much smugness in the assumption of those who made the film that history was firmly on their side, that times would continue to move on in the direction they favoured. And if there is any perspective on the future common to all liberals, it is that one. The historicism of modern liberalism is integral to a huge proportion of its arguments. If they're honest, the future most liberals dream of - where faith is a private eccentricity and a common morality non-existent, where the word 'freedom' simply means an absence of moral and legal obstacles to the pursuit of sensual gratification by sex and drugs, and where all of life is ultimately a return to the freedom of infancy, with all personal responsibility transferred to the state - is seen by them not so much as a possible world to be fought for as an inevitable world to be brought about as soon as possible. This tendency to inject time with inherent political and cultural properties is obvious to anyone who has heard the average liberal speak and debate. Oh, some embittered reactionaries might drag their knuckles in trying to prevent this future, certainly, but the idea of a successful backlash, of the world following a very different course, isn't really one to which the left gives much thought. And while this arrogance shines through so many of the Life of Brian's scenes, we now know just how misplaced it was when it comes to the particular target at which the film was aimed. Is it wrong to take a little pleasure in that mistake, to reflect that if these liberals managed to be wrong about one of the things about which they reasonably feel secure, they can certainly be wrong about the inevitability of their triumph in areas where majorities continue to oppose them? I don't think so. The relevance to the modern world of a film whose producers smugly assumed was only about the past is a testament to how misplaced liberal arrogance can be, and should be an inspiration to those who do not share in their vision of the future. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Saturday, July 03, 2004
Quote of the Day
"Hey, Tory Boy!" - George Galloway, through his microphone, from the top of the RESPECT battlebus, in the middle of a crowded Leicester street, at me. :( Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Friday, July 02, 2004
Back on Sunday
Off to Leicester South. Should be back by the end of the weekend. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Thursday, July 01, 2004
Quote of the Day
"I'm still easily shocked by the Guardian. Granted it is when they print an entirely sensible letter from a reader." - Anthony Cox Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
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Sean Gabb's 
It's so common to hear sophisticated voices complain about the sensationalism of tabloids, but I am starting to wonder if the lack of sensationalism in broadsheets is the greater problem. Scrawled across the front pages of all the broadsheets today is the profoundly misleading claim that the young thug who smiled as he stabbed 14 year old Luke Walmsley to death has been sentenced to life. How many decent, caring people do you suppose read no more, and went away believing that justice had been done, and that the boy's sadistic killer will be locked away for decades to come? In fact, the judge recommended a sentence of just a dozen years, a step up from the normal "life" sentence of six to eight years, certainly, but only one-seventh the life Luke Walmsley could have hoped to lead, and now cannot. In no time, his murderer will be back on the streets, at the ripe age of 28.
Tomorrow will be the second anniversary of my starting this blog, and I am very pleased to have been able - more or less - to keep it going for that length of time. I know I have benefited from doing so, both in terms of the way my writing has improved and the way it has forced me to keep up with the news. I have benefited too, from getting to know a number of other bloggers, and mainly through their friendship getting much more seriously involved in politics. I don't know how I would have reacted if, two years ago, I had been told that by now I would be working for a Conservative MEP, would have spent a day in charge of the office in the Reading local elections and another running one of the offices in the Leicester South by-election, would have been mentioned in the Spectator, the Guardian and the Canadian National Post and would be read by a number of senior journalists.
If there's one clear effect 9/11 has had on British electioneering, it's the way it has opened up a new Dutch auction, particularly on the left, for Muslim votes. Dominic Wills 
I think it is one mark of a successful politician that even his mainstream opponents are unable to adopt a consistent line on just what is wrong with him. The language of opposition to Margaret Thatcher varies enormously, from those relaxed about accepting an enormous chunk of the Thatcherite agenda as the new political consensus to those who loathe deeply what she did and stood for. Tony Blair has also succeeded in this regard. There are many possible lines of attack on this Prime Minister, but the Conservatives took almost a decade finally to decide on it, if indeed they have yet done so.
One of the reasons I find Britain's current immigrant policy so exasperating is not only because I think the numbers of unskilled immigrants who come to our island every year has a damaging effect on race relations, social cohesion and Britain's economy, but because I think the right immigration policy could be greatly beneficial to this country, as well as to the people we would accept. Skilled, educated immigrants could benefit us all by their talents, while coming in small enough numbers as to integrate easily into British society.
In one of his many famous letters of advice and counsel to his illegitimate son, Lord Chesterfield warned him off the common practice of mocking and disparaging clergymen at every opportunity. Clergymen are generally no better nor worse than any other man, he explained, and it does not do to condemn all together. Although the letter was written in the 18th Century, there was no mention of any legal consequences that might befall his son should he mock religion. I suppose the notion that expressing an offensive opinion about something as open to interpretation and argument as religion might earn his son such a punishment would have struck Lord Chesterfield as absurd.
Andrew Stuttaford has a piece at National Review Online 
