Below I mourned that Hutton had not killed two birds with one stone. I may have been too hasty.

Three times as many people trust the BBC to tell the truth than trust the government, despite Lord Hutton's damning judgment, an exclusive poll by ICM for the Guardian shows.

More significantly, the survey reveals that confidence in both has been shattered. Almost half of those surveyed said they trusted neither.

If these bastions of the left cannot sort themselves out, something will have to rise to fill that vacuum and offer an alternative - something better. If Margaret Thatcher proved anything, it's that once the much-abused if patient majority of the British people finally becomes tired of being alternately shoved around and ignored, nothing can get in the way of the backlash - not the BBC, not the Labour Party, not the criminals' advocates or the trade unions, not the PC lobbies or the statist wastrels. Let us hope this marks the beginning of the beginning of that process.

As for the BBC: with two scalps at the very top claimed, things are certainly looking up. Electric Review goes as far as to say that the pro-government, anti-BBC angle of Hutton was actually preferable to the reverse, because the BBC and not Labour is the Tory Party's greatest enemy.

And let no conservative doubt that the BBC must be changed radically. The case for this would be strong even if it were politically neutral. Its current method of funding has in recent years become an embarrassing anachronism as hundreds of channels have become accessible to television viewers, but anyone who wishes to watch them must pay a £116 a year poll tax to fund a small handful. But the case for scrapping it ought to be unanswerable for anyone with a basically conservative view of life who cares that his ideas are represented fairly. Let it be explained once again to those who maintain their scepticism what is meant when the BBC is described as biased.

What is not usually meant is that the corporation regularly shows a direct bias for or against a particular political party. There have been occasional moments when this was the case - the extremely negative coverage of the Tory victory in the 2003 Local Elections, or the picture of Mussolini beside Iain Duncan Smith in one news piece about birthrates - stands out. But in general, I would myself say that the BBC is basically fair in the way it deals with the parties. What is not meant is that the BBC has a conscious agenda of setting out to defend a left-liberal consensus. I say with even more confidence that this is not the case. What is meant by accusations of BBC bias is that the institution as a whole is dominated by and infected with a culture that views as sensible, moderate and normal the ideas of Roy Jenkins and Polly Toynbee and as suspect and peculiar the ideas of Michael Howard and Charles Moore. It's not that the people who set the agenda on the BBC have in their minds a deliberate aim of promoting this sort of thinking: it's that recruitment always being from the infamous jobs section of the Guardian they tend to be drawn from all the same sections of society, the same opinions of the world. The result is a group of people generally so closeted as to be unable to understand any good reason for disputing the tenets of their ideas.

These people have rarely had to fear their house being broken into in the middle of the night: they are more worried about the burglars being jailed. They've never been to a party where it would be anything but social death to worry about the new age travellers in the park near one's home. They've never questioned why the euro is a good thing; it's blindingly obvious that anyone opposed is a xenophobic little Englander. And every day they read columns and articles assuring them that those who are different are simply less educated or cultivated than they are, that they give in to base prejudice and bigotry where their betters always have a liberal platitude at the ready. Janet Daley has encountered this culture at its most blatant when trying to engage typical BBC employees in political discussion.

What is most disturbing about encounters with BBC current affairs people is not that one has disagreements with them, but that they regard their own quite narrow frame of reference as the only rational one.

Any party, politician or pundit who does not accept this consensual package will either be ruled out of the debate entirely or treated like a maverick side-show - a bit of a comic turn who is outside the boundaries of serious consideration.

There isn't their opinion and your opinion: there is their opinion and you're insane. Making out a moral case for low taxation is not regarded as a contentious contribution to political argument, but as ludicrous raving - a flat-earther's fit of extremist nonsense.

As far as the BBC is concerned, the notion that freeing markets might produce more equitable and beneficial circumstances for more people more of the time is simply off the register: it is not just wrong; it is crazy and malign.

Reasonable people - the sort whom corporation staff know and socialise with - simply do not think this way.

And when one understands how these closeted types think, their whole attitude is all the more explicable. When the Beeb's Brussels correspondent warned of a "Referendum Danger for EU" that could leave in pieces "two years of painstaking work by Valery Giscard d'Estaing" - heaven forbid! - it wasn't a conscious effort to promote the Europhile cause. Nor was this true of Stephen Sackur's report on the Swedish euro referendum, quoting Romano Prodi that "The people who know the European Union voted yes" and adding himself that "What's sad is that most people obviously didn't know the European Union". Cases like this are a simple reflection of the attitude of most BBC journalists that it is ignorant, destructive and disreputable to oppose the latest advance from Brussels. When the corporation's Africa correspondent covered the murder of hundreds and hundreds of white farmers in South Africa in recent years from the perspective of white people deserving their fate on the grounds that "racism and extreme inequality exact a price", it was because it is obvious to BBC types that the victims of murder share in the guilt. Such an attitude is constant and unrelated to any one journalist or presenter.

What is bizarre is that despite a tone and attitude that fits perfectly the editorial line of the Guardian on every issue from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe and from taxation to transport, some continue to deny any bias. It is actually quite bizarre in itself that while no sensible person would claim that any newspaper or magazine is without editorial line or a particular culture of opinion, it is perfectly acceptable to make this outlandish claim when it comes to the BBC. Are television journalists somehow much smarter or more immune to the effects of their political convictions than others? But when the evidence is so abundant of this culture, it is right to suspect the motives, whether commercial or political, of those who persist in denying the obvious. Perhaps they are just not observant. More likely they fear the vibrancy and diversity of views on our televison screens of the sort we get every day in the press.

The BBC's closeted culture is what lead to the Gilligan fiasco, and this culture is what denies a fair hearing to both sides on almost any debate. Only the most radical reforms will alter it, and only a replacement of the BBC as it currently exists will qualify. It is time for the BBC to earn its keep commercially, not continue to rely on a license fee that is unfair to all. If that means they may need to advertise something besides their own programmes and books, that too is acceptable. The Gilligan affair shows once and for all why the BBC needs to be changed. Let us hope it gets us a good distance down that route.

UPDATE: Charles Moore says it all.

Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |

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Thursday, January 29, 2004
 

Adjectiveless conservatism has a future in the Republican Party

No doubt many conservatives who keep an eye on US media may have been somewhat irritated by the tendency of their right-wing to lionise Blair in the run-up to and during the Second Gulf War. "It's alright for you," one felt like saying, "You don't have to live under his tax rates or his social and constitutional vandalism!".

But this sense in which one sees mainly the international face of foreign leaders works both ways, and it has received insufficient coverage here among keen British supporters of Bush's foreign policy how disappointing his domestic agenda has been by comparison. There is no denying the positive effect of his two big tax cuts, but they are the most glowing contents of a pretty mixed bag. His steel tariffs, his very high spending on programmes like Medicare and his new immigration policy are depressing parts of any Republican programme. Each defiles a core conservative principle, be it contempt for kowtowing to special interests at the expense of the wider good, suspicion of expanding government, or respect for the law of the land, and each was a somewhat desperate appeal to a new set of voters among whom some Republicans feel the need to make greater headway. It would be interesting to see any polls that suggest that these appeals will actually have a net positive effect, in the sense of winning over more swing voters than it deters instinctive Republicans. Will being the party to grant illegal immigrants citizenship offset the natural tendency of the poorest migrants to vote for big-spending politicians, or will Republicans passing the measure be turkeys voting for Christmas, foolishly enfranchising millions of Democrats who have no legal right even to be in the country? Will the Medicare proposals actually convert those with a fondness for that sort of thing, or will it serve only to remind them of why they like voting Democrat? We shall see. But in the meantime the country is in a few notable ways being made less American and less free as the President pursues liberal policies of the sort even Bill Clinton was more cautious about.

Jonah Goldberg has a consoling column in the National Review for those who worry about this effect: as a rule, when Bush deviates from conservative values, the Republican Party is not with him, and that shows little sign of changing. Long-term, if Bush is a disappointment like his father, it will only increase the pressure in the party for another Ronald Reagan.

The gravitational forces of the party largely determine the course of policy. The Democratic dogma is instinctually to err on the side of government action. Republican dogma, at least for now, is to err on the side of individual initiative and the market.

Now, if you think George Bush is moving the Republican party - and the federal government - too much in an "I feel your pain" direction, I, um, feel your pain. That might have been worth bringing up during the 2000 GOP primaries when we had a shot at changing the direction of the party. But now, George W. Bush is the guy. He's doing a great job, all in all, on the war on terror. And it sounds like conservative complaints are starting to be heard.

But I'd like to point something else out. Bill Clinton moved his party decidedly to the right on policy, and the only successful candidates running for that party's nomination are running far to Clinton's left. The same thing could very well happen with the GOP. If George W. Bush ends his eight years in office seeming more like a liberal Republican than a conservative one (still very possible), Republicans might look for a Goldwater or a Reagan next time, just as they did after Eisenhower and Nixon, respectively. In other words, George W. Bush may be changing policy, but he may not be changing the party that much. I don't run into a lot of people who call themselves compassionate conservatives, except as a joke.

Goldberg's piece should also be read for its introduction. His puncturing of the pretensions of a certain sort of independent who sees all those happy enough to support a particular party as mindless drones, utterly unable to think for themselves, is most necessary and deserved.

Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |

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The Hutton Defence

Clearly the Hutton Report didn't kill two birds with one stone, as the right must have dreamed, or even kill one of them, wounding as it has been to the BBC. What is has produced instead on left-wing blogs is a wonderful new way to respond to charges of wrong-doing: the Hutton Defence. When caught red-handed and by a senior judge, who has elucidated your mistakes over hundreds of pages, you freely admit to it. Clever, eh? Then those whose political assumptions are virtually part of your charter can all explain just how wonderful this proves you are. "Who else would freely admit to something like this, not even a year after the event, without a scrap of evidence to prove your guilt besides a comprehensive report by a man like Lord Hutton? Can you imagine News International doing that? I can't." And of course, such newspapers not having committed such offences, there is no way of disproving such claims about their reactions if they had.

Best of all, it seems to work retrospectively, too.

'What a bastard that Jimmy Carter was! Can you imagine him resigning like that if he'd been up to his neck in a Watergate scandal? Hah! Say what you like about Richard Nixon, but he never sank that low.'

'Martin Bell? The high and mighty white-suited little git! Neil Hamilton showed his true qualities after cash for questions, resigning from the government and all. What did Bell ever do?'

Perfect.

Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |

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Tuesday, January 27, 2004
 

Lib Dem extremism watch

Reporteth the Guardian:

Charles Kennedy is facing calls from rank-and-file Liberal Democrats to reverse his decision on Friday to sack Jenny Tonge from the party's front bench, after she said that she might be a suicide bomber if she lived in Palestine. Yesterday the outgoing Liberal Democrat deputy chairman, Donnachadh McCarthy, said that he was mounting a petition for her reinstatement. Although not well known outside the Liberal Democrats, Mr McCarthy carries influence with party activists.

He said yesterday: "The sacking of Jenny Tonge has been greeted with dismay across wide sections of the party. Jenny made a brave attempt to try to bring attention to the fact that if the appalling suicide bombings are to stop, then we need to understand and address the desperation and political alienation that leads to such awful acts of violence.

"The party should take no lessons in condemning violence against innocent civilians from the Tory party, which have been such enthusiastic cheerleaders for the war in Iraq in which tens of thousands of innocent people were maimed and killed."

Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |

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Quote of the Day

"Sir: Whilst I would not condone the murder of Jenny Tonge MP, I understand why people out there might want to kill her." - Michael Metliss in the Independent

Indeed. I think if I had to live in that situation, and I say this advisedly, I might just consider murdering Jenny Tonge myself - and that is a terrible thing to say.

Thanks to Stephen Pollard for the link.

Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |

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It's not just about badgering Blair

With the vote on university top-up fees only hours away, today's Telegraph leader is excellent on why Conservatives can in good conscience vote down the measure: it has been so compromised it will now raise very little money; it is spitefully, viciously egalitarian, the same people who destroyed our secondary schools now waging class war in the tertiary sector; and it binds the universities to government more closely than ever, when increasing their independence from the state has to be the way forward.

Having conceded so much to his back-bench rebels in terms of additional help for poorer students, and having failed to receive extra money from the Treasury to fund those concessions, Mr Blair has already spent (or committed the universities to spending) much of the new income.

... The power to levy fees will not belong to universities themselves. They will simply be licensed to collect an additional ring-fenced tax to supplement their taxpayer-funded subsidy. This is the very opposite of a market-based finance system, and the Conservatives are right to oppose it.

... A radical overhaul of the system is needed and its priorities must be fairness and efficiency. The universities are currently financed as a tax-funded, centrally administered monopoly in which spending is traditionally based on the public sector principle of "more means better". Efficiency, in the commercial sense of obtaining value for money for every purchase of a commodity or a service, is rarely a consideration. The bureaucratic habits of the public sector are commonplace in universities.

If higher education continues to be run on wasteful public sector assumptions, then adding compulsory charges to "top up" existing budgets is unlikely to produce efficiency. If, as well, the Government demands more influence on the universities' admissions policies in return for the right to charge top-up fees, then fairness is hardly likely to be the result. The universities will have to earn their right to charge by meeting government demands for what it calls "wider access". What this means, in effect, is that the middle class (or middle income) students will be penalised in two separate ways: they are likely to be discriminated against at admission (since their family background, through no fault of their own, is disfavoured by the Government) and, if accepted, they will receive none of the extra help in grants and bursaries given to fellow students from perhaps only marginally poorer homes.

There is a socially destructive (and morally dubious) precedent being set by this measure, which has effectively been mutated into a rather spiteful graduate tax. Once they are earning over the minimum limit, graduates from middle class families will have to repay far larger loans than comparably qualified working class graduates who, having received the Government's accumulated fee remissions, bursaries and maintenance grants, will have needed to borrow much less. Thus, two people on identical incomes will be paying differential rates of tax, based purely on their "class" origins. Whatever solution the Conservatives propose to problems of financing poorer students, it must not incorporate this illiberal notion of hereditary guilt.

... Those MPs planning to vote against the Bill tonight may worry that defeat of the Government will plunge the university sector into financial chaos. But Britain's universities are not (yet) nationalised: they remain independent institutions. It would be perfectly plausible (and constitutionally proper) to produce a policy that reinforced that independence instead of diminishing it. Government endowments, and the introduction of tax breaks for private endowments, could form the basis for a viable future which would incorporate an element of student fee that was not class-prejudiced.

Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |

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Monday, January 26, 2004
 

The cartoon meets reality

So drew the Telegraph's Matt yesterday. Twenty-four hours later, the indication is that people of this sort already are joining - and feeling very welcome.

Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |

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Holy Moley!

Jackie D reports:

Interesting item in today's Mail on Sunday about Hughie Rose, the youth coordinator for the Liberal Democrats' Ethnic-Minority Liberal Democrats (EMLD) Executive. According to their investigation, he's leader of the New Black Panthers in London, a black separatist organisation that critics of the group -- including a key member of the original Black Panthers -- have accused of being racist vigilantes who have "embraced the terrorism of September 11th".

Apparently Mr Rose, who has shared a platform at the Lib Dem conference with leader Charles Kennedy, has been using Lib Dem mailing lists to recruit new members for the group. He also helped to organise a lecture tour last year by Professor Tony Martin, author of The Jewish Onslaught, which describes "the Jewish role in the Black Holocaust."

The Liberal Democrats have never been home to the most sensible people in British society, but events of the last week really take the biscuit. And this isn't just about Jenny Tonge or Hughie Rossie. In Brent East a few months ago, the party received the enthusiastic endorsement of radical extremist groups like MPAC-UK and the Muslim Association of Britain, which wants to execute any Muslim who loses his faith. The party was never as mainstream or cuddly as it was perceived to be, but it now seems to be becoming a place where extremists who would overturn our democracy and civil rights in a second can feel comfortable. There's something very wrong at the heart of the Liberal Democrats, and suspicious as I am of any internal purges (which historically seem always to have been about a failing leader scapegoating others for his own underperformance), I think the party has to ask if it wants to await any more incidents like those of the last week before taking action against other unsavoury types who may be in their midst.

Similarly, those at the top of the party need to examine its message very closely and ask themselves what the effect is of promoting its BBC/Independent style of politics. When Lib Dems promote a radical, sexualised agenda, when they plot to give rapists the vote, empty the jails of burglars and fill them with those who defend against those burglars, when they show themselves wary of any harshness even towards the Taliban or Robert Mugabe, is it any wonder they are so good at attracting the support of the wrong sort of people? It's not just about embarrassment in the media - it's a matter of whether those policies really are right given the rats they attract. Good ideas do not have such appeal to bad people. When you are getting the support of black separatists and hateful religious fanatics, it's a useful indicator that the message itself is wrong.

The Lib Dems might also ask themselves if the reason the party is so good at winning over extremists like this is the same reason it is so bad at winning the support of a mass of the British people.

Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |

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Sunday, January 25, 2004
 

As untrue as it is immoral

All that can reasonably be said about the depravity of Jenny Tonge's "I might just consider becoming [a suicide bomber] myself" comments now seems to have been, so I have nothing myself to add on the morality of her statements. In particular, Oliver Kamm's two columns on the subject put the matter in its proper context. With even Charles Kennedy unequivocal this morning that Tonge deserved to be sacked, it seems just about everyone with a moral compass is united in contempt, Tonge's supporters consisting only of the sort of Chomskyites who really do believe Bush is the world's number one terrorist, the Abu Hamzas of academia like Hezbollah-supporting Haleh Afshar, and various other undesirables.

What does need to be stressed further, however, is that there is no deeper truth beneath the warped morality of what Tonge said, either. Her comments were not a cack-handed way of stating reality, but a reflection of her complete ignorance of why people in that part of the world are becoming terrorists and how they recruit others. As Stewart Steven, who died this week, noted when Cherie Blair made a similar argument, it is not desperation which motivates these murderers, but ceaseless indoctrination. Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority attempts to poison the mind of every child with the most hateful anti-Semitic propaganda, in schools and on television, ranging from the vulgar caricature of Jews that appeared on German beermats in the thirties to full-blown holocaust denial.

I can scarcely believe the ignorance or indifference shown by the usual 'anti-Zionist' of the way the Palestinian Authority operates. Many of these people are so closed-minded they think it means bigotry or mental illness to believe in marriage as the union of a man and a woman, but they are happy to support political advances by a state which responds to homosexual acts by throwing men into pools of sewage. They often think the appropriate response to the arguments of men like David Irving is not contempt but imprisonment, but they cheerfully support a state whose idea of intellectual output would make Irving blush. It is not desperation but year on year of filthy propaganda which encourages the blind, psychotic hatred of those who become suicide bombers. Those who believe the Middle East can be at peace must recognise that this will never occur until we see regime change in the Palestinian Authority, whose leaders have for forty years proved themselves opposed to any peace that does not entail Israel's destruction, and whose state apparatus is at all times directed towards ensuring the Palestinian people share that view. Blaming Israel for provoking the murder of her civilians, which is what Tonge and her apologists are doing, is not only morally repugnant but contrary to facts available to anyone willing to do a little reading.

There is a reason why so many on the left like in a subtle or an open way to blame free nations for the attacks upon her. Explaining terrorism in this way allows them to assert not only the futility of defending against those people who try to destroy us, but the necessity of their own aims. Just as blaming crime on material poverty allows them to justify the existence of their every social programme, blaming terrorism on inequality or international injustices ensures liberals can smugly assert that only when the victims of terror come around to their views can they hope for an end to their misery. It is a self-serving argument and a morally warped argument, using the bodies of innocents as platforms from which to proclaim a doctrine of appeasement and self-loathing often very similar to that of the terrorists. It is an argument which, if ever applied, would have horrendous consequences in the form of what one of Oliver's commenters describes as "the surrender of civilised values to those who are prepared to use violence". And it is also a lie, contrary to the facts of terrorism and of those who live by it and kill by it.

UPDATE: Gene at Harry's Place examines Palestinian TV.

Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |

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Link of the Week

Once again I have left the Link of the Week for a fortnight, but I can at least remedy that now. The link of this week is to Electric Review, which recently returned after months of down-time. An excellent and contemplative site which the press describes as having cult status among the up and coming generation of Conservatives, I very much missed it over the last few months, and very much look forward to it returning to putting up a number of articles each week. If you want a flavour of what to expect when that occurs, I particularly recommend from their archives Kit Kildare on the logic of the Ulster peace process, James Steerforth's Roy Jenkins Obituary, Christopher Montgomery on the Tory Modernising Tendency or even Peter Cuthbertson on setting off a rightwards ratchet-effect, a piece I plan to follow up on soon.

Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |

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Quote of the Day

"Generalisations are inevitably wrong" - Vivienne Raper

Priceless.

Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |

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Saturday, January 24, 2004
 

Unilaterism = Acting without France

Watching President Bush's excellent State of the Union Address, I noted that no matter how many countries Bush listed who supported the US over Iraq, it wouldn't be anything but a unilateral mission for liberals without the support of the 'right' people, The French. Maureen Dowd demonstrates that about as well as I could ever have hoped in the New York Times:

You wonder how many votes [Bush] scared off with that testosterone festival: the taunting message, the self-righteous geographic litany of support? The Philippines. Thailand. Italy. Spain. Poland. Denmark. Bulgaria. Ukraine. Romania. The Netherlands. Norway. El Salvador.

Can you believe President Bush is still pushing the cockamamie claim that we went to war in Iraq with a real coalition rather than a gaggle of poodles and lackeys?

Let's see the President's list again:

Some critics have said our duties in Iraq must be internationalized. This particular criticism is hard to explain to our partners in Britain, Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Italy, Spain, Poland, Denmark, Hungary, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania, the Netherlands -- (applause) -- Norway, El Salvador, and the 17 other countries that have committed troops to Iraq. (Applause.) As we debate at home, we must never ignore the vital contributions of our international partners, or dismiss their sacrifices.

Britain, Australia, Japan, Italy, Spain, Poland, South Korea - a huge number of the leading nations in the world - are 'poodles and lackeys'? How ignorant can one get?

Bush continues:

From the beginning, America has sought international support for our operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we have gained much support. There is a difference, however, between leading a coalition of many nations, and submitting to the objections of a few.

But for Dowd and her fellow travellers, submitting to the objections of a few is exactly what diplomacy must be about. By elevating France to level of moral titans, their President's decision the deciding factor in whether every conflict should or should not be waged, liberals hope to erect an almost insuperable barrier to America acting globally in Western interests. What is perhaps worst about this is that the list of nations supporting the Second Gulf War is dominated by those whose peoples best understand freedom, because in the twentieth century they spilt blood, tears and sweat to achieve it, or because they were denied it by decades of Soviet socialism. In the period when Britain and the United States waged ground and air war on Nazis and Communists in Germany, Korea, Vietnam, Chile and Nicaragua, when Poland declined to collaborate with the Nazis and then waged internal war on Soviet Communism, when Romania was executing its socialist tyrant, Germany invaded all her neighbours and attempted genocide and France prostrated herself before the Third Reich but left NATO. Given that history, should we even be surprised which countries from that list liberals deem exclusively worthy of setting Western foreign policy?

Thanks to Right Wing News for the link.

Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |

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Respect for tradition is a love for genuine change

Madsen Pirie's essay on Hayek's political conservatism - a quality the man himself denied - is so strongly argued that it ought to be read by anyone with an interest in Hayek, or in the borders and connections between conservative and libertarian thought. What should be of interest to all politicos, however, is the sophistication of the description within of the conservative attitude to change. So often one sees conservatism confused with reaction, with a pig-headed devotion to the existing state of affairs, a desire to stand before the tides of history and yell 'stop'. The last caricature was coined by leading conservative William F. Buckley, which just demonstrates how strongly conservatism is often associated with the idea of slavish attachment to the past and present. One Liberal Democrat site defines conservatism simply as "the defence of tradition, if necessary to the detriment of progress".

Dr Pirie shows how different the reality is, how the conservative attitude to 'progress' depends entirely on who is behind that progress, and how it is to be achieved.

If we list under the banner of conservatism figures as diverse as Burke, Liverpool, Peel, and Salisbury, right down to Churchill and Thatcher, we find major differences of temperament at once obvious. Some were optimists, some pessimists. Some were gregarious, some withdrawn.

What unites them is not an aversion to change, but an aversion to imposed change. All of them have embraced certain types of change and opposed others. Some introduced change. The unifying factor is an opposition to those changes which attempt to impose a pre-conceived plan upon society. What they have sought to preserve is not any particular state of society, but its spontaneity. Their opposition has been to the type of changes which seek to produce a particular outcome and to make people live in a particular way.

... Burke's objection to the French revolutionaries was not derived from an obsessive dislike of change. He recognized that changes are sometimes necessary. What he objected to was the attempt to make society conform to a rational plan. Burke's conservatism was founded in his rejection of endeavours to produce a preconceived outcome.

... Under conservatism, people make choices. Their future, and that of their society, is not made to conform to the grand design of some idealist, but is instead a cumulative result of independent actions. The individuals do not try collectively to achieve any particular goal; the outcome is the overall result of all of their actions.

Most people follow traditions because they are brought up to do so, because they like to do so, or because it is easier and safer to do so. When traditions change, conservatives would have it that they do so because their value has declined, or because circumstances have changed, and because people have developed different traditions to replace them. What conservatives object to is the deliberate abolition of traditions because they have been examined and found wanting, because they fail to produce the social goals desired by the legislators.

The words above may be a mere exposition of conservative ideas, but they are also a very powerful argument for why those who value and accept human choices should feel themselves naturally drawn to the conservative philosophy. In its intelligence and pragmatism, the Tory conception of society - voluntary, organic, evolving and progressing, but at a rate determined by an aggregate of individual choice, not an imposition of individual preferences - trumps with ease any rationalist plan that socialists, communists or liberals have to offer.

Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |

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Wednesday, January 21, 2004
 

How could it be they haven't governed for eighty years?

My new digital camera will of course be wonderful around party conference time, but in the meantime, it is still proving useful for the occasional blog entry. For example, I can now show you a charming leaflet I got through my door from the local Liberal Democrats. One can just imagine them all crowding around the final version and concluding "Perfect!".

(The red is where I removed their contact details. I don't think having them pushed through my door quite gives me the right to put them up online.)

Ignoring for a moment the Lib Dems' choice spelling, note too their big advertisement for a pub crawl. It truly is Charles Kennedy's party now.

Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |

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Any other bright ideas?

One benefit of Tom Watson's not-quite-unprovoked vendetta against Richard Dawkins is that it is producing some rather interesting links to controversies that involve the Oxford scientist. Yesterday, it was to a piece examining critically Dawkins' campaign to relabel atheists 'brights'. This campaign has come under some fire for its rather obvious implication that by laying claim to the 'bright' adjective these athiests look down on everyone else. It has to be said that their pleas of innocence - "Snotty? Condescending?! Us?!" - are not particularly convincing given this suggested exchange from Richard Dawkins in his Guardian column launching the idea:

"You mean a bright is an atheist?"

"Well, some brights are happy to call themselves atheists. Some brights call themselves agnostics. Some call themselves humanists, some free thinkers. But all brights have a world view that is free of supernaturalism and mysticism."

"Oh, I get it. It's a bit like 'gay'. So, what's the opposite of a bright? What would you call a religious person?"

"What would you suggest?"

Of course, even though we brights will scrupulously insist that our word is a noun, if it catches on it is likely to follow gay and eventually re-emerge as a new adjective. And when that happens, who knows, we may finally get a bright president.

An open and shut case, one would have thought, but the above isn't mentioned in the criticisms.

Anyway, I think one has to feel a little sympathy for organised athiests, for they have a tougher cause than most to promote. Atheism is by definition a negative, a denial, not an affirmation. Save for disagreement with theism, athiesm has no necessary doctrines nor claims of its own to make. Absolutely nothing else can unite all atheists beyond this one coincidence of their not believing in God, so it's inevitable that the only real way their lobbyists have of making their presence known is by being obnoxious to religious people. So they talk endlessly about the religious having an imaginary friend in the sky, they rewrite history to blame religious faith for just about every war, and they compare Creationists to the Taliban. In Britain, as Giles Fraser has noted, they have little choice but to follow religious groups around, absurdly demanding their time on patently religious programmes like Thought for the Day and complaining vociferously about pre-debate prayers in the House of Commons. In the US, their snarling agents in groups like the ACLU persecute ruthlessly anyone who would not confine religion entirely to the private sphere, from the fireman who says "God Bless" on duty to the schoolgirl who wears to class a red and green scarf at Christmas time.

What choice do the political atheists have? The only distinguishing feature of their movement is disagreement with others. You can't campaign on that without including plenty of negative stuff about your opponents. So if atheism is a big part of your personality, and you feel the need to spread its message, it's near-impossible to do it without acting like a jerk.

Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |

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Quick note of interest

David Aaronovitch seems to be another journalist who keeps an eye on British political blogs, if his Guardian piece yesterday is any indication.

The intensity of this dislike of the successful Democrat was caused, I think, by an anxiety about the inversion of proper political law. Because, as one rightwinger put it in an internet piece this week, only the right comprehends that, "Human nature - with its sex differences and its stress on individual, family and ethnic self-interest - is an innate heritage, not a blank slate that can be wiped clean by speech codes, sensitivity workshops and re-education camps."

I think it's safe to assume this is a reference to my quoting last Wednesday of Steve Sailer's piece on Sociobiology (which in fact was written a few years ago). I didn't get a link, but it's still good to know that the people at the top are keeping watch.

Thanks to Public Interest for the link.

Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |

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Tuesday, January 20, 2004
 

Quote of the Day

"One reason (although certainly not the only one) why Conservatives cannot ignore [civic and cultural issues], even if we wanted to stick to our tried and trusted economic arguments, is that these cultural changes have an economic impact. One thing we know about family breakdown, for example, is that it costs a lot of money and taxpayers end up having to help single parents with the costs of raising their children. Vandalism and crime impose high costs, particularly in our inner cities, and drive businesses elsewhere. Even such narrow economic arguments show the significance of these social changes.

A few years ago it was fashionable for Conservatives to say that they were 'dry in economic policy but wet on social issues'. It became such a cliche that one was almost desperate to find a brave soul who would claim to be wet in economics but dry in social policy - perhaps a believer in prices and incomes policies enforced by corporal punishment. But what we are now discovering is that a tough approach to fiscal policy rests on crucial assumptions about self-control, prudence, indeed behaviour generally. These are the issues which economics solves by assumptions about economic agents but which politicians cannot assume away. Ultimately, fiscal Conservatism depends on the character of the people." - David Willetts

Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |

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If Labour wins a third term, I warn you not to grow old ...

More at Samizdata.

Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |

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Monday, January 19, 2004
 

Society to blame

We should all greet news of an alleged attack on 62-year old, wheelchair-bound physicist Stephen Hawking with horror. Horror that our barren, penny-pinching welfare state - with a budget barely above a hundred billion pounds per annum - still does not remove the harsh inequalities that make such attacks inevitable. The usual hangers and floggers on the right will no doubt take the view that our first priority must always be the victim. I agree: the poor souls who beat up this 'defenceless' man are completely innocent victims of a viciously unjust society, and it must absolutely be our priority to alleviate the economic circumstances against which their every punch was a hammer blow. Not for us the bloodthirsty caveman's desire always to 'punish' people for supposed wrongs. If the conservatives had their way, people who did this sort of thing would be put away for a long time, on the grounds that the defence of the public comes first. What better testament to their lop-sided priorities could there be? It's as if they would rather violent criminals and repeat offenders spent years behind bars than they be released and react in the natural way to their material deprivation. Make no mistake: if they could lock up everyone who is a danger to the public, they would do it. And some of these people even admit to speeding on the motorway. The hypocrisy!

It is easy to blame crimes on the people who commit them. But the real courage comes in recognising how responsible are those who fall prey to them, and in acknowledging that any 'faults' within the lovable rogues who perpetrate attacks like this pale into insignificance when we consider how much all of us, everyone in society, is to blame. God-speed, young chaps: all enlightened opinion is four-square behind you. If you get anything approaching a custodial sentence, it will be an utter travesty. But then we both know how unlikely that is.

Thanks to Natalie Solent for the link.

UPDATE: Of course, the above was a parody. This, it seems, is not.

Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |

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What television could gain

Bobbie at PolitX charges those who complain of left-wing media bias of exaggerating the case. The mushy Guardianings of the BBC, he claims, is more than balanced by high-circulation dailies like the Sun, Telegraph and Daily Mail.

I agree. On the whole, Britain's media does make room for people of a great variety of perspectives. But this is entirely a matter of newspapers filling in the gap for the failings of television and the radio. I am proud of the British press. For all the criticism raised at the supposed hysteria and fury (for which read: interest and circulation) our tabloids in particular generate, I think British newspapers are probably about the best in the world. Whether one wants high-brow or low-brow, left-wing or right-wing, mushy-centrism or forthright conviction, the press caters for you somewhere. The Mail, Independent, Telegraph and Sun all serve their purpose well. My reasons for liking the right-of-centre press are obvious. But although I attack Guardian columns constantly on this site, that doesn't mean I deny that it too does a good job for its readership. I rather like it that American or Australian bloggers often turn to it or to the Indy when they want to find a left-wing 'idiotarian' to fisk. I may not agree with the views espoused in these cases, but it does please me that our newspaper industry fills that market niche so well, as it does so many others.

And it is precisely this that makes the BBC's dominance of television and radio so depressing. British journalism is naturally exciting and challenging, catering for a great range of views very well by any global standards. The only thing that holds it back from succeeding in other media is an anachronistic state monopoly whose idea of diversity of opinion is to mix the occasional Thatcherite in with a dicussion panel of social democrats and then have the presenter mock him throughout. If we saw on our television screens one-tenth of the vibrancy and diversity of opinion that exists in the British press, we would all be the better for it, public debate being hugely enhanced. The British press should not be the corrective to British television. It should be the model for how its political content and opinion could work. The BBC behemoth prevents that, and all those who seek more intelligent, thoughtful and open debate are the worse for it.

Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |

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Sunday, January 18, 2004
 

Quote of the Day

"The conscience is, of course, common to all human beings except psychopaths and editors." - John O'Sullivan

Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |

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