Hurrah for Skepticism!

Antonia Senior’s article in the Times is the sort of thinking we need more of!

The Greens are the heirs to the idealistic utopians of the Communists and the far left. Let’s chuck that nonsense out at the next election.

Articles of the day

Max Hastings on the Army.
Christopher Booker on the lunacy of the government. Is it just me or is this stuff the new socialist dream?
Same here from a different source.
And Peter Soissons proving us right about the BBC.

A line marked “taboo”

Hello the five people who occasionally drop by to see if I’ve updated! Well, here’s something I’ve been sitting on for a little while and thinking over.
Someone, it might have been Nick Cohen, once said that people who view themselves, not as “good” but as “virtuous” are actually deeply unpleasant but repress that unpleasantness for fear of violating the cultural taboos in which they live. We would not dream of holding a woman in politics to a different standard (well, actually most political commentators do hold women to a different and unfair standard) but when a woman has entered the “wrong” camp in politics, those self-rightously virtuous souls not only hold that person to a different standard – they violate every taboo around sexism, attacks on her family and children. Indeed when one looks at the liberal-left media treatment of Sarah Palin, one can only conclude that the self-appointed bearers of women’s rights and equality decided that Sarah Palin did not merit the rights which they insist are universal.
Disgusting sexual smears (all fabricated) have been used against her and her daughters – yes that means you, Letterman. A concerted attempt to undermine and criminalize Sarah Palin has been waged since she was chosen as John McCain’s running mate. If this was being waged by the “Republican attack machine”, there would be outrage at her treatment but the secret to this puzzle lies back in 2000-2001.

After Gore lost to Bush in 2000, the left wing reacted by criminalizing (in their world view) the political right. From then on all ethical standards were not to be applied Republicans, who were now designated as evil. In a certain sense, the left reacted to defeat by declaring political war against the right. The patterns of this war can be seen in the treatment of Sarah Palin – intense media attacks promoting a caricature of a far-right, fundamentalist slut combined with incessant legal challanges; the same pattern first applied in the 2006 Congressional elections. The legal challanges are an important element in this war as these wear out the political personalities and eat up political funds.
David Horowitz of Front Page Magazine has been mapping these attacks for years. I wasn’t sure whether he was seeing things that won’t there until last year but I first began to be worried by the political tone of the US left when I ran across a slogan on the Sonic Youth forum entitled “Take America Back!” I’m not saying that this was some conspiracy giveaway, rather it was the tone: totalitarian, intolerant and filled with hatred.

The left in America is sick because it all knows how to feel and think today is to hate. Think about the US left’s reaction to the election in Iran – they can’t hate the Iranians, so they ignore them. Hate poisons politics – think on this.

This is the second time around

Hit tip to Harry’s Place for its superb blogging on the ongoing repression in Iran. But this has happened before: read this article by an Iranian dissident in 2004.
The Iranian regime is one of the worst on the planet – and therefore protected by the Left, especially as it has a fig-leaf of “democracy” in front of the tyranny, which given the controls placed on that democracy, render it a fraud – like the recent elections.
Reports are coming out of police and Revolutionary Guardsmen opening fire on crowds, of abducting the wounded from hospitals (probably never to be seen again) and arresting “foreign agents” (i.e. opposition leaders, thinkers and organisers). All trade, whether merchant or financial should be severed at once. This is the bare minimum that the West could do – but to change the regime, which is founded in terror, murder and the threat of unrestricted violence, we should prepare to wage war.
Freedom should be our slogan. Where injustice is allowed to exist, all justice is emperilled (to loosely quote Dr King).

Caroline Glick is right once more

Reading her latest column in the JPost, she argues that Israel should morally speak up for the anti-regime protesters in Iran and should do it can to aid them. Once again the West is just waiting for a tyranny to crush its opponents, proving that the West’s obsession with human rights is merely a canting form of speech.
Britain, by any reasonable measure of moral politics should enact the same measures she prescribes for Israel: publically supporting democracy, acting to give alternative channels of information and communication to the opposition and making clear that the agenda of the Iranian regime is not that of the Iranian people.
There is not likely to be much of a chance of change, especially if the regime resorts to massacre (by bringing the army onto the streets) but history is resplendent with moments of seeming madness turning a fixed situation into an unknown number of possibilities.
Britain, as should Israel should support the opposition and do all it can to aid a change of regime. It is time to drop the scales from our collective eyes.

And again…

Someone else has this right too. The Republicans have lost their focus and must think about what is important.
An excellent article sums this up.

Bruce Bawer says it right

Link via Little Green Footballs. But he is right; people I had previously respected have gone nuts. This is not good but the best we can do is to maintain our unwavering gaze on the preservation of Western values.

Saluting the IDF

Watch this video (linked via Little Green Footballs) and then consider that 80-90% of those killed by the IDF in Gaza during Cast Lead were Hamas terrorists.
The IDF faced these challanges embedded in a disgusting disregard for the sanctity of human life and still beat them.

Shire Network News, recent entry

Have decided to post comment here as the comment button does not appear to be working…

Excellent podcast entry! Agree with a great deal of what was spoken here. I disagree partly on religion and fear. I think that it is a combination of mutual interest, altruism and law that makes societies work better and keeps people within the bounds laid down by society. That said in Britain we still live in a society whose ethics are influenced by Christian ethics, in addition to the ethics of Greek philosophy and the organic ethics of Western family life. What we should not forget is that so much of what drives the crazed-Left is religious in impulse without a deity. I do not mean that that this part has set up a deity of their ideology but that the same pyschological impulses that used to be fed into religion (or that secular religion, socialism) are still grounding themselves in a fruitless (for it is always so) search for Utopia. You guys should seriously talk to Philip Stott of [url]http://web.mac.com/sinfonia1/Clamour_Of_The_Times/Clamour_Of_The_Times/Clamour_Of_The_Times.html[/url] and ask him his thoughts on what drives the modern Left today. I have been a fan of his for as long as I have been listening to this show (from when you first had Nick Cohen on here). It is perspicacious, is it not, that President Obama’s agenda is proving to be [i]radical[/i]? Just like Melanie Phillips and others had been warning… It is called seeing what is in front of your nose, something only a few of us (including this site) have been doing for a very long time. Finally, I love the Churchill quotes and agree fully with putting Churchill up for one of the great men of history.

Don’t be so foolish…

Please tell me that the government is not going to deport the terrorists arrested last week? We all know exactly what will happen – they’ll get a year (or less) in a Pakistani prison and/or go straight back to their masters and try again.
Try them and put the bastards in prison (though I admit my preference would be for execution).