Mark Lawson's article in Saturday's Guardian has come into for some justifiable criticism (noticeably at normblog). Lawson's thesis is that the US is increasingly becoming a theocracy. Like many commentators (as I discussed recently at The Sharpener), he is unable to see the amazing complexity of a society whose largest city has, after all, spent this weekend celebrating this.
That's not to say that he doesn't have a serious point in highlighting the increasingly pernicious role that conservative Christians have in American law-making. If only he'd taken more care in researching his subject...
This week's prize for moronically ludicrous analogy, however, (thanks to Laban Tall for the link) has to go to Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens, who believes that, under the sway of those villainous liberal elites:
Britain has been the victim of a cultural revolution no less radical than that which swept China in 1967
China in 1967? I have clearly led a very sheltered life. I must have been away when my local Anglican priest was taken away by the authorities to be executed, and, when I last attended a classical music concert in the UK, I was lucky enough to escape the revolutionary guards at the exits waiting to pull out my toenails for listening to such bourgeois decadence.
One piece of advice to Mr Hitchens and his ilk - if he were to spend only ten minutes of each day not actively despising the culture and the country in which he is lucky enough to live, he might find life just a tiny bit more endurable.
Hasn't exactly got a gift for understatement, has he? I once saw him describe cannabis as "the most harmful substance known to man". Does he really think it's more harmful than, say, anthrax or the bubonic plague? Bet if he could transport himself back to the Victorian era, all he would do is bitch and moan about that too...
Posted by: Shuggy | 27 June 2005 at 04:55 AM
And I think the cultural revolution started in 1966. I normally wouldn't be so pedantic, but Peter Hitchens' slip here should serve as a warning to us all about the dangers of sliding standards in education :-)
Posted by: Shuggy | 27 June 2005 at 08:14 AM
Well the Mail has always been into absurd overstatement, so much so it's funny. For example, recently their headline was (something like) "Labour declares war on middle-class drivers" (this was regarding their plans for road pricing). It conjures up images of drivers being forced into Pol-Pot-style concentration camps.
Similarly for Hitchins' view that Labour is out to destroy the middle classes. What drugs is that man on?
Posted by: Phil Hunt | 27 June 2005 at 09:14 AM
"What drugs is that man on? "
God knows - but I *don't* want any...
Posted by: Shuggy | 27 June 2005 at 09:48 AM
You're confusing the form of the Cultural Revolution (murder, beatings, re-education classes) with the substance (how different China was at the end).
When the Cultural Revolution finally ended, China was not a completely different country. The point about the Chinese cultural revolution is that it failed, whereas the British one (which Hitchens dates roughly 1965-97) has succeeded.
You shouldn't really take a quote like that then start talking about executions without quoting a little more.
"The British cultural revolution has so far been free from direct violence. No elderly professors have been led through the streets in dunce's caps, nor have counter-revolutionary elements been thrown off the tops of buildings or otherwise crippled and murdered. The violence has been done to institutions and to traditions and ways of doing things, to language, but not - yet - to people. I cannot guarantee that it will not lead to bloodshed in the end, as revolutionary ideas so often do, but it has been restrained up till now.
For this has been a very British revolution, perhaps the last thing we shall do which is British."
Posted by: Laban Tall | 27 June 2005 at 12:25 PM
" cannot guarantee that it will not lead to bloodshed in the end, as revolutionary ideas so often do, but it has been restrained up till now."
It's "been restrained up to now"? A simpler - and more realistic - explanation of why there hasn't been bloodshed up to now is this British cultural revolution simply hasn't happened. What we've had is *evolution* - more violent social changes tend to appear when social institutions are completely inflexible. But it's unchanging, inflexible institutions that you appear to favour.
Posted by: Shuggy | 28 June 2005 at 05:20 AM
Shuggy - speaking from the other side, it's not that I favour unchanging, inflexible institutions. Rather, I think that the pace and (critically) the direction of change has not been wholly to the good, and might well be undermining those institutions. Those institutions often predate the liberal era, and some of us are concerned that it is they that make a liberal society possible, but that they can't survive in that liberal society.
Posted by: Blimpish | 28 June 2005 at 06:00 AM
I think Shuggy's wrong on this. Laying aside all the physical and technological changes, the way people behave has changed more in the last 40 years than in the 100 before that.
In some areas, like the collapse of marriage and the rise of bastardy, there are no precedents in recorded British history - going back 1,000 years or so.
Posted by: Laban Tall | 28 June 2005 at 05:40 PM
"the way people behave has changed more in the last 40 years than in the 100 before that."
I'm divorced and share custody of my son, which was the product of a subsequent relationship. I for one am glad it's no longer socially acceptable for people to refer to my firstborn as a "bastard."
I had a great-aunt who was, very unusually for the time, the product of a one-parent family. On nearing death, she was terrified that she'd go to hell and burn in the fire where her worm dieth not, neither would her fire be quenched because she was a bastard.
I don't give a shit what Peter Hitchens and Melanie Phillips think; some things have changed for the better...
Posted by: Shuggy | 29 June 2005 at 06:33 AM
SOME things have changed for the better; but that doesn't mean all have, and it doesn't mean that some of those changes haven't had negative consequences alongside the positive ones. To say that all change is for the better is as absurd as saying that all change is for the worse (although probably more dangerous in its implications).
Posted by: Blimpish | 29 June 2005 at 06:27 PM
"To say that all change is for the better is as absurd as saying that all change is for the worse"
I can agree with this statement because if you look at the last sentence I wrote, I was careful to say *some* things have changed for the better. Like the fact that my son will not be treated as a social pariah because his parents aren't married, for example. I know a lot of Tories don't agree; that's just one of the reasons they will never, ever get my vote.
Posted by: Shuggy | 30 June 2005 at 04:49 AM
I know you said *some* - that's why I started my comment as leading off from it.
But we're in the land of the strawmen now. I know of no breathing Tory who would want illegitimate children to be given pariah status for its own sake. Even those who may wish to restore some degree of stigma, do so because they think the upside (those children being more included) is not worth the downside (the collapse of deterrents to looser family arrangements). Now, it might be that you think this downside is of no import - but you might at least accept that believing that it matters does not require a trace of malice, and that political questions are beset by balancing judgements like this.
Posted by: Blimpish | 30 June 2005 at 07:25 PM
The HUMAN PARADIGM
"...the creative process is a choicemaking process."
Consider:
The missing element in every human 'solution' is an
accurate definition of the creature. The way we define
'human' determines our view of self, others, relationships,
institutions, life, and future. Important? Only the Creator
who made us in His own image is qualified to define us
accurately. Choose wisely...there are results.
Human is earth's Choicemaker. Psalm 25:12 He is by nature
and nature's God a creature of Choice - and of Criteria.
Psalm 119:30,173 His unique and definitive characteristic
is, and of Right ought to be, the natural foundation of his
environments, institutions, and respectful relations to his
fellow-man. Thus, he is oriented to a Freedom whose roots
are in the Order of the universe.
The arts and the sciences of man, as with his habits,
customs, and traditions, are the creative harvest of
his perceptive and selective powers. Creativity, the
creative process, is a choice-making process. His
articles, constructs, and commodities, however marvelous
to behold, deserve neither awe nor idolatry, for man, not
his contrivance, is earth's own highest expression of the
creative process.
Man is earth's Choicemaker. The sublime and significant
act of choosing is, itself, the Archimedean fulcrum upon
which man levers and redirects the forces of cause and
effect to an elected level of quality and diversity.
Further, it orients him toward a natural environmental
opportunity, freedom, and bestows earth's title, The
Choicemaker, on his singular and plural brow.
Posted by: James Fletcher Baxter | 01 July 2005 at 09:13 AM