My name is David Lindsay, and I want to be a Labour MP. I joined the Labour Party when I was 17, have served on CLP GC and EC (and on DLP) since I was 18, chaired my Branch for several years from the age of 19, became a Parish Councillor (in an unusually large and busy Parish) at the legal minimum age of 21, became a primary school governor just short of my twenty-second birthday, and became a comprehensive school governor just short of my twenty-third birthday. I have since been re-elected as a Parish Councillor and re-appointed to both of my school governorships, having served as Vice-Chair of the primary Governing Body. At 19, I was a Ward Sub-Agent in the 1997 General Election, securing an overall majority of the total vote on a four-way split in a traditionally Tory ward. And at 25, I became DLP Secretary, having been a District Group Observer for three years before that. I have only just relinquished that office, aged 28.
Therefore, I should now appreciate the opportunity to make a further contribution, drawing and building upon those experiences, which include a great deal of committee work, of working to deadlines, and of hugely successful co-operation with a very wide range of individuals and bodies. Furthermore, I have always done all of the above while engaged in either or both of full-time paid work and various forms of academic work, as well as numerous other voluntary activities, thus demonstrating, I feel, both my commitment, and my ability to organise my time to optimal effect.
I am a One Nation politician, with an equal emphasis on the One and on the Nation. Therefore, I am a Socialist: I believe in the universal Welfare State and in the strong statutory (including trade union) protection of workers, consumers, communities and the environment, the former paid for by progressive taxation, the whole underwritten by full employment, and all these good things delivered by the partnership between a strong Parliament and strong local government.
I offer the possibility of many years of service in the future. My mixed ethnic background would also add an unusual, but increasingly important, dimension. I reject all talk of left and right within the Party, or of Old Labour and New Labour: I am simply Labour and proud of it.I wish to be a workers’ MP on a worker’s wage, accepting only the national average salary for full-time work (the real rate for the job), and donating the rest to political and community causes, and thus rising with the British People rather than above the British People. I should campaign for election on what I firmly believe to be this hugely popular basis.
Meanwhile, I hope that you will enjoy the posts below, which are on politics, philosophy, theology, history, literature and other things.
My email address is davidaslindsay@hotmail.com
Tuesday, 6 June 2006
In circulation on the Left
In circulation on the Left, the crossover with the material in circulation on the Old Right being in itself an important point:
1. The conservation or restoration (as the overwhelming majority of Britons wishes) of such good things as national self-government (the only basis for international co-operation, and including the United Kingdom as greater than the sum of its parts), local variation, historical consciousness, family life, agriculture, manufacturing, small business, close-knit communities, law and order, civil liberties, academic standards, all forms of art, and mass political participation within a constitutional framework, all of which free market capitalism corrodes to nought;
2. The restoration of the supremacy of British over EU law, the use of this to restore Britain's historic fishing rights, the British adoption of a show-stopping Empty Chair Policy until the Council of Ministers meets in public and publishes an Official Report akin to Hansard, and the election of Britain's European Commissioner by the whole electorate from a shortlist of two submitted following a ballot of all MPs;
3. A much higher threshold for income tax (national median earnings) and corporation tax (the amount needed to pay every employee a minimum wage of half median male earnings per hour), with a flat rate thereafter, so that the working poor are taken out of tax, while genuinely middle-earners and small or medium-sized businesses pay far less than at present, because the richest individuals and the biggest corporations pay their fair share for the first time ever;
4. A unified benefits, pensions, student funding, and minimum wage system, so that no one's income falls below half national median earnings;
5. A one hundred per cent tax at source on all income from rent, with a Social Security payment to those thus taxed equal to national average earnings (or sufficient to maintain the legitimate activities of religious or educational institutions), as a step towards giving every household a base of real property from which to resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State;
6. A permanently higher rate of corporation tax on the banks and the privatised utilities, with the money spent on reimbursing the employers' National Insurance contributions for workers aged 25 or under and 55 or over, and with strict regulation to ensure that no cost is passed on to workers, consumers, communities or the environment;
7. A ban on any company paying any employee more than ten times what it pays any other employee, with the whole public sector (including MPs and Ministers) functioning as one for this purpose, its median wage pegged permanently at the median wage in the private sector;
8. Every public limited company to have one non-executive director appointed by the Secretary of State for a fixed term equivalent to that of other directors, and responsible for protecting the interests of workers, small shareholders, consumers, communities and the environment;
9. Restoration of democratic political control over monetary policy;
10. The renationalisation of the railways, uniquely without compensation in view of the manner of thier privatisation, as the basis for a national network of public transport free at the point of use, including the reversal of bus route and (where possible) rail line closures going back to the 1950s;
11. Building on the statutory right of every worker to join a trade union and to have that trade union recognised for collective bargaining purposes by giving every trade unionist so recognised the statutory right to take industrial action in pursuit of a legitimate grievance, including strike action, and including solidarity action of a clearly secondary character (such as a work to rule in support of a strike) within a single industry or corporation;
12. Abolition of all remaining vestiges of Compulsory Competitive Tendering, of the capping of councils, and of the power of central government to rule local services ultra vires;
13. Continual exposure of the ruling class's pathological hatred of local government as in fact an undisguised hatred of people other than themselves, and as expressing itself in the ridiculous view that councils ought to be "commissioners rather than providers" of services, as if efficiency or accountability had somehow been increased by a village primary school's no longer even employing its own caretaker, or by giving private companies unconditional licenses to print public money in return for risk-free "investments" in, say, emptying the bins, or preparing school food, so that the sooner that this whole process of the last 25 years is halted and reversed, the better;
14. Local authorities to be able to set precepts on top of the flat-rate income tax and corporation tax outlined above, so that Council Tax and National Non-Domestic Rates could both be abolished;
15. No return to the 11-plus, working instead to overcome this country's crippling cultural division between arts and sciences, and between academic and technical education;
16. Defence and restoration of Special Needs Education, and total opposition to the idea of abolishing, or greatly reducing the responsibilities of, Local Education Authorities, not least since the real reason for wanting this is a desire to abolish counties, as would follow very rapidly on the abolition of LEAs, there being no comparable country in which anyone would ever even suggest abolishing whole tiers of local government, never mind in which such a thing might actually happen;
17. Freezing of prescription charges, and restoration of free eye and dental check-ups;
18. Repeal of the Civil Contingencies Act, no identity cards, and no control orders;
19. Repeal of existing erosions of trial by jury and of the right to silence, of existing reversals of the burden of proof, and of the Official Secrets Acts;
20. Police forces at least no larger than at present, and be subject to local democratic accountability, most obviously though Police Authorities;
21. Removal of all nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological weapons from British soil and waters, and a total ban on the sale of arms abroad;
22. Removal of foreign forces from British soil and waters, and restoration of British overall control of our defence capability, with no more participation in "neoconservative" wars;
23. Strong defence (including the restoration where necessary) of Labour's trade union links as constituting the Party's grounding in the lives and practical concerns of millions of working people and their families throughout this country and beyond;
24. A powerful role for co-operatives, credit unions, mutual guarantee societies and mutual building societies, including legislation to protect the remaining mutual building societies, and the implementation of the Co-operative Party's recent Manifesto other than in relation to European integration;
25. An undertaking to go to prison rather than carry an identity card, and likewise to go to prison rather than pay taxes for the sake of state funding of political parties, which would necessitate state involvement, no doubt through some ghastly commission of the ruling class, both in policy formulation and in candidate selection, which is why those who advocate such funding do so, since they expect that they or their mates will be appointed to such a commission, and will thus be able to dictate, even more than at present, both what may be discussed, and by whom, with no role for trade unions, i.e., no role for large numbers of working, tax-paying people and their families, the length and breadth of this country;
26. The introduction, by agreement among the parties, of a system whereby each constituency party submitted a shortlist of two potential parliamentary candidates to a binding ballot of all registered electors in that constituency, and each party at national level submitted a shortlist of two potential Leaders (i.e., putative Prime Ministers) to a binding ballot of all registered electors throughout the United Kingdom, not least because this would help to protect the First Past The Post electoral system at both national and (therefore) local level;
27. Everywhere to be covered by a Parish or Town Council, or an urban or suburban equivalent, with greatly increased powers and resources;
28. Total opposition to the further deregulation of drinking or gambling;
29. Election of the BBC Governors for a fixed term of five years from among those licence-payers in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and each of the nine English regions who are politically independent (sufficient to be eligible in principle for membership of the remuneration panels of local councils), with each licence-payer (including members of political parties) voting for one candidate, the top two per area being elected at the end, and the Chairman being appointed by the Secretary of State with the approval of the relevant Select Committee;
30. Britain at least ordinarily to use her UN Security Council seat to veto any proposal not approved by the majority of the world's elective democracies (other than those with permanent seats of their own), making her the true leader of the democratic world, in contrast to any country that might arrogate to itself such a title while acting out of selfishness rather than self-interest;
31. No one to be permitted to own or control more than one national daily newspaper, more than one national weekly newspaper, more than one television station (including any of the ITV regional stations), or interests in both sectors, a move which, if made at the start of a Parliament, would just be a fact of life by the time that another General Election came round;
32. The obscenely misnamed "Social Democrats, USA" (the main Shachtmanite faction, with close links to the Bush Administration, just as it had to the Reagan Administration) to be expelled from the Socialist International; and
33. The Henry Jackson Society to be proscribed within the Labour Party in the same way, and essentially on the same grounds, as was the Militant Tendency.
1. The conservation or restoration (as the overwhelming majority of Britons wishes) of such good things as national self-government (the only basis for international co-operation, and including the United Kingdom as greater than the sum of its parts), local variation, historical consciousness, family life, agriculture, manufacturing, small business, close-knit communities, law and order, civil liberties, academic standards, all forms of art, and mass political participation within a constitutional framework, all of which free market capitalism corrodes to nought;
2. The restoration of the supremacy of British over EU law, the use of this to restore Britain's historic fishing rights, the British adoption of a show-stopping Empty Chair Policy until the Council of Ministers meets in public and publishes an Official Report akin to Hansard, and the election of Britain's European Commissioner by the whole electorate from a shortlist of two submitted following a ballot of all MPs;
3. A much higher threshold for income tax (national median earnings) and corporation tax (the amount needed to pay every employee a minimum wage of half median male earnings per hour), with a flat rate thereafter, so that the working poor are taken out of tax, while genuinely middle-earners and small or medium-sized businesses pay far less than at present, because the richest individuals and the biggest corporations pay their fair share for the first time ever;
4. A unified benefits, pensions, student funding, and minimum wage system, so that no one's income falls below half national median earnings;
5. A one hundred per cent tax at source on all income from rent, with a Social Security payment to those thus taxed equal to national average earnings (or sufficient to maintain the legitimate activities of religious or educational institutions), as a step towards giving every household a base of real property from which to resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State;
6. A permanently higher rate of corporation tax on the banks and the privatised utilities, with the money spent on reimbursing the employers' National Insurance contributions for workers aged 25 or under and 55 or over, and with strict regulation to ensure that no cost is passed on to workers, consumers, communities or the environment;
7. A ban on any company paying any employee more than ten times what it pays any other employee, with the whole public sector (including MPs and Ministers) functioning as one for this purpose, its median wage pegged permanently at the median wage in the private sector;
8. Every public limited company to have one non-executive director appointed by the Secretary of State for a fixed term equivalent to that of other directors, and responsible for protecting the interests of workers, small shareholders, consumers, communities and the environment;
9. Restoration of democratic political control over monetary policy;
10. The renationalisation of the railways, uniquely without compensation in view of the manner of thier privatisation, as the basis for a national network of public transport free at the point of use, including the reversal of bus route and (where possible) rail line closures going back to the 1950s;
11. Building on the statutory right of every worker to join a trade union and to have that trade union recognised for collective bargaining purposes by giving every trade unionist so recognised the statutory right to take industrial action in pursuit of a legitimate grievance, including strike action, and including solidarity action of a clearly secondary character (such as a work to rule in support of a strike) within a single industry or corporation;
12. Abolition of all remaining vestiges of Compulsory Competitive Tendering, of the capping of councils, and of the power of central government to rule local services ultra vires;
13. Continual exposure of the ruling class's pathological hatred of local government as in fact an undisguised hatred of people other than themselves, and as expressing itself in the ridiculous view that councils ought to be "commissioners rather than providers" of services, as if efficiency or accountability had somehow been increased by a village primary school's no longer even employing its own caretaker, or by giving private companies unconditional licenses to print public money in return for risk-free "investments" in, say, emptying the bins, or preparing school food, so that the sooner that this whole process of the last 25 years is halted and reversed, the better;
14. Local authorities to be able to set precepts on top of the flat-rate income tax and corporation tax outlined above, so that Council Tax and National Non-Domestic Rates could both be abolished;
15. No return to the 11-plus, working instead to overcome this country's crippling cultural division between arts and sciences, and between academic and technical education;
16. Defence and restoration of Special Needs Education, and total opposition to the idea of abolishing, or greatly reducing the responsibilities of, Local Education Authorities, not least since the real reason for wanting this is a desire to abolish counties, as would follow very rapidly on the abolition of LEAs, there being no comparable country in which anyone would ever even suggest abolishing whole tiers of local government, never mind in which such a thing might actually happen;
17. Freezing of prescription charges, and restoration of free eye and dental check-ups;
18. Repeal of the Civil Contingencies Act, no identity cards, and no control orders;
19. Repeal of existing erosions of trial by jury and of the right to silence, of existing reversals of the burden of proof, and of the Official Secrets Acts;
20. Police forces at least no larger than at present, and be subject to local democratic accountability, most obviously though Police Authorities;
21. Removal of all nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological weapons from British soil and waters, and a total ban on the sale of arms abroad;
22. Removal of foreign forces from British soil and waters, and restoration of British overall control of our defence capability, with no more participation in "neoconservative" wars;
23. Strong defence (including the restoration where necessary) of Labour's trade union links as constituting the Party's grounding in the lives and practical concerns of millions of working people and their families throughout this country and beyond;
24. A powerful role for co-operatives, credit unions, mutual guarantee societies and mutual building societies, including legislation to protect the remaining mutual building societies, and the implementation of the Co-operative Party's recent Manifesto other than in relation to European integration;
25. An undertaking to go to prison rather than carry an identity card, and likewise to go to prison rather than pay taxes for the sake of state funding of political parties, which would necessitate state involvement, no doubt through some ghastly commission of the ruling class, both in policy formulation and in candidate selection, which is why those who advocate such funding do so, since they expect that they or their mates will be appointed to such a commission, and will thus be able to dictate, even more than at present, both what may be discussed, and by whom, with no role for trade unions, i.e., no role for large numbers of working, tax-paying people and their families, the length and breadth of this country;
26. The introduction, by agreement among the parties, of a system whereby each constituency party submitted a shortlist of two potential parliamentary candidates to a binding ballot of all registered electors in that constituency, and each party at national level submitted a shortlist of two potential Leaders (i.e., putative Prime Ministers) to a binding ballot of all registered electors throughout the United Kingdom, not least because this would help to protect the First Past The Post electoral system at both national and (therefore) local level;
27. Everywhere to be covered by a Parish or Town Council, or an urban or suburban equivalent, with greatly increased powers and resources;
28. Total opposition to the further deregulation of drinking or gambling;
29. Election of the BBC Governors for a fixed term of five years from among those licence-payers in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and each of the nine English regions who are politically independent (sufficient to be eligible in principle for membership of the remuneration panels of local councils), with each licence-payer (including members of political parties) voting for one candidate, the top two per area being elected at the end, and the Chairman being appointed by the Secretary of State with the approval of the relevant Select Committee;
30. Britain at least ordinarily to use her UN Security Council seat to veto any proposal not approved by the majority of the world's elective democracies (other than those with permanent seats of their own), making her the true leader of the democratic world, in contrast to any country that might arrogate to itself such a title while acting out of selfishness rather than self-interest;
31. No one to be permitted to own or control more than one national daily newspaper, more than one national weekly newspaper, more than one television station (including any of the ITV regional stations), or interests in both sectors, a move which, if made at the start of a Parliament, would just be a fact of life by the time that another General Election came round;
32. The obscenely misnamed "Social Democrats, USA" (the main Shachtmanite faction, with close links to the Bush Administration, just as it had to the Reagan Administration) to be expelled from the Socialist International; and
33. The Henry Jackson Society to be proscribed within the Labour Party in the same way, and essentially on the same grounds, as was the Militant Tendency.
In circulation on the Old Right
In circulation on the Old Right, the crossover with the material in circulation on the Left being in itself an important point:
1. The restoration of the supremacy of British over EU law, the use of this to restore Britain's historic fishing rights, the adoption of the showstopping Empty Chair Policy until the Council of Ministers meets in public and publishes an Official Report akin to Hansard, and the election of Britain's European Commissioner by the whole electorate from a shortlist of two submitted by a secret ballot of MPs;
2. The government of Northern Ireland precisely as if it were any other part of the United Kingdom (not least including the restoration of proper local government there, and organisation there by the British political parties), and the adoption of the Irish Republic's attitude of contempt towards terrorist political parties (views that I hold not least because I am a practising Catholic);
3. The monarchy as embodying our fundamental values, and the duty to hold the Royal Family to account as that embodiment which enables then to enjoy enormous privileges, always having in mind that the succession to the throne is determined by Parliament in our 'res publica' (the reason why there must be no change to the Oath of Allegiance, which, when understood historically and grammatically, expresses this fact);
4. British Standard English to be the only official language of every public body in the United Kingdom, except where another language indigenous to these islands has a high concentration of native speakers, in which case that language should have parity (though no more than that) with British Standard English;
5. Saint George's Day, Saint Andrew's Day, Saint David's Day and Saint Patrick's Day all to be public holidays throughout the United Kingdom, with the flag of the relevant part of the United Kingdom should be displayed alongside the Union Flag in or on all public buildings at all times, to be joined by the appropriate flag, on the other side of the Union Flag, on each of the aforesaid Saints' Days;
6. Total opposition to any lowering of the voting age to 16, as this would threaten our democracy since no one seriously suggests that the political opinion of a 16-year-old is equal to that of, say, his Head Teacher, so, sooner or later, someone would suggest, unanswerably, that people like the latter ought to have more votes than the former;
7. A much higher threshold for income tax and corporation tax, with a flat rate thereafter, so that the working poor are taken out of tax, while genuine middle-earners and small or medium-sized businesses pay far less than at present, because the richest individuals and the biggest corporations pay their fair share for the first time ever;
8. Serious consideration of the restoration of grammar schools on the German Gymnasium model, thus avoiding the 11-plus while working to overcome this country's crippling cultural division between arts and sciences, and between academic and technical education;
9. Continuation of my ongoing work in trying to set up on a co-operative basis an Examination Board drawn from independent schools while making its services available to all schools, in trying to persuade public schools and Oxbridge colleges (run as these are by professional educationalists) to sponsor City Academies (if we must have them at all), and in trying to create a new educational charity which would elect to Associateship those pupils in all schools who, on leaving the Sixth Form at 18, had attained since beginning Year 10 examination results at or above the average in the remaining state grammar schools, both in terms of the marks themselves, and in terms of the range of subjects studied (as well as electing to Fellowship those teachers whose pupils attained such results over 10 consecutive years), including with a view to contacting the most prestigious universities in order to make the Associateship (which would be automatic) an admission requirement, and in the hope that this charity will be called after a Labour politician who fought to defend the grammar schools as the ladder of working-class advancement;
10. The defence and restoration of schooling at the highest academic level for those to whom it is appropriate as intimately related to an emphatic dedication to the defence and restoration of Special Needs Education;
11. Total opposition to the idea of abolishing, or greatly reducing the responsibilities of, Local Education Authorities, since the real reasons for wanting this are a desire to abolish counties (as would follow very rapidly on the abolition of LEAs) and a determination to ensure that bipartite or tripartite secondary schooling can never be restored (as this would be logistically impossible without very powerful and well-resourced LEAs), which former would entail the abolition of Lords Lieutenants, this anti-monarchist cause being a key part of the anti-LEA, inescapably anti-county agenda, and there being no comparable country in which anyone would ever even suggest abolishing whole tiers of local government, never mind in which such a thing might actually happen;
12. Continual exposure of the metropolitan liberal elite's pathological hatred of local government as in fact an undisguised hatred of people other than themselves, and as expressing itself in the ridiculous view that councils ought to be "commissioners rather than providers" of services, as if efficiency or accountability had somehow been increased by a village primary school's no longer even employing its own caretaker, or by giving private companies unconditional licenses to print public money in return for risk-free "investments" in, say, emptying the bins, or preparing school food, so that the sooner that this whole process of the last 25 years is halted and reversed, the better;
13. Local authorities to be able to set precepts on top of the flat-rate income tax and corporation tax outlined above, so that Council Tax and National Non-Domestic Rates could both be abolished;
14. The abolition, as soon as practicable, of Capital Gains Tax and Inheritance Tax;
15. The imperial and metric systems (both of which, it must be said, are of foreign origin but have long histories of use in this country) to be taught and used side by side (my generation is in the ridiculous position of having been taught no system except the one used only for certain specialist purposes), except where metrication has not already taken place, as in the case of road signs;
16. University funding per student, regardless of parental income, on a sliding scale of the A-level or equivalent grades required by the course (up to three As) and those obtained by the student (up to three As), with full fees paid for, and generous maintenance grants awarded to, those at the higher end;
17. Defence of rural services, leading in particular to the systematic reversal of bus route and (where possible) rail line closures, as well as of the erosion of local schools, medical facilities, Post Offices, and so on;
18. The development of a national network of public transport free at the point of use, including the reversal of bus route and (where possible) rail line closures going back to the 1950s;
19. Defence of real agriculture as the mainstay of strong communities, environmental responsibility and animal welfare (leading to safe, healthy and inexpensive food), as against American-style 'factory farming';
20. The supermarkets to be made to fund investment in agriculture and small business (investment to be determined in close consultation with the National Farmers' Union and the Federation of Small Businesses) by means of a windfall tax, to be followed if necessary by a permanently higher flat rate of corporation tax, in either case with strict regulation to ensure that the costs of this are not passed on to suppliers, workers, consumers, communities or the environment;
21. Repeal of the ban on hunting with dogs, and defence of the remaining field sports;
22. Everywhere to be covered by a Parish or Town Council, or an urban or suburban equivalent, with greatly increased powers and resources;
23. The removal of foreign forces from British soil and waters, the restoration of British overall control over our defence capability, no more participation in "neoconservative" (i.e., anti-conservative) wars, and the retention of the historic regiments as the framework for the Army's future efficiency;
24. Britain's permanent seat on the UN Security Council to be used in consultation with the other 15 Commonwealth Realms (i.e., Commonwealth countries retaining the monarchy), vetoing any resolution not approved by the majority of them, and seeking a similar arrangement with regard to the British and Canadian seats at the G8, all the while with a view to binding the Commonwealth Realms to each other through the monarchy, and on the basis of the shared values and history embodied by that institution, with their citizens having at least the same rights of access to this country as are enjoyed by EU citizens, and with every step made to ensure at least the same level of cultural contact (twinning, exchanges, and so on) with the other Commonwealth Realms as with the other EU member-states (which must never include Turkey);
25. Britain's permanent seat on the UN Security Council to be used at least ordinarily to veto any proposal not approved by the majority of those countries (other than those with permanent seats of their own) which, like seventy-two per cent Christian Britain, have Christian majority populations, which, among other good things, would gain Britain enormous influence in the increasing important regions of Africa and Latin America (it would be constitutionally impossible for the United States to adopt a similar policy);
26. Britain's permanent seat on the UN Security Council to be used at least ordinarily to veto any proposal not approved by the majority of the world's elective democracies (other than those with permanent seats of their own), making her the true leader of the democratic world, in contrast to any country that might otherwise arrogate to itself such a title;
27. The closest possible ties (not least by this medium, and especially in schools) with those British Overseas Territories with permanent populations (I myself am half Saint Helenian, and I was in fact born in Saint Helena), and the National Days of all the Commonwealth Realms and Overseas Territories to be marked in our public institutions, including by the display of their flags alongside the permanent display of the Union Flag;
28. This country to have at least equal cultural ties with those Western European countries (primarily Norway, Iceland and Switzerland) outside the EU as with those inside it;
29. Scholars working at least part-time right inside the Palace of Westminster publicly interpreting contemporary events in the light of Classics and the Bible, including their respective traditions of reception and interpretation (not least by reference of each other);
30. Programmes of internships, conferences, publications, and so forth, on social questions which those employed at public expense to research these things refuse to research as a matter of principle. Examples might include: beyond multiculturalism to integration; the economic, social, cultural and political consequences of substance liberalisation, of gambling liberalisation, and of prostitution and pornography; the economic, social, cultural and political importance of fatherhood, and of marriage as traditionally understood; domestic and non-domestic violence by women; domestic violence against men; female sexual abuse of children; female sexual abuse and exploitation of men; and the effects on the poor of each of penal policy, education policy, health policy, policing policy and housing policy;
31. A legal presumption of equal parenting, and the restoration of the tax allowance for fathers for so long as Child Benefit is still being paid to mothers;
32. Raising of the age of consent to 18, and total opposition to the further deregulation of drinking or gambling, with strong support for calls to criminalise the buying of sex at least above the age of consent (raised to 18) provided that this is accompanied by the equal criminalisation (including in sentencing terms) of the selling of sex above that age;
33. Reclassification of cannabis as a Class A drug, with a clampdown on possession as well as on supply;
34. Repeal of the Civil Contingencies Act, no identity cards, no control orders, repeal of existing erosions of trial by jury and of the right to silence, repeal of existing reversals of the burden of proof, repeal of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, and a return to preventative policing based on foot patrols;
35. Police forces at least be no larger than at present, and subject to local democratic accountability, most obviously though Police Authorities, although my mind is by no means closed to the idea of elected sheriffs;
36. Every offence to carry a minimum sentence of one third of its maximum sentence, or fifteen years in prison where the maximum sentence is life imprisonment;
37. Gypsies and Travellers to be made to obey the same planning laws as the rest of us;
38. Practical recognition that just as one cannot logically oppose the decadent social libertinism deriving from the 1960s without also opposing the decadent economic libertinism deriving from the 1980s (or vice versa), and just as one cannot logically oppose the European Union's erosion of our self-government without also opposing that by global capital and by American hegemony (or vice versa), so likewise one cannot logically oppose the unrestricted movement of people (i.e., migrants) without also opposing that of goods, services and capital (or vice versa);
39. The development of nuclear power as at least the core around which other things (wind, wave, solar, &c) may operate, since it offers both the re-creation of strong working-class communities based on high-wage and high-skilled employment (as previously provided by pits, steelworks, shipyards, and so on), and independence from the affairs of the Middle East, as well as from Russian gas;
40. Election of the BBC Governors for a fixed term of five years from among those licence-payers in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and each of the nine English regions who are politically independent (sufficient to be eligible in principle for membership of the remuneration panels of local councils), with each licence-payer (including members of political parties) voting for one candidate, the top two per area being elected at the end, and the Chairman being appointed by the Secretary of State with the approval of the relevant Select Committee, as well as the election in the same manner, though by the whole electorate, of Ofcom, of the Press Complaints Commission, and of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, just for a start;
41. An undertaking to go to prison rather than carry an identity card, and likewise to go to prison rather than pay taxes for the sake of state funding of political parties, which would necessitate state involvement, no doubt through some ghastly commission of the metropolitan liberal elite, both in policy formulation and in candidate selection, this being why those who advocate such funding do so, since they expect that they or their mates will be appointed to such a commission, and will thus be able to dictate, even more than at present, both what may be discussed, and by whom; and
42. The introduction, by agreement among the parties, of a system whereby each constituency party submitted a shortlist of two potential parliamentary candidates to a binding ballot of all registered electors in that constituency, and each party at national level submitted a shortlist of two potential Leaders (i.e., putative Prime Ministers) to a binding ballot of all registered electors throughout the United Kingdom, not least because this would help to protect the First Past The Post electoral system at both national and (therefore) local level.
1. The restoration of the supremacy of British over EU law, the use of this to restore Britain's historic fishing rights, the adoption of the showstopping Empty Chair Policy until the Council of Ministers meets in public and publishes an Official Report akin to Hansard, and the election of Britain's European Commissioner by the whole electorate from a shortlist of two submitted by a secret ballot of MPs;
2. The government of Northern Ireland precisely as if it were any other part of the United Kingdom (not least including the restoration of proper local government there, and organisation there by the British political parties), and the adoption of the Irish Republic's attitude of contempt towards terrorist political parties (views that I hold not least because I am a practising Catholic);
3. The monarchy as embodying our fundamental values, and the duty to hold the Royal Family to account as that embodiment which enables then to enjoy enormous privileges, always having in mind that the succession to the throne is determined by Parliament in our 'res publica' (the reason why there must be no change to the Oath of Allegiance, which, when understood historically and grammatically, expresses this fact);
4. British Standard English to be the only official language of every public body in the United Kingdom, except where another language indigenous to these islands has a high concentration of native speakers, in which case that language should have parity (though no more than that) with British Standard English;
5. Saint George's Day, Saint Andrew's Day, Saint David's Day and Saint Patrick's Day all to be public holidays throughout the United Kingdom, with the flag of the relevant part of the United Kingdom should be displayed alongside the Union Flag in or on all public buildings at all times, to be joined by the appropriate flag, on the other side of the Union Flag, on each of the aforesaid Saints' Days;
6. Total opposition to any lowering of the voting age to 16, as this would threaten our democracy since no one seriously suggests that the political opinion of a 16-year-old is equal to that of, say, his Head Teacher, so, sooner or later, someone would suggest, unanswerably, that people like the latter ought to have more votes than the former;
7. A much higher threshold for income tax and corporation tax, with a flat rate thereafter, so that the working poor are taken out of tax, while genuine middle-earners and small or medium-sized businesses pay far less than at present, because the richest individuals and the biggest corporations pay their fair share for the first time ever;
8. Serious consideration of the restoration of grammar schools on the German Gymnasium model, thus avoiding the 11-plus while working to overcome this country's crippling cultural division between arts and sciences, and between academic and technical education;
9. Continuation of my ongoing work in trying to set up on a co-operative basis an Examination Board drawn from independent schools while making its services available to all schools, in trying to persuade public schools and Oxbridge colleges (run as these are by professional educationalists) to sponsor City Academies (if we must have them at all), and in trying to create a new educational charity which would elect to Associateship those pupils in all schools who, on leaving the Sixth Form at 18, had attained since beginning Year 10 examination results at or above the average in the remaining state grammar schools, both in terms of the marks themselves, and in terms of the range of subjects studied (as well as electing to Fellowship those teachers whose pupils attained such results over 10 consecutive years), including with a view to contacting the most prestigious universities in order to make the Associateship (which would be automatic) an admission requirement, and in the hope that this charity will be called after a Labour politician who fought to defend the grammar schools as the ladder of working-class advancement;
10. The defence and restoration of schooling at the highest academic level for those to whom it is appropriate as intimately related to an emphatic dedication to the defence and restoration of Special Needs Education;
11. Total opposition to the idea of abolishing, or greatly reducing the responsibilities of, Local Education Authorities, since the real reasons for wanting this are a desire to abolish counties (as would follow very rapidly on the abolition of LEAs) and a determination to ensure that bipartite or tripartite secondary schooling can never be restored (as this would be logistically impossible without very powerful and well-resourced LEAs), which former would entail the abolition of Lords Lieutenants, this anti-monarchist cause being a key part of the anti-LEA, inescapably anti-county agenda, and there being no comparable country in which anyone would ever even suggest abolishing whole tiers of local government, never mind in which such a thing might actually happen;
12. Continual exposure of the metropolitan liberal elite's pathological hatred of local government as in fact an undisguised hatred of people other than themselves, and as expressing itself in the ridiculous view that councils ought to be "commissioners rather than providers" of services, as if efficiency or accountability had somehow been increased by a village primary school's no longer even employing its own caretaker, or by giving private companies unconditional licenses to print public money in return for risk-free "investments" in, say, emptying the bins, or preparing school food, so that the sooner that this whole process of the last 25 years is halted and reversed, the better;
13. Local authorities to be able to set precepts on top of the flat-rate income tax and corporation tax outlined above, so that Council Tax and National Non-Domestic Rates could both be abolished;
14. The abolition, as soon as practicable, of Capital Gains Tax and Inheritance Tax;
15. The imperial and metric systems (both of which, it must be said, are of foreign origin but have long histories of use in this country) to be taught and used side by side (my generation is in the ridiculous position of having been taught no system except the one used only for certain specialist purposes), except where metrication has not already taken place, as in the case of road signs;
16. University funding per student, regardless of parental income, on a sliding scale of the A-level or equivalent grades required by the course (up to three As) and those obtained by the student (up to three As), with full fees paid for, and generous maintenance grants awarded to, those at the higher end;
17. Defence of rural services, leading in particular to the systematic reversal of bus route and (where possible) rail line closures, as well as of the erosion of local schools, medical facilities, Post Offices, and so on;
18. The development of a national network of public transport free at the point of use, including the reversal of bus route and (where possible) rail line closures going back to the 1950s;
19. Defence of real agriculture as the mainstay of strong communities, environmental responsibility and animal welfare (leading to safe, healthy and inexpensive food), as against American-style 'factory farming';
20. The supermarkets to be made to fund investment in agriculture and small business (investment to be determined in close consultation with the National Farmers' Union and the Federation of Small Businesses) by means of a windfall tax, to be followed if necessary by a permanently higher flat rate of corporation tax, in either case with strict regulation to ensure that the costs of this are not passed on to suppliers, workers, consumers, communities or the environment;
21. Repeal of the ban on hunting with dogs, and defence of the remaining field sports;
22. Everywhere to be covered by a Parish or Town Council, or an urban or suburban equivalent, with greatly increased powers and resources;
23. The removal of foreign forces from British soil and waters, the restoration of British overall control over our defence capability, no more participation in "neoconservative" (i.e., anti-conservative) wars, and the retention of the historic regiments as the framework for the Army's future efficiency;
24. Britain's permanent seat on the UN Security Council to be used in consultation with the other 15 Commonwealth Realms (i.e., Commonwealth countries retaining the monarchy), vetoing any resolution not approved by the majority of them, and seeking a similar arrangement with regard to the British and Canadian seats at the G8, all the while with a view to binding the Commonwealth Realms to each other through the monarchy, and on the basis of the shared values and history embodied by that institution, with their citizens having at least the same rights of access to this country as are enjoyed by EU citizens, and with every step made to ensure at least the same level of cultural contact (twinning, exchanges, and so on) with the other Commonwealth Realms as with the other EU member-states (which must never include Turkey);
25. Britain's permanent seat on the UN Security Council to be used at least ordinarily to veto any proposal not approved by the majority of those countries (other than those with permanent seats of their own) which, like seventy-two per cent Christian Britain, have Christian majority populations, which, among other good things, would gain Britain enormous influence in the increasing important regions of Africa and Latin America (it would be constitutionally impossible for the United States to adopt a similar policy);
26. Britain's permanent seat on the UN Security Council to be used at least ordinarily to veto any proposal not approved by the majority of the world's elective democracies (other than those with permanent seats of their own), making her the true leader of the democratic world, in contrast to any country that might otherwise arrogate to itself such a title;
27. The closest possible ties (not least by this medium, and especially in schools) with those British Overseas Territories with permanent populations (I myself am half Saint Helenian, and I was in fact born in Saint Helena), and the National Days of all the Commonwealth Realms and Overseas Territories to be marked in our public institutions, including by the display of their flags alongside the permanent display of the Union Flag;
28. This country to have at least equal cultural ties with those Western European countries (primarily Norway, Iceland and Switzerland) outside the EU as with those inside it;
29. Scholars working at least part-time right inside the Palace of Westminster publicly interpreting contemporary events in the light of Classics and the Bible, including their respective traditions of reception and interpretation (not least by reference of each other);
30. Programmes of internships, conferences, publications, and so forth, on social questions which those employed at public expense to research these things refuse to research as a matter of principle. Examples might include: beyond multiculturalism to integration; the economic, social, cultural and political consequences of substance liberalisation, of gambling liberalisation, and of prostitution and pornography; the economic, social, cultural and political importance of fatherhood, and of marriage as traditionally understood; domestic and non-domestic violence by women; domestic violence against men; female sexual abuse of children; female sexual abuse and exploitation of men; and the effects on the poor of each of penal policy, education policy, health policy, policing policy and housing policy;
31. A legal presumption of equal parenting, and the restoration of the tax allowance for fathers for so long as Child Benefit is still being paid to mothers;
32. Raising of the age of consent to 18, and total opposition to the further deregulation of drinking or gambling, with strong support for calls to criminalise the buying of sex at least above the age of consent (raised to 18) provided that this is accompanied by the equal criminalisation (including in sentencing terms) of the selling of sex above that age;
33. Reclassification of cannabis as a Class A drug, with a clampdown on possession as well as on supply;
34. Repeal of the Civil Contingencies Act, no identity cards, no control orders, repeal of existing erosions of trial by jury and of the right to silence, repeal of existing reversals of the burden of proof, repeal of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, and a return to preventative policing based on foot patrols;
35. Police forces at least be no larger than at present, and subject to local democratic accountability, most obviously though Police Authorities, although my mind is by no means closed to the idea of elected sheriffs;
36. Every offence to carry a minimum sentence of one third of its maximum sentence, or fifteen years in prison where the maximum sentence is life imprisonment;
37. Gypsies and Travellers to be made to obey the same planning laws as the rest of us;
38. Practical recognition that just as one cannot logically oppose the decadent social libertinism deriving from the 1960s without also opposing the decadent economic libertinism deriving from the 1980s (or vice versa), and just as one cannot logically oppose the European Union's erosion of our self-government without also opposing that by global capital and by American hegemony (or vice versa), so likewise one cannot logically oppose the unrestricted movement of people (i.e., migrants) without also opposing that of goods, services and capital (or vice versa);
39. The development of nuclear power as at least the core around which other things (wind, wave, solar, &c) may operate, since it offers both the re-creation of strong working-class communities based on high-wage and high-skilled employment (as previously provided by pits, steelworks, shipyards, and so on), and independence from the affairs of the Middle East, as well as from Russian gas;
40. Election of the BBC Governors for a fixed term of five years from among those licence-payers in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and each of the nine English regions who are politically independent (sufficient to be eligible in principle for membership of the remuneration panels of local councils), with each licence-payer (including members of political parties) voting for one candidate, the top two per area being elected at the end, and the Chairman being appointed by the Secretary of State with the approval of the relevant Select Committee, as well as the election in the same manner, though by the whole electorate, of Ofcom, of the Press Complaints Commission, and of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, just for a start;
41. An undertaking to go to prison rather than carry an identity card, and likewise to go to prison rather than pay taxes for the sake of state funding of political parties, which would necessitate state involvement, no doubt through some ghastly commission of the metropolitan liberal elite, both in policy formulation and in candidate selection, this being why those who advocate such funding do so, since they expect that they or their mates will be appointed to such a commission, and will thus be able to dictate, even more than at present, both what may be discussed, and by whom; and
42. The introduction, by agreement among the parties, of a system whereby each constituency party submitted a shortlist of two potential parliamentary candidates to a binding ballot of all registered electors in that constituency, and each party at national level submitted a shortlist of two potential Leaders (i.e., putative Prime Ministers) to a binding ballot of all registered electors throughout the United Kingdom, not least because this would help to protect the First Past The Post electoral system at both national and (therefore) local level.
Selection of Parliamentary Candidates
The Conservatives of Bromley and Chislehurst deserve universal congratulation for selecting a parliamentary candidate other than from David Cameron's racist and sexually discriminatory "A-list". In fact, in the course of each Parliament and across all parties, each constituency organisation's shortlist of two potential parliamentary candidates should be submitted to a binding ballot of every registered voter in the constituency, while each party's shortlist of two potential Leaders (i.e., putative Prime Ministers) should be submitted to a binding ballot of every regsitered voter in the United Kingdom. Then the Notting Hill and Primrose Hill sets simply would not be MPs at all, having been replaced with serious politicians; the nonentities currently being lined up for safe seats by all three parties could forget it.
Furthermore, no constituency organisation of any party should consider selecting any candidate, including reselecting any sitting MP, who did not undertake to accept only the national mean wage for full-time work (which would still put him or her in the top third in the country), and to donate the rest of the MP's, and any ministerial salary, to political and community causes. Plenty of people manage to live in London on a lot less than the national mean wage, and they certainly do not have MPs' perks.
Furthermore, no constituency organisation of any party should consider selecting any candidate, including reselecting any sitting MP, who did not undertake to accept only the national mean wage for full-time work (which would still put him or her in the top third in the country), and to donate the rest of the MP's, and any ministerial salary, to political and community causes. Plenty of people manage to live in London on a lot less than the national mean wage, and they certainly do not have MPs' perks.
"Christian" America and "Secular" Europe?
I have yet to read George Weigel's The Cube and The Cathedral, but the review of it in the latest edition of FAITH does not bode well, since it suggests a heavy and uncritical dependence on the theory that America is more "Christian" than "secular" Europe.
While church attendance figures are much higher in the US than in Western Europe, what does that prove? In itself, nothing at all. What is being inculcated, celebrated and even worshipped is very often a collection of economic, social, cultural and political prejudices that the participants have simply declared to be Christianity (or any specific form of Christianity, including Catholicism), despite their fanatically and even hysterically anti-Christian (and especially anti-Catholic) origins and content, which former is very often denied outright.
Those participants have made themselves the "Useful Idiots" of the old Shachtmanites who have come to run the Republican Party, and who remain Marxist in their dialectical materialism, Leninist in their vanguard elitism, Trotskyist in their entryism and in their belief in the permanent revolution, and yet also Stalinist in their belief that the dictatorship of the victorious class must be created in a superstate in order to be exported (including by force of arms) throughout the world while vanguard elites everywhere owe their allegiance to that superstate rather than to their own countries. The only difference is that the victorious class is the bourgeoisie rather than the proletariat; but that is really just a detail.
It is also notable that this unpleasant and expansionist idea of America is powerfully attractive to embittered cranks from elsewhere, especially (though not exclusively) in the rest of the English-speaking world, just as an unpleasant and expansionist idea of Germany was (and sometimes still is) powerfully attractive to embittered cranks from elsewhere, especially (though not exclusively) in the rest of German-speaking Europe.
Churches complicit in all of this might pack them in, but they are ultimately not very different from, for example, the "Catholic" Patriotic Association in China. Lest this seem an overstatement, look at the level of American churchgoing support for the Iraq War. And why? To what end? The reversal of Roe v Wade? Believe in that when you see it, and not before.
In Western Europe, by contrast, no country has on paper, and few have in practice, the American system of abortion on demand at every stage of pregnancy (for that, one has to look to America's new best friends in Eastern Europe). There are 10 sacral monarchies (11 if one includes the Vatican), monarchy being an institution for which no purely secular argument can ever be constructed. National events are routinely conducted in the form and course of church services. Church schools, maintained at public expense, are normal in many European countries, while at least broadly Christian Religious Education and (although this law is widely flouted) a daily collective act of Chrsitian worship are compulsary in all British schools.
In Germany, the churches are actually the largest employers after the several tiers of government, with hardly anyone opting out of the church tax system, with the churches routinely providing numerous services of the kind that provoke uproar when suggested in the US under the rubric of "compassionate conservatism", and with three tiers of government funding an annual Kirchentag (Catholic and Protestant in alternate years) from which no major political figure from Left to Right would dare be absent. Anglican bishops sit as of right in the British Parliament (where they recently played a key role in blocking physician-assisted suicide); and while the House of Lords might one day be abolished entirely, no one seriously suggests that it might ever remain with only the bishops removed. And since when was contraception any less available, or any less widely used, in the US than in Europe?
So one could go on.
None of which is to suggest that there is not a great deal of re-evangelisation to be done in Western Europe. However, the last possible way of going about this would be to emulate a country in which the absolute exclusion of religion from public life is written into the founding documents as a first principle (however long it might have taken the courts to come round to enforcing this properly), with those documents then elevated to the status of Holy Writ, and their rationalist and Deist authors to that of Prophets and Apostles, in the national folk-religion. So complete, uncritical and even unthinking is the American identification of that folk-religion with Christianity that the US, alas, pretty much needs to be evangelised from scratch.
While church attendance figures are much higher in the US than in Western Europe, what does that prove? In itself, nothing at all. What is being inculcated, celebrated and even worshipped is very often a collection of economic, social, cultural and political prejudices that the participants have simply declared to be Christianity (or any specific form of Christianity, including Catholicism), despite their fanatically and even hysterically anti-Christian (and especially anti-Catholic) origins and content, which former is very often denied outright.
Those participants have made themselves the "Useful Idiots" of the old Shachtmanites who have come to run the Republican Party, and who remain Marxist in their dialectical materialism, Leninist in their vanguard elitism, Trotskyist in their entryism and in their belief in the permanent revolution, and yet also Stalinist in their belief that the dictatorship of the victorious class must be created in a superstate in order to be exported (including by force of arms) throughout the world while vanguard elites everywhere owe their allegiance to that superstate rather than to their own countries. The only difference is that the victorious class is the bourgeoisie rather than the proletariat; but that is really just a detail.
It is also notable that this unpleasant and expansionist idea of America is powerfully attractive to embittered cranks from elsewhere, especially (though not exclusively) in the rest of the English-speaking world, just as an unpleasant and expansionist idea of Germany was (and sometimes still is) powerfully attractive to embittered cranks from elsewhere, especially (though not exclusively) in the rest of German-speaking Europe.
Churches complicit in all of this might pack them in, but they are ultimately not very different from, for example, the "Catholic" Patriotic Association in China. Lest this seem an overstatement, look at the level of American churchgoing support for the Iraq War. And why? To what end? The reversal of Roe v Wade? Believe in that when you see it, and not before.
In Western Europe, by contrast, no country has on paper, and few have in practice, the American system of abortion on demand at every stage of pregnancy (for that, one has to look to America's new best friends in Eastern Europe). There are 10 sacral monarchies (11 if one includes the Vatican), monarchy being an institution for which no purely secular argument can ever be constructed. National events are routinely conducted in the form and course of church services. Church schools, maintained at public expense, are normal in many European countries, while at least broadly Christian Religious Education and (although this law is widely flouted) a daily collective act of Chrsitian worship are compulsary in all British schools.
In Germany, the churches are actually the largest employers after the several tiers of government, with hardly anyone opting out of the church tax system, with the churches routinely providing numerous services of the kind that provoke uproar when suggested in the US under the rubric of "compassionate conservatism", and with three tiers of government funding an annual Kirchentag (Catholic and Protestant in alternate years) from which no major political figure from Left to Right would dare be absent. Anglican bishops sit as of right in the British Parliament (where they recently played a key role in blocking physician-assisted suicide); and while the House of Lords might one day be abolished entirely, no one seriously suggests that it might ever remain with only the bishops removed. And since when was contraception any less available, or any less widely used, in the US than in Europe?
So one could go on.
None of which is to suggest that there is not a great deal of re-evangelisation to be done in Western Europe. However, the last possible way of going about this would be to emulate a country in which the absolute exclusion of religion from public life is written into the founding documents as a first principle (however long it might have taken the courts to come round to enforcing this properly), with those documents then elevated to the status of Holy Writ, and their rationalist and Deist authors to that of Prophets and Apostles, in the national folk-religion. So complete, uncritical and even unthinking is the American identification of that folk-religion with Christianity that the US, alas, pretty much needs to be evangelised from scratch.
Divorce
The latest rulings on divorce pose a terrifying threat both to the institution of marriage and to the status of women, and therefore doubly cry out for legislative redress.
First, there is no reason why an intelligent and well-educated woman (or anyone else, for that matter), having spent years bringing up children, should thereafter be considered incapable of any employment whatever, and thus require to be maintained by her ex-husband. There should be a statutory maximum of, say, three years for retraining, after which she should be expected to find a job like everyone else. Whether it is the sort of job for which she was qualified before having children is neither here nor there.
Secondly, any spouse petitioning for divorce without alleging fault (which would then have to be proved in court) should thus forgo any entitlement to any part of the other spouse's estate, and in no circumstance should any asset (including the marital home) already held by either spouse before the marriage be subject to any claim by the other spouse.
And thirdly, no former spouse without dependent children should be entitled to maintenance for longer than the marriage itself lasted, nor should any former spouse with dependent children be so entitled in his or her own right rather than in right of those children.
While working as homemakers, did the women in these latest cases not eat? Did they go about naked? Did they sleep in the street? Surely, they have already had their share? Every man, every woman of good will, everyone who believes in the institution of marriage, everyone who believes that women are intellectually equal to men: withold your vote from any parliamentary candidate who does not undertake to support the above reforms.
First, there is no reason why an intelligent and well-educated woman (or anyone else, for that matter), having spent years bringing up children, should thereafter be considered incapable of any employment whatever, and thus require to be maintained by her ex-husband. There should be a statutory maximum of, say, three years for retraining, after which she should be expected to find a job like everyone else. Whether it is the sort of job for which she was qualified before having children is neither here nor there.
Secondly, any spouse petitioning for divorce without alleging fault (which would then have to be proved in court) should thus forgo any entitlement to any part of the other spouse's estate, and in no circumstance should any asset (including the marital home) already held by either spouse before the marriage be subject to any claim by the other spouse.
And thirdly, no former spouse without dependent children should be entitled to maintenance for longer than the marriage itself lasted, nor should any former spouse with dependent children be so entitled in his or her own right rather than in right of those children.
While working as homemakers, did the women in these latest cases not eat? Did they go about naked? Did they sleep in the street? Surely, they have already had their share? Every man, every woman of good will, everyone who believes in the institution of marriage, everyone who believes that women are intellectually equal to men: withold your vote from any parliamentary candidate who does not undertake to support the above reforms.
Montenegrin "independence"
So Montenegro has become "independent", has it? In what way? Not only is a "Serbia and Montenegro" team still competing in the World Cup (too late to change that, I suppose), but this newly "independent" state aspires to membership of the EU, NATO, the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. Some "independence"! Apart from the next World Cup, what else is there to express this new-found status? The Eurovision Song Contest? Seriously, these really do seem to be the limit of this "independence".
Anyone doubting the inseparability of European federalism, American hegemony and international capital need look no further than the above list of bodies, rightly regarded as an indivisible whole. Only Serbia (about to be dismembered by Western-backed "independence" of this kind for blackshirted, Islamist Kosovo) remains of the multiethnic, truly independent Yugoslavia that was never part of the Soviet Bloc, and so, on becoming democratic, saw no reason to join the EU-NATO-WTO-IMF-WB Bloc either, which latter was favoured by Croatian separatist Fascists, and by Islamist separatists nostalgic for the Nazi period in Bosnia and Kosovo, all of whom found that that Bloc was just as favourable towards them as they were towards it.
And why does Montenegro have a Romance name when it is a Slavic country? I only ask.
Anyone doubting the inseparability of European federalism, American hegemony and international capital need look no further than the above list of bodies, rightly regarded as an indivisible whole. Only Serbia (about to be dismembered by Western-backed "independence" of this kind for blackshirted, Islamist Kosovo) remains of the multiethnic, truly independent Yugoslavia that was never part of the Soviet Bloc, and so, on becoming democratic, saw no reason to join the EU-NATO-WTO-IMF-WB Bloc either, which latter was favoured by Croatian separatist Fascists, and by Islamist separatists nostalgic for the Nazi period in Bosnia and Kosovo, all of whom found that that Bloc was just as favourable towards them as they were towards it.
And why does Montenegro have a Romance name when it is a Slavic country? I only ask.
No getting rid of the neocons
So the neocons are on the way out, are they? Dream on! In the US, perhaps; but they are now on a roll in Canada, where they recently took over: they are even planting explosives in order to frame Canadian Muslims as "al-Qaeda" operatives, in order to give the impression that countries outside the Coalition of the Wicked at the time of its invasion of Iraq are targets of this non-existent organisation. (People mock Condoleeza Rice for never having heard of "al-Qaeda" in September 2001, but why should she have done? She is a serious scholar of international relations, whereas it does not exist.)
Meanwhile, the President of the European Commission is a former Maoist who went on to become a rabidly "free"-marketeering and pro-Bush Prime Minister of Portugal before being eased into his current role. They don't come more neocon than this. Watch that space.
Meanwhile, the President of the European Commission is a former Maoist who went on to become a rabidly "free"-marketeering and pro-Bush Prime Minister of Portugal before being eased into his current role. They don't come more neocon than this. Watch that space.
"The Hebraic and Hellenic traditions"
"We cannot comprehend our Western cultural legacy, unless we acknowledge the interaction of the Hebraic and Hellenic traditions," says the Centre of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham: www.nottingham.ac.uk/cotp/
Quite so, but we may and must go further: that "the Hebraic and Hellenic traditions" *themselves* cannot be comprehended without reference to the interaction between them; and that "reasoning is not fully separable from faith and hope, nor conceptual reflection from revelatory disclosure" precisely because the ostensibly competing rational and empirical methods at the root of Modern Western thought themselves derive from (indeed, belong within) the Augustinian illuminist tradition, with all that that entails, which is how and why "The reverse also holds, in either case".
In that vein:
1. The deconstruction of the Greeks as the "first philosophers" (a notion disclaimed by the Greeks themselves, and invented by those originators of all wholesome doctrine, the German-speakers of the "long nineteenth century") is quietly underway in the byways of academe, especially among African-Americans, whose interest in Egypt (a debt fully acknowledged by the Greeks: for example, Plato's Republic is about an idealised version of Egypt) is of necessity at least as much an interest in the Semitic as in the "black" as now understood.
Furthermore, the Egyptologist Jan Assmann has argued for seeing the theological and philosophical thought of Ancient Egypt, and by extension of other parts of pre-Hellenistic Antiquity, as dealing fairly subtly and sophisticatedly with metaphysical matters of high order, in particular by arguing that by the time of the New Kingdom, Egyptian thought had flowered into a high pantheism, expressed in the notion of "the one who makes himself into millions" (which the Greeks were later to rehash as 'hen to pan') as a description of the unity of reality as one before creation, and many as and after creation, the one god Amun understood as having transformed himself into the plurality of all existence, "a world full of gods", the one and the many.
If this sort of metaphysical subtlety is seen as the background of the Egyptian-educated Moses, then a highly metaphysical reading of the 'ehyeh asher ehyeh' ("I am that am") at the Burning Bush, disclosing a monotheism beyond all pantheisms, Egytian or modern, does not seem so absurd after all, although of course such a deity also comes with the usual (but essential) "divine council" baggage and associated "mythology" together with temple, priesthood and liturgy.
2. But were not the Hebrews set apart from the otherwise more or less single and indivisible Semitic people? Not at all. The post-Exilic Deuteronomistic Historian (Joshua, Judges, I&II Samuel, and I&II Kings) wanted them to have been; but his whole point is that they never were, hence the Exile, the last event that he records, so that his work cannot have been written prior to it. Likewise, the Prophets go on, and on, and on about intermarriage, so there really must have been a great deal of it going on, which much of the Old Testament simply presupposes as a fact of life. The Egyptian hieroglyph for Israel denotes a people, never a place; and it seems fair, not least in terms of the OT itself, to see that people as a sort of permeable social class or subculture, however it might prefer to define itself aspirationally and by reference to its distant past. Both Biblical Theology and contemporary politics must come to terms with this, which is both the Old Testament's own and all other evidence's presentation of the matter.
There were no Jews until at least after the Exile, and we must remember the extent to which Judaism has defined itself against Christianity, not least with regard to the Canon. It is a very strong case for the early date of Old Testament books, notably Daniel (which modern 'criticism' would date very late indeed), that the early rabbis, at a time very close indeed to that of their alleged composition, did not exclude such works from the Jewish Canon; and just read Daniel, and tell me that it and so much Greek thought are not fundamentally part of the same metatradition (the late dating of Daniel ruins this realisation, but I suspect that such is one of the motives behind that dating, for the sorts of reasons that I have already given). To the early rabbis (as to the Apostles and the Fathers), it must have seemed profoundly Hellenistic, at least mutatis mutandis; to say the least, they didn't seem to mind.
Judaism has seldom, if ever within anything like its mainstream, been hostile to Greek thought in intellectual terms: Rabbinism and Kabbalah are both shot through with it; and the more Orthodox a Jew is, the more faithful he is to the former, as the Hasidim are to the latter as well. We must be mindful that Hellenism was a very conducive environment to the Jews: the Jewish quarters of many Eastern Mediterranean cities were highly prosperous, cultured and civic-minded, while Jews often simply lived in the most prosperous, cultured and civic-minded part of town. A far cry from some put-upon collection of ghetto-dwellers.
Jews have not ordinarily been persecuted (although they certainly have been at particular times and in particular places), poor, or confined to ghettos. But it suits certain Jewish and Gentile interests to see them that way, and to have them revel in their plight, rather than admit that the Semitic philosophical influence on the West and the world begins, not with German-Jewish atheists in the nineteenth century, nor with Spinoza, nor even with the influence of Maimonides and of Islamic writers on Mediaeval Europe, but with the influence on the ostensible founders of Western thought of that which has its most abiding monument in and as the Old Testament, so that two streams of the same river met in the profound Hellenisation of the Levant (to which the two most abiding monuments are the Septuagint and the New Testament), and flowed out as Christianity.
3. No one disputes that the material collected in the Pentateuch is older than any Greek philosophy. And no one any longer disputes that the culture which produced that material and that collection profoundly influenced the origins and development of Greek philosophy (even if there has hitherto been an emphasis on Egypt in particular, and thus on African-ness at the expense of the Semitism that was the root of the original nineteenth-century German denials). So why not put two and two together?
It is of course perfectly correct historically to say that Christianity long predates an allegedly, but not actually, autonomous philosophical tradition which cannot escape its Christian roots, try as it might. But look at the (Very) Ancient World, and see that the Biblical Revelation's predating, anticipating, initiating and thus including Philosophy is nothing new: Descartes, the Rationalists, the Empiricists and Kant are as a New Testament to the Old Testament of the Pre-Socratics, Socrates, Plato and (Neo-)Platonism, Aristotle and Aristotelianism, and the Stoics (the Epicureans, the Sceptics and the Cynics are another matter).
What does it mean to re-read the whole of Western Philosophy in these terms, recognising not only the Moderns as perverted, but still recognisable and useful, Augustinian illuminists (hence their belief in the rational and/or empirical method(s)), but also the Ancients as, if not perverted then at least corrupted, but still recognisable and useful, figures of the intellectual tradition that produced the pre-Hellenistic parts of the Old Testament? What does this mean for the study of later Old Testament material, and of the whole New Testament? What does it mean, that such is ultimately the true character of the Neoplatonism of Augustine and of the Aristotelianism that Aquinas synthesised with Augustine's Christianised Neoplatonism, i.e., of the tradition to which the founders of Modern Philosophy continued to belong, continuing (as their successors still do) to appeal to Ancients who in fact belonged to the intellectual tradition of the Old Testament?
4. I have two initial suggestions as to what part of the above might mean in practice. The first is that the Deuteronomistic History, and the haggadic parts of the Pentateuch, are older than Herodatus, and are in fact the earliest extant histories as the term is now understood (i.e., chronology plus analysis), with all that this entails for historiography. And the second is that, just as "conservatives" are challenged by the fact that the Bible, of all things, is an integral part of the roots of Western philosophy, but only if at least initially Afrocentric and related insights are taken on board, so "liberals" are equally challenged by the fact that it is the Bible, of all things, that is a standing contradiction and critique, both of the Eurocentrism of those who see philosophy as beginning with the Greeks, and of Greek misognyny when one contrasts the Greek belief that heredity was only on the male side with the Hebrew presupposition (seen in the OT purity and incest laws) of a biological relationship with both parents.
This latter difference has, in turn, profound class implications: the Greek theory was devised by members of a homosocial urban leisure class, whereas the OT writers were working farmers, not to mention husbands and fathers: it is the Bible that is on the side of the working class, reflecting its practical wisdom; and it is the Bible that is on the same side as feminism, precisely because these parts of it were written by patriarchs. (One might add that several OT books, such as Ruth and Esther, although their precise authorship is unknown, were clearly written by women, just as, say, 'Pride and Prejudice' was clearly written by a woman, even if one had never heard of Jane Austen. So women were clearly literate in Hebrew culture, just as much of the OT presupposes mass popular literacy generally.)
5. Thomism presents itself (at least to the common reader, best exemplified in English by Chesterton despite his unfortunate acceptance of the theory that it was a rupture with Augustinianism) as sanity and common sense; and its roots are three-fold, namely Aristotelianism, the Bible (and everything lying behind it), and the existing Augustinian synthesis of Platonism and Scripture. What have rightly come to be seen as Scholastic, and above all Thomist, concepts are really philosophical-theological formulations of what would have struck Biblical and other Ancient Semitic writers as common sense, just as they still strike most people as such when properly explained.
For God's Book of Scripture begins by recording the beginning of God's Book of Nature, presenting the Author of both as creating, naming and commanding: He is concerned with being, knowing and doing; with ontology, epistemology and ethics. Throughout the OT, God raises up priests, prophets and kings accordingly, corresponding to that with which each of these branches of Philosophy is concerned, until the Perfect Form of all three appears in and as the Person of Jesus Christ, Who proclaims Himself to be the (Ethical) Way, the (Epistemological) Truth and the (Ontological) Life, and Who commissions His Ecclesial Body to teach (epistemologically), to govern (ethically) and to sanctify (ontologically).
The Septuagint (LXX) translators had no problem identifying that creating, naming and commanding Author of both Books with and as the Logos of their wider Hellenistic culture, while the NT writers had no problem presenting the Perfect Priest, Prophet and King as the Incarnation of that same Logos, recognised in their own (both the LXX translators' own and the NT writers' own) Hellenism by the Semites who compiled the LXX. Is it possible that they recognised in the Hebrew concept the root of the Hellenistic concept? Or rather, is it possible that they did not do so?
One might add that "He saw that it was good", and that "Behold, it was very good." Beauty discloses being, truth and goodness: the really identical categories of being (i.e., of being created by God), of being true and of being good are in turn really identical with being beautiful. What could be more Platonic or more Thomist, not to mention more sane or more commonsensical? And what could be more Biblical, when one looks at the very first chapter of the Bible?
6. What does all of this mean that the other Indo-European centre of Ancient Philosophy, recognisable as such in far more than only linguistic terms, in India? A recognition of the Greek and Indian traditions' common Semitic roots would be very revelatory in all sorts of ways, and not least would assist in realising the aspiration in 'Fides et Ratio' that non-Western thought become the handmaid of Theology without in any way compromising the Church's initial and providential Graeco-Roman inculturation.
Modern Western philosophers, examining the thought of India, have concentrated on those thinkers who view the impersonal Brahman as the ultimate reality and who conceive of Nirvana accordingly, both because such thinkers have come from "elite" backgrounds comparable to their own, and because those equally "elite" figures who have nevertheless given philosophical articulation to the vastly more popular theistic traditions (with all that theism entails for the definition of one's ultimate destiny) have, in so doing, reminded them far too much of Christianity in general, and of Catholicism in particular. Venerating the (unpopular) Deists of Early Modernity, such Westerners have deliberately chosen the (unpopular) "Deists of the East", thus misunderstanding India no less than they misunderstand the West.
For example, I am not sure that people believe much in Nirvana at a popular level (although they might still use the word), at least if they are confronted with an alternative. In the very syncretistic world of Northern India, for example, followers of the Sant tradition, whence came Sikhism, basically seem to replace Brahman with Allah as understood by the popular Sufi teachers, and Nirvana with the Qu'ranic Paradise thus understood, while still seeing the latter as the place of escape from samsara and karma. But then, who could believe (as most Hindus do) in a personal Vishnu, Shiva or Mother-Goddess, seldom or never thinking about any mysterious impersonality beyond it all, and yet believe in Nivana rather than in a state of being with the deity, most obviously presented as the place where the deity lives? "Hinduism" is an invention of British colonial administration, and most "Hindus" are no more (or, I suppose, less) Vedantic philosophers seeking after Brahman and Nirvana than most Westerners, never mind "Christians", are adherents of comparble schools of thought in Western academe.
7. Meanwhile, although Islam later took on some features of Greek thought (although one must be wary of the idea that such things were ever "lost" in the West), but is of course largely a Semitic reaction against the threefold Christian recapitulation, as can also be said of "Judaism as we know it", which specifically defined its Biblical canon so as to exclude works deemed likely to lead people into Christianity. And the Christianity with which both Muhammed and the early rabbis were familiar was one in which the Semitic influence was uppermost: Syriac, Aramaic, Coptic.
This has never gone away: such communities still exist in the Middle East, and also in India (where such communities' Christianity is Semitic in the way that Russian Christianity is Greek, or German Christianity is Latin), as well as in diaspora. Variously, they use the Latin, Byzantine, East Syrian and West Syrian Liturgies. And variously, across all these liturgical categories but the first, they are in or out of the Roman Communion, which therefore has a particular obligation to give practical effect to the reality of itself as containing all these Semitic and Semitic-derived expressions of Christianity, as well as the Greek and Latin traditions.
Arab Christians are an integral part of the Arab people (they actually founded the pan-Arab movement, and remain among its stalwarts), and even call the Triune God "Allah". (Similarly, Indian Christians of Syrian and Mesopotamian missionary origin, not to say very probable Apostolic foundation, have been an integral part of Indian society for a very long time.) Given the strong similarity among the spoken forms of the Semitic languages, it seems fair to suppose (although I might be wrong about this) that the Arabic spoken in the cafes or the bazaars of Damascus, Jerusalem or Cairo is really a form of Syriac, Aramaic or Coptic.
All in all, there seems nothing to fear from a "rediscovery" of the Ancient Semites as philosophers who influenced the Greeks (and thus influenced Christianity definitively not once, but twice), but rather very much to gain.
Incidentally, those who have attained the canonical degree of STD have been, as I understand it, examined in three modern and three ancient languages. Presumably, while the former must vary enormously, the latter are almost (if almost) always Latin, Greek and Hebrew (itself potentially a key to learning Syriac, Aramaic, Coptic or Arabic at some speed)? Given this fact, and given the existence of large Arabic-speaking (as well as liturgically and historically Syriac, Coptic and Aramaic) Catholic communities, one would have expected a far greater appreciation of the Semitic corner of the triangle than Catholic thought has tended to manifest. The contemporary urgency of correcting this defect can hardly be over-stated.
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