George Handlery about the week that was. The Left’s real agenda. Who is to blame? Everybody to become President. The present danger is that it is not PC to admit it. What turns off the warning lights. Misapplied welfare and its consequences.
 
1. What the rank and file individually opposes or supports reveals the real agenda of  movements. The “democratic Left” in Europe and the “Liberals” in the USA claim to be secular, pro-woman and growth oriented. They are also for the exchange of ideas and diversity as well as full employment.  In fact, if it is anti-Western, they have much understanding for dogmatic, religion-fed extremism. They also drop their heroic stand for women if someone, such as Islamists on their home turf or in “their” districts within Europe, practice things such as forced marriage, honor killings and hate-speech.

When the media keep repeating that someone is beyond the pale, some people are bound to believe them. Recent events show that radicals will even try to kill people who have been demonized in this manner. Perhaps that is the goal behind the policy of demonization: to neutralize and remove the people’s democratically elected representatives.

Roger Scruton

 This essay by Roger Scruton was first published in the Winter 2008-09 issue of Azure. It is reprinted here with permission of Azure and Roger Scruton.

What it is about our civilization that causes such resentment, and why we must defend it.

By Roger Scruton

THE WEST today is involved in a protracted and violent struggle with the forces of radical Islam. This conflict is intensely difficult, both because of our enemy’s dedication to his cause, and also, perhaps most of all, because of the enormous cultural shift that has occurred in Europe and America since the end of the Vietnam War. Put simply, the citizens of Western states have lost their appetite for foreign wars; they have lost the hope of scoring any but temporary victories; and they have lost confidence in their way of life. Indeed, they are no longer sure what that way of life requires of them.
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Ray Bradbury (born 1923) foresaw with clairvoyance the socio-political phenomenon that goes by the name of political correctness. His 1953 dystopia, Fahrenheit 451 attests Bradbury’s prognosticative perspicacity. Most readers know the general situation that Fahrenheit 451 depicts, one with a resemblance to other items in the category of dystopian fictions such as H. G. Wells’ The Holy Terror or George Orwell’s 1984.

George Handlery about the week that was. The People’s Democracy of Starvation challenges the world. The “Butcher-in-Chief” is safe. Trivialities about the serious “ethno-business” ailment. Robin Hood apprenticeship. Minority vs. majority: who may terrorize whom? What if the government is unable or unwilling to protect its people?
 
1. The end of the world or a new beginning by exploiting old tricks. North Korea is about to launch a satellite. It is suspected to be an intercontinental missile. The country is on war footing. Pyongyang threatens: shooting down its rocket is an act of war. Messing with mighty North Korea leads to the assured total destruction of her enemy. The policy behind the story of this dictatorial spasm of temper (aid agencies: please send tranquilizers!) might make political-propagandistic sense.

More than six hundred scientists, economists, legislators, and journalists from around the world met in New York on March 8-10 for the second International Conference on Climate Change. Presentation after presentation documented the pseudoscience and dictatorial intentions behind the climate alarmism of the UN, EU, and Obama administration.

In yet another act of conciliation on the part of Western religions towards Islam, the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano has voiced its approval of Islamic finance. The Vatican paper wrote that banks should look at the rules of Islamic finance to restore confidence amongst their clients at a time of global economic crisis. “The ethical principles on which Islamic finance is based may bring banks closer to their clients and to the true spirit which should mark every financial service,” the Osservatore Romano said. “Western banks could use tools such as the Islamic bonds, known as sukuk, as collateral”. Sukuk may be used to fund the “‘car industry or the next Olympic Games in London,” the article says.

The upcoming, so called Durban II festival of grievance that is the UN’s second “Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance” is bound, as happened to the first to become a anti-Semitic and anti Western hate fest.

George Handlery about the week that was. Throw the rascals out: Now it is our turn to steal. Equality for the inherently unequal. How to perpetuate relative poverty. The problem with the “other Europe”. How to be a nimble candidate: Free yourself of the gravitational force of the facts.
 
1. It is a prejudice of our public affairs culture that, indiscriminately, “equality” is regarded as a standard of quality. Whenever a measure is judged, the extent of equality relating to it is accepted as a yardstick to determine whether the rating becomes positive or negative. In doing so, we tend to overlook some or our collectively indulged inconsistencies as well as the popular misapplication of the term.

When in the Course of human events

The title of Chapter 9 is borrowed from Robert Graves. Graves (1895 -1985) was one of those people one could find only in Europe: an Anglo-Irish-German, he was an intellectual son and grandson of intellectuals, a poet, classicist and translator from Greek and Latin, Oxford University professor, novelist  and author of 140 books, most remembered nowadays for his I, Claudius, made in 1976 into a hit BBC-Television series with Derek Jacobi in the title role.