Monday, 25th May 2009
The sexualisation of heresy
8:33am
The Equality Bill currently going through Parliament is the latest and potentially most oppressive attempt to impose politically acceptable attitudes and drive out any that fall foul of these criteria. Since the attitudes being imposed constitute an ideological agenda to destroy Britain’s foundational ethical principles and replace them by a nihilistic values and lifestyle free-for-all, they represent a direct onslaught on the Judeo-Christian morality underpinning British society.
The most neuralgic of these issues is gay rights. This is because the tolerance of homosexuality that a liberal society should properly show has long been hijacked by an agenda which aims at destroying the very idea of normative sexuality altogether – and does so by smearing it as prejudice. The true liberal position, that it is right and just to tolerate behaviour that deviates from the norm as long as it doesn’t...
May 25, 2009 It’s the morality, stupid. Daily Mail, 25 May 2009 There has never been anything like it. The political class is disgraced. Public fury is unassuaged. Revolution is in the air. Yet our MPs are still obdurately behaving true to discredited form. Some are taking refuge in self-pity, claiming they are being driven to the edge of nervous breakdowns or even contemplating suicide. Certainly, public shaming is a savage ordeal. But since this has occurred only because MPs hid shameful behaviour which has now been exposed, such an appeal to public sympathy just adds insult to injury. Others are throwing their toys out of the pram. ‘I didn’t give up seeing my children grow up for this,’ moaned one MP bitterly. Excuse me? Give up their family life for what precisely? Surely they made these personal sacrifices for the greater good, not to rip off the public through scams of apparently limitless cynicism and ingenuity? Of course they never expected to be turned into pariahs. But it is they who have dragged their collective reputation into the gutter. It is this refusal to take responsibility for what has happened, presenting themselves instead as victims, which really sticks in the craw. What we are seeing is not contrition but the sulky behaviour of rogues who have been caught swindling, cheating and lying — yet are outraged because they didn’t think this was wrong. So they blame us for telling them that it was. The public disclosure of their shopping choices thus strikes them as persecution. They just don’t grasp that claiming for dog food and barbecue sets, let alone £1,645 duck-houses in the style of 18th-century Sweden, was simply wrong; and to the extent that these were sanctioned by the rules, the rules were also wrong. But if the vast bulk of MPs don’t get it, their leaders are no better. From all sides, we hear the all-too-familiar sound of political leaders doing the only thing they appear to know - reacting not from principle but out of opportunism. Both Gordon Brown and David Cameron are clearly trying to avoid the essential first step in clearing up this mess: to remove from office all those who employed such scams. Although Mr Cameron’s former close adviser Andrew MacKay was forced out after his constituency revolted over his breathtaking abuse of the second-home allowance, ministerial and opposition frontbench offenders have so far remained in place, with only a few backbenchers falling on their swords. It is hard not to conclude that these have been sacrificed because they are viewed as disposable — and any senior scalps being lined up seem to be in the same category. That’s why Hazel Blears’s Cabinet days are apparently numbered, since she fell foul of Gordon Brown by ridiculing his appearance on YouTube. In view of the way she reportedly abused the expenses system, the current rearguard attempt by her supporters to save her political skin seems distasteful. But if she goes, then certainly other even more senior Cabinet members who practised similar scams should also get the heave-ho. Yesterday, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, whose own expenses claims have been called into question, said that MPs were paying ‘a very, very heavy price’. But many of them — including Mr Darling himself, who has refused to be drawn on whether he will pay back any of this disputed money — so far appear to have paid no real price at all. Beyond this highly questionable damage limitation exercise, the crisis is also being cynically grasped as an opportunity to advance various other agendas. On the Tory side, suspicion is growing that David Cameron is taking advantage of the ever more ludicrous claims for moats, swimming pools and duck-houses to get rid of the old guard and replace them with modernisers in the Notting Hillbilly mould. His invitation yesterday to people with no background in Tory politics to stand as Conservative parliamentary candidates re-enforces that impression. On the Left, constitutional reform zealots see their chance finally to realise their long term goal of destroying Britain’s ancient system of governance. Hence the calls for a written constitution, proportional representation, an elected House of Lords and greater control of Parliament by the public. All this, however, would merely make matters far worse. If our MPs are to be reformed, they need to regain their lost sense of purpose. That means strengthening Parliament — but the proposed constitutional reforms would merely weaken it still further. It can’t be emphasised enough that it’s not the system that’s to blame, but the members of Parliament who have abused it. This is not a constitutional problem. It is a moral crisis. With MPs apparently incapable of recognising this fundamental fact, one would hope that the Church would do what we expect it to do and provide a moral lead. Dream on! The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, took instead the dismal MPs-are-victims line and called for a halt to the disclosures. In his view the point had already been ‘adequately made’, and the ‘continuing systematic humiliation of politicians’ would only undermine confidence in democracy. Well, parliamentary democracy certainly has been undermined — not by those who have shone a light on the corruption of the system, but by those who have corrupted it. How very depressing — if not altogether surprising — that the Archbishop of Canterbury, of all people, appears not to be able to distinguish between the two. He rightly went on to lament the loss of integrity in our wider culture, which has degraded moral thinking to a calculation of what people can get away with. But what he fails to grasp is that his own reluctance to hold people to account for the wrong they have done is part of the reason they do that wrong in the first place. For personal accountability, in the form of paying a price for one’s misdeeds, is essential to a moral sense. It is the breakdown of such accountability at all levels in our society that has caused the values free-for-all of which our MPs have shown themselves to be such spectacular exemplars. For years, however, the Church has spinelessly gone along with this wider nonjudgmental culture of self-gratification which has turned morality on its head and undermined the cultural foundations of this nation. It is no accident that the churchmen who have spoken up in support of the expenses disclosures, the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey and the Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali, have both criticised the Church for conniving at society’s moral and cultural disintegration. Dr Williams, by contrast, unfortunately exemplifies the moral confusion of the age, which increasingly lets wrongdoers off the hook while punishing instead their victims or those who blow the whistle. This society has accordingly got the Parliament it deserves. And we won’t put Parliament right until and unless we arrest the slide in our wider culture. The first step must be to restore accountability through de-selections, prosecutions and a speedy General Election. The next must be to make politicians more concerned to keep on the right side of their voters than their party big-wigs. That means reducing the powers of the whips and boosting MPs’ independence. But beyond this, duty and responsibility must be restored to the public sphere at every level. That is why the only political platform that will address the parliamentary crisis is also one of moral regeneration, upholding the historic ethical principles of this nation and its right and duty to govern itself in accordance with those principles. It’s the morality, stupid. |
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