This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column Another year begins with another Big Lie exposed. I wonder how many voters foolishly supported David Cameron’s Unconservative Party last May because of his loud claims that he would do something about immigration. Yet a report from a Left-wing think tank, the IPPR, shows that Mr Cameron must have known perfectly well that his pledge could not be kept. Immigration will not fall this year and may even rise. EU citizens can come and go as they please. Lithuanians and Latvians, and many of our Irish neighbours, will arrive in thousands in search of work, keeping wages low. We will continue to host hundreds of thousands of overseas students and large numbers of alleged refugees. ‘Family reunions’ will allow many others through supposedly closed doors, from all the parts of the world which have already supplied so many of our new citizens. Mr Cameron’s vaunted cap on economic migrants from outside the EU will indeed begin to operate, but this will affect no more than two or three per cent of the immigration total. So why this gap between claim and reality? First, Mr Cameron could be fairly sure that most voters wouldn’t notice the small print in his pledges. Secondly, we are not considered grown-up enough to discuss the greatest political issue of our time – the steady takeover of our once-independent country by the EU and the colossal implications of this. And no major political party will offer us an exit. But third, the modernised Tory Party, just like its New Labour twin, actively favours large-scale migration. Rich young careerists in pleasant parts of London – who form the core of all our establishment parties – couldn’t function without the cheap servants and cheap restaurants that immigration brings. Not for them the other side of immigration – the transformation of familiar neighbourhoods into foreign territory. Not for them the schools where many pupils cannot speak English, and the overloaded public ser¬vices. Not for them the mosque and the madrassa where the church and the pub used to be. Not that they mind that so much. These people have no special loyalty to this country, nor much love for it. They are not significantly different from the Blairite apparatchik Andrew Neather, who last year unwisely said openly what such people have long thought privately. Let me remind you that he spoke of ‘a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the UK Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural’. And that he recalled coming away from high-level discussions ‘with a clear sense that the policy was intended – even if this wasn’t its main -purpose – to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date’. Well, doesn’t Mr Cameron also like to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date? I think he does. And of course anyone who complained could be (and always will be) smeared as a ‘bigot’. In fact, the issue long ago ceased having anything to do with skin colour. We have many black and brown Britons who have, over time, become as British as I am – though alas this is less and less the case because the curse of multiculturalism has prevented proper integration, as has the huge size of the recent influx. And we have many people here with pale northern skins who do not speak our language or share our culture. Finally, after a silent but obviously considerable internal struggle, she fought her way back to her own chosen subject with the strangest link I’ve ever seen. It went like this: ‘King James may not have anticipated quite how important sport and games were to become in promoting harmony and common interests. But from the scriptures in the Bible which bears his name, we know that nothing is more satisfying than the feeling of belonging to a group who are dedicated to helping each other.’ Surely, nobody, not even Anthony Blair, could have pronounced this tripe in a public place without in some way being forced to do so. An excellent book by Glasgow University Professor Neil McKeganey, Controversies In Drugs, shines a harsh light on the fashionable ‘harm reduction’ policy that has done so much damage. Huge amounts of money, about £900 million a year, are being spent on supposed ‘treatment’ of drug abusers that often involves maintaining them in their sad and dangerous habits at our expense. Efforts to get them off their drugs have been badly neglected. Most soaps have become vehicles for politically correct propaganda, and Ms Whitburn has been commendably candid about this. She once said: ‘To be PC is really to be moral. It is having a correct moral stance. PC is, in fact, my moral plank. I don’t think that wishy-washy liberal ideology works any more.’ On another occasion she proclaimed: ‘Drama always has to move you to make you think, and distress you for a purpose.’ She recently rejected criticisms that an episode involving a raid on the village shop was unrealistic, saying: ‘I had newspaper cuttings about raids on village shops, and how awful they were. If one did big stories all the time, it would start to lose its reality, but when we do one of them the repercussions of it reverberate for a long time.’ Well, most PC enthusiasts disapprove of rural firearms and want tighter controls. Ambridge is so real to listeners that a gun rampage in its lanes would have a powerful effect. And 2010 saw two such rural gun rampages, so the cuttings justify such a thing. Don’t be surprised if this non-existent village echoes to the sound of gunfire tonight, distressing you for a purpose, and reverberating for a long time. And don’t expect the arguments for the free man’s liberty to own a firearm to get much of a hearing afterwards. If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down. If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down. If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down.
01 January 2011 6:49 PM
Didn’t you read the small print? Now it’s Dave’s turn to rub our noses in diversity
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Still Not Getting It
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31 December 2010 2:12 PM
What's happiness got to do with it?
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An Old Year Message
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29 December 2010 4:32 PM
What is the big Archers secret? Will there be a gun massacre in Ambridge?
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Slow Learners, or Not Learners at All?
Sunday, 2 January 2011
Our wealthy urban elite are actively pleased by these changes because they did not like Britain as it was, conservative, Christian, restrained and self-disciplined. They like it as it is, and as it will become. But what about the rest of us?
Who made our proud monarch spout such tripe?
Has Her Majesty been abducted? I am still puzzling over her weird Christmas broadcast, which began and ended with just praise for the matchless Authorised, or King James, Version of the Bible, which celebrates its 400th birthday this year. It was clear that she both knew about the subject and had genuine feeling for it. But in the middle of this, she suddenly began babbling about sport, as if someone like Alastair Campbell had taken over the Royal brain.
We know that the Queen’s speech at the Opening of Parliament is written by the Government. But I had always thought that the Christmas broadcast was more personal. Obviously it is not. I think we should be told who is responsible for this grave humiliation of our head of state.
A telling blow in the bogus ‘war on drugs’
While it is good news that there is a knighthood for Robin Murray, the psychiatrist who has done so much to warn against the mental health dangers of supposedly harmless cannabis, our efforts to combat the drug menace are in deep trouble.
As for the alleged ‘war against drugs’ or ‘prohibition’ of which we hear so much, Professor McKeganey can find little trace of it. Nobody should engage in this debate until they have read this telling book.
I can hear gunfire echoing around Ambridge
I’m going to risk a prediction here about tonight’s 60th anniversary special edition of the BBC radio drama The Archers. The programme’s editor, Vanessa Whitburn, has promised an event that will shake the fictional village of Ambridge to the core.
I have now begun to enjoy the predictable inability of the atheists to grasp the following simple proposition: Absolute ideas of good and bad, wrong and right, cannot exist without a religious belief. Unless they are attributed to a power beyond human control, then such ideas have no sure foundation.
They can appear to exist, but they will swiftly become conditional as people alter them to suit their circumstances. Any honest human adult with any self-knowledge at all knows that he or she can and will talk himself or herself into believing that a desired or convenient act is in fact justifiable. The more powerful that human being is, the wider the range of actions to which this applies. An illustration in miniature of this is the transformation of human behaviour which often results from placing a person behind the wheel of a motor car. The power conferred will often turn apparently mild, patient, considerate and gentle persons into snarling, selfish monsters. Imagine, in that case, the transformation possible if someone is put in charge of a state machine. Power, as Lord Acton did say *tends* to corrupt. What does it corrupt? Moral goodness.
I might add to this that atheists generally cannot distinguish between 'Golden Rule' common decency - a self-interested practice of public goodness in the hope of securing a return from ones' fellow creatures, with the belief that one must love God above all things, and love one's neighbour as oneself, a wholly different and much tougher proposition.
The two examples of moral sophistry I always come up with here are:
Number one - (for liberal leftists) abortion, which secular sophists quickly conclude is not the meaningful killing of an innocent person but the justified removal of a 'foetus' or 'blob of jelly' which is not properly human and whose removal therefore involves no moral breach.
Number two - (for patriotic conservatives) the bombing and burning to death of women and children in their homes, provided the regime of the country involved is sufficiently wicked on the Hitler-Stalin scale. These hideous killings (of unquestionably sentient but wholly innocent beings) are justified and excused by the higher purpose of saving the country from a dreadful enemy. Anyone who raises doubts about this is drowned out by false accusations that such protestors are equating the bombing of Dresden with the Holocaust. Personally I regard the Holocaust as a distinct and unique crime, considerably more wicked than the bombing of Dresden. But this does not in any way overcome the problem that the bombing of Dresden was morally wrong too.
Paradoxically, many of the liberal defenders of abortion will condemn the bombing of Dresden, but quite large numbers of them could be found to defend the more recent bombing of Belgrade (which the British left were in general happy with), and a significant number of secular leftists also defend the bombing of Baghdad and the bombardment of Fallujah.
So when 'Tony' asks petulantly: ‘Are you seriously suggesting that people who have no active belief in a higher Deity are somehow inherently lacking a sense of moral code? That unbelievers are somehow lacking in compassion for others?’...my answer is 'No'. That's not what I said, and 'Tony' has absolutely no basis, save his own rush to judgement, for concluding that this is what I said.
Nor is it what I think. Unbelievers are quite capable of having and following a moral code. Who could doubt it? I never have. But they will be borrowing that moral code from religion, and would have no basis for distinguishing between right and wrong if religion didn't provide it for them.
But it's what I knew 'Tony', and everyone like him, would immediately convince himself I had said. They almost all, almost always, do it.
Here's what I did say: 'All the categories of good and evil employed by the Godless are in fact religious categories. They cannot acknowledge this, for two reasons.
‘One, because it would make them look silly to admit it, and expose one of the large holes in atheist certainty which are at least as embarrassing to the Godless as the more arcane claims of Christianity are to the believer.
‘The other is that the accusation of free riding gives them private cause for alarm, alarm they cannot admit to without disclosing their true reasons for their own faith in a Godless, purposeless universe. After all, if they were to concede that they wish to be free from those rules, then in all honesty they would have to argue that others should be free from them too.'
As I said. they cannot acknowledge it. So they feign rage at a suggestion I haven't actually made, while steering smartly round the much more important suggestion which I have made. Note the large concession I made in my original article, of doubt and weakness in my own position, which they didn't seize on because to do so would be to acknowledge that both sides - including them - have problems. The atheist is consumed with such a burning certainty that he is sure that only the believer has problems of doubt.
Most believers, by contrast, are filled with doubt. And I've said before that both Christians and atheists fear there is a God. But Christians also hope there is one.
The connection between Christianity and liberty is likewise straightforward. It stresses the self-government of each human, based upon his willing acceptance of the known desires of God. This creates a society in which individual conscience, self-discipline and self-restraint are so nearly universal that there is no need for a strong state to enforce rules of goodness.
Thanks to Christ's clear statement of the distinction between earthly and celestial power ('My Kingdom is not of this world' and 'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's), Christianity does not seek or endorse (as for instance Sharia does) a theocratic state. Though it does urge Christian love upon rulers, it rejects Utopian movements. (Christ rebuffs Judas's socialist plan - to sell the costly ointment which the weeping woman is wasting on Christ's feet and give the money to the poor - by remarking that the poor will always be with us. One gospel also hints that Judas, like so many utopian socialist states, is actually a thief who intends to steal the money he pretends to want to distribute to the needy.)
The rule of law (wholly absent in so many parts of the world, and not even understood in many more) is perhaps the most important contribution of Christianity to liberty. Because it asserts the existence of a celestial law higher than human law, and of rules so important that even the powerful may not break them with impunity, it creates the concept of an invisible but supreme authority higher than that of princes. This lies behind the development of most truly free societies. Without this concept, Magna Carta, and all that flowed from it (and Magna Carta is the ancestor of the American and English Bills of Rights) would not exist.
We might also consider that the division between Church and State is the origin of political pluralism, and some theorists have likewise attributed this idea, and the development of the separation of powers, to the existence in the Christian mind of the concept of the Trinity.
Once again, if people would read my books, they would find much of this explained. They're readily available, in bookshops and libraries, for anyone really interested.
I've also stated, more times than I care to remember, here and elsewhere, that in my view belief is a choice. We are all free to believe that there is a God, or to believe that there is no God. In either case it's a matter of faith. Childish abuse about 'flying spaghetti monsters' and 'fairytales' misses the point that the putative existence of God would explain a number of things which otherwise remain unexplained. (Not least 'Why is there something, rather than nothing?') Many people who jeer in this fashion are startlingly ignorant of the limitations of scientific knowledge or indeed of the existence of many distinguished scientists who are also religious believers. Science cannot answer the question 'Does God exist?' for us. We must choose for ourselves.
What's important is the making of the choice, and what fascinates me is the reason behind the choice. I believe most atheists are less than candid about why they so very anxiously want there not to be a God. They could so easily conclude that the question couldn't be decided, and leave it at that. But they absolutely must go further, and are then stuck in self-condemnatory traps about faith, such as my brother's two-edged assertion that 'what can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof'. Well, so it can, and that goes for atheism as well as for belief.
And thus it leaves both sides where they were before, with nothing but faith. Well, that suits me fine. I choose to have faith in God. This seems to me to be quite easily explicable. It is easy to see why the human heart yearns for a just and purposeful universe in which the least of us matters, and each action has significance. But why would an intelligent person yearn with such furious passion for a pointless chaos?
I think the only way for this argument to advance is to concentrate upon that issue, since faith and belief are consequences of the individual's desire. What do atheists want, and why?
Works every time.
If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down.
Someone styling herself (or for all I know himself) 'Arabella', has written :' Why is Peter Hitchens so unhappy? I do agree with everything he writes and says (apart from the god stuff of course, which I am with his brother on) but I feel depressed at his anger and loathing of the world. CHEER UP!
Such postings occasionally turn up here and I usually ignore them , but this time I feel moved to explain why I think they are irritating and thought-free.
1.Why do people associate reasonable pessimism about public affairs (or anything else) with personal unhappiness? On the contrary, the pessimist is seldom disappointed, sometimes pleasantly surprised and usually well-equipped for the world as it is. He or she also opens another bottle of wine, or buys his round, earlier than the 'optimist' who thinks the glass is 'always half-full' . Of course it's always half-empty, unless something is actually being poured into it at the time. Think about it . Would you rather have your journey to an unknown destination planned by a pessimist or an optimist? I have no doubt which I would choose.
2.So far as I know I have never met this 'Arabella'. She (or he) almost certainly knows nothing about me or my private life or my state of mind. I don't tend to write or speak about these things. If I have reasons to be happy or unhappy, cheerful or miserable, these have little or nothing to do with my views on the state of my country. Like most people of my class, education and advantages I can, for the moment, live most of the time at some distance from the problems I observe. But I still observe them, and believe I have a duty to try to put them right if I can. Discontent with wrongdoing or public squalor is not, in my experience, a feeling that leads to personal misery, or has anything much in common with it. In fact. a person who is not angry at injustice and wrong has something severely wrong with him.
Loathing of injustice, corruption, cheating and dishonesty is not loathing 'of the world'. On the contrary.
Finally, I beg leave to doubt that this 'Arabella' , as he or she says, 'agrees with everything I write'. I can't see how this squares with the frankly rather silly and unperceptive view that I am personally miserable because I dislike the current political and cultural order, and that I 'loathe the world'. And since my most fundamental disagreement with my Marxist brother is on the subject of God, and all his and my differences on other subjects flow directly from this disagreement, it's hard to see how 'Arabella' can have this one disagreement with me about the deity, while agreeing with me about crime and punishment, foreign policy, marriage, personal morality, etc etc. If I am wrong, I'd be very interested if 'Arabella' could explain.
I notice that our prime ministers, increasingly convinced that they are heads of state instead of mere heads of government, have taken to issuing 'New Year Messages'. So have leaders of the opposition. Dear me. Well, vain and bossy as I undoubtedly am, I am not yet that grandiose. The planet will continue to spin on its axis, and to orbit the Sun, uninfluenced by me as it follows its ordained path - or its wholly accidental and meaningless path, if you are, say, Dr Thomas or Mr Embery.
And as I am actively hostile to the 'New Year', a celebration of nothing in particular generally encouraged by states which loathe Christmas, I'll try to make no further mention of this empty, insignificant moment, for which non-devotees now have to buy earplugs if we wish to sleep, since the 'New Year' lot seem to think they are entitled to shatter the midnight peace with colossal explosions and high-pitched whistles.
However, I will respond to various squawks of disapproval which followed my riposte to Dr Sean Thomas, who said: 'Enjoy your religious celebrations. I shall enjoy my secular version.’
I am told it was rude of me to reply as I did. Oh, come now. Dr Thomas has shown by his contributions that he enjoys a little cut and thrust, and the remark was plainly designed to provoke. Nothing I said was personally abusive.
What shocked my critics, I think, was the unusual experience of encountering a Christian who is not diffident about defending his position, and who is prepared to use against the atheists some (but not all) of the techniques they happily employ against Christians. Put simply, they don't like it up 'em. The other thing that worries them is that there is in fact no answer to this argument. All the categories of good and evil employed by the Godless are in fact religious categories. They cannot acknowledge this, for two reasons.
One, because it would make them look silly to admit it, and expose one of the large holes in atheist certainty which are at least as embarrassing to the Godless as the more arcane claims of Christianity are to the believer. The other is that the accusation of free riding gives them private cause for alarm, alarm they cannot admit to without disclosing their true reasons for their own faith in a Godless, purposeless universe. After all, if they were to concede that they wish to be free from those rules, then in all honesty they would have to argue that others should be free from them too.
But they don't want their neighbours, their fellow-passengers on the bus, their children's teachers, the tradesmen who supply their wants, the officials who run their cities, to be free from neighbourly obligation. On the contrary, they are anxious that they should remain as obliged as possible, sensibly not wishing to live among muggers, cheats, idlers, perverts and corrupt officials. And in their public dealings, they will follow the tenets of enlightened self-interest (which many of them mistake for morality) precisely in the hope of obtaining common decency in return from their fellow creatures. They have not yet begun to suspect what a shaky and unreliable bargain this can become in times of trouble when the strong rule and the weak cringe.
But if they understand what it is that they are doing (and most of them do) they must grasp, even if dimly, that if all thought and did and felt as they did - especially in the private dealings where they want no interference or commandments, thanks very much, life would be a great deal rougher.
It is precisely because they do understand this that they sheer away, often with angry impatience and sometimes with personal abuse, from the stages of the argument which lead to this acknowledgement. And when they are rightly categorised as free riders on the back of a faith they profess to despise, they are so shocked by the direct truth of this accusation (and in these dreary days by the fact that anyone is prepared to make it) that they take it as a slap in the face, and imagine that a plain statement of fact in clear English is in some way ill-mannered. Robust argument often has that character in modern Britain, because so much discourse is wrapped in jargon and evasion.
Let them examine their own statements about Christianity in the same light.
Mr Bancroft asks: ‘There are those of us who acknowledge and wish to maintain Christianity's decided role in western civilization, but have questions about some of the particulars and events described in the Old Testament. I wonder if Mr Hitchens could elaborate his thoughts on what our role is in keeping the cultural radicals at bay and maintaining the traditions and culture Christianity has given us, or are we on the wrong side of the barricades in his opinion?'
To which I reply that I have no idea what his role should be, but I am repeatedly baffled by the belief of so many apparently educated people that the Bible is a sort of Christian Koran, whose every word is of equal significance; and also by the failure of similarly educated people to notice that the Old Testament is so called largely because, among Christians, it is superseded by the New Testament.
Miss 'Un' asks (quoting me first): ' “Once everyone agrees with him that Christmas and Christianity are fairytales, then the world will be a violent and selfish chaos in which each deed is measured quite precisely by its immediate effect.” Will Mr Hitchens be backing up this bizarre claim with any rationale, or will it just be left for readers to gasp at in despair?'
Miss 'Un' may gasp as much as she likes. But is she seriously pretending not to understand the simple point here made, that the Christian religion is the foundation of our society of ordered liberty? I can see why someone might argue that this was not the case, but I cannot see how anyone could say he or she couldn't see the connection.
Mr Lewis is mistaken when he says that it angers me when others don't share my views. Dishonesty and misrepresentation in argument anger me, as the breach of known and accepted rules in any activity should do. They are a form of cheating. Straightforward honest disagreement gives me pleasure and I seek it out.
Mr Everett says that 'he (ie me) often calls anyone who disagrees with him “moronic” or an “imbecile” or “ludicrous”.’
I can certainly be rude about poor arguments, but I am unsure about the rest of this allegation, and I would ask him to back up his statement with quotations.
I am about to make a prediction about an event which will take place on Sunday evening. It's only a guess, but I think it is a good guess. See if you agree. But first, the basis of my guesswork:
I don't often listen to 'The Archers', the BBC Radio 4 serial drama set in a fictional Midlands village called Ambridge. But I have family members and friends who do, and so I am compelled to take a vague interest in its plot. I have to admit that I have also been fascinated for many years by Vanessa Whitburn, editor of the programme. Indeed, I count her as a sort of discovery, along with another of my favourite characters in modern PC Britain, the policewoman Cressida Dick. I mentioned the interesting Ms Dick many years before she became famous, in my 'Brief History of Crime' (reissued as 'The Abolition of Liberty') .But Ms Whitburn featured strongly in my 1999 book 'The Abolition of Britain'. In a chapter called 'Suburbs of the Mind', which dwelt on the propaganda effect (and intent) of so-called soap operas, I quoted Ms Whitburn as having said: ‘To be PC is really to be moral. It is having a correct moral stance. PC is, in fact, my moral plank. I don't think that wishy-washy liberal ideology works anymore.’
She also once said: ‘Drama always has to move you to make you think, and distress you for a purpose.’
A few weeks ago in the 'Guardian' (13th December, G2), Ms Whitburn disclosed that she planned a major plot development in 'The Archers' to mark its 60th anniversary. It would, she said, shake the fictional village of Ambridge to its fictional core.
But she would not say what it would be. But it will be 'controversial'. Knowing Ms Whitburn's provenance, her desire to distress for a purpose, and move to provoke thought, her love of political correctness, I fell to wondering what it could possibly be.
My sources among Archers listeners weren't much use. They explained the cobweb of personal hatreds, jealousies and resentments which form the drama's current plot. They went on about a character called 'Helen' who is apparently going to have a fictional baby.
No, I thought, Ms Whitburn wants to make actual news in the world outside the studio, or why has she given this interview a fortnight before the broadcast? Fictional babies won't do that.
Then I noticed something else that Ms Whitburn told the ‘Guardian'. 'Where I will defend the story-lines vigorously is against the "these things don't happen in village life" argument. I brought in a raid on the village shop and a previous editor, William Smethurst, claimed it wouldn't have happened. But I had newspaper cuttings about raids on village shops, and how awful they were. If one did these big stories all the time, it would start to lose its reality, but when we do one of them the repercussions of it reverberate for a long time.'
In the past, Ms Whitburn has come up with all kinds of stuff to make the Guardian reader and the PC liberal in general happy. The one that always seemed to me to be most questionable (apart from gnarled farmers speaking in metric rather than in customary measures) was a racialist attack on a Hindu woman living in the village. I have often, incidentally, wondered why she was a Hindu, not a Muslim. Perhaps Muslims just don't live in English villages. But do many Hindus? Then there was a further plot with the same woman marrying the vicar, not to mention all kinds of sexual revolution stuff and ultra-feminist propaganda.
But if Ms Whitburn went through the newspaper cuttings of English rural life over the past year, what truly shocking plot development could be justified by recent news, which would 'shake Ambridge to the core', allow her to dispense with several played-out characters, create a whole set of cliff-hanger dramas lasting days, not to mention a long aftermath?
Why, a gun massacre, of course.
We have had two major ones (and by coincidence a more recent rural shooting incident) in the past year. Nobody could claim it was impossible, or even necessarily improbable (nor would I, but for other reasons discussed here on other occasions) this would also allow her to help propagate the standard PC belief that gun control in Britain isn't tight enough, and that it is especially lax in the rural areas where legal firearms are mainly held. In fact, almost all gun crime is committed using illegally held weapons, but who cares about such arcane details? They can always be forgotten in the subsequent frenzy.
Sometimes I wonder if I should introduce streaming here, not letting people post on some threads until they had showed themselves capable of a certain level of reason, promoting those who showed that they knew how to argue into higher streams, and bumping slow learners down to the simpler subjects if they demonstrated that they couldn't keep up. Perhaps in that way most of us could get past a couple of rather stupid and annoying arguments, which flop and wallow about in a swamp of self-imposed ignorance and irrationality, and move on to other more exciting topics.
Those who were stuck could accept the need for a bit of remedial coaching before at length catching up. Or they might accept that they weren't cut out for our high standards, and go elsewhere. A fond hope, alas.
Here's one who would struggle to get into the top class, calling himself 'Tony'. He recently wrote: ‘All ten of Hitchens's anti-cannabis points could be applied directly to alcohol. And it just won't do to have Hitchens belittle this point. Alcohol consumption and, indeed, addiction is actively pursued in this country by the large alcoholic drink corporations in much the same way that cigarette addiction was pursued - by presenting alcohol as a fashionable social good. The argument that we shouldn't therefore promote the use of other substances in society is just a red herring as far as I'm concerned. What is Hitchens going to propose be done about alcohol? His view seems to be that we can't do anything about it as it is so ingrained in our culture. But so is supermarket shopping and car ownership. And he actively proposes that the state immediately step in to change those cultures. Why not also with alcohol, then? How about a 1000% increase in alcohol duty with immediate effect?’
On supermarkets and car ownership, the state could have an instant effect by simply ceasing to encourage these things as it encourages them now with all its subsidising, regulating might (though I would myself go further, actively encouraging railways, trams, bicycling, walking, covered markets, farmer's markets and busy high streets).
I have repeatedly said (and I think it would be very hard for any reader here to be unaware of this, unless his unawareness was wilful) that I support strong practicable controls on the sale of alcohol, notably the reintroduction of the 1915 licensing laws so foolishly abolished in the 1980s (and cordially hated by some contributors to this site, who bizarrely imagine I am something called a 'libertarian', when I am in fact something entirely different). Likewise I am on record as supporting strong legal penalties for persons found driving while drunk, and for persons who misbehave while drunk. These are practical and effective measures against an acculturated poison which can (unlike illegal drugs) be used in moderation by the wise, and whose abuse by the unwise can be discouraged and on occasion penalised. I am not convinced that higher alcohol duty would work. Raise duties above a certain point on a product which is still widely desired, and culturally accepted, and large-scale criminal evasion becomes practicable and worthwhile. There has to be a calculation here of practicability (the same one which shows that, in Sweden and come to that in our armed forces, strong enforcement of drug laws means fewer drug takers). In principle, as I have said, I would accept the legal banning of alcohol for myself, if I thought it would work. Anybody who has worked in my trade for as long as I have has seen at first hand the terrible things that alcohol can do to people (and to their friends and families) so I am specially irritated by dim and baseless accusations of complacency on this matter.
But I don't think a total ban would work, so this offer (though genuinely made) has no practical value as a suggestion. The plan I outline above, on the other hand, was shown to be workable when it was in force. It was abandoned not because of public demand but because of subtle and effective lobbying. It would of course make my life less convenient in a number of small ways, and those of others too, but the benefit would be far greater than the loss.
I mention the possibility of a total alcohol ban because it seems to me to be an important difference between me, a person who genuinely wishes to reduce the damage done by alcohol, and the cannabis propagandists, who couldn't in truth care less about this damage but merely hope to weaken the laws against their own selfish pleasure, and so seek to dodge the powerful case for prosecuting cannabis possession, by changing the subject. It is precisely because they don't want to give up their pleasure, and hate and despise those who would deny it to them, that they are so biliously, intolerantly militant on this subject.
These cannabis propagandists almost always, at some point or another, misrepresent my position because to admit the truth about my views would be to open their own flanks to attack. They are, in short, gross hypocrites, pretending a concern they don't really feel, for self-serving political advantage. Thus espousal of a dishonest cause makes them feeble debaters, fit only for the kindergarten stream.
I do, by contrast, think that the still-nascent use of cannabis and some other illegal drugs could be reduced to negligible numbers if possession were penalised.
Likewise I support (having initially opposed) the legal measures being used to discourage smoking in workplaces, restaurants etc. I think the scientific pretext for these bans is pretty thin, and allowed this, plus a sort of sentimentality about the smoky old days of Fleet Street, to distract me from the real point - which is this: cigarette smoking (the real target of these bans) can be quite effectively discouraged; many smokers are themselves helped to reduce and even quit a habit they often dislike and wish they hadn't taken up, by such rules. Unlike the drinking of wine, beer and spirits, the heavy smoking of cigarettes is a relatively recent development, and I suspect it can be marginalised by legal and social disapproval, just as it was spread by clever advertising, wartime misery, and general social approval. I doubt if it can ever be eradicated entirely, or made subject to the criminal law. But it can be made much rarer.
Then I think I need to see Joshua Wooderson after class as well.
He said two things which make me suspect he hasn't been paying attention, or hasn't been doing his homework.
Here's one: 'As for the statement [made by me, P.Hitchens], "I doubt whether many of those involved in the violence of recent weeks are in fact students in any serious meaning of the word", whilst we know that many were in fact hooligans looking for trouble, is there any evidence that the majority of protesters weren't students with a genuine conviction that the fee rise was unfair?’
Careful readers will note a basic logical slippage. I refer to 'many of those involved in the violence'. Mr Wooderson quietly alters this, so that I am assumed to have referred instead to 'the majority of protesters', which I didn't do. As is clear after a moment's reflection, the two are not only not the same, but utterly different, so altering my meaning to the point of misrepresentation. Unless Mr Wooderson believes, as I do not, that the majority of the protestors were involved in the violence, he is attacking me for a sentiment I haven't expressed, and which he must know I haven't expressed, since he has carefully and correctly copied out my exact words. I seem to remember from my long ago studies of logic that J.S. Mill had a fancy name for this slippery trick. But I call it 'bait and switch'. Why do people do this stupid, self-damaging thing?
Mr Wooderson then turns his attention to the bed and breakfast question. ‘What I wonder is whether Mr Hitchens would defend somebody’s right to turn away a black couple on the basis that giving accommodation to other races was against his or her Mormon beliefs (Mormonism was officially a racist church until very recently).’
This is a question to which he must know that the answer is 'no'. He cannot really 'wonder' since he already knows. Thus the inquiry is not what it claims to be, an honest desire for knowledge, but a rather disgusting smear, of which he should be thoroughly ashamed. He won't be, of course, until perhaps years later when he is grown-up enough to realise the sort of game he is playing. I hope for that day.
How does he already know? Well, there are two ways. One, racial bigotry is these days rightly considered such a wicked moral failing that a) to be found guilty of it means more or less total exclusion from reasoned debate, combined with a fair degree of notoriety. The idea that I could have expressed views compatible with the refusal of hotel rooms to a couple on the grounds of skin colour, without it being widely known, is absurd, even for someone who is not a frequent contributor here, as Mr Wooderson is.
My recent discussion with Matthew Parris actually turned upon this exact comparison, often made by sexual revolutionaries to smear their opponents, and I went to some lengths to express a) my abhorrence of racial discrimination and b) my rational explanation for this abhorrence, and my reasons for believing that Christian opinions on sexual morality were not comparable to racial bigotry, and cannot be equated with it by any thinking, knowledgeable person.
Further, I am not now a member of the Mormon cult. Nor was I a member of the Mormon cult during the time when it upheld racial discrimination. Nor have I ever been. I am fairly well known to be a member of the Church of England, which, flexible as it is, debars me from membership of the Mormons, whose texts and doctrines set them apart from Christianity. Before that I was a Marxist atheist, which likewise precluded attendance at the Salt Lake City tabernacle. So there is no reason to suppose that I do now hold, or ever have held, or would wish in any way to defend the views he ascribes to that cult - or felt any wish or need to defend them against just laws prohibiting racial discrimination.
Mr Wooderson later issued this qualification: 'With the racist analogy, I was merely using a reductio ad absurdum, to question whether Mr Hitchens would tolerate racist guesthouse policies. I wasn't in any way comparing racism and homophobia in terms of the genetic component. My view is that they are equally unjustified prejudices, not that race and sexuality necessarily have the same cause.'
Oh, right. That makes it all right then, especially the Latin. Or does it? I suspect that Mr Wooderson would absolutely hate it, were he to be the target of such a 'reductio ad absurdum'.
The deeper, wider arguments, about the distinction between nature and behaviour, between being and doing, are dealt with largely in my book 'The Cameron Delusion', which contains an interesting quotation from the works of one Matthew Parris about the extent to which homosexual behaviour is predetermined.
Mr Parris wrote in 'The Times' of 6th August 2006, 'I think sexuality is a supple as well as subtle thing, and can sometimes be influenced, even promoted; I think that in some people some drives can be discouraged and others encouraged; I think some people can choose.' My thoughts on this can be found on and around page 120 of the book.
Dr Thomas Writes
I'd also like to respond to a couple of other recent postings, whose thoughtfulness demands an answer, and is a refreshing change from yelling and misrepresentation.
The first is from Sean Thomas, who wrote before Christmas (but on a dying thread) as follows.
I've inserted some comments, marked with asterisks thus **
'I’m pleased Mr Hitchens has taken the time to consider my comments. Indeed, I really didn’t expect it. But I appreciate his willingness to engage. Likewise for all other posters (though I can’t engage with all issues for sake of time and economy). First of all, I would like to offer some clarifications, along with some rather honest (and rather shamefaced) apologies. Then I would like to provide some further details about my position on the issue of drugs. I hope I can match the succinct quality I admire in his writing (I doubt I will though).
'I have a PhD in law, and I am currently a Lecturer in Commercial Law at the University of Leicester. The reason I used my title is that I am happy to make my comments in my capacity as a professional academic lawyer (and I agree with Mr Hitchens’s distaste for the prevalence of (essentially) anonymous posting). I could say: ‘Google me Peter!’ But I have the (mis)fortune to share a name with an author who once won the Bad Sex in Fiction award, so looking for ‘Sean Thomas’ on the internet can lead to amusing mistakes of identity. As my job title indicates, my speciality is commercial law, not drugs. Nevertheless, I have a longstanding teaching interest in criminal law, and my research often covers areas of property crimes, so I like to think my interest in this issue is more than that of the “interested observer”. In particular I am interested in lay (as opposed to legal) conceptions of the “moral” in criminal law and policy.
'On to the apologies: I used the term ‘hypocrisy’ in relation to Mr Hitchens’s commentary that (essentially) the pro-drug side are shrill and closed-minded in relation to the position held by Mr Hitchens. I felt that his reaction was as bad, and I thought this looked like hypocrisy. I agree it was a loose use of the term (certainly I was not implying that he was perhaps a Howard Marks in his private life: if this was what was inferred I apologise).’
** I'm grateful for that.**
'I can see now that I perhaps should have considered my language. As for straw man – we all know this is the style of argumentation whereby a real problem is expanded to unreal levels.’
**Is it? I thought it was to misrepresent an opponent's position, to refute, or appear to refute, the misrepresented position and so to claim to have won the argument, while having in fact sidestepped it.**
'Thus I think that the claim that because some people suffer badly from drug consumption, that all drug consumption is bad, is a species of the straw man argument.'
**Whereas I would say that this formulation is in fact a misrepresentation of my position. In my view self-stupefaction is self-evidently morally wrong, in almost all cases opens to the stupefier to criminal or negligent acts which he would otherwise avoid, and ought to be repugnant to any morally literate person. Its consequences are frequently disastrous to the self-stupefier himself and to those around him. Therefore, where morality fails (as it has on this issue for half a century) the law must step in. That is rather different from 'because some people suffer badly from drug consumption, that all drug consumption is bad', a crude oversimplification.**
‘For now, I shall move on from that as I discuss it later in a bit more depth. So yes, the doc does disagree with you, and I should have come out and said it clearly.
**Once again, thank you.**
‘You claimed that the argument that self-stupefaction is not a private matter and that it has effects on people other than the individual drug-taker. I take issue with the first claim, that it is not a private matter. I have some problems with the second claim, that it impacts on others.
'For the first claim (that self-intoxication is not a private matter): Taken in the abstract, there is no moral reason why we should prevent other people doing things to their own body, even if we disagree with those things done. If it is not our body, it is not our choice. Only the individual concerned has that right. This is very much a personal opinion, but it derives primarily from the work of the great legal philosopher HLA Hart (for which, I think his rebuttal in his book “Law, Liberty and Morality”, to Lord Devlin’s claim that morality and law are necessarily linked, was successful).’
**Hart's view was the more *fashionable*, and the one most acceptable to his time and to academic lawyers of his and subsequent generations. I do not think that makes it definitively correct. Hart himself seems to me to have been one of the early apostles of the permissive society, not only in his own life but in what he promoted. He cannot really be a court of appeal, or considered an unbiased oracle.
As for it being a private matter, I suppose that if drug abusers had no families, no friends, no dependents, and managed to maintain themselves in all cases without direct thieving, or without becoming parasites on the welfare state, then this might be a tenable position for an atheist, and indeed this belief that we are our own self-created property is one of the attractions of atheism for the amoral. But this practical state of affairs is very rarely the case. Even very rich heroin users have children, for instance, who suffer less than the children of poor heroin users, but suffer gravely nonetheless. And parents, and lovers, and many other elective and non-elective affinities through which their behaviour is felt and suffered.**
'As for the second claim, that self-intoxication necessarily impacts on others: I think I agree in part. Drug use can cause distress to immediate family, provided the immediate family are in fact distressed. What if the immediate family do not feel distressed? The problem disappears. (On the same point, I personally don’t think family has much to do with it anyway, but I am not pro-family like Mr Hitchens. That is for a different debate though.)'
**Well, that's all right then. Just stop feeling distressed, and all manner of things will be well. And we can cope without families, apparently. Or can we? It isn't, in fact, a different debate. It's the same one, and its main concern is unselfishness versus selfishness.**
'Similarly the other claims, such as decreased competence at work or at education, or on the roads, are correct if those factors actually occur. But it is not the case that intoxication at one point in time necessarily leads to the problems at all times in the future. So if one chooses to get stoned, fine: just sober up before you interact with others. I agree that drugs do ‘stick’ in the body and brain (to varying degrees), but I do not agree that there is any evidence that the intoxicating aspect remains. It will over time dissipate. The presence of metabolites of cannabis does not mean one is still stoned. So my approach would be get drunk, get stoned, get high. Just don’t be a drunk, or a stoner. Sober up afterwards.'
**It is not only intoxication (or stupefaction) during drug abuse or soon afterwards of which we speak, but the permanent damage done to users, most especially of cannabis, the very dangerous drug which the legalisation lobby most dishonestly seeks to whitewash. Dr Thomas must also be lucky never to have met the sort of person who thinks he is sober when he is not. Plenty of drunks are like this, and they drive cars. So, in what I suspect are growing numbers, do drug abusers who genuinely believe that they are not impaired.**
'As for the criminal aspect: I think there are many people out there who commit crimes a) when intoxicated with drugs, and b) to get money to get intoxicated with drugs. But it would be a faulty syllogism to say that all people who get intoxicated then commit crimes over and above the initial criminal act of obtaining the drugs.'
**It might well be. But there is no need to make it. If the first and second propositions are true (and they are), then we already have a problem for which the criminal law is a remedy. The rest is just a matter of undermining the huge public relations campaign mounted for cannabis, and the incessant lie that it is a 'soft' and harmless drug instead of a dangerous poison which can wreck its users' mental health forever.**
'I think this issue then devolves into the issue of whether drugs should be criminalised. I think not, for reasons I have tried to elucidate above.'
**Do please try harder.**
‘As for the worries about narco-lobby, this reminds me of Gladstone’s claim to have lost an election on a torrent of gin and beer! It may be true: the problem though is with the institution of lobbying, not what is the subject matter of the lobby. Governments need spine and guts.'
**This is a useless, complacent statement. Most of my critics on this subject seek not to argue with me but to complain that I am still allowed to say what I say, to abuse me for saying what I say, or to vent their rage on me for daring to say it. Currently the argument is not about the rights or wrongs of the drug laws, but about the right of the opponents of legalisation to be heard at all. Where will governments find the 'spine and guts' if the arguments for employing these things are not made? If the cannabis lobby dominates the media and captures the minds of legislators, why should government try to show courage? The question is, which argument is right and true?**
'Finally, a peace offering: I enjoy reading your work Mr Hitchens. You make me think (after I have calmed any initial rage!). I agree with some of your points, but not all. For instance, I agree with your penal policy: if you want criminal law to work you need severe punishment (though not to the extent of capital punishment). I just disagree that self-intoxication in situations where others are not actually harmed is a valid subject for criminalisation. I agree with you on the pernicious growth of ‘security’ in the name of liberty: I think that governmental intrusion into the personal sphere is unjust. I happen to think that criminalisation of drug usage is a species of the same problem. So although you may not read/reply to this until later, I would like to apologise for my woolly writing earlier. I know I have only covered some of the points raised, but I hope I have clarified my position. If you are ever passing Leicester, please feel free to contact me and I can see if we can arrange a more detailed discussion of these issues. Enjoy your religious celebrations. I shall enjoy my secular version.’
**Thanks so much for the acknowledgement of woolly writing, much appreciated. But no thanks for this patronising good wish. I hope I should find my way to the altar rail at Christmas even if secret policemen tried to stop me, and I don't need Dr Thomas's blessing to do so now. But what exactly is *he* celebrating? He surely doesn't believe that the Gods must be propitiated to ensure that the days lengthen again? Science, based upon Christian belief in an ordered and purposeful - and explicable - universe, long ago exploded that idea. So what has he to make merry about at this season? If he thinks Christmas silly, then why bother?
This is typical. The secularist, or whatever he calls himself, enjoys the civilisation brought about by the birth and resurrection of Christ, but denies or mocks the truth of these events. He doesn't make the connection between the two, because he recognises, deep down, that this would be to admit that he is cheating by doing so. Once everyone agrees with him that Christmas and Christianity are fairytales, then the world will be a violent and selfish chaos in which each deed is measured quite precisely by its immediate effect. Or he will be marking Eid whether he likes it or not. So he rides free - for now.**
Another Doctor Writes
And then there was this from Dr Kevin Law (again, doctor of what, please?) 'Phew – I can’t help but think that sometimes newspaper columnists do seem to have a very high opinion of the importance of their own views on life.
‘And certainly Peter Hitchens would come into this category.
‘First the good bit. I actually admire the way Peter Hitchens has an excellent command of the facts about any subject he comments on. A lot of other newspaper columnists could learn from his methods. He is always fully informed and read on any subject and does his research. I don’t think I have ever read any comments from Peter Hitchens that were not based on genuine facts rather that the sloppy regurgitation of what others have written in the media (a crime other columnist commit regularly). Plus he is consistent. He doesn't change his views depending on the way the current media trends are running. He also mounts powerful and carefully crafted arguments that need thought to disagree with. I have never read Peter Hitchens offer up an opinion he hasn’t thought through. I also have to say that I am in broad, if not total agreement with him over many issues. From the climate change hoax to the duplicity of David Cameron who calls himself a conservative but who is, in reality – just a social democrat. That’s the good bit.
‘The bad is that like other certain columnists (Simon Heffer is another, as is Polly Toynbee) that they offer up indignant criticisms of our present political and social systems plus their “radical” alternatives with a force that suggests should society not undertake such change, then we are all somehow being both blind and deaf to the obvious. However this force majeure is not backed up by actions on their behalf. I'm sure the pen is mightier than the sword but getting paid a rather high salary to propagate these views to us each week like some unsung prophet can be both wearing and a trifle irritating to the reader. Yes, these columnists are entitled to their opinion. And no, as a reader I don’t have to read their work. I can ignore them if I want. But we all have the right to opinions. But most of us don’t get paid to air these opinions every week in media.
‘For me the irritation lies in the fact that these columnists clearly have a very high opinion of the importance of their argument and their own importance in “spreading the good word”. But to the best of my knowledge – apart from being paid to give us the benefit of these views – on very regular basis – do precious little else to bring about the change they desire whilst constantly criticizing and hectoring others who don’t undertake polices and practices which would please the columnist personal prejudices.'
PH replies: Well, I'm grateful once again for the fair-minded tone of this. But I'm not quite sure about all this 'high opinion of myself' stuff. No doubt I'm as vain as the next man and vainer than some. But so what if I'm right? And I can't or won't speak for any other columnist who wishes to defend himself or herself against the accusation of self-importance.
But, as I've explained here time without number, I would enter parliamentary politics next month if it were a practical option (that is to say, if a party existed to which I could in conscience belong, which was capable of winning election to a significant number of seats, and prepared to select me to stand in one of those seats where I had a reasonable prospect of winning). But these conditions don't exist. I've done all that I can to bring them about, and my effort hasn't yet had the desired effect. I'm not sure what else Dr Law would suggest, but I'm interested if he has anything original to say. I stress the word 'original'. I've heard plenty of suggestions based upon ignorance of the political process (Why don't you stand for Parliament? being one of them. Having reported at first hand on many, many by-elections and general elections I know that my personal qualities and views would have almost no bearing on the result), but none based upon knowledge of it, such as I possess.
And that's another thing. Dr Law might look at my curriculum vitae some time. I didn't just spring, fully formed out of nowhere as a 'columnist'. I worked my way through my trade for more than two decades before I was given that singular honour, time during which I found out at first-hand how this country is run, and where it stands in the world. I tend to think not that I'm 'important' but that I have knowledge, wisdom and experience which many others lack, and which I long to apply in the affairs of my country, and cannot, except by stating them in my columns and other writings. What sort of person would I be if, knowing these things and feeling these things, and offered a platform from which to state them, I wrote about allotments, football and au pairs?
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