Credit Where Credit's Due

 There's a lot to be said for Peter Bottomley. Like Douglas Hogg and Ken Clarke and a few others, he was agin the Iraq War. Richard Shepherd is also a great libertarian and free speecher, though I don't know what his stance was on the Iraq War.

Such Tory MPs tend to the pro-Europeans.

There's so much hysteria and insult in the modern British Press - especially the corporate sections like the Murdoch stable - that open and reasoned debate is almost impossible. Blunkett is that way because after 20 or so years in senior positions in politics, he knows that if he is going to survive or get anywhere, he has to play the Murdoch tune.

But it ain't going to last much longer. Radical American capitalist culture which drives these values is rapidly nose-diving into the briney.

Bottomley's entire political career has been dedicated to Anglican apologetics.

Whatever the supreme master says, Bottomley will defend it. Is what he does - he belongs to the 'taliban tendency' in the Tory party. A bizarre group that now exercise their obsession with abortion, sodomy, contraception and other threats to God's Kingdom on the back benches. Widdicombe's another in the same group, though since her conversion to catholicsim she no longer feels obliged to defend Anglican absudities.

Rowan Williams is certainly not dangerous - he's just an old fashioned reactionary seeking to maintain a privileged position for his particular confessional tribe. Part of the quid pro quo with Islam - and other big battalions - for tolerating the institutional privilige of the Anglican communion is the idea that 'The Archbiship' articulates their concerns and prejudices as well.

Cut through the Bishop's pretentious circumlocutions, and that's what you're left with. Another desperate attempt by an outmoded institution to maintain  its power and privilege.

Peter Bottomley is right. A reflective sppeech by the Archbishop has been horribly distorted by those who agenda is to put it mildly suspect. The British corporate media have gambled on the British public having the attention span of a gnat - and so far they seem to have it right.

I urge people to read the speech. By all means disagree with it but have no doubt the agenda of the SUn and Mail is nothing short of the sick promotion of hatred. When will Gordon Brown diswon these people rather than inviting Murdoch around for hospitality and having an open door to his right hand man? When Brown stands up to these bullies, we may see some British values to be proud of!

More Bishop bashing.

If you read the speech in detail it's rather worse than it appears at first sight. Most revealing is his criticism of 'The Enlightenment,' with it's 'focus on 'equal..accountablility for all.' 

The Bishop has a problem with this, and guess why? Because it leads to a situation "in which particular sorts of interest and of reasoning are tolerated as private matters but never granted legitimacy in public.."

In other words the Englightnment made religion a matter of private conscience, and not of public duty. Oh dear.

The rest of the speech is a really just a rant against 'the narrowly based rights culture' and it's contempt for 'customary tradition' and the modern legal culture 'that loves to have it so..' etc.

The subtext of the Bishop's interminable lament is fairly clear: All that is good is rooted in 'Chrisitan theology,' and the 'Abrahamic tradition.' It's time for every knee to bow, and for the law as well as the rest of society to acknowledge the primacy of revelation over individual conscience and equal rights. The only new idea is the justification of an old fashioned reactionary agenda on the grounds of 'pluralism' and a post modern understanding of competing legal narratives.

Contrary to his messiahs instructions, Rowan's been tipping old wine into new bottles.

Let's make the most of the backlash to promote a secular agenda. In the words of Cananadian journalist Doug Saunders:

"Archbishop Williams, along with Mr. Sarkozy and others, have placed a new pressure on the state to find "accommodation" of belief, to give religion some governing functions. Today, as both men have acknowledged, the beliefs making that demand are as likely be Muslim or Jewish or Christian. For once, we are fortunate that Islamic religion creates such an angry backlash in the West (even though the majority of Muslims are non-religious) — and that backlash will probably end interest in any religious involvement in civic affairs, whatever the faith. I suspect that the outcome will be a stronger defence of the neutral, secular state and the essential privacy of religion."

I see the hand of a liberal, secular God in the current crisis.

This is only correct in so far as,  it's politically correct. 'the narrowly based rights culture' deserves criticism, because it is a weapon in disguise to attack the natural rights  of the individual, and so control all our individual freedoms. How is this done? Because people individuals need their liberty guaranteed, but by giving rights to groups, you take away rights of the individual: i.e.  Natural rights - obvious common sense rights, and the force of their passion which serves those interests. You make people impotent by government sponsorship of an 'imagined group'.  Take homosexuals. Maybe we're all bisexual , maybe we're not. Maybe we flit may be we don't. So what's the point? 'They' are protected by the law anyway - as individuals!  To specify one group or another , is to undermine the liberty of the individual in all legitimate domains, until their rights in those circumstance are defined. Which basically mens as an individual, you have none. All can be controlled, according to experts - who will never say leave it alone. Let people bargain and work it out themselves.

Take the example. of parents and children, where the effect is to destroy families (to which we all belong, and through which children are reared) so as to turn them over to the control of the state, 

Are their rights for parents to remain with their children - or children with their parents? No, only rights for divorce on demand, for a special group of people who imagine their partner is less than perfect and want to get another one ( + a house and income - no strings attached), sod the children sod the parent. Why can't they just separate - build a second hut next door? Because of the economic system. Recognising that, the disaffected (or disloyal adventurer) is given a house and an income, and 'de-facto' custody - according to the welfare benefits system (now las law makers in family law).

Actually, this is an important matter: do we have to make people as parents a minority group with rights? How did they lose them to begin with? Isn't it obvious the child belongs to them? SO how can they lose a child, if they don't want to? Because they have to go to work (as a slave) , and aren't allowed to build their own place. WHat about rights to a home then? That's a majority right, so it's no right at all, until you become a minority. Unfortunately loyal parents aren't a minority.

pay attention people...dump the priests and control the money. I mean how hard can it be? duh. Ahoy hoy.

 David Aaronovitch, of all people, makes an intelligent comment on this:

http://tinyurl.com/yp33ut

I've also been moved by the vehemence with which the Synod and ordinary members of the Church have been backing him in the face of so much irrational hatred and prejudice. Militant Anglicanism?!?

Without doubt there is vast wisdom in what you say. I once came across a site which had the same theme but covering more aspects of life in this pitiful island.

http://www.angelfire.com/realm3/accord  I think!