I dislike the Party Conference Season, not least because it showcases pushy politicians in grisly surroundings seeking adulation and applause by promising the crazed party faithful deeply questionable legislation. (At least the Nuremberg rallies took place in spaces made unintentionally amusing by their mutated-Deco architecture.)
Theresa May, one of those hoping to lead the Conservative Party after David Cameron is knifed for losing the next election, wants to go down in history as the one who thumped the Islamic 'extremists'. So she has just promised legislation outlawing Thoughtcrime ... well, at least the crime of daring to express ones views. If she gets her way, it is to be made illegal to express 'extremist' views which might cause "harassment, alarm, or distress" to others.
As we all know, the aggressively ideological section of the homosexual community does a very good line in feeling hurt and Distress and outraged victimhood when faced with any expression of views which goes against its own dogmas ... I mean the sort of people who get kicks out of taking to court proprietors of guesthouses who decline to give double beds to same-sex couples, or cake-makers who decline to bake their 'wedding' cakes.
A populist desire to thump the Islamists is, in itself, a distinctly iffy basis for legislation. Thumping them with legislation which will, undoubtedly, eventually, probably sooner rather than later, be used against Catholics (and Orthodox and Evangelicals and Orthodox Jews) is deeply worrying. We would become a country like Vietnam, in which only an expurgated version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church could be published.
Constitutional reform is never off the British political agenda. I pray for the preservation of that delightful anomaly, the House of Lords. I can imagine a situation in which Their Lordships might be the only bulwark against such deeply anti-libertarian projects as those envisaged by May and Cameron. Politicians who are free to ignore party discipline and who never need to trim their actions in order to secure re-election are the best sort of safeguard against ideological tyranny driven by populist hysteria.
Bravo!
ReplyDeleteYes, I too agree.
ReplyDeleteDon't you mean Bravo New World?
ReplyDeleteShould people be allowed freely to distribute hate literature under the pretext that it is holy?
ReplyDeleteBut who decides what is "hate literature"? Politicians?
ReplyDeleteMuch as I too would favour a rebalancing of the constitution away from the elected elements and in favour of the unelected elements we must recall that without “populist hysteria” there would be no Redemption
ReplyDeleteAs so often Father, you are, I fear, correct.
ReplyDeleteThe Physiocrat managed to make me think twice, and then a third time. No great result yet; all I can think is that when the Christian Faith, Established in the Constitution of our country in the Church of England, has been abandoned by almost all in the Establishment except the Queen, then you can put Physiocrat's question as if you were on the outside, looking in. And then, of course, the Bible, like the Koran, can be judged to fall far below the standard acceptable (or even tolerable) in the new and secular enlightened Big Society now being forged for us.
ReplyDeleteMay God help us all.
Yes. Only the House of Lords will save us from having to go back to being "nice" to all and sundry.
ReplyDeleteHow to determine if a text is hate literature? You have a legally constituted tribunal If a complaint is brought, the usual criteria apply: that of the reasonable man.
ReplyDeleteA defence would be that the text is meant to be interpreted metaphorically, but that would mean that there would have to be an authority to determine the interpretation. The bible is the book of the Catholic church and is indeed problematic if taken out of the Catholic jurisdiction and interpretation left to individual opinion.