Wilberforce, Sayat and the Left

Unlike Laban, I do blame the BBC. We’re talking about a bunch of folks who can’t make a cup of coffee without lauding their own anti-establishment credentials, but whenever the received wisdom tilts Left, they’ll gobble it up with a shovel.

It’s true enough though that the commemoration of Britain outlawing the slave trade was always going to degenerate into a Hate-Britannia fest. If you claimed there were echoes from the Nazi era in modern Germany, Liberals would want you jailed for hate speech, but events 200 years ago ? Practically yesterday!

Needless to say, the Left’s position is absurd. The Anglosphere was involved in the slave trade. Fine. So was everyone else. Liberals objecting to slavery in the Anglosphere, and only the Anglosphere, is as transparent as a guy claiming to be worried by mugging, who only writes about cases involving black offenders – and deserves exactly that much respect.

Still, the bile directed at Wilberforce surprised me. There's the fruit of the poison tree thing, of course. After all, no one contaminated with British blood could ever truly be considered innocent, but still, some of the Leftist rhetoric has been truly unhinged. What's that all about ?

The Left does love their crusading heroes, but here’s a real-life Atticus Finch getting slimed. Wilberforce sure sounds like he should be a Lefty hero, a man who really did take on 'the system' and defeat a great evil. Ah, but that's the thing of course. For all that Liberals like to rant about the 'evil' of particular opponents, the thought of any kind of consistent moral framework brings them out in a rash. Au contrair, as Evan Sayat shows in a brilliant speech, large parts of the Left are at war with the very concept of morality:

It’s hard to really accept; there is no criteria for truth, beauty, justice or anything else for the modern liberal. Indiscriminateness is a moral imperative because rational moral thought is an act of bigotry. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. But at the very minimum, in order to be called a freedom fighter, wouldn’t you have to be fighting for….freedom? Quite literally, being indiscriminate leaves them unable to tell the difference between freedom and having your head hacked off.

Far from being a Liberal pin-up, Wilberforce was the antonym of modern Liberalism. There was nothing tactical about Wilberforce's loathing of slavery, he saw it as an offence against both God and man. Even worse, he insisted on dragging morals into a whole range of issues, even to the point of being an early advocate of 'zero tolerance'.

To Wilberforce, good and evil were as real as north and south. He opposed slavery because that was the position his moral compass took him to, and so it was with the rest of his life. That's why the Left hates him, he's further proof of an embarassing truth for them. For all Liberals like to indulge in Utopian pretensions, hysteria and outright violence, when it comes to actually making the world a better place, the Right beats them hands down.

Really Huge Mystery

Laban reports on the insanity of the ‘sexual orientation regulations’. Latest news: the government wants to make it an offence to indirectly induce someone to discriminate. Huh ? What couldn’t be caught under that law ? Who knows ? But, apparently, the horror of indirect inducement is enough to justify shredding the basic principles of law.

I can’t help detecting a certain chutzpah here. Back when these people were forcing through gay marriage, anyone who wondered whether destroying a millennia old institution might just have some adverse consequences further down the road was ridiculed as some kind of Nazi.. No talk of indirect inducements then, any consequence more subtle or long-term than an outbreak of botulism at the wedding reception was not admissible in the debate.

See, it’s at times like this you really need a scorecard. On the one hand, some guy calling for opposition to this law is such a serious threat to social order that it must be criminalised (they’re all about the freedom, these gay rights activists!), yet at the same time the prospect that the rise of gay marriage might lead to the final hollowing out of the institution of marriage is self-evidently ludicrous. So which is it ? Is social order sufficiently robust that the state can play ‘Operation’ with the institutions of society with no consequences, or is it so fragile that even a country vicar speaking out against this legislation threatens to bring about social chaos ?

Actually, I vote for Option C: it’s just a crude attempt to silence their opponents. After all, even some prominent gays have admitted they lied about their motivation in forcing through gay marriage. Now, we’re supposed to believe them on this ? Still, I’m with Laban - this might not be a bad thing. Now, everyone can see what’s at stake. It was never about hairdressers cringing in terror at the thought of someone reading the Bible. Nope, it’s an outright attack on the whole idea of morality and the sooner everyone realises that, the better.

Pandering Never Works (Part 2455)

OK, this story is funny on its own merits, but I can't be the only black-hearted conservative enjoying the sight of a lefty being hoist on his own PC petard. Still, you've got to have some sympathy for this guy. He bows down before the victimhood hustlers, and all he gets is demands that he lick their boots clean while he's down there. Well, duh! They're grievance hustlers, whining is what they do. There's no point trying to address their complaints logically, it's the simple act of whining that's their thing. The only thing that will shut them up is someone developing a set of gonads and learning the gestures for the phrase 'get a life!'

Who'd Have Thunk It ?

So, a guy decides the best way to sort out a family dispute is to tear his wife's eyes out ? Ah yes. You'll never guess what his name is.

I'm sure the femiloons would speak out, but they're tied up dealing with the horrific case of a City Witch who was called fat by a colleague.

The Conspiracy To Stop You Robbing Stuff

What to say about Adam Curtis’s latest outbreak of stupid ?

It must mean something that even fellow Lefties are starting to mock Curtis’s dreadfully clichéd nonsense. Not that that’ll stop the BBC. After all, the fact Curtis has been employed again after ‘The Power of Nightmares’ proves once and for all that the BBC is incapable of embarrassment.

Actually, all you really need to know is that Mad Maddie gave it the thumbs up in the Guardian. Of course, the delusional pay their licence fee just like the rest of us, but don’t ask me to watch their stuff. There’s plenty to say about Curtis’s absurd thesis, but that’d almost be giving it more credit than it deserves.

Nope, what intrigued me was the sheer chutzpah of it all. Here’s Curtis taking out an onion for the collapse of social cohesion. Yet what is the central thesis of, well, more or less everything Curtis has ever done ? Ah yes: IT’S ALL A CONSPIRACY!

To buy into Curtis’s nonsense – and I’m not convinced even he does – is to believe that every well-adjusted member of society is either a sad dupe or an actual co-conspirator. Ditto, social norms are actually a form of oppression by the elite. How exactly can you call for social cohesion while believing that the self-same society is secretly run by dark forces ?

Oh, sure, Curtis would no doubt try and square that particular circle, but the society-as-conspiracy meme has been one Lefties have been pushing for years – and not without considerable success. The idea that expecting people to conform to social norms is a form of oppression has been given full reign in our schools and courts. If Curtis really wants to see why our society is falling apart, he might want to start closer to home.

Shakedown Latest

This is great. Plus, it's nice to imagine the femiloons reduced to spluttering rage, unable to use their usual tactic of whining about ‘sexism’. Boo hoo! It’s not blokes who are claiming that employers need to provide each female employee with their own chaise longue to collapse onto should they ears be assailed by indelicate language. These losers make the Victorians look like Hell’s Angels.

Personally, my favourite bit was the femiloon claiming that a whole new pack of bogus rights popping up out of thin air actually makes it easier for employers. Presumably, that’s kind of like being mugged means you don’t have the worry of having to decide what to spend all that money on ?

Mystic Marxists Do Defence

Interesting coincidence on this Wednesday’s Jeremy Whine Show on Radio 2. The first hour was spent discussing the renewal of Trident and Zimbabwe. Hey, it’s great that it’s now legal to call Mugabe a scumbag, but it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the Left’s argument against Son Of Trident.

After all, Mugabe’s misrule of Zim has lasted nearly thirty years – more or less the same as the projected life of this new system. Libs claim they can absolutely guarantee that at no time will we ever need this new system, but how long did it take them to realise that, actually, Mugabe was nuts just like those fascists on the Right always said he was ? Up to the turn of the century, Libs were arguing that Mugabe might play a little rough, but he was basically a good hearted sort. If they can’t spot a twenty-four carrot loon like that, why should we give any credibility to the rest of their analysis ?

Funnily enough, the day after the main topic was the Olympics and yes, despite some quibbling over costing, no one questioned whether or not the country really needed to spend 25 billion on two weeks of running around and throwing things.

High Boom ?

You know what we don't have enough of round here ? Posts about '300'. Anyway, the latest news is that the Islamopaths are complaining about the movie's anti-Islamic tone (huh ?).Fortunately, over at Right Wing News, they've been suggesting a few movies to redress the balance, here and here.

Who'd Have Thunk It ?

The BBC reports - no doubt through gritted teeth - the confession of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. What's interesting about this is not only Funnily enough, they speed past the really interesting part of KSM's admission:

I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z," said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a partial transcript from a closed-door hearing.

He also said he had planned attacks on Big Ben and Heathrow airport in London.

But...but...it's all about the Iraq, right ?

Gosh, must be something else they don't like about us.

Quote Of The Day

Staying inside between 3.30pm and 4.15pm is something you are going to have to learn to do

Ah...the reassuring work ethic of the public sector.Look on the bright side: he could have joined the Fire Brigade.

UPDATE:

OK, so the link is playing up, so just in case, here's a quick précis: it's a police sergeant responding to complaints from a group of local residents about the behaviour of kids from a local school. Incidentally, his other great line was 'We have got to accept there is going to be a certain amount of disorder in a teenage environment'.

Support Our Murderous Troops

Couple of interesting posts pointed out at Conservative Grapevine. I can’t say I’m a big fan of Jonah Goldberg, but he makes an important point here.

I have never witnessed anyone who said that we need to get beyond ideology actually abandon his own position for the sake of unity.

For example, Al Gore constantly says the time for debating global warming is over and the time for unified action is now. But he says that because he wants the other side to stop being such a pain in his neck by disagreeing with him. Gore critics and fans alike can agree that he would be an idiot and an intellectual coward if, valuing unity over substance, he switched sides.

Well, exactly. Endlessly splitting the difference between the collectivist Left and the individualist Right is not a sign of sophistication, it’s a sign of immaturity. Just how much simpler do you need it ?

Ditto, Thomas Sowell in bang on here. If anything, coverage in Britain is worse. Liberals can detect almost infinite nuance in Islamopathic rantings, but they’re sure the Army is savages all the way. That’s why we end up with cases like this.

Well, OK, that does mark some kind of improvement. After all, they did get one result this time, but a single conviction for a minor act of brutality doesn’t really cut it when you’ve indicting seemingly everyone in the Army for involvement in an unlawful killing.

In contrast, Libs were horrified – horrified! – when Mr Plod stopped by for a chat with the Forest Gate Kittens. We need a scorecard to keep up here. Searching an address used by armed Islamic fundamentalists ? Harbinger of the Fourth Reich. A 10 mile tailback of war crimes witch hunts that collapse as soon as they go to trial ? Democracy in action!

Not that I’m necessarily complaining. This is as close as we’ll get to the Left telling us who they really are. Forget all the rhetoric, here is the Liberal worldview in living colour. They're not really opposed to Guantanamo Bay, they just think it should be used to jail British soldiers instead.

The BBC: Your 'No Honour' Network

The BBC is baffled why a man would slaughter his own family. The closest we get to an explanation is this:

Speaking after the hearing, Det Supt Martin Bottomley, who led the investigation, said:
....

"We will probably never know why Arshad committed this awful crime, unless he chooses to tell us."

Except it turns out that les flicks have said quite a bit more than that.

POLICE investigating the deaths believe it may have been a so-called “honour killing”, where people, usually women in certain Asian communities, are murdered for bringing “shame” on their families. Children are sometimes murdered along with their mother because of their association with her shame.

So were these deaths another case of Sudden Jihad Syndrome ? Well, there's loonies all over the map, but there sure seems to be a cluster round one point. Bottom line: the BBC has no qualms about ascribing racial motives to crimes on even the flimsiest grounds, but now suddenly they're Gil Grissom, dealing only with hard evidence ?

A vote of thanks too for the femiloons. They must still be drained after fighting so hard to deal with really serious issues, like the prize money at Wimbledon. Either that, or we've finally found a way to silence their idiot yammering.

Are we sure there isn't some kind of Heisenberg effect here ? The BBC would no doubt claim that they are merely the sewer not the sewerage, but isn't this kind of coy, minimalist reporting of brutal violence part of the problem ? Isn't there at least some truth in the old line that 'silence = consent' ? And shouldn't a multi-billion pound operation be asking these questions itself ?

Man Injured By Reversing Vehicle

I'm sure I've said it before, but there's something truly eerie about Cameron's ability not only to miss the bandwagon, but to get run over by it coming back the other way. Yep, that Glowball Warning backlash is well under way.

Earth Still Cool, Libs Bursting Into Flame

Just seen 'The Great Global Warming Swindle'. First thought: how the hell did this get made ? Well, OK, this may have been a factor. Is there anything she can't do ? Still, what a program, and from Britain's most Left-wing channel as well. Funny how a nasty old commercial channel like C4 can produce this stuff, while our public service broadcaster's reporting remains firmly mired in duckspeak, as even some of its own people admit.

Second thought: in so far as Libs charge any unapologetic right-winger with creating a 'hostile environment', I think we're free to speculate on whether there's a connection between a front-bencher for a supposedly respectable party demanding media outlets silence critics of anthropogenic global warming, and other Liberals exploring more direct forms of censorship.

Final thought: Well of course the tide is turning (and not rising). Look who's leapt aboard the bandwagon. Truly, he is the disco vicar of politics.

That Was Quick

Now '300' has tanked at the box office, Hollywood has reluctantly decided to change tack and start producing Lefty movies.

No, I'm not kidding. These people are insane.

Counter-Culture ? We've Got Your Counter-Culture Right Here!

Exactly:

After forty years of liberal rule in Hollywood it is nihilism that’s old-fashioned. It is moral relativism that is tired. It is political correctness, the always-noble people of color, the always-evil white guy, and the metrosexual that is cliched. A film with a clear divide between good and evil is something new. A film that celebrates patriotism, heroism, sacrifice, freedom, and honor is something revolutionary. In 1955 300 would be old-fashioned. In 2007 it makes a counter-culture statement as strong as Easy Rider in its day.

Hollyweird’s Inconvenient Truth

Biggest March opening ever in the US, and third-biggest R-rated movie opening ever ? Looks like ‘300’ could be another one of those surprise hits, y’know, kind of like ‘The Passion of the Christ’. One more and it’s officially a trend, but till them Hollywood will keep producing droney moral equivalenceograms featuring sinister CIA guys and noble Islamic freedom fighters.

Chickenhawk Down!

Farewell sweet chickenhawk, we hardly knew ye.

Liberals have spent years insisting that unless you’ve personally beaten six Argies to death with your water bottle, you’re not qualified to support the war on terror, but now, following Patrick Mercer’s comments, it turns out that pretty much anyone can run an infantry battalion.

With the nation’s race-hustlers turning the hysteria meter up to 11, it’s quite an achievement to produce the sleaziest contribution to the debate, but Raffles the Gentleman Thug managed it. Cameron not only fired Mercer, but also labelled him a racist – a charge too far even for some of the race hustlers. Hey, if a Tory frontbencher with a fine record of military service gets slimed by Cameron, what chance do the rest of us have with him ? Indeed, you could almost say this is Cameron’s Rose Addis.

But there’s more to it than that. Mercer’s two points were that soldiers often use insensitive language and that some black troops exploit racial paranoia to skive off. As far as the latter goes, if that doesn’t happen, then someone should call the Biology Police, because the laws of human nature are being broken. If next week the MoD announced extra pay for Jedi Knights, the force would be with half the Army by Easter.

As for the insensitive language, well…… Twenty years of PC have resulted in an obsession with social mores that make the Victorians look like Hells Angels. Yet still the running-into-machine-gun-fire industry won’t get with the program. Just a hunch, but I’m guessing this might not be unconnected with the fact that when we refer to soldiers being ‘wounded’ it doesn’t mean someone’s made a hurtful comment about them.

Liberals have spent years claiming soldiers are semi-literate sociopaths, but now they’re just horrified at the thought of the little flowers being exposed to hurtful language. Hey, Libs, you know what else is hurtful ? IEDs, but the Left is happy for our troops to travel round in ‘snatch’ Land Rovers with the survivability of a cardboard box, just as long as no one uses naughty words.

All of which is by way of saying that this debate is emphatically not about anything Mercer said, just the fact he said anything at all. Under the Left’s conception of racial equality, whites are forbidden from saying anything substantial about racial issues. Self-flagellation is allowed, but God preserve the white guy who points out, say, the racist rhetoric employed in rap music. That was Mercer’s problem: he just didn’t know his place and play his cards right.

See, this is why the Tory base is wrong about Cameron. The excuse for Cameron is that he’s not quite as awful as the alternative. I’d dispute that, but anyway, let’s assume for the moment that it’s true. Look at the price to be paid. Just as it took the election of Tony Blair to truly secure the Lady Thatcher’s legacy, so victory for Cameron would set in stone this kind of PC lunacy. In fact, to judge by this case, Cameron would go even further (and, again, if he’ll do all this to Mercer, what hope is there for, say, the average police officer) ? That’s the bottom line: can anything – anything at all – that Cameron might do, make up for institutionalising this kind of PC lunacy ?

Beyond The Satire Event Horizon

About six months back I was trying to think of suitably ludicrous headline to mock the EU's obsession with trivia. I came up with this. I thought I was joking, but it turns out I was just ahead of my time.

Mind you, that is just amateur hour compared to events in Blackburn. There'll be head's popping all over the BBC over this one.

(a tip of the mullet to BNP guy)

Outrage D'Jour

In the comments to this post, LP points out this eyeopening article. Like most folks on the Right, I knew instinctively that the anti-Gitmo campaign was nonsense, but it’s still staggering to see just how blatant was the media manipulation by shills for terrorism.

Yep, saying that MSM got bamboozled into spinning for terrorists is like saying that a Glaswegian got conned into drinking loads of whisky, but it’s still amazing to see how the MSM – multiple layers of fact-checking and all – uncritically published enemy propaganda during time of war. ‘Journalistic ethics’ was always an oxymoron, but now they aren’t even bothering to hide it anymore.

The Tories New Target Demographic: Martians

In a deft attempt to quash those pesky drug rumours, Raffles the Gentleman Thug has been speculating publicly on what Martians might think about the EU. I guess this must be what they mean about going green ?

There’s no word as yet as to whether Cameron will be welcoming Martian input any on other matters. Why not ? After all, we let the Law Lords make the law up as they go along, and they’re not even from this universe.

Mind you, even a visiting Martian should have enough grasp of history not to fal for Cameron’s line on the EU. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but anyway it’s like this….

In one of his most important speeches since becoming Tory leader, Mr Cameron will signal the start of a new engagement by his party with Europe, reforming it from the inside so that it moves from uniformity to diversity and from being an inward-facing bureaucracy to an outward-facing association of states. It would be one which devotes its energies to matters such as global warming, world poverty and creating a dynamic economy.

Every PM since Heath has tried that. Right now it’s a toss-up whether Cameron is just another sleazy Tory federist or a complete idiot. Either way, the chances of anything actually changing are approximately zero.

Critics of the EU are often libelled as anti-European, but how arrogant do you have to be to actually buy what Cameron’s selling ? Apparently, the Continent is full of deluded idiots just waiting for the British to point out the error of their ways and lead them to a bold, new future. Ah yes.

Memo to deluded Tories: the EU is the way the EU is cause that’s the way the EUtopians like it. Take the bureaucracy: that’s the way the Continentals run their governments and always have done. Leaving aside the absurdity of Cameron posing as the enemy of Big Government, the Continentals ain’t going to overturn their whole system of government no matter how nicely we ask. In so far as the Tory position boils down to the belief that the EU will become the next America, if only they’ll let the British run it, it sounds rather like something dreamed up by ‘fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists’.

And Another Thing...

Following on from that last post, the thing that really annoys me about the MSM is that they'll rant all day about the vital importance of their right to produce soft-focus depictions of perversion and sadistic insanity (even though no one on the Right actually says they shouldn't have that right). But when a real restriction on press freedom comes along ? Nope, all quiet on the Western front - must be tied up making mini-series featuring hip young crack dealers.

Culture War (Continued)

Interesting comment from ‘Novus’ on last week’s culture war post:

The essence of drama is conflict, something generally absent from a functional traditional family or the life of a successful and well-adjusted businessman, at least insofar as the family is functional or the businessman successful and well-adjusted. Dramatically the dysfunctional family is more interesting than the functional family - though I'm quite prepared to believe that any depiction of a hitherto successful and well-adjusted businessman suddenly finding his life going down the tube is as likely as not some kind of metaphysical punishment from the writer for being a dirty capitalist and grinding the faces of the poor, etc., etc.. The Game is a good example, where all through the film his experiences are presented as punishment for his being rich and successful - but even at the end, after the reveal, it's still apparently a cause for reassessing his priorities and re-ordering his life. That said, I love The Game, and I'm quite prepared to overlook politics in order to enjoy an otherwise great film. This is something you seem unprepared to do. When you accuse the MSM of "pushing dysfunction", all they're actually doing is writing interesting drama. Dysfunction = drama. Function = boring.

Furthermore, I absolutely do not buy the idea, implicit in your complaints, that the audience is bovinely incapable of differentiating fiction from reality, that if faced with a show like Torchwood (which I've enjoyed, though it's not as good as Doctor Who) or Shameless (which I've not seen) they will moronically assimilate everything they see as normal or acceptable behaviour. That sort of elitism ("the proles won't get it") is something you usually rail against, so to find you worried about shows "promoting pathologies", as though they're somehow hypnotising and brainwashing their audience, is slightly odd

Actually, with my type of movies the drama normally arises through an attack by killer zombies. Still, I can understand that not everybody likes rubbish, it’s just that there’s a continuum here. Gloomy Russian novels pretty much require dysfunction, zombie outbreaks not so much, except at the BBC where everything, without exception, has to include mentally-deficient characters behaving horribly – and, again, ‘Torchwood’ is the perfect example of this. It's this constant injection of human misery that's so grating.

Anyway, while it’s true conflict can be a fruitful source of drama, in so far as the Conservative position is frequently ignored, or presented as caricature, where’s the conflict ? Huge number of shows feature Liberal characters parroting Liberal articles of faith to other Liberals. The closest we got to actual conflict is when one Liberal tackles another Liberal about whether or not he’s Liberal enough. Ditto, it may once have been ‘edgy’ to feature a lead character who was, say, a really huge stoner, but it’s not the 70s anymore.

All of which is by way of saying that it’s not the Right that insists on bringing politics into it, it’s the Left that can’t produce the weather forecast without propagandising for social chaos – and that’s without taking account of explicitly political projects. In the same comment thread, RoP mentions ‘Cathy Come Home’. Leftists love that film as just the perfect piece of agitprop. Ditto, Fat Al: Oscar winner. So which is it ? Does the media set the cultural agenda or it all jus’ mindless entertainment ?

Besides, if it is all just meaningless pap, why do we need a licence fee anyway ? Does the BBC play a vital role in our culture, or does it just fill the air with moving wallpaper ? And if it’s option two, why exactly should we be forced to support it ?

It’s not elitism to suggest that a popular culture that features a constant diet of unfeasibly handsome characters engaging in consequence-free dysfunctional lunacy might just have real world effects. Well, not unless you’d also support a sitcom which featured a group of loveable Neo-Nazis and their wacky queer-bashing exploits. After all, the Left has spent years telling us that one guy using the wrong word can make an entire campus a ‘hostile environment’ and persecuting anyone who goes off-message. Look at their girly hysteria over the presence of supposed 'right-wing extremists' on this 'ere Net. No one on the Right wants this kind of witch hunting, we just want to point out the humbuggery in the MSM’s claim that they make the cultural weather, except for all the bad stuff, which just happens for no reason at all.

Freedom of Information (Tory Style)

They haven't even been elected yet, and already Cameron is trying to strangle debate. And this is the guy we want to trust in government ?


I guess there's only one thing for it:

Gorillas In The Mist: Washington Edition

OK, I’ve said before that I don’t want to turn this place into IainDaleSux.com, but if ever a guy wrote posts with a metaphorical ‘kick me!’ sign on his back, it’s him. Take his post on his visit to America’s CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference). In so far as this event attracts the kind of lively, youthful, non-elite crowd the Tories couldn’t attract if they had a free bar, you think any Tory visitors would be taking notes. Well, not so much.

Actually, it’s tempting just to reprint his post, subbing in the word ‘gay’ at the appropriate places, particularly when faced with prose like this:

The Conservative Political Action Conference, which I am attending in Washington, shows the very best and the awful worst of the American right. I had never attended one of these before and wasn't sure what to expect. Part of me expected to be appalled by a predominance of so-called "religious right" groups.

If anyone wrote this way about a Mardi Gras, Dale would need a novacaine suppository to calm him down. Instead, we get a Christianist atrocity story:

Apart from a twenty two year olf who confidently asserted that he would pray for my redemption and that he had the self discipline to banish lustful thoughts from his mind, I haven't really seen any evidence of what I feared. In fact, quite the reverse.

I guess we’re supposed to be appalled by loony evangelicals claiming they can cure homosexuality, but let’s just compare the number of Christians who believe this with the number of gays who talk about ‘repression’. Plenty of mainstream, prominent homosexuals claim just about every straight guy on the planet wants to sleep with them, except we’re just too repressed to recognise our true, gay nature. Renounce your sins, release your inhibitions. Potat-o, potat–ah. Except no one ever used the Bible to justify anal rape.

As with much else, Dale’s whining about ‘gay cures’ would have a lot more credibility if he was similarly energetic in condemning the toxic ideology of the home team, but don’t hold your breath. Besides, consistency doesn’t appear to be his thing:

However, having gone round the conference centre this afternoon asking people who they would like to see as the Republican candidate in 2008 it was clear that Giuliani has a lot to do to appease the social conservatives.

Appeasement ? Is the Reverend Dale, pastor of the Church of the Perpetually Offended, really comparing socio-cons to Nazis ? Yep, and that’s a mere aperitif to the humbug that’s coming next:

One lady told me she wouldn't vote for Giuliani because he wanted to take away her gun. I gently pointed out he was a proven leader and had a great record on crime in New York, but she wasn't going to be persuaded.

Yes – that really is Iain Dale criticising someone else for being over-invested in a single issue. Mind you, if you’re a snotty Limey, wandering round one of the top US political meetings ‘gently’ pointing out how ill-informed and stupid actual Americans are about their own politicians, I can see why you wouldn’t want them to be armed. I’d find Dale’s condescending drivel easier to take if he showed any evidence of trying to understand why the RKBA is such a totemic topic in US life, but apparently socio-cons are so despicable there’s no need to actually listen to what they say.

But what really sums up Daleism is this quote:

But [John Bolton] lost my respect when he appeared to advocate a US intervention in North Korea, designed to bring about the reunification of North and South Korea. He also made clear his view that the US should prepare to use military action against Iran. I would certainly not rule that out, but he seemed to positively salivate at the thought.

No actual policy disagreements then, but he doesn’t like Bolton because….. what ? Excessive salivation ? How exactly is that measured ? Is it a simple scale or logarithmic ? And is Dale really saying that he would have had no problem with these policies if only Bolton had indulged in Cameronesque theatrics, complete with sonorous phrase-making and ostentatious lip-biting ? If ever there was a good reason for letting Israel be ‘wiped off the map’ – as Ahmadinejad once said, while doubtless rending his clothes and wailing constantly – the failure of US statesmen to behave like guests on Oprah isn’t it.

Of course, not to put too fine a point on it, but Dale’s decision to concentrate on the Bolton Saliva Status Report may actually be for the best all round. It’s not at all obvious why events in Iraq would prevent the US striking at Iran. No matter how heavily engaged the US Army is, massive air and naval forces remain free to strike. Ditto, how exactly does Dale justify Bolton’s criticising the UN for giving too much power to free riders, even as he criticises Bolton for not showing enough respect for free riding Europeans. Shouldn’t being an ‘ally’ require deployment of actual troops ? Who knows ? Not the Reverend that’s for sure.

Inevitably, Dale’s ‘what I did on my holidays’ report tells us more about the pathologies afflicting the Tories than those of the American Right. You almost expect his report to be popping up anytime now on a pro-UKIP site, so perfectly does it capture the basic obnoxiousness of the Tory top brass. On the plus side, I’m sure they’re tough on salivation and tough on the causes of salivation.

Thou Shalt Not Mock Thy Lord The Dawk

Remember how Atheists (as opposed to mere 'atheists') are always banging on about how anal the religious are about their faith, as compared to their own open-minded selves. Ah yes.

Apart from anything else, what’s with EweTube ? Now, they’re your one-stop shop for Obnoxious Atheism and Islamofascist propaganda ? You know, sometimes I think the Left doesn’t have an actual ideology aside from hatred of the West.

More-Than-One Global Warming

This has been out there for a while, but you can’t point it out too often. Clearly, the Americans must have a base on Mars already. Well, either that or the ecoloons have been making it up all these years. But wait…check out this report.

OK, so as conspiracy theories go, it’s pretty funny – and the first comment is brilliant - but let’s consider the implications further. The suggestion that contrails prevent sunlight reaching the surface would tend to neatly decapitate the argument for taxing flights. Hey, taking the ecoloons own arguments to their logical conclusion, Mr Broon should be subsidising trips to Spain. But there’s something more.

Here we have a group of scientists admitting that there was a whole extra factor influencing the climate that they had no idea about right up until an unprecedented occurrence in 2001. Just how many other X factors are there out there ? And shouldn’t we find out before we destroy the economy based on theoretical models we keep finding holes in ?

Leadership

Down at Clare College, they’ve finally given up trying to excuse their surrender to the headchoppers. Instead, they’re trying the rhetorical equivalent of taking their ball home, claiming that it’s all an internal matter. If only.

Then there’s David Cameron. Don’t be shocked, but it turns out that the Future Greatest PM Ever was a member of a club made up of deadbeat, over-privileged yobs with a hatred of state school pupils and Jews. But enough about the Tories. Apparently, Cameron spent his Oxbridge years in a club which revolved around £1000 meals followed by wrecking the restaurant, with side-lines in sexual assault and violence. See ? It is a training ground for the nation’s leaders, after all, except that we can’t ask them what they did there because it was all a long time ago, and they were young. So, which is it ? Is an Oxbridge education proof positive of superior status, or is it a meaningless interlude ?

Of course, Oxbridge has always relied has on its own version of the light in the refrigerator problem, arguing that they’re so super smart that only other super smart people can appreciate their super-smartness. Their medics can’t cut it, the physics lacks gravitas and engineering is a train wreck, but that’s OK because they aren’t here to waste their time getting bogged down doing a job any old prole with a scalpel could do, they have special, generic skills, they’re leaders, strategists, visionaries, they’re….David Cameron.

See, this is where the rubber meets the road. If you’re USP is your supposed leadership qualities, people are going to expect you to demonstrate some actual leadership. It’s harsh, but there you have it. That’s why Clare College's surrender could never be an internal matter, not as long as the products of these places keep penning paeans to their special status, vis-à-vis drones from places like Imperial or Edinburgh. Not only because their conduct is the very definition of unfitness for command, but also because their self-appointed role as the natural rulers of Britain means that their conduct reflects unfairly on the nation as a whole.

This is what connects Cameron with the folks at Clare. Both claim an entitlement to power, even while renouncing the responsibilities that should come with it. Forget any talk of the balance between centralisation and localism, or cunning plans for remaking the tax system. None of that matters until we can find some actual leaders.