Steyn D'Jour

Another cracker from Steyn. The specifics are American, but there's plenty of resonance over here:

There is a potentially huge segment of the population that thinks homo economicus is missing the point. They're tired of the artificial and, indeed, creepily coercive secular multiculti pseudo-religion imposed on American grade schools. I'm sympathetic to this pitch myself. Unlike Miss Noonan, I think it's actually connected to the jihad, in the sense that radical Islamism is an opportunist enemy that has arisen in the wake of the Western world's one-way multiculturalism.

In the long run, the relativist mush peddled in our grade schools is a national security threat. But, even in the short term, it's a form of child abuse that cuts off America's next generation from the glories of their inheritance.

For all that the left's talk of comunidees and the like is creepy and disturbing, at least there's a recognition there that there's more to politics than tax rates. Meanwhile, the Tories have resolutely gone the other way, actively hostile to any attempt to cast conservatism in anything other than economic terms. The epic incompetence of this government may yet deliver victory to the Tories, but their determination not to engage with a huge chunk of the population should disqualify them from power.