I agree with the general points made here, and the underlying concerns, but I have one reservation: is it really helpful to write in quite such a 'tabloid style'?

"self-respect and parental and community responsibility have catastrophically broken down."
" Teen magazines advise on sex acts for tots" (tots, really?)

"part of our society has degenerated into a fetid stew of anarchic sexual activity"

So after such revelations, Melanie says "The murder of children remains, thankfully, very rare." Isn't that the point then? We can overreact to such undoubtedly shocking cases precisely because of their freakish nature. If things were as bad as this otherwise admirable argument points out, surely such incidents would be a far more regular occurrence? I think it's hard to keep perspective in a case like this, but we seem to in line for more knee-jerk reaction in response to a single case again (like Dunblane).

Is it a terrible atttitude to take to say that people like Huntley are in a tiny, tiny minority and unfortunately, a free and open society will always be unable to guard against intelligent, cunning and twisted personalities like his without making life for 99.9% of the population unbearable?

Your children are safer, healthier and have a longer life expectancy than ever before, though if you just read newspapers all day you wouldn't necessarily think so.

Huntley is a manifestation of the damage done to Britain by the radical left. Currently, they are in ultimate charge because they are the elected government. But before Blair and his socialist cohorts got in, the radical left dominated the British film industry and, of course, the broadcast media. The BBC especially took a nauseating pride in "pushing back the boundaries", as though destruction of civil values was a service to humanity.

What Melanie calls "the governing class" - I assume she means teachers, people in law enforcement, religious leaders, doctors, community leaders, etc - has abdicated its responsibilities to the community, although not before putting up a good fight. But they have been sneered at, ridiculed and called "uptight" and "pathetic" for the last 30 years and no one has spoken up for them. So what used to be known as pillars of the community are no more.

Today, what adult would be bold enough to reprimand someone else's child? When I was little, an occasional telling off by a neighbour was part of the fabric of our lives. Adults kept children in line and children accepted this as normal - as indeed, it is in other human societies the world over.

So Britain civil society has been beaten about the head and shoulders and its life battered out of it. Now we have little sexual predators of 11 and 12 whose parents leave them to frequent clubs and bars in the name of letting them "make their own decisions" and we have a weird acceptance that adult male predators are free to indulge their fantasies with children.

We have little girls of 13 and 14 running off with men they've met in chat rooms over the internet and their parents profess surprise. In one recent case, the mother said the girl used to be on the computer up to 11 hours a day but she had no idea what she was doing or who she was talking to.

This social anarchy and failure to protect the young is a purely British phenomenon. I have not encountered it in any other country. So far as I know, no other country's government devalues marriage and the family structure as does ours. No other country contemplates giving temporary partners the same legal rights as married couples. No other country encourages households without fathers but constantly changing male companions of single mothers - many of these men themselves sexual predators on the little girls within the household. And the police don't bother to enforce the law, perhaps because the new British phenomenon of radical activist judges will find for the perpetrator. And the new parasite stratum of "social services" and "counsellors" will surge in and leaven the offence with psycho-babble.

This is all part of the agenda of the radical left which has governed Britain in fact, or dictated standards via the broadcast media, for the past 30 years. The goal: total dependence on the state. I find it astounding that so many millions are complicit in their own destruction. I wonder if the ease with which a determined clique can take over an entire society surprised Stalin, too.

Rusry,

"So after such revelations, Melanie says "The murder of children remains, thankfully, very rare." Isn't that the point then? "

I agree very much with your comments.

Melanie would have written a better article if she had stayed on the theme of the disastrous effects upon children of irresponsible parenting - and the lack of corrective action exerted upon damaging and anti-social behaviour by institutions (families, police, welfare personnel, teachers, communities etc)- and had mentioned Huntley within this context but not as the main focus of her article.

The fact is that most of the irresponsible behaviour of the parents cited does not lead to murder - as she rightly states - and, in fact, the murder rate of minors in the UK is, thankfully, still very low (and has hardly changed in 50 years).

So, one might conclude, differently from Melanie, that Huntley and Carr are aberations and, in fact, modern day equivalents of Brady and Hindley (who were even more sadistic in their torture and murder of their victims).

Even if someone inhabits a moral 'swamp' it rarely leads to murder. However, Melanie does point out quite rightly that some children are growing up in an environment that is morally chaotic with no people or institutions providing any real guidance as to the difference between right and wrong with well-defined boundaries that set out acceptable codes of behaviour. Often, they are born to parents who no longer seem able to distinguish. These are symptons of a modern sickness within British society and one that results in a whole range of anti-social behaviour that is now beyond the control of the institutions and the people that traditionally regulated social behaviour.

Wile I see that "society" has its share of blame for these disordered personalities; I would like to focus on more immediate causation.

Huntley drives a car.....did he present his driver's licence when applying for a job ? His birth certificate ? His NI number ? Did they all state his name as "Ian Nixon" or were they still "Ian Huntley" as his real name ?

He needed to use another name because his reference for this position was his father, a caretaker of another school.....and we all know that "Huntley" as a common surname might suggest they were related. Did those taing up references from Huntley Senior ask what his relationship was to the applicant ?

Michael Howard was Home Secretary when he put in place a laborious procedure whereby people had to prove identity when applying for jobs.....I am interested in learning just how Huntley proved he was "Ian Nixon".

The failure is at every level....from a school which provided housing to an unmarried couple. one of whom used a false identity....but presumably paid NI and Income Tax.......and another who worked in the school itself.......based on the fact that Huntley's background check was imperfect, how can one assume Maxine Carr's was okay ?

Up and down this country, teachers, scout leaders, voluntary workers, doctors, nurses are being charged £40+ and months of waiting to get a "Persilschein" to say they are unblemished......what this charade shows is that it its yet another Government Con and these people are now cast into doubt when volunteering is hard enough anyway.

Just why is our State run by such serial incompetents and bunglers ?

Romulus - Good questions, although not relevant to the article. However, re how Huntley aka Nixon, according to reports, did formally and legally change his name by deed poll. It still seems strange, though, that no one called him on it. He said he'd legally changed his name because he'd "had some problems". Strange that this didn't prompt anyone to ask, "What problems?"

I must say that I wholeheartedly agree with Rusty here.

"So after such revelations, Melanie says "The murder of children remains, thankfully, very rare." Isn't that the point then? "

It is indeed the point. Melanie's general argument about the destruction
wrought by left-liberal social policy is one with which I am in complete agreement, but the Soham case was not a legitimate hook on which to hang such an argument.

Rusty.It takes a great deal of courage to take such a rational position as you have here. Respect.

However....I fear that you push it a bit in your last paragraph.While bairns these days are indeed at no greater risk of being murdered in headline grabbing fashion than in the past, they most certainly are NOT safer.

Caroline:

"What Melanie calls "the governing class" - I assume she means teachers, people in law enforcement, religious leaders, doctors, community leaders, etc - has abdicated its responsibilities to the community, although not before putting up a good fight. But they have been sneered at, ridiculed and called "uptight" and "pathetic" for the last 30 years and *no one has spoken up for them*. So what used to be known as pillars of the community are no more."

Other than the assertion, which I have enclosed between asterisks in the above quoted paragraph from your posting, I agree entirely with what you say and as a long retired Police Officer I appreciate the skill and acumen with which you expressed your points. The only reason I quibble with the phrase "nobody has spoken up for them" is because there have been very good commentators and journalists that have consistently spoken up for them and Melanie Phillips is our champion in this regard and has been for many years.

The problem is, the logic of Melanie and others who have tried to stem the descent of society's infrastructure into the abyss has either been ignored or vilified by the agitprop tactics of the leftist libertarians.

When I watched the police incompetence, bungling, stupidity and post trial arrogance and complacency
publicly displayed throughout this tragic case of double murder, which could have been prevented with the basic application of common sense and crime prevention measures in Huntley's erstwhile home town, I was deeply disturbed and dismayed that the police service has deteriorated to it's present level of utter incompetence.

It confirmed what I have long feared, that many Chief Constables have been drawn, not from the pick of experienced and wise officers who have spent long periods of time in each rank and accrued experience and nous, but from a cadre of graduates whose accelerated promotion through the politically correct Bramshill brainwashing and Gramscian propaganda process has rendered them apparatchiks of the current government's appalling libertarian revolution. As a result their officers have become demoralised, incompetent (the worst form of corruption) and lazy.

After the trial was completed, both Chief Constables should have turned up at their HQ's just once more - to hand in their resignations, and, as they did so, to hang their heads in shame and contrition. If their Universities did not teach them that, then it was waste of public money, just as their fat salaries have been throughout their 'service'- or perhaps I should say, their careers.

Kenny, I don't agree. I cannot think of a more appropriate hook on which to hang her points about the destructiveness of the liberal left on society than this topical story. Huntley had sex with a series of underaged girls. This is statutory rape. Yet he was never charged. Society has given up on protecting under-aged girls from sexual predators. Had he been brought to book even once on any segment of these episodes of sexual predatation and violence, he wouldn't have checked out clean and he wouldn't have got the job. That is a point worth making and is perfectly illustrated by these nightmarish events. I read that a senior officer says he may have committed murder in the past, but he is so forensically savvy that he may have gotten away with it.

"This is statutory rape. Yet he was never charged. Society has given up on protecting under-aged girls from sexual predators"

my understanding was that prosecutions require a complaint. If the 'victim' was complicit in the act I do not see where you obtain your witness statements

Although I can't cite the statistics, I read not so long ago that the incidence of the murder of children by strangers has remained pretty much constant since figures have been kept. Choosing to ignore this fact, Melanie is more or less linking paedophilia with any other form of sexual activity of which
she disapproves. There is too the usual lazy and spiteful homophobia - it was all the fault of Ian Huntley's mother because she is a lesbian, apparently. If one-parent families and lesbian mums created psycopaths, then the UK would be teeming with them. It isn't, and the revulsion that everyone I have talked to, heterosexual, gay, or lesbian, feels at the events in Soham shows that nor is there the 'terrifying loss of human empathy' Melanie talks about. It is also completely illogical to believe that, for example, the change in attitudes towards lesbians and gay men, whose behaviour is seen now by most people to be natural, consensual and to harm no one, means that there is now going to be acceptance of all sexual behaviours that are clearly harmful and abusive, such as assault or child-abuse. It assumes that the majority of people are moral half-wits who can't make simple distinctions. But then I think that Melanie really does believe that us poor plebs need to be rescued from our 'fetid stew' (shades of James Anderton there talking about gay men who were HIV+ 'swirling around in a cess-pool of their own making') by our moral and intellectual superiors such as herself.

"it was all the fault of Ian Huntley's mother because she is a lesbian, apparently"

Interesting ! Where did you discover that ?

Romulus,

I didn't 'discover' it - Melanie states it in the article above.

Romulus - Perhaps Frank Pulley, above, can enlighten us. When a crime is perpetrated against a minor, who files the complaint? Who filed the complaint about the rape of a five month old baby a couple of months back? Surely the parents file complaints in such cases?

Frank Pulley - Yes, I was wrong to say no one spoke up for maintaining the structure of society when others were busy with the wrecking ball. You are right. There is Melanie, there's Peter Hitchens and quite a few others. Before them, there were equally famous, albeit it ignored in this context, names. But Melanie et al are calumnied, jeered at and mocked by the left and special interest groups who wish to elevate their own importance on the planet (see Matt, above) as being "judgemental". That is about as severe an offence as exists today.

The police in Britain have lost all sense of service to the community. There was that prat who let the drug industry basically take over Brixton, who allowed his male lover to smoke pot in his flat and who said he had a sneaking admiration for anarchy. His reward is, he's been promoted to an even higher position where he can do even more damage.

The tragic, tragic deaths of these two little girls can be directly traced to a lack of interest in upholding the law (under-age sex is against the law; several complaints about one man over a period of time would have raised the hackles of an alert police department). I also agree that, under this present jackbooted regime, it is the police officers who know how to pass exams, and not those with street savvy and finely tuned intution, who have taken over.

One tiny quibble: "liberals" (for which read "thought fascists") are not "libertarians". Libertarians are for much less government and less interference. They are at the other end of the political spectrum from "liberals".

"GPs hand over the morning-after pill. "

I don't know what Melanie prefers, but a GP faced with such a situation has either the choice of the RU pill or the whole debilitating procedure for abortion......just why should GPs be put in the position of policing society....they are too busy trying to cope with the after-effects of its social problems !

You can see why so many GPs are quitting the NHS !

While we are on the subject: Winston Churchill's father was a syphilitic philandrer and his American mother collected lovers; he seemed to be able to pursue a reasonable course in life.......maybe just maybe individuals should start to take responsibility for themselves and stop this "New Society" type stuff .....remember this periodical Melanie ? .....blaming parents, schools, traffic wardens etc.........yes, I know, we are familiar with the fact that Hitler could not get into Art School so he invaded Poland and Russia......but what did the other rejects do ?

The one thing (or one of the many things) that Melanie Phillips forgets/ignores, is that it doesn't matter whether Ian Huntley's Mum was a lesbian witch activist and his Dad Richard Nixon, the girls came to his house because they were asking after his then-girlfriend, Maxine Carr. It could well have happened as it did whether he was employed by the school or not.

Caroline:

Firstly, to address your point about ’leftist libertarians’ I would argue that the phrase is not necessarily an oxymoron, but if it helps I will emend it to ‘leftist libertines’ in the context of this subject. We can discuss the effect of libertarian ‘life styles’ and Lord Devlins’s ‘single seamless web’ argument at some other time and in some other context to clarify what my necessitarian stance would be in the broader context of your thinking.

But to return to the question of the deficiencies of the investigative processes in Grimsby: obviously, prima facie evidence has to be presented if someone is arrested, particularly on such a serious charge and one can forgive the police on the first occasion if they felt that reluctant witnesses and lack of corroborative evidence made the chances of a successful prosecution very slim. I would have persevered myself, but let’s be generous.

But thereafter Huntley should have been a target as a known sexual predator; his background should have been researched; a dossier should have been opened and kept active. On the second occasion he came to notice, every effort should have been made to secure, by gentle persuasion and with due reassurances, direct evidence of Unlawful Sexual Intercourse (USI) and every effort made to bring the case to court and secure a conviction. Experienced officers should have been able to cope with this and the full resources Social Services should have been brought into play. It is unforgivable that more effort and resources were not put into stopping this predatory pervert. I simply do not believe that there was no officer in Humberside Constabulary capable of bring a successful prosecution. If there is not, then I hereby offer to come out of retirement, at 70 years of age, and show them how. And I certainly wouldn’t use the Data Protection Act as an arse shield. I could think of a hundred ways that Huntley could have been put under surveillance and captured in delicto flagrante.

The fact that his proclivity was exposed on ten occasions and the only response from Humberside police was to “weed” the information relating to it is so bizarre as to be absolutely incredible. I understand that Humberside has Child Protection Unit; moreover, every police station has a Collator, someone whose job it is to collect, evaluate, collate and analyse information on individuals, groups, businesses and premises that have come to police notice on their patch for suspected criminal behaviour or enterprises. To suggest that none of Huntley’s actions came to the notice of the Collator, or the Child Protection Unit simply cannot be true. The ultimate duty of a Collator, having performed four intelligence functions listed above, is to disseminate information to an appropriate level of authority for the necessary resources to be acquired and executive action taken. The Data Protection Act is irrelevant - the CC is grasping at straws that will surely crumble in his trembling hand. If he really believes what he has asserted he is a fool. If he doesn’t he’s a liar. Take your pick.

If these steps were not taken as a matter of routine, then the chain of command, right up to Chief Constable, is both responsible and accountable for the dire results that ensued. Heads should roll from bottom to top, including his. He can’t plead that he “was upstairs collecting fares” as the old cop-speak goes! It is not possible that a man with Huntley’s intelligence could thwart an efficient police force on ten occasions. It is farcical to suggest it. I do not buy the argument that Huntley was so clever and cunning that he could have outwitted any police officer that was worth his salary. It is utter cobblers. He did not, as the Counsel for the Prosecution suggested during the trial “run rings around them”. It was a no-brainer from the second day and the police ran rings around one another, whilst his demeanour, his behaviour and his words should have flagged even to a rookie cop with the most basic training under his/her belt that they had their man; and that the location being used as a press office and general meeting place was a sensitive crime scene. As for the officer in charge of the enquiry – don’t even ask me to describe what I feel about him!

Furthermore, the performance of the arrogant Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire during his post-trial press conference had me throwing things at my TV screen. If this is an example of modern Chief Officers, then the abysmal failure of police to contain the exponential rise in crime, social disorder and dysfunction becomes much clearer.

And before anyone talks about 20/20 hindsight; I was screaming at anyone who would listen from Monday 5th August onwards, “I hope they have filleted the caretaker, he’s the obvious prime suspect, why isn’t he sitting in the interview cell? Why are they trampling all over the crime scene?”

I simply couldn’t believe that he had not been thoroughly investigated and eliminated. If I had known that he hadn’t, I would have gone to Soham myself and prompted them, I live only 20 miles away in my retirement.

There must be thousands and thousands of ex-coppers like myself who have been going through the same thought processes during the past few days. But it is not just the police that failed; I read the transcript on Sky inter-active throughout the trial and I am not surprised that the Jury had problems and took 18 hours to reach a verdict. The opening speech and the cross examinations were poor, the summing up speeches were also confusing. I also cannot understand why Huntley was allowed to allege the police had “stitched him up” on a previous occasion in Grimsby and that was the reason he was afraid to report the “accidental deaths” of the girls – for fear of being stitched up again. By making this allegation he opened the door to rebuttal evidence being introduced. I see no reason why the police officers in that case should not have been called to explain that not only did they not stitch him up, but also that they had given him the benefit of the doubt in a very dodgy set of circumstances. I am pretty certain too, that if the police, the CPS and the Counsel had done their jobs properly, some way could have been devised to introduce evidence of the record of serial sex allegations against him, as further rebuttal of his assertion of previous good character and victimisation by the police. I think there are many villains who would be happy to suffer the police victimisation that he suffered, viz. being let off ten times when he was obviously bang to rights on each occasion.

This case must result in a shake up from Land’s End to John O’Groats, not only in deference to the memories and Holly and Jessica and their agonised parents, but also to shake up the complacent Chief Officers who think that there main purpose is to make sure they get their holidays on time, play plenty of Golf, get to their Lodges on Thursday evenings and plan for their inflation proof pensions, rather than supervising their systems and functions and kicking ass when appropriate.

I am now reluctant to admit to people I meet that I ever served as a police officer, such is the ignominy that these deficient guardians of the Queen’s Peace have brought down on the reputation of Her Majesty’s Constabularies. Their attempt to garner credit outside the Old Bailey after the trial was another obscene and inappropriate attempt to draw a red herring across their bungling buffoonery during the investigation. Had it not been for observant members of the public and persistent press investigation Huntley would have evaded capture for the 11th known occasion (and God knows how many other times that are still ‘on file’ in some forgotten file dump).

Loz

Don't be daft. He would never have been in Soham if Humberside and Cambs constab had done their job properly. Moreover in my experience most nonces come from dysfunctional families; it certainly can't help a psychopathic pervert to control himself if his philandering Pa runs off and leaves the family and his Ma takes up with a Dyke. But all of that can't excuse double child slaying, otherwise there would be few children left to defile in these libertine times.

Good item Frank Pulley. It is clear that it is not only railways which we have let decline abysmally in this country.

Frank Pulley - That was a mind bogglingly riveting post. I wish it had been longer! A fascinating analysis, from someone who knows and understands all the strands of law enforcement, of the baffling inadequacy of the police in this (and how many others?) case.

I seriously suggest that you write a book about this. Your writing style is gripping.

When Melanie Phillips writes about the worrying state of our education system she chooses and researches her examples well. Yet when she hypothesizes about the makings of a mind like Ian Huntley’s, the morally flawed errors begin to pile up.

It is more likely that a dry and guilty symbiosis between man and wife leads to the passionless consumer culture that Melanie rightly despises rather than the fact that sexuality is not at all as simple as Melanie would like it to be. Her tenuous connection between sexual orientation and murderous violence is preposterous. So is the insinuation that no more than one life-long sexual partner is the key ingredient to a morally healthy and self-accountable human being. Of course care and interest in our children is vital and it is extremely worrying that the vast majority of girls who suffer from anorexia come from middle class families where the parents still appear to be happily married.

If a child learns nothing but social lies through the imitations of the “model stability”, the fallout is like to be just as devastating as the one which might occur from the child who is provided with no family stability whatsoever.

Karen: "more likely that a dry and guilty symbiosis between man and wife leads to the passionless consumer culture that Melanie rightly despises rather than the fact that sexuality is not at all as simple as Melanie would like it to be."

One word: HUH? We are discussing murder of two children by a sexual predator here and the destruction of community enforced rules of behaviour which enables the Huntleys of this world to operate on the edges without censure or even, as Frank Pulley points out, notice.

What on earth are you talking about? The connection between sexual predators, sexual violence and murder has been established for centuries. Check Vladimir the Impaler for someone who kidnapped children for sexual pleasure, then murdered them. Or the Marquis de Sade. Or, oh, let's bring it forward to moral bankrupts you might have heard of: Myra Hyndley and Ian Brady.

A "passionless consumer culture" ... uh, say what?Ian Huntley preyed on little girls and adolescent girls because he is a violent pervert, not because his credit card was maxed out and he was mad with the bank.

Hey! Maybe it's something to do with people called Ian! You know how dryly consumer oriented they are!

I think you're the same Karen who posted on another Melanie Phillips thread that you wanted society to give your husband a job that would enable you to stay at home and look after your children. Only socialists/communists think that "society" should give "to each according to his need" rather than merit. I think you have a problem with a capitalistic/consumer society and that Christmas spending is upsetting you. And you think all society's ills and perversions derive from consumerism.

In a previous article yopu complainmed about the victim culture. You feel it is wrong for victims of bullying, rape, or wife beating to complain yet now you have decided it is OK to complain. What sorts of abuses it is it acceptable to complain about. Should we label those who hate Ian Huntley as "man haters". After all you labelled the governments anti domesitc abuse laws as being those of "man haters".

My own view is the victim culture is good. It is the bedrock of a civlised society. We should complain about abuse we should hate abuse and feel negatively to those who act such abuses.
It is not a victim culture that causes the soham murder it was an abuse culture.

This is meandering a little. Ian Huntley was treated as a rational human being until sentenced, given the benefit of the doubt; and allowed to vote and drive.

He failed to act as a responsible human being and failed......he alone is responsible. He is not a doll, nor was he attached to his mother's apron strings; he was the kind of man that attracts weak women and makes them subservient....either through force of will, or the use of force.

HE and HE alone is responsible for his actions; and not some "culture" "society" or "syndrome". He is the perpetrator and he failed to control his urge to dominate and subdue and destroy.......he gets his very own cell for his very own action.......if he wants 'society' 'consumerism' or 'culture' in there with him....good luck......he should just thank Sidney Silverman MP for carrying out Roy Jenkins' wishes........

Romulus just excellently cut to the chase! There are no side issues. And all that prevented this controlling pervert from being apprehended several years sooner was an enabling, non-judgemental society which has lost its sense of direction. But ultimately, as Romulus nails it, Huntley was responsible for controlling himself, as we all are.

Rory you are not thinking straight. What is wrong with the victim culture is that people who abuse other people are encouraged to think of themselves as victims too.

We saw this in the United States with the OJ Simpson trial, where a black man, an abuser and killer of women, got off because he presented himself as a victim of racism.

Who wants to think of themselves as a perpetual victom of society any way? Is that the way to build strong healthy cultures and communities? I think not.

In the US and the UK, the stoic survivor who took adversity in stride and bounced back was once considered an admirable role model.

Today, the race is on to see who can present the most pitiful case to excuse their actions. I was watching the "current events" chat shows last night and they made me sick. Various relatives of Michael Jackson were all over the TV moaning about how he had been victimised by the media, the racist police, anybody and everybody responsible for his arrest except himself. They have misappropriated the victimhood of the children he molested for themselves. I find this utterly disgusting.

First of all ,
this is in response to Micheal Jackson to Susan.

For Micheal after watching the video in which he was exploited by the English reporter. One thing that stood out was how simple was Micheal in term of socializing skills. Also , the fact that he likes to hang with kids is that well he never had a childhood of his own and just wanted to make life a better place for children.

Before we put any accusation against the African american
gentle man lets not hang him before a fair trial people.

All he is guilty of doing is giving some kids free luxury that most of them never had either because they were poor or sometimes it was their last wish.

Furthermore, in case of his children , he loves them I mean its clear that he is with them 24 hours a day , what else do you want in a parent?

As for the masks for the children , he just want their identities to be protected so his children will not have reporters chasing them ...

Did he molested people or not that is for the court to decide. I honestly do not think a guy who treats children of others as his own childrens is gona be savage enough to comit an act of molestation.

Its a shame that our society we actually punish characters as lovable as Micheal with titles as Whacko Jacko and now serious charges of Molestation. So what if he wants stright hair instead of his natural hair, so what if he wants a smaller nose...who cares?
its his nose...his life.

One thing does stays very strongly in my mind though is the length people will go to see this guy humiliated in public.

Example # 1 The british reported made a name for himself on Micheal's expense.

Example # 2: The child dangling pictures were really so much intensified, in reality the whole incident was 0.23 seconds. In the picture the child looks dangling since the child had a cover .. on their head. Actually the child was in his hand quite firmly.

Example #3 50 police officers rampaging his ranch .... as if they were on the hunt for Rambo or somthing.

I personally thing 25% of those officers just wanted to be involed for the heck of it may be ride a ride on the jackson park for free.

Question: So is he a victum?

Yes Micheal is a victum of Society , where people make carees out of his misery simple as that. A happy Micheal means they have no jobs. They create these fictional stories to make life interesting in the tabliods and papers.

Anyways so no need to be disgusted , yes he is black and has whited children and he is their biological father. Some people may find that offensive and gives them enough motive to take the custody of those chidren away form him. America is not a free country yet.

As for Oj simpson well ..

I think the Jury was not all black .. their was no substantial evidence to convince them .. so OJ was set free..

I don't know much about the case myself to say anything I was too young at that point .. when this case was going on I cared more about harmones then some court case going on .. but I do admit the world stood still when they announced that verdict.

The "standard disclosure" for people working with children and "vulnerable adults" checks the Police National Computer for any court convictions plus details of any police cautions, warnings or reprimands, and runs a List 99 check.

The "enhanced disclosure" for people "in sole charge of children or vulnerable adults" is the same as a standard disclosure but can also include locally-held police intelligence about an applicant, and obtaining that still takes time.

Since 1990 the Department of Education for Northern Ireland has required a criminal record check on anyone before they are appointed to a position giving "substantial access to children".

This applies to employees and volunteers, whether full-time or part-time.

The list of posts covered is extensive: all professional, ancillary, administrative and clerical staff employed by all state and independent schools and further education institutions, guidance centres, education and library boards, the youth and music services - even home tuition teachers, drivers and school crossing patrol staff.

In addition the department records cases of misconduct by teachers, which takes account of not only court convictions but dismissals and even press reports.

What about teachers from overseas?

Not covered by the CRB.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/2223657.stm

What is important to me, given that Melanie Phillips is adding to the worrying diagnosis of Britain as a complete basket case, is where does she see Britain in five or ten years' time without any radical change? I also looked back and read her piece "Locking up the British mind" from 2002, and that was like a precursor to the current trend. Having lived in Germany for a number of years, I am beginning to feel like an alien in Britain. Everywhere I go I see the vacant stares of thousands of Brits whose shallowness is evident from their appearance and behaviour and the thin veneer of respectability has worn so thin as to be practically non-existent. If we do not change, where will it all end?

Mike

Five further levels down the abyss - add another notch for every year therafter. 'Twas ever thus. And that's an optimistic forecast.

Frank Pulley. That was a bit Delphic. Care to explain?

Mike if you want to add to it read Theodore Dalrymple's piece in The Sunday Times today.....he talks of "pigsty" Britain in terms of behaviour and values

Mike if you want to add to it read Theodore Dalrymple's piece in The Sunday Times today.....he talks of "pigsty" Britain in terms of behaviour and values

Interesting posts but the sickness of society shouldn't be a surprise to any of you.

Where you have no absolutes in the life values of the people in a society, you will just have shifting sands of personal morality.

The natural law is to chaos so if there are no absolutes to hold on to then everyone does as he/she thinks is ok.

When you couple that to they not being held accountable for their behaviour, then you pour the lack of absolutes into the succeeding generations.

As Frank has said it is going to get worse.
Read the internet papers around the world.
Look at your own "role (royal) models".

Underage sex, Phooey.
The total sexualisation of the media has produced a society that is desensitised to the traditional values (and responsibilities) of relationships.

We've been reading the glee of your papers in describing those paragons of social standards the Footballers and their "roastings".

Is it any wonder that society has become unhinged about relationships.

Just a thought, How many of us can throw the first stone?
Mike NZ

"Just a thought, How many of us can throw the first stone?
Mike NZ"

That Mike is why Heaven rejoiceth over one Sinner that repents.....because he can cast the first stone !

Romulus

If the article by Theodore Dalrymple is on line would you kindly post the link.

Reply to Sheraz: I agree with you that Michael Jackson is a victim. He was abused and exploited by his father and other family members since he was a small boy. He suffered tremendously and that's probably why he is so weird today.

However, none of this should be a justification for him passing the abuse on to someone else. If his relatives think he is innocent, they should lay out why he is innocent in solid and reasonable terms - not try to deflect the issue by babbling about racism and police brutality and his horrible childhood. The fact that this is what they do, instead of defending him point by point, should tell you something about whether or not he is guilty.

And yes, indeed, the OJ verdict was about racism, not about whether or not he killed his wife and her friend. The fact that you can't see that is probably due to the fact that you've been brought up in the morally fuzzy morass created by moral relativism. It's so hard to get away from that kind of pervasive thinking that I do it myself sometimes, even though I know better.

Note to Rom and Mike: I love Theo. Dalrymple. I bought his book "Life at the Bottom" and have given it to others as a Christmas present. However, you can find all of his essays and articles -- going back to 1995 or so -- linked online at Judd Brothers' blog, including all of those that were collected in Life at The Bottom.

Mea culpa - it was The Sunday Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fopinion%2F2003%2F12%2F21%2Fdo2102.xml

Even if Ian Huntley had not killed Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, he would have deserved a life sentence or two. Society desperately needed to be protected from the predatory and conscienceless behaviour that he exhibited over several years; but if this is so, scores and possibly even hundreds of thousands of young British men deserve the same fate. For the horrible fact is that Ian Huntley was in many respects a perfectly normal young British male - normal in the statistical sense, that is, and within a certain social stratum. Only his superior educational accomplishments (nine GCSEs) and his two murders set him apart.

As for Maxine Carr, she was normal for young British womanhood in precisely the same sense. Her dialectic between abject submission to a violent, jealous man on the one hand, and utter drunken sluttishness on the other, is characteristic of hundreds, if not thousands, of young women whom I have seen as patients over the years, and whose behaviour is to be witnessed in every British town and city at weekends. Except for the extremity of its denouement, the Soham story was typical of the pigsty that is so much of modern Britain

Let us get one thing straight: Huntley was no paedophile. True, he liked sex with underage girls: but since the age of consent has, in effect, been abolished in this country, there was nothing in the slightest unusual about that. Indeed, some of his liaisons with underage girls were conducted with the full knowledge and consent of their parents, who either winked at them or positively acted as panders to Huntley.

The very banality of the Soham episode (except for its unusually horrific outcome) is what so enrages a great deal of the British public, for they see in Huntley and Carr not monsters, if monstrosity consists in being out of the ordinary, but themselves. Huntley and Carr are a looking glass in which they are reflected, and they respond by wishing to break the glass. Many of the prisoners who want to kill Huntley will have fathered abandoned bastards, will have abused women, will have been possessive, jealous and violent. In many cases, it is more by luck than judgment that they haven't killed. And so they react with the ferocity of the justly accused.

Their girlfriends, of course, will have been Maxine Carrs. These Maxine Carrs do not break with their criminal boyfriends because they are appalled by what they have done, or by the vileness of the acts they have committed, but because their men are absent in prison for prolonged periods, and they receive what they think are better offers elsewhere, usually from men of precisely the same type.

Huntley's need to dominate women, or girls, is typical of the inflamed egotism of many young British men. Claiming complete sexual freedom for themselves, they nevertheless desire the exclusive sexual possession of a woman or girl (the younger they are, the easier to dominate they are). These young men need exclusive possession to boost their fragile sense of self-importance in an age in which wealth and celebrity fill their minds as never before: and while they may not cut much of a figure in the wider world, at least they are all-important to one woman (or girl, in Huntley's, and many other young men's, case).

The problem is that their own sexual unscrupulousness leads them to suppose that everyone else is cut from the same cloth. Thus no relationship for them is ever secure, or even reasonably stable. For them, every man is a threat and every woman is a slut (after all, they should know, because they have "pulled" scores of women, each within a few minutes of meeting them). Arbitrary violence alternating with charm is the obvious, if unstable and only temporary, answer to the conundrum.

The arbitrary violence sets the woman an insoluble problem: how do I avoid it? For example, a man may demand a freshly cooked meal on his return to the house, but adamantly refuse to say when he is coming home. There is no possible answer to this conundrum, but so long as she is puzzling over it, she is thinking - to the point of obsession - about him, which is precisely what he wants her to be doing. That is also why, as Huntley did with Carr, he tries to separate her from all her previous friends and even from her family, in short, all other sources of social and psychological support. Huntley and Carr went to live in remote villages in which there was no public transport, so that Carr, who did not drive, could go nowhere, and do nothing except wait for Huntley.

Of course, after each episode of violence, the woman threatens to leave. Then the man turns on the charm. Not only does he apologise and swear never to repeat the episode, but he becomes attentiveness itself, all flowers and chocolates (Huntley knew the technique). The woman says, "When he's nice, doctor, he's very nice." I wish I had £100 for every time I have heard that. The trouble is, when he's horrible, he's murderous, and in my view strangulation trumps chocolates any day.

But the Maxines of the world "love him to bits": first, they are scared of what he would do to them if they left; second, they are scared of what he would do to himself if they left (Huntley was an adept at the tactical overdose); third, they believe that all men are the same and better the psychopath you know than the psychopath you don't; and fourth, after decades of propaganda in favour of romanticism, they believe that feelings, in this case love or lust, are more important than knowledge, for example that a man is feckless, violent, dangerous and worthless.

Huntley and Carr, therefore, were by no means exceptional; rather, they were typical, at least of a disturbingly large proportion of the inhabitants of these islands. The insensate fury aroused by the case is caused by the fact that it has shone a light in dark places, on the mob. They have seen the enemy, and it is themselves.

News: Huntley must serve at least 50 years, trial judge is told

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2003

Gosh, Romulus. Why not just post the link?

I see now that the British taxpayer is to spend £750,000 protecting Maxine Carr from the consequences of her own criminal behaviour. She is not just to be given a new identity, but a whole new country! (They seem to think Australia is still taking lags and slags, unaware that the immigration standards have been elevated considerably over the last 200 years. Nowadays, you need to be of good moral character and have a degree or a technical skill that the country needs. Which would seem to exclude Carr on every count.)

Giving police informers new identities makes sense because they've jeopardised their own lives by giving information valuable to the police, thereby contributing to the British justice system. Carr attempted to pervert the course of British justice and is therefore an enemy of the system. Why are the politically correct morons who make these decisions going to spend £750,000 of taxpayer's money to shield her from the consequences of her own criminal behaviour? It is only at the discussion stage just now, and perhaps anyone who feels that Carr should be left to make her own way in the world and cope with the consequences of actions she knowingly undertook should contact his/her MP and let them know that you want this zany notion abandoned.

She is certainly very weak, ill educated and easily manipulated, and she committed one criminal offence that we know of. How this entitles her to £750,000 of taxpayer's money to shield her from the consequences of her bad decisions is quite puzzling.

Gosh, Romulus. Why not just post the link?

Well Caroline, in my misapprehension that the site was The Times, I realised that those from outside the UK could not access the site.....and I wanted everyone to have a chance to read it

No offence, but I don't think Americans would be particularly interested as there aren't really any corresponding types in the US that they could relate to. At least, not in the almost universally accepted manner Melanie and Dr Darymple describe. The pervasive breakdown of society and social norms is a particularly British phenomenon. I haven't encountered it in any other country. Someone having sex with underage girls would have been banged up a long time ago in the US, even in very liberal states with liberal laws, like Massachusetts.

Every society has its underclass, of course, but in Britain, the mores of the underclass have been elevated to being regarded as the norm.

True Caroline, but in the US you have PWT - Poor White Trash and although different in constitution, I am afraid exactly the same misfits run around and underage sex is not uncommon, nor drugs, alcohol and truancy......

I am afraid that things such as happen and doninate our press are exaggerated by repeated coverage.....how many children were murdered in the same time period is not publicised.......in the past this would have been an inside story.....I bet the coverage of Brady and Hindley in 1968 was much less sensationalized.

Germany has the same problems....hardly a week goes by without some young girl vanishing and turning up raped and dead......and it is only the insularity of our media focussing on one issue ad nauseam which gives this feeling of uniqueness.

We live in an era of convergence where many of the problems in our own society are replicated elsewhere.....Germany, USA, France....all suffer the same maladies......only the remedies will have to be different.....society is atomising and politicians are deconstructing society as they pander to sectional interests and fads.

"Society is atomising" - great phrase! In my post above, I intentionally tried to indicate that I was not talking about po' white trash in the US. If you lived in the US, you'd know that they have very little in commone with the disaffected, self-centred flotsam and jetsom that washes around Britain today. There is nothing in the United States approaching the mayhem in British towns and cities on weekend nights at closing time. Nothing.

There is nothing like the drinking to get drunk to get sick culture. No other country in the world exports the garbage that we send to resorts like Falikari (sp?) all through the summer. I have never seen anyone have sex in the street in the US. There are standards of behaviour in America that all classes adhere to.

I live in France and I have never witnessed here anything like the "normal" behavior of young British men and women.

That people are raped and murdered happens all over the world and has done throughout history. It is not murder that we were discussing. It was the unpicking of the fabric of society which allows people who should have been prosecuted and punished 10 years before to carry on offending as though their behaviour was unexceptional.

Sorry, Romulus, your arguments are well reasoned and very interesting to read, but your facts are wrong. Britain is worse than anywhere else because the social cohesion has gone and no one dares to try to keep up community standards for fear of getting a beating. In French hospitals, they don't have bulletproof glass between the medical personal and the patients. In France, doctors don't conduct their surgeries inside police stations for their own safety. In France, school children do not attack their teachers. In France, parents don't go down to the school and beat up the teacher for reprimanding their child. This happens only in Britain.

It is due mainly to the Marxism which strangely took root in Britain through channels like the BBC, but also through faux academics like Hobsbawm and a legion of others and preachy pacifists like Bertrand Russell, that has dripped its poison into the civil society for so long. People have feared to say them nay because the Marxists round on them with such viciousness - like wolverines or vipers. Just look at the Marxist-funded anti-war crowd. Not in Our Name is funded almost entirely by Marxist organisation, which are, unbelievably, alive and thriving. The people who attend their rallies are vicious and destructive.

Well Caroline, I will accept your point. You forgot our Marxist friend Miliband whose son is now Schools Minister.......

There has been an undermining of structure and authority it is true.......Grammar Schools were modelled on Public Schools......and much of that was linked into County, Church, Regiment, House, Prefect.......and funnily enough it was the Public School progeny like Anthony Crosland, Shirley Williams, who deconstructed things together with Grammar School boys like Woy Jenkins.

Well Caroline, I will accept your point. You forgot our Marxist friend Miliband whose son is now Schools Minister.......

There has been an undermining of structure and authority it is true.......Grammar Schools were modelled on Public Schools......and much of that was linked into County, Church, Regiment, House, Prefect.......and funnily enough it was the Public School progeny like Anthony Crosland, Shirley Williams, who deconstructed things together with Grammar School boys like Woy Jenkins.

Yes, Romulus. How strange that the socialists destroyed grammar schools - the one route a poor but intelligent or gifted child could take out of poverty and into a life of achievement and reward. This is why I believe the socialists are destructive Marxists; they seek to divide and destroy society; not to promote cohesion and opportunity.
You can see it today in the absurd promotion of racism into a major crime. Certainly, it's hateful, ignorant and hurtful, but it has been elevated by the socialists to be more important to the police than booking burglars and muggers. The political correctness freaks who outlaw Christmas carols because "we must remember we're a multi-cultural society and we mustn't offend other religions". This is so specious as to defy description and it is an argument designed to divide society.
Britain is between five and six percent ethnic minority. They could fit in and fade into the general woodwork and get on with their lives if they weren't constantly being used to beat the white majority. And it's very seldom a minority, per se, complains about anything. No Muslim has ever complained about Christmas carols or services. They're not stupid. So the socialists promote disharmony by pretending to a care for immigrants while actually portraying them as being so ignorant and stupid that they hadn't realised by were living in an at least nominally Christian country.
They destroyed the grammar schools so everyone would be fed the same thin gruel of what passes for education - certainly not tutored in thinking logically and thinking for themselves. The socialists are well on their way to getting the passive society they seek. I've never understood what their ends are, though. It always strikes me as a "So what?" deal. OK. Everyone's passive and does as they're told. The tax system has been organised so that even the middle classes now have to apply for clawbacks. In other words, the intention to make the population dependent on the government, not on itself, for its wellbeing is well underway. Now what?

There was an interesting programme on German TV about life in the GDR...how children of Christians were persecuted, banned from university, and some were imprisoned to eradicate it.

In many ways they have succeeded as the predominantly Lutheran GDR is very secular and somewhat amoral, whereas West Germany is largely immoral...but there is a solid core of Christians defending themselves against the Secularists esp. in Bavaria.

It is interesting how the Left has used the Muslims to attack Christianity, whereas moderate Muslims prefer those who believe in God to the secularists of The Guardian whose verities are rejected by anyone with faith in God.

It is however for Christians to resist....after all Andrew, Paul, Jesus himself were all executed by Roman Secular Power......when all modern Christians have to do is to stand up and be counted.....they don't even have to defy a dictator as did Pastor Niemoeller or Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Caroline, you're wrong, Americans are very interested in Dalrymple's ideas. "Life at the Bottom" was a major best-seller in the US. Also the US may not be as far along as Britain in the path to socialist-inspired anarchy, but we are certainly getting there in some places -- or were until a backlash recently set in, epitomized by ex-Mayor Guiliani's zero tolerance for crime policy and some school districts adopting sexual abstinence-promoting programs for teen-agers, and by the welfare reform act of 1996 which tied benefits to job seeking. However all of these improvements can be easily over-turned when the "progressives" get back into power, as US politics is very cyclical.

We have had "progressives" inner-city schools trying to teach poor black children -- those of our society who need a good education the most pressingly of all -- that ghetto patois is a legitimate "language." We have had whack-job "teachers" who have plenty of time to hold "Free Mumia teach-ins" for the same kids -- but apparently, not much time or money to teach them to read, speak and write English properly. And on and on it goes.

One more thing: Caroline you correctly note that the main goal of the "progressives" is to destroy Western Civilization, social cohesivness and culture, but you wonder what their "end game" is. The simple answer is that they don't have one. They only know how to destroy, not build up. Building up something, anything, is a heresy against their one over-riding social imperative: equality of outcome for all people at all times. The very act of building something up is a statement that violates the "equality" of builders and non-builders, and that's unacceptable to the "progressives."

Why do you think the current slogan for the Marxist retreads is, "Let's destroy capitalism and replace it with something nicer." They have no idea what that "something nicer" is. They only know how to destroy, and they despise those of us who know how to build up as heretics and apostates from their irrational, destructive social religion.

Romulus - Certainly most Muslims - save those in bonkers regimes - respect people who follow a religion (particularly Christianity, as it is part of their own tradition) in preference to people who don't, because people with a faith are generally moral,law-abiding and considerate. They never asked for any of this divisive political correct garbage. It was an officious little indigene school teacher in Yorkshire who took The Three Little Pigs out of the nursery school library in case it "offended Muslims. We are a multi-cultural society".

First, we're not multicultural. 5-6% does not make "multicultural",although the idea is being imposed on Britain by the application of a jackboot to the forehead. It makes an ethnic minority that most societies since the beginning of time have been perfectly able to absorb happily. People have been travelling and changing countries for tens of thousands of years. American Indian tribes are noted for having had "foreigners" through marriage integrated into their societies. It's no big deal - certainly not at 5 or 6%. This is normal among humankind.

Second, the Muslims, when confronted, said they'd never complained about the nursery school book and they well understood that the host society had a different attitude to pigs than they do. In other words, the lefty multi-cultis had attempted to make the Muslims look bigoted and intolerant - not to say totally stupid - when they weren't at all. Why?

Divide and rule.

I don't take your final point, however. You say that Christians don't have to stand up and face a dictator, but they do. The entire radical left establishment, including the Archbish of Cantab. No wonder the churches are emptying faster than the mice can scurry out.

I'm not arguing from the Christian point of view, but from the position of one who thinks Christian attitudes have brought, on balance, benefice and progress to the human race. I seem to be more alive to the mind-boggling intellectual and humanitarian contributions made by the Judeo-Christian root than many "Christians" like, oh, Tony Blair, who advertises his Christianity, but failed to understand that a christening is a public event and he couldn't ban the public from the church.

Susan - I'm really interested to hear this. And, based on what you've posted, I understand how Dalrymple could apply. And I'm grateful to have been alerted.

Given what you've said, are you not referring to the black underclass? (Forgive me if I misread you.) I would still propose that the destruction of an indigenous society by the woodlice within, has never occurred in humanity before. (Black people were sold by their fellow blacks - what a betrayal! - into a white society. To further the ends of the cotton plantations.)They were inserted into the ruling society for economic gain - not to destroy that society.

The white lefties of Britain have imported black people and Muslims specifically in order to provide themselves with a "cause" they could right.

This is not to imply in any way that immigrants cannot fit into the fabric of British society, and certainly, it's to everyone's benefit to see them assimilated. But they weren't encouraged to come to Britain for any reason other than the dilution of Britishness.

I was fascinated by your point that the left doesn't know what to do next. I'd never thought of it before. I always thought there was a glorious end-dream, but I think you're right. There's nothing. A void. Vacuity. But why fight so long to establish a vaccum?

Caroline...the dictator was Adolf Hitler....the penalty was Concentration Camp where Niemoeller was incarcerated and Bonhoeffer died - I think the situation in the West is a pushover compared to what they had to face; it is a pushover compared to the earth-shattering situation Martin Luther faced bringing himself as a mere monk into conflict with the most powerful institution on earth with a mandate from God and a continuity from Kefa or Simon-Peter who stood beside Jesus Christ

www.bonhoeffer.com

http://thesumners.com/bonhoeffer/

APRIL 9, 1995 was the 50th anniversary of the execution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by the Nazis. He died at 39, but left a legacy in his writings that now, a half-century later, still provides valuable insight for Christians seeking to live faithfully to the Gospel in a culture dominated by hostile ideologies.

http://www.gospelcom.net/chi/GLIMPSEF/Glimpses/glmps063.shtml

Bonhoeffer was condemned for his involvement in "Operation 7," a rescue mission that had helped a small group of Jews over the German border and into Switzerland. The 39-year-old theologian had also been involved in planning an unsuccessful assassination attempt on the life of Adolf Hitler. His participation in the murder plot obviously conflicts with Bonhoeffer's position as a pacifist. His sister-in-law, Emmi Bonhoeffer, cited his reasoning. He told her: "If I see a madman driving a car into a group of innocent bystanders, then I can't, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe and then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver."

http://lutherthemovie.com/

Caroline, it is not I but Dalrymple himself (he also writes for a New York e-mag called "City Journal") who compares the US black underclass with the British white underclass. He points out many parallels between the two, illustrating that it isn't a matter of race or ethnic origin, but an indictment of how the welfare state currently contributes to the formation of a violent, barbaric underclass.

There are of course US blacks who have made it into the middle and upper classes who see the light, but their enlightenment is so far only trickling down into the ghettos.

Also, we also have leftists who seek to import immigrants (the most valuable to their cause being non-white immigrants, of course) to use as a battering ram against the state as currently constituted. It is particularly bad in my home state, California, where the left has introduced its most destructive policy yet: all sorts of proposals to give illegal immigrants the same documents and rights as legal citizens and residents, including the right to vote in local elections. San Francisco recently only narrowly defeated a "Greens" mayoral candidate who wanted to give illegals the right to vote in school board elections -- obviously a first step toward giving them the right to vote in other, more important elections as well. Now, the illegal immigrants in California can easily obtain the rights of citizenship by standing in the same queue as other immigrants to the US and taking the citizenship oath, etc. But the left doesn't want that to happen. Those Latinos who undergo the citizenship process have an annoying habit of assimilating into and supporting the prevailing political order, just what the left doesn't WANT to happen at all costs. They think they can keep Latinos out of the assimilation loop by absolving them of the need to go through the citizenship process.

And the political establishment in California is just mad enough to eventually let it happen and with that, Civil War would probably follow.

I do not have a problem with Latinos, I have lived with them all my life. Prior to being exploited by the leftists, they have assimilated into the US melting pot just like everyone else. Intermarriage between Latinos and whites and other races has been historically high. But from the mid-70s on, the trend has been toward non-assimilating, encouraged of course by the oh-so-solicitous left.

Our traditional American culture of the immigrant melting pot is under vicious attack by the leftists who seek to destroy our unity on all fronts and replace our society of individual rights with one of group rights (in other words, a return to tribalism and all the lovely things that will follow from that.) It is frightening to behold. The US is too ethnically, culturally and religiously diverse to sustain a serious breakdown in the old melting pot culture; what would follow such a breakdown would be chaos, anarchy, civil war and violence. The left knows this and that is what it is counting on. For them the United States is the Great Satan of capitalism same as it is for the radical Islamists. Only when the US is destroyed will their holy grail be achieved.

With regard to the left not having any end game, it is readily apparent from their writings. They in fact admit it themselves. George Monbiot admitted it only a few weeks ago after attending the "anti-Globalization" forum in France recently. He wrote a column for the Guardian saying he didn't know what would replace capitalism after it was destroyed, but he just kenw it would be something lovely and wonderful and full of bunnies and kittens and rainbows. (I'm exaggerating of course, but not by much.)

Read David Horowitz's memoir, "Radical Son." Horowitz is an ex-Marxist radical from the 60s who turned hard Reaganite in the 80s. He records that one of his epiphanies about the left occurred when he looked at his book shelf and realize that there were hundreds of tomes describing what was wrong with capitalism and how to destroy it, but only a handful postulating what its replacement would look like.

People like Monbiot (and like Horowitz in his radical son days) have no clue; they have never held a real job except for teaching and writing about their pet theories. They have no clue how to create a product, make a sale, bring in a crop, load a ship, meet a payroll. They are completely divorced from reality. How can they have any idea of how to build the more "just" society they fantasize about? Matt Gonzalez, the Green candidate who nearly became mayor of San Francisco, has spent his entire career as a public defender -- a state-paid defense lawyer for the poor. A necessary job in the scheme of the US legal system, but it is hardly a job where one becomes acquainted with the realities of producing the goods and incomes which pay for such niceties.

Monbiot is a Class A loon...funny that his father Raymond is Deputy Chairman, Conservative Party and was CEO of Campbell Soup in the UK.....

Well if you give way to these loons you get what Lenin predicted:

"Probe with bayonets. If you encounter steel, withdraw. If you encounter mush, continue."

Well, there you go Rom, Moonbat's an upper-class trust-fund brat who never had to do a real job in his entire life. In the old days his kind would have been forced by social pressures into the Imperial Army or Navy and gotten a taste of real life at Maffeking or Mandalay.

Caroline, I am surprised that you are surprised that the US faces the same kind of social attacks from the left as the UK. These things are happening, to one degree or another, in all of the Anglosphere countries (and we are more alike than not, methinks). Sleepy old New Zealand has one of the highest crime rates in the industrialized world -- I think it even tops that of the UK's now. Read Dalrymple's excellent essay about when and how the crime rate in NZ started to climb. Very interesting reading.

Again, I urge everyone to check out the exhaustive, "Complete Guide to Dalrymple" that is posted on the Brothers' Judd website. Reading Dalrymple certainly changed how I look at the world!

I am surprised by your reference to Imperial Army....what is that ? There was a British Army and an Indian Army, but never an Imperial Army and only a Royal Navy.

Still Monbiot would not have done that....he would have been a lawyer or politician or journalist.....I lay odds he would have been a pacifist.

NZ had the weird experiece of loopy Left politicians like David Lange riding the anti-nuclear horse to change to embrace Friedmanite Monetarism and Chicago-School neo-classicism undermining much of NZ social fabric.....so the culture built up by Scottish immigrants was diluted by a foreign culture of theoretical free market ideology which even the US would find unpalatable

Romulus

NZ has at present has a lot loopy left politicians that would make David Lange seem like a conservative.

There is a mixture of militant feminists, man-hating dykes, homosexual activists and militant Maori activists.

The Prime Minister has publicly denied that she is in a lesbian herself. I do not have proof that she is so I would not want to call her a liar publicly. However, an editor of a magazine called Investigate has done just that. The following is part of his response to someone that wrote a letter to the editor the following month criticising his editorial.

“As I explained in my response Diana Wichet’s attack in the Herald, we have uncovered far more than we have printed. If you seriously think that I would make the bold assertion that the Prime Minister of New Zealand is gay without being 110% sure of it you are naïve. If you knew what we had assembled on the Clark marriage and withheld, you’d be praising us for our restraint.”

BTW – The URL to the article by Theodore Dalrymple in the Telegraph was okay. I think it could be read from anywhere in the world. The problem is with newspaper that one has to pay to subscribe to.

Susan - Yes, California is the closest state insofar as being destroyed by the left goes, to Britain. And I agree that welfare dependent blacks are the closest to the bottom feeders in Britain. Although, even then, I would say that their society - although a highly unattractive dependency society, is not as degraded as this class of British whites.

As in California, the British socialists are using mass illegal immigration as yet another battering ram against the native population and not allowing any dissent from the indigenes, under threat of prosecution of "hate laws". Like the public defender you mentioned in California, neither Tony Blair nor his "human rights" lawyer wife have ever done a day's work in their lives that wasn't paid for out of the public purse. Neither has ever had a job in the real world. They have no idea how anything works. Blair's a chameleon, but underneath the skin deep changes of shade, a chameleon is still a chameleon.

I am a huge admirer of David Horowitz's brilliant writing. He has a new book out, by the way.

I don't know what can be done, because rational arguments are met with hysterical screams of "racism!" or "dangerous right winger". Meanings of words are perverted and distorted to meet the one-worlder goal.

Tony Blair has stated many times that he intends to destroy the Tory party and make it unelectable ever again. In other words, his stated goal is to destroy democracy. No rival parties. Everything decided by concensus in the muffled carpeted halls and the five star restaurants of Brussels. He is hellbent on signing a Mickey Mouse "constitution" for Europe making "Europe" into a country (poof! You're a country!)and destroying British sovereignty forever and he is not going to allow the British a referendum. Stalin could not have put it better. So, the destruction of ancient laws and affiliations and "loyalty" (and subservience) transferred by fiat to Brussels.

What is astounding is, they get away with it. (Hopefully, with Schwarzenegger, the Californians may get a welcome injection of hard reality into their system.)

Most mind-boggling of all is your notion - with which, on reflection, I agree - is, they have no idea where they're going. They just want to destroy. Why?

"Most mind-boggling of all is your notion - with which, on reflection, I agree - is, they have no idea where they're going. They just want to destroy. Why?"

nYe Bevan spoke of the Left having an "emotional spasm" over nuclear weapons......well think of people riddled with guilt at their own privilege and feelings of low self-esteem......"I am here because of what my parents did" kind of thinking.....and a sense of throwing a tantrum against authority figures or structures

Sorry, Romulus, but I just don't buy it. I do not believe there are millions of people in Britain alone wracked with guilt because they are privileged. They're not guilty at all. They're bossy, preachy and controlling. They have written "thought crimes" into British law! Formerly, the Anglosphere had the freest speech in the world. Now, people even worry about what they put in an email. They fear they are being monitored by Big Brother.

They almost succeeded, in Britain, in smothering all free speech about floods (hundreds of thousands into a tiny island) of illegal immigrants swamping our system - but people got so angry they began speaking out regardless. The idea is to dilute, with a view to destroying, Britishness. I do not believe it is motivated by humble revulsion of being "privileged". It is sheer, overweening arrogance and I believe they are driven by hatred of privilege.

Blair knew he had a third rate mind and he'd never rise above taking publically funded cases. So, having failed to be a rock star and failed to be a showy star in the courtroom, he went into politics, where his phony charisma (which amounts to nothing more than an insane belief in his own infallibility) could be put to work in the drab Labour Party. Half his cabinet is made up of people of similar ilk, and the other half by a particular bossy British type - the lady of the manor syndrome, who takes greedy pleasure in organising other people's lives. The leaders in the Labour-held councils are bitter failures bent on revenge against a society which failed to recognise their merit.

As in the US, the legions of state school teachers are in it for themselves - and they are the ones training up - while failing to educate - young minds. What a morass!

But guilt? No, Romulus, I don't see it.

"I do not believe there are millions of people in Britain alone wracked with guilt because they are privileged" BUT cArloine you appear to believe millions "have written "thought crimes" into British law! "

It is a minority Caroline. I mean the USSR ran for 70 years with a Communist Party of 300.000 controlling 267 million souls !

Obviously, millions aren't in a position to write laws into the law books. But millions are passive about the theft of our traditional freedoms as long as those unemployment cheques and child benefit cheques and who-knows-what other cheques keep rolling in.

I admit the action-takers are a fairly small cadre, but they are in positions of enormous power. Who put them there? Why is the BBC still up and running? In whose interest is it to keep this nest of Trots and Marxists on the public payroll? Forty thousand of them.

Why on earth, would anyone in their right mind, buy The Guardian? It couldn't survive were not the sole place to advertise all the state-supported toy jobs. Who pays for all the ads? The government, in one form or another.

So that's two communist organisations being supported by the British state.

Who is inviting more and more people onto the public payroll? They now number one-quarter of the workforce. Add to that all hundreds of thousands on the dole in one for or another - that is a pretty large army of people dependent on the state for their daily bread. Possibly almost half the adult population. Add to that, those supplicants who have to be treated by the NHS because they can't afford private insurance, and there you have another immense constitutency which will vote to protect their "right" to get free-at-point-of-delivery treatment.

"Add to that, those supplicants who have to be treated by the NHS because they can't afford private insurance, "

Now Caroline you become OTT...private Medicine has never functioned in Britain, and as you know most private hospitals were bankrupt pre-war and there is NO private insurance policy in Britain which does not exclude pregnancy, and most private insurance is just top-up like BUPA and cannot exist without taxpayer subsidy to employers....most of whom want to dump private health insurance together with pension plans on grounds of cost.

Even Americans flock to buy medication in Canada, and few are satisfied with their health cover....and as you know in France and Germany, the health budget cuts are going to end the free-ride.......cost-containment is the order of the day everywhere

Romulus - I have friends in Britain with very good comprehensive health insurance. In any case, a discussion of Britain's NHS isn't the point. The point is the way state dependency is encouraged, and individual initiative and responsibility discouraged. My point was that the socialists have got huge swathes of people (1/4 of the total workforce works in the public sector; add to that the people who don't work - yobs, louts, single mothers and pensioners - and that is another vast tranche of the population totally dependent on the government, whether on state-paid salary or state-paid benefit. Then there's the NHS. People in Britain are being infantalised. They are being encouraged to regard the state as a parent.

There is a roiling instability under the surface in Britain. Who has the world's most feared football hooligans? Who has the least welcome young tourists? Whose town centres are the most dangerous on weekend nights? England. Not Britain, but England, which has had its history cut out from under it by the socialists and whose young people have no sense of who they are or where they came from.

"I have friends in Britain with very good comprehensive health insurance"

Please tell me the underwriter so I can buy some too !

"Who has the world's most feared football hooligans? "

Netherlands ! Dortmund supporters are not nice either, but Turkey has a few who stab foreign visitors to the regret of Leeds United Supporters Club.

You are far to apocalyptic Caroline which ruins your case Britain is not the darkest corner of the deepest pit, with the sunny uplands reserved for all others.....we certainly have none of the racial problems in France or Neo-Nazi groupings of Germany, Russia or Denmark

http://www.galatasaray.org.tr/english/default.asp

The name of a football club with truly awful, criminal, football-supporter thugs

I agree entirely with Caroline's very sensible comments above. What really sickens me is the way commentators say that the present trends are "inevitable", that society in the UK has changed "irrevocably" and that if the Conservatives (for instance) ever want to regain power, they had "better catch up". The point is that no social change is irreversible and when a new generation sees the damage done by the previous, it will react against it.

I work full time in Germany and whilst their society is far from perfect, there are some fundamentals we could learn from. One is that Germans value their culture, history and traditions. Despite having substantial ethnic minority communities, the celebration of the traditional German way of life is all pervasive, including its strong Christian tradition. Another is that the traditional family is still very important in Germany and is recognised by their tax system which allows a working partner to claim the tax allowance of a non-working spouse. Parenting is a full time job and it is time the UK Government recognised this instead of trying to force young mothers back into the workplace, offering inadequate childcare in return.

It is time the current bunch of wreckers were turfed out of office. I cannot bear the thought of having to wait until 2005.

and yet Richard the Sozis are currently talking about national Kindergarten strategies to get women to work; and that 30% women in Germany are childless, and the birthrate is below replacement.

The Verfassungsgericht hhas hit the Govt because families are disadvantaged in the tax system compared with DINKs, and that the country has quite a single-parent problem esp. in the former GDR.

The traditional family is probably valued in Germany because it is rare, and the presence of children infrequent outside the lower income groups and Auslaender...education level and income are negatively correlated with childbearing amongst women.

Germany and Italy have abysmal birth rates and Britain is one of the very few countries in Europe with an expanding population. Whilst I agree with your points about social mores are mere corks on a bobbing sea and can/will be changed; I find your idealism about Germany misplaced, and perhaps indicative of small affluent islands of Germany but certainly not typical.

Germany has much the same problems as Britain but has thrown money at them as was done here in the 1970s now as the Rotstift cuts back inexorably Germany will no longer lubricate its societal fractures with cash.

Thatcher took a big swipe at the family, and Lawson did much to undermine it....it was Thatcher who viewed children as a consumption good to be financed by the parents not society. Labour has merely nationalised the children.

Try living in Wernigerode outside Magdeburg, or in Berlin, or Gelsenkirchen, or Hamm or Duisburg and see the other side of the tracks.....visit the Sozialamt or Jugendamt or even the Einwohnermeldeamt and see some of the detritus of society....

German Krankenversicherung is esp ungenerous for children when both parents work, and the changes afoot are certainly detrimental to families.

The fact is simply that throughout the Western world politicians have undermined families, imposed heavy burdens on such families, and created chaos in divorce and child custody arrangements. The German system is a nighmare if you do not conform to the exact template the legislators enacted for your family.....it is so highly prescriptive it is the very model of the system Gordon Brown wants to create

Caroline,

“Why is the BBC still up and running? In whose interest is it to keep this nest of Trots and Marxists on the public payroll? Forty thousand of them.

Why on earth, would anyone in their right mind, buy The Guardian? It couldn't survive were not the sole place to advertise all the state-supported toy jobs. Who pays for all the ads? The government, in one form or another.

So that's two communist organisations being supported by the British state."

Sorry - I’m really having difficulty keeping up with this debate. ARE YOU BEING IRONIC? If so I apologise for being stupid?

Surely the BBC is a rather stuffy conservative institution - it displays ludicrous amounts of sycophantic reverence to the monarchy and sees Westminster as the only real focus of political attention. NOT VERY SOCIALIST I'M AFFRAID.

The Guardian has entirely bought into the Blarite project and dropped any of its socialist pretensions. It has the occasional token left-wing columnist but the editorial direction is pretty New Labour.

The only "Marxists" in Britain are the SWP and other silly organisations, which make a lot of noise but don't really amount to anything. (In fact they aren’t really Marxists at all but Leninists - a very different kettle of fish)

As someone very much on the left, I wish "socialists" did have as much influence as you claim they do. Only I don't see it - ANYWHERE.

Incidentally - "socialism" preaches community solidarity and fraternity - precisely the values that our neo-liberal society erodes through pitting human being against human being, recklessly moving labour around the globe and destroying whole communities and placing the obsession with consumerism before any genuine moral foundation. In capitalism we come to regard human beings solely in terms of their "use" and not their inherent value.

I am sympathetic to your lamentation of the demise of the core values that hold society together - only you should perhaps look to the abstract conception of freedom stemming from neo-liberal economics rather than blaming the situation on some mythical other.

rob maynard: Socialism preaches community, fraternity and solidarity? Sure that's what they say when they want you to look at "socialiasm with a human face."

What it really preaches is equality of outcome at the cost of everything else, including the family. Maybe even especially the family.

To name just one example, why do the socialists consider it "selfish" for a parent to send their child to a private school? Because they don't want parents to value their own children over someone else's. After all, if one publicly admits that they love their own children more than their neighbor's child, that would upset the "equality of outcome at all costs" social imperative that is socialism's only true moral value. A parent who loves their child too much might be willing to make sacrifices for that child, so that child could "get ahead" -- monetarily, careerwise, intellectually, it doesn't matter -- and therefore render that child unequal to other children.

I can't believe someone is arguing that socialism somehow underpins social cohesiveness and the family unit. Did perhaps the Gulag imprison whole families together? Did perhaps the Khmer Rouge and the Red Guard slaughter whole families together? Well, in that case, yes I guess you could argue the point.

"- "socialism" preaches community solidarity and fraternity - precisely the values that our neo-liberal society erodes through pitting human being against human being, "

So are you Bernsteinian or Kautsky-ite ? You may recall that the proclaimed "Socialism" is a Christmas-tree upon which baubles catering to every fancy are hung; until it becomes the governing creed when some take away their baubles claiming they were not polished enough, and then disown the governing regime which once it has power disappoints the more idealistic.

I am afraid that "socialism" as a nirvana is little better than Adam Smith's nirvana of the free-market Utopia where competition is perfect and rewards are distributed evenly through the Market.

I prefer the real world with its problems to solve rather than revelationary visions of utopian glory.......Blair is the figurehead that god Labour in power, and when they lose power the party will disintegrate as it has no core values and the trades unions cannot afford another £200 million to carry it through opposition as 1979-1997

Rob Maynard - The BBC is a seething viper's nest of Trots and Marxists and your calling it stuffy and conservative must have had them rolling in the aisles from Land's End to John O'Groats. It was the BBC which "pushed back the boundaries" of social cohesion and polite behaviour with a mind-numbing relentlessness. They were first off the mark with naked people having sex. It got so, with BBC plays and series, one waited with dread for the naked sex scene. The BBC did not want to cover the late Queen Mother's 100th birthday celebrations (a national event) and was only persuaded with customary churlishness to cover her funeral. So much for a slavvering interest in royalty. They hate the royal family. They adored Princess Diana. Even now, they jeer at every word the Prince of Wales says. Paul Burrell is their hero.

You are correct when you say they are not very socialist, however. They are deeply communist and deeply destructive.

I can't even be bothered to respond to you about the Guardian. I don't know whether it's bought into Tony Blair's "programme" (if he has one; I've never seen any signs of a coherent plan, or even thought, emanating from this flibberty-gibbet)but Blair, for what it's worth, is a dyed in the wool socialist with equality of outcome (except for himself and his family)as his first priority. Look at the mess he has made of the examinations system. And university entrance.

If I were about to go to university today, I would be on a plane to the United States.

Read what Susan said, above. She has a firm grasp on the truth of the situation.

I have no idea what the SWP is.

Actually, Richard, above, has a very good point. The socio-communist agenda comes in many disguises, some seemingly harmless.

Commentators note that the world has changed "irrevocably". Not at all. Social engineering can be undone. Tony Blair, ever the helpful head prefect to the world, lectures that the Tories cannot possibly win an election unless they adopt his policies. This is part of his subliminal campaign to kill democracy and the two party system in the UK, which is his oft-stated goal. These words like 'irrevocable' and 'inevitable' are simply code words for keeping the fascist element in power.

Vast swathes of illegal immigrants can easily be returned to their home countries, or at least dumped back in France, but any attempt to say so is beaten back with cries of racism and "hate crime". So the British are currently not allowed to make mild comments on the fact that their shores have been invaded. We fought off the might, discipline and intelligence of the German war machine, but we are expected to believe the false declaration that the appearance of these hundreds of thousands on our island shores is 'inevitable'.

It is all part of the iron-fisted thought control being exercised by the current government. The social problems that have developed on their watch are 'inevitable'. For 'inevitable' read 'drunkenness, licence and trash TV keep attention focused elsewhere'.

Of course too much is assumed: that democratic systems will survive. As Europe's decline accelerates, there may be a time when new forms of government emerge.

I no longer take it as given that these politicians will continue.....surveys already show 20% eastern Germans despairing of "Democracy"....and the corruption and amoral behaviour of political leaders debasing their societies and exporting jobs to the Third World while extracting every more burdens from their populace, is not a sustainable position.

If Italy think the taxpayer will stump up £7 bn + to bale out corrupt management and save a mere 7000 jobs in Italy...Berlusconi must be hoping they will rescue his house of cards.

The crisis of democratic legitimacy is pervasive and severe and affects all parties

Europe's decline is certainly accelerating, through greed for ever more "free" social programmes, sheer laziness as in demands for ever shorter working hours, and moral degeneracy.

That doesn't mean that democracy is dying. It just means that Europe is dying. India is a democracy of over a billion people. The US, religious and hard working, has a population of 300m. Democracy is alive and well - just not in Europe. Europe's going down the pan of history.

Democracy in Europe was only ever skin deep and I don't think it will be missed. We, having had democracy for 1200 years, have more to lose. We should be careful we don't get dragged down with them.

Caroline, who is "we" in the context of 1200 years ? For a start the "democracy" in Britain between 800AD and 1815 AD is the form of government I think we shall return to.

When I speak of 'Europe' I mean the European Continent including Great Britain, which as a matter of geopolitics is "Europe" whatever political grievances you might have.

I think democracy in Britain is more impaired than in Germany; and that Margaret Thatcher's autocratic didactism destroyed the culture of debate and discussion, eroded local democracy, and broke the ties between government and governed: they have not been restored since.

Government, like Policing, no longer can rely upon the consent of the public and the link of trust is broken and faith in institutions is gone....it may take 20 years yet, but the polity in Europe is heading for turmoil and disaster.

Melanie: we agree it is immoral and evil to terminate the life of two schoolgirls.

We are in dispute as to whether it is right to terminate the life of Ian Huntley with an execution. Myself, I favour this solution, but many do not.

Yet in this country, and on this Continent, there are thousands of beings terminated before, at, and sometimes after 24 weeks of life through abortion.

We also expend huge efforts to preserve the fragile life of babies born prematurely at or before 24 weeks.

It is a confusing picture, that in the US Ian Huntley might be executed, but here not. Yet in Europe an unborn (yet viable) human being can be terminated, but not in the US. It seems it is wrong to murder schoolgirls (or even adults), but not right to punish murderers through execution; yet it is acceptable to liquidate an unborn child in one part of a hospital; yet spend huge sums to save such a life in another part of the hospital.

Do you think the Vo Case in Strabourg will throw any light on this, or is it our moral philosophy which is lacking ?

OK – so you’re not being ironic.

Caroline,
We must be living in parallel universes if Tony Blair is a socialist. Yes he does have a programme, which he pursues with evangelical fervour. Firstly, came the removal of any commitment to common ownership in Labour party doctrine through the abolition of Clause 4 of the Labour Party constitution. This was followed up by a desire to bring private finance into every sphere of public life and the insistence upon beating down any opposition from the public sector unions. Overall he is religiously committed to the free market as a means to solve each and every global problem. Of course, I could talk about his attempts to out-Thatcher Thatcher in terms of the transatlantic alliance but this would be too obvious.

“They [the BBC] were first off the mark with naked people having sex.”
If didn’t realise that this constitutes “socialism” – I must have missed the point of Marx’s capital somewhat.

Do you really believe that “naked people having sex” has a substantial role in causing social decay? More so than the issues I listed above – e.g. higher labour mobility, the culture of disinterested individualism, consumerism overtaking any religious or moral framework.

On royal reverence, surely you have heard Jenny Bond or Andrew Witchell’s sycophantic ramblings. Also, does liking Diana mean hating the monarchy? – I thought she was the figure who rescued them from public disinterest or contempt.

Susan,
On the question of “equality of outcome” – I’m not sure this is necessary to attack private education. You can do so on the basis of “equality of opportunity”. If we believe that children’s education is fundamental to giving them life-chances and we are committed to giving each and every child an equal starting point in life, then it is inconsistent to have a differential system of education. Read Rawl’s seminal “Theory of Justice”, for example. No mention of “equality of outcome”. I don’t think many on the left get involved in debates over individuals sending their children to private schools – they are more worried about the systemic imbalance of opportunity which must be addressed at a systemic level.

Bit of a cheap point bringing in Pol Pot or Stalin. Stalinism gets most of its doctrinal support from a distorted reading of Leninism, which is itself a bizarre extension of Marx. The Khmer Rouge, in turn was a mix of 'Khmer elite chauvinism, Third World nationalism, the French revolution, Stalinism, and some aspects of Mao Zedong's "Great Leap Forward” – not much to do with Marx either. Don’t lump everyone in together – it’s not very scholarly.

As for the left being anti-family, it is certainly true that Engels equates the modern family with an attempt to privatise the reproduction of future generations of labour. However, many Marxists (e.g. Adorno – Minima Moralia) also talk of the family as a refuge of ethical worth above and against the cold logic of the market. It represents a symbol of goodness – of unconditional attachment – which resists instrumentalisation.

Romulus,
The “real world” – that old chestnut. Socialists never really discuss utopia – they have something akin to the Jewish ban on graven images which prevents them from laying out positive plans for a “socialist” world. What they do have is a radically historicist understanding of “the real world” which understands it as fragile, dynamic and susceptible to radical change once the masses realise their collective power. Utopia appears as some sort of regulative ideal, which allows us to claim that more is possible than the closed discourse of the “realities of politics” would appear to allow.

I take your baubles analogy – socialism is a very broad church – but don’t think there is any reason why (of necessity) that it should always become some form of hideous monolith.

Trace

What is your source that abortion is not legal in the US?

Abortion is legal is some circumstances in most parts of the western world. To equate the cruel murder of two young girls by some sick individual diminishes the gravity of his crime.

The original article was about how the lowering of standards contributes to these sorts of crimes.

Hi rob, thanks for your comments.

I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I couldn't give a flying fig for all the "scholarly" books you cite, so no, I'm not interested in reading turgid tomes about the various gradations and sectarian offshoots of your socialist/collectivist religion/belief system that have developed over the past 150 years. Bit like debating how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.

I draw most of my observations from real life, because I have a real job, a real husband, a real child and a real family. I have also worked for 20 years in various real, product and income-producing industries, not in professions that derive entirely from teaching and writing about theories and abstracts, for an audience of people who also derive their income from teaching and writing about theories and abstracts.

You haven't really gotten the point I made about equality of outcome being the overriding social goal of your collectivist faith. You simply jumped ahead and agreed that equality of outcome was a laudable social goal (as I pretty much expected you to), without thinking through the moral implications of such a mindset. Also, you took the example I gave of private education and responded as if that is really the issue, rather than simply an example of a moral/social trend that I'm discussing.

Let me try again: Having equality of outcome as the overriding social goal turns morality on its head; in the example I gave, in most societies, it's considered a virtue to love your child and sacrifice to ensure a good place in the world for him or her; but that is not a virtue, it's a vice, in the world where equality of outcome is valued above all.

In most societies, it's considered a moral act to stand up and defend your own person and your own home from a criminal invasion; but not in the society where equality of outcome is valued above all other moral imperatives. Thus, Tony Martin must go to jail as an "enemy of the state" - he committed the unpardonable sin, the sin of valuing his own life over that of a criminal's. The sin of declaring himself "bette