It is still strange to my ears to hear how the British economy - three decades ago the “sick man of Europe” – is spoken of as a model the rest of the continent should emulate.  It is doubly strange, in fact, since just about any degree of confidence in modern Britain flies in the face of our general experience of daily, abject cultural defeatism.  If it isn’t the anguish of Anglican liberals we have to endure, it’s another crazy anti-racism campaign.  Or we are bleeding with guilt after a crazed axe murder.  Or we are binge drinking into the middle of the night while Old Father Thames is brained on crack.  Or record numbers of children are growing up without a father, whilst marriage has become just too tiresome for the modern couple …

The list is long.

Still, when British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw stands up in Strasbourg to tell the European Parliament that “Without significant changes I see little prospect of a deal”, one has to raise a couple of patriotic cheers, however weakly.  One has also to acknowledge that, actually, this is nothing knew.  Straw is simply sounding the latest charge across some very old battle lines.  Our liberalising economic agenda for the EU is all of a piece with Napoleon Bonaparte’s supposed observation that, “L’Angleterre est une nation de boutiquiers.”

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Have you ever read an article which begins well but then takes a disastrously wrong turn?

There’s an article being praised amongst some conservative groups here in Melbourne, written by Augusto Zimmermann. Augusto hails from Brazil but is undertaking his Ph.D in law at Melbourne’s Monash University (he appears to be of German descent). Augusto is an obviously intelligent young man, who appears regularly in the Christian conservative press.

His latest article takes aim at Victoria’s religious vilification legislation. Augusto begins by noting that the legislation contradicts the Western legal tradition by disallowing the truth of a statement as a defence. That’s why two Christian pastors could be prosecuted under the legislation for accurately quoting parts of the Koran to a private church gathering.

Augusto then criticises the idea that the legislation will help to create a “multicultural democracy”. He argues that not all cultures are equally committed to democracy, and that democracy and the rule of law might not be preserved if Australia “eventually decides to reject its own culture on account of multiculturalism”.

Augusto’s article then reaches its high point when he observes that,

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A little good news is needed now and then. The pioneer spirit is still alive. As a person somewhat responsible for the resurgence in technology prize awards, I have a few things to say about Burt Rutan’s capture of the Ansari X-Prize by being the first to fly a man to space in a reusable craft twice within a week. He follows the great technology pioneers Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, both of whom came to prominence during similar fair contests: The Guggenheim Trophy and Orteig Prize respectively. (From these exemplars some might now see a reason the powers that be shy away from fair contests—contests where they can’t really control who wins the prizes—and it was left to an Iranian family, the Ansaris, to fully fund the X-Prize.)

A speech by Burt Rutan before the National Space Society is worth a view (requires QuickTime ). He repeatedly and angrily declares his embarrassment at the risk averse culture that has strangled the pioneer spirit since the feats of the 1960s—nearly 40 years ago. I’ve got my issues with his speech but we clearly agree that something went horribly wrong with the pioneer spirit subsequent to the 1960s. The turning inward of the human potential has resulted in the halting of human progress upward and outward with aerospace technology being bureaucratically and monotonously scaled up for jumbo jet transportation. The result is the sort of danger warned of by Charles Lindbergh in his 1939 Reader’s Digest article “Aviation, Geography, and Race”: a sea of humanity threatening our race which is, after all, a global minority. Indeed the technological exemplar of this era has been driven by the rise of finance to preeminence—the inward-turning microelectronic revolution. The unintended side-effect of this revolution you see before you now as a website, but it is small consolation for the damage to our pioneer spirit.  As we were warned by Henry Ford the great struggle of the 20th century was creative industry vs global finance.  Global finance has dominated the past 30 years or more. Perhaps men like Burt Rutan can lead us out of our malaise and realize the human potential.  If so it may be due to prize awards like the Ansari X-Prize that give men even younger than Burt Rutan a chance to make a name for themselves purely via their own grit and gifts.

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“... today’s IFOP poll of the candidate likely to make the best president of France is headed by Mr Sarkozy on 61%, 10 points up on last month. Mr Villepin is on 53%, and the leading Socialist, Jack Lang, on 45%.”

Somebody explain this to me, please?  Is it a case of “vote early, vote often”, as the Irish used to say?  The single transferable vote?  Too much Volnay with lunch?

And they haven’t even added in Jean-Marie yet.

It passes the obvious to say that the internet offers a host of political and news commentary of a character the mainstream media disdain.  Over the last year or so there has been some considerable debate about the uneasy relationship between the two.  MSM journalists don’t like to be attacked from the fringes, and surely take much gratification from net journalism that descends into shoddiness and irresponsibility.  I bet, though, they would kill for the freedom of speech we take for granted.  It’s their rotten luck they don’t have it - and we do.  It must be intensely annoying to have us freely deride them as bought and paid-for hacks.

But lest you start to feel too sorry for them, just remember the sins of ommission which characterised MSM reporting at the outset of the Paris riots or the post-Katrina looting.  And just take a moment to read this piece from the Toronto Star.

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“There were two contrasting worlds in the 1960s, the tiny elitist world of Brian Jones, with its sex, drugs and decadence, and the real world, Frank’s world, which was still very grey.  Frank [Thorogood] was very bitter, and jealous of the kids who were reaping the benefits of what he had helped to create.  He was one of the forgotten generation who had won the war and survived terrible things, in his case losing an eye.  And they’d done it though discipline and self-control.  Then along came the 1960s with this ‘Let it all hang out’ attitude.  It was like a red rag to a bull.”

Film-maker Stephen Woolley, quoted in the Sunday Telegraph on his directorial debut with “Stoned”.

The film, of course, investigates the circumstances in which the ex-Stone came to be lying face-down in his swimming pool at Cotchford Manor in Sussex on the night of July 3rd 1969.  It alleges murder and is in part based on a book alleging the same. 

However Jones’ death occurred, it was a sad and sordid end.  Vice or viciousness, it really doesn’t matter.  But, as Woolley’s words show, “Stoned” has a sub-text which is much more interesting.

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In rejecting their own ethnic traditions liberals are left with a major problem. What is to hold society together, if not a common ancestry, culture, religion and history?

Australian intellectuals are especially fond of “imagining” new forms of national identity which will unify society. The latest effort is called “Australia: Ideas for our Future”. The authors of this work believe that there is an Australian tradition of mateship, tolerance and a fair go for all around which a unifying Australian identity can be based.

The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen, has criticised this approach to an Australian identity in an article in today’s Age newspaper (not yet online).

He is, firstly and understandably, disappointed that the proposed national identity is entirely secular. He sees this as further proof of the declining position of Christianity in Australia. In his own words, “Frankly, Jesus is slipping out of memory and imagination.”

He then points out the limitations of the proposed identity, in words which demonstrate a mixture of clarity and confusion:

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Probably over this weekend MR will be upgraded to the latest ExpressionEngine package.  This will include an Open Forum and a number of other useful tweaks to the system.  So if you find we are off-line for a while that will be why.

Then over the ensuing days we will be making some general design changes, including garnering our science material into a single resource available at the click of a button on the side-bar.  Again, some unavoidable but brief service interruptions will be occasioned.  Our apologies for that.  But we expect the end-result to be worth it.

Thanks, as ever, for your interest and your fantastic commenting support, and please stay with us to help develop the blog and all the arguments for majority rights.

The EE guys performed their mysterious deeds today, in fact.  We will now set about making the required design changes.

The Forum carries a risk, I agree.  But it also gives the blog an extra, somewhat democratic dimension.  I think it’s worth a try.  If the tone descends into personal abuse we’ll IP-ban the offenders, naturally.  But actually, the experience civility-wise has been remarkably good thusfar, and I’m hopeful that won’t change.