Do liberals discriminate?

Posted by Guest Blogger on Wednesday, 27 October 2004 09:50.

Are liberals willing to practise religious discrimination? In the case of Chris Cranmer, it seems not. Mr Cranmer has won recognition of his satanism on board his Royal Navy ship, meaning that he is free to publicly practise satanic rituals and to have a funeral carried out by the Church of Satan.

But then we get to the case of Signor Buttiglione who has been deemed unacceptable for a position of responsibility with the EU because of his orthodox Catholicism - this despite a promise that he would keep his Catholic beliefs private.

Matthew Parris, in a column in the Sunday Times, wrote of Mr Buttiglione that,

“Signor Buttiglione claims that he has been the victim of anti-Christian discrimination ... I think Signor Buttiglione has indeed been the victim of anti-Christian discrimination, and that such discrimination is now in order ... Catholic teaching on contraception and abortion are unacceptable and insulting, not only to me but also the majority of Europeans, and the overwhelming majority of educated Europeans. I do not shrink from according special status to the educated, for they lead thought.” (via Conservative Commentary)

So, we’ve arrived at a situation where it’s thought reasonable to allow Satanism to be practised in the Royal Navy, but that Catholicism is too “insulting” to be accepted even as a private belief by a political candidate.

Liberals, in other words, will discriminate on the grounds of religion, but just aren’t concerned to discriminate against satanists. In fact, on one very liberal Australian website, satanism was declared to be admirable for its “frank and rational hedonism”. So I don’t like the chances of a return to a more traditional ordering of things, in which discrimination was practised against satanists rather than Christians, at leat not in modern liberal societies.

Tags: Christianity

Comments:

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Wed, 27 Oct 2004 14:29 | #

Mr. Matthew Parris’s ugly comments are shocking for a number of reasons, among them that:

1) they veer into leftist thought-control: Mr. Buttiglione declared forthrightly that his personal feelings about homosexuality wouldn’t affect his official acts as long as it wasn’t a crime, so it seems he’s being punished merely for having certain thoughts (as Jim Kalb points out, by the way, he might have done better had he phrased his concerns about homosexuality in terms other than “sin”);

2) his comments are shocking in being such an unhesitating, stark black-and-white statement of liberalism’s intense antipathy toward Christianity in general and Catholic Christianity in particular, something tradcons have long discussed of course but seldom been so openly slapped in the face with (“tradcons” being what until around 1970, give or take a couple of years or so, were just ordinary, normal, average, utterly apolitical folk—it seems such folk have to have a name nowadays). Notice by the way how Mr. Parris insinuates that anti-Christian liberals in Europe are more intelligent, the same way liberals here keep thinking they have higher IQs—see Steve Sailer for more on this liberal myth.)

3) these foolish, ignorant comments of Mr. Parris’s are shocking because they perfectly illustrate the soundness of that Frenchman’s concerns last month who coined the apt metaphor about the dry riverbed of European secularism just waiting to be filled by the mighty river of Islam, a metaphor needing no further explanation or comment for MajorityRights.com regulars, I trust. Mr. Parris: whether you yourself be homosexual, or anti-Catholic Protestant, or just garden-variety liberal, now’s especially not the time for statements like these, if you wish literally to help save your own civilization!

Posted by Howard Sutherland on Wed, 27 Oct 2004 14:53 | #

As it happens, Matthew Parris is a homosexual, something he does not conceal (or at least has not for a long time). That no doubt accounts for at least some of his animus against orthodox Catholics and Rocco Buttiglione.

In the United Kingdom, Parris is considered rather conservative, and was actually a Tory MP for a time during the Thatcher years. HRS

Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 28 Oct 2004 16:40 | #

The Buttiglione case is not merely a liberal cause celebre but a golden opportunity for a customarily toothless European Parliament to assert its will over the Commission.

That said, what I find revealing here is the astonishing failure of the right to argue the case, over many years, FOR discrimination and FOR inequality. Because that’s what fighting liberalism actually comes down to. It’s no good trying to clothe oneself in the faux-decency of liberalism whilst railing against it at the same time.

Even to type such words as I have just typed is to cause oneself to stop and ponder, so deep has gone the process of liberal internalisation and self-censorship. Did I really think such unfashionable and illiberal thoughts? Can that be right?

Well, I think it is entirely right. And I shall post something over the next day or so to argue to that effect as best I can.

Posted by Tim on Sat, 30 Oct 2004 03:54 | #

This affair in the faraway EU is unfortunately not faraway from us here in Australia.

For an excellent discussion on how the “post-socialist” left has redefined “tolerance”, the ancient and honourable virtue of allowing others the right to make fools of themselves, into “Totalitarian Tolerance”, the new age thought police state where wishy washy inclusiveness speak (actual actions don’t matter that much) is mandatory, see this article in Australia’s NEWS WEEKLY http://www.newsweekly.com.au/articles/2004apr24_b1.html

Posted by willchill on Sat, 30 Oct 2004 17:47 | #

I agree with Guessedworker that conservatives need to be able to say, at least to themselves, that they are in favour of discrimination and inequality.

It seems to me to be the definitive characteristic of modern politics for talk always to be framed in terms of “justice” and “decency”, while in actual fact seeking to uphold privilege and inequality.

And liberals are just more dishonest than conservatives because they seem to believe in their own moral virtuosity, without being willing to sacrifice very much of anything to pursue the “equality” they profess so much to be in love with !