Quotations, stolen from Toma

I express my thanks to Toma, who comments regularly on my blog and who collected these and posted then on his.

The first quotation expresses what I feel British foreign policy should be.

We can regard the troubles of others with sympathy and patience. We hold out the hand of friendship and peace to every nation in Europe. But the affairs of Europe are not our concern. Every time we have involved ourselves in these affairs, it has brought us great burdens and great loss. We have prospered when we have kept clear of European politics.

Our one duty is to mind our own business. We should set an example of ordered freedom and sensible economics. These things are well within the genius of the British people, even if our Government finds them a bit difficult. For this, too, is one of the lessons of history: the British people are always a good deal wiser and more sensible than those who govern them.

A.J.P. Taylor

Boris was right to want to avoid lockdown, but then bottled it

I agree with Fraser Nelson's article in the Telegraph and am terribly ashamed of how my country clings to the lockdown. It's a sort of Stockholm syndrome. Is that also the explanation for the way people back home kowtow to the Black Lives Matter movement?

Boris Johnson was right the first time. He resisted lockdown for as long as he could, regarding it as a draconian, untested experiment that might cause far more harm than good.
Far better, he thought, to ask people to keep their distance, work from home, self-isolate if anyone in their household fell sick. Why pass needless laws and ask the police to pursue workers, lovers and dog-walkers? It’s better, he said, to level with people. Give them the facts, offer advice and trust them to do what’s right.
Only now do we know how well this was working. Most people were staying home on government advice (and their own concern). The virus seems to have peaked by lockdown on 23 March. None of this was known at the time. Instead, we had panic and Prof Neil Ferguson saying that 250,000 would die unless rules were mandatory. So politically, the Prime Minister had no choice.

Quotations

Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions. After looking at the Alps, I felt that my mind had been stretched beyond the limits of its elasticity, and fitted so loosely on my old ideas of space that I had to spread these to fit it.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., author of The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, misattributed to his son, the judge.


Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.
Follow the three Rs:
Respect for self
Respect for others
Responsibility for all your actions.
Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

'History will judge those who emerged from lockdown to fight the ghost of Cecil Rhodes'

Marie Daouda is a stipendiary lecturer in French at Oriel College, Oxford, and wrote a wonderful article for the Daily Telegraph, entitled 'History will judge those who emerged from lockdown to fight the ghost of Cecil Rhodes'. I quote from it.

I come from a country with no statues.

It is not that Morocco never had statues. Not that long ago it had statues of French officials – of which only one remains, hidden in a consulate garden. It had, a bit earlier, statues of Christian saints and Roman dignitaries, of which there is no trace. Before that, it must have had statues of Phoenician deities. All have been destroyed, and with them visible proof of the complex history of North Africa.

...I will not say that as an African I am oppressed by Oriel’s statue of Rhodes and by the buildings Oxford owes to imperial largesse, nor that I feel incomplete, as a Catholic, by the absence of statues in some of the other niches. I do not wish to change a single stone of Oxford, because I love it. I love it as much, and maybe more, than I love any city I have lived in before.

There is no shame in loving the country you belong to. We immigrants love it, too. It is possible to criticise a country and the people who built it, while still loving it. Without a French presence in Morocco, I doubt I would have had any chance to enjoy an international academic career, let alone as a woman. My mother insisted that I should be educated in the French system; my grandmother’s pride was that I ended up teaching French to French teenagers.

Could I decolonise myself? No; nor do I wish to. I am proud of what the complicated past of colonialism made me. I feel no guilt about it, and the last thing I need now is the apologies of a French person feeling sorry for me.White guilt is unhelpful and condescending. Whenever someone tries to deploy it, I tell them that my ancestors were involved in the slave trade, too.

He wanted his scholarships to create amity between the English speaking peoples and I assumed he did so because Anglo-Saxons and Germans are Teutons, but Dr. Daouda quotes from his will: 

“no student shall be qualified or disqualified for election to a Scholarship on account of his race or religious opinions.”

Why did England leave it to football supporters and the far right to protect the Cenotaph?

A very intelligent and highly successful Cambridge educated Facebook friend posted this status about the recent riots in London.

Why did we rely, complacently, on the Football Lads Alliance and Britian First (sic), to support the veterans who wanted to protect the Cenotaph that commemorates Our Glorious Dead? It should have been the Police's job to do that, over the past three weeks, and just to be clear, All Cops Are NOT Bastards, particularly in the UK. But, as part of the mainstream conservative majority of our great nation, I am hanging my head in shame because I, and millions of us, were too frightened to come out last weekend and contest the hateful narrative that Great Britain is a historically and systemically-racist nation, rather than a shining light that did more than any other nation over the centuries to end slavery. For those of us who are Conservatives, marching, even protesting, isn't really our thing. We were worried that, if we supported the veterans and stood up for ourselves, some people (who, for some reason, we would still like to consider our friends) would openly denounce us as racists. Yes, we wanted to obey the law and socially-distance; yes we didn't want to antagonise our children some of whom were were marching with BLM; yes, we were surprised that some people off the telly, that we quite like, came out to support BLM; yes, we were horrified by the capitulation of our Police, forced to kneel, initially for their own safety, but then advised to do so by their useless commanders and yes, we were disgusted when the leader of the opposition followed suit. Some of us probably still believe what we are told by the BBC. But, none of us should welcome the Cultural Revolution being encouraged, and perhaps soon to be demanded, by these protests

Not so Imperial College - not Imperial at all in fact

Imperial College London has dropped the motto “scientia imperii decus et tutamen” (“scientific knowledge, the crowning glory and the safeguard of the empire”) from its crest, but has not asked the Queen to change its name.

Imperial College said the move would help promote diversity.

“We know that this motto is a reminder of a historical legacy that is rooted in colonial power and oppression.”

Bristol University said it was reviewing using the crests of Edward Colston (whose statue was toppled into the harbour), Henry Overton Wills III and the Fry family. The Frys made chocolate, were Quakers and therefore pacifists and were leading liberals and social reformers, as I recall.

Oriel College Oxford, the last Oxford college to admit women, is going to get rid of the statue of Rhodes, founder of Rhodesia.

Rhodes donated scholarships to help amity between the English speaking peoples and their German cousins, but now they are open to people from anywhere and promote left-wing causes he would have detested. Someone should sue the trustees.

So farewell then, Dame Vera Lynn and Jean Kennedy Smith

Dame Vera Lynn has died.

Her songs are not my cup of tea, but another figure from the Second World War and the end of British glory is gone. Rest in peace and God save the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh, who served in the forces in the war.

I cannot mourn Jean Kennedy Smith, Bill Clinton's Ambassador to Eire and one of the architects of the Good Friday Agreement, by which we let the IRA share in running the Six Counties, but may her sins be forgiven her.

Lionel Shriver is 'controversial'

Anglo-American writer Lionel Shriver was interviewed by Alison Pearson on a Telegraph podcast. She has said she is "profoundly disappointed" in the British people for their tolerance to the UK's strict lockdown during the global pandemic.

"The British people have never more profoundly disappointed me. It seems so un-British to say, alright then I’ll just roll over and I’ll stay home. I think part of it was being able to feed into the Blitz narrative....
"The bizarre attachment to being confined to your homes and not making a living and relying on the government...I’m just dismayed." 

She is a Democrat and feminist who likes Mr. Obama very much, came slowly to like Hillary and absolutely detests President Trump, but the Telegraph, a supposedly Conservative paper, feels it necessary to call her "controversial" to distance itself from her views on identity politics. 

And possibly the lockdown.

She said that in 2008 

'Ever opposed to nepotism, I disliked the prospect of our first female head of state achieving the position through marriage to a previous president, a cheap shortcut I considered anti-feminist. Besides, I opposed the political dynasty in principle. The US famously rejected monarchy in 1776, and phenomenons like the Kennedys, Bushes, and Clintons seemed antithetical to the American project.
'When in those early, why-can't-we-all-be-friends days of the Obama administration, the new president called a truce by appointing his rival secretary of state, I was disgusted. The woman lost. She wasn't due a compensation prize. By then well weary of her strained attempts at populist folksiness, inconsistent put-on drawl, unpersuasive tearfulness and gratingly nasal voice, I didn't want to have to keep looking at her face.'

She was absolutely right, but later changed her mind about Hillary, despite the destruction of Libya.

BLM in Iceland

Gunnar Smári Egilsson, founder of the Socialist Party of Iceland, wants the statue of founder of Iceland Ingólfr Arnarson taken down because he “murdered” and oppressed “freedom heroes” and owned slaves. He wants to replace the statue with that of slaves.

The revolution in the American media

It became very clear as soon as Trump was sure to win the Republican nomination that most American journalists working for major newspapers, sites and even TV channels had become political actors rather than news-gatherers but this process has this year gone even further. Very much further.

I just found two must-read articles on this subject. 


From an article on a site new to me:

Yet Fang found himself denounced online as a racist, then hauled before H.R. His crime? During protests, he tweeted this interview with an African-American man named Maximum Fr, who described having two cousins murdered in the East Oakland neighborhood where he grew up. Saying his aunt is still not over those killings, Max asked:

I always question, why does a Black life matter only when a white man takes it?... Like, if a white man takes my life tonight, it’s going to be national news, but if a Black man takes my life, it might not even be spoken of… It’s stuff just like that that I just want in the mix. 

Shortly after, a co-worker of Fang’s, Akela Lacy, wrote, “Tired of being made to deal continually with my co-worker @lhfang continuing to push black on black crime narratives after being repeatedly asked not to. This isn’t about me and him, it’s about institutional racism and using free speech to couch anti-blackness. I am so fucking tired.” She followed with, “Stop being racist Lee.”

Boris Johnson, Evelyn Waugh and Churchill: three very different Tories

Evelyn Waugh on Churchill:

'Rallied the nation indeed! I was a serving soldier in 1940. How we deplored his orations.'



'Churchill was a radio personality who outlived his prime.'

Boris Johnson on Evelyn Waugh on Churchill: 

There are some people…who may be tempted to dismiss or downplay the virtuosity of Churchill as a writer …. Indeed, he has always had his detractors. Evelyn Waugh, that inveterate Churchill-basher, said he was a “master of sham-Augustan prose”, with “no specific literary talent but a gift of lucid self-expression”. After reading Churchill’s Life of his father Randolph, Waugh dismissed it as a “shifty barrister’s case, not a work of literature”…

Why did Waugh sneer at Churchill’s writings? Notice that he–Waugh–had actually tried to emulate Churchill in the 1930s and got himself sent out to cover a war in Abyssinia. He produced Scoop of course, one of the great stylistic landmarks of the twentieth century. But his reporting had nothing like the same journalistic impact as Churchill’s. Is it that Waugh was just a teensy bit jealous? I think so; and it was not just because Churchill had become so much more famous than Waugh had been, by the time he was twenty five, but that he had made such stupendous sums from writing. And that for most journalists, alas, is the truly sensitive point for comparison.

This explains one important reason why British journalists so much dislike Boris, though there are certainly others. Boris, when writing about Churchill, is talking about himself. 

Charles Moore made the case the far left should make about the European Union

Labour, writes a well-known political journalist, embraced the idea of Europe in 1998, as it was the best opponent of Thatcherism and seemed to mean trade union and welfare rights. But this came at a high cost, he writes. "In doing so, however, it abandoned the classic left-wing vigilance against the 'bankers' ramp' , the device which allows democracies to be overpowered by banks, central banks and their lackeys to run an economy in their own interests. The euro is just such a ramp. It was imposed without democratic endorsement and cannot be unstitched by democratic rejection. Hence perma-slump in large parts of the eurozone, 50 per cent youth unemployment in the worst bits, and German domination of the whole. Never, since the age of the dictators, have the workers been further from control over the means of production, distribution and exchange than they are in the EU today."
Oh glory be, at last someone has spelled out the left-wing (very left-wing) case for Brexit. But who is this seer? Gosh, it's Charles Moore, a high Tory, in the Spectator, the weekly conservative magazine. And some of you criticise me for writing in the Daily Mail. But it is here, on the right, that the left-wing case for Brexit is being made. Where Is The Thinking Left in this debate? 

Adam LeBor, 17 June 2016, six days before the referendum which changed everything.

Theodore Dalrymple's words are very topical this week

“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”

BLM is gaining support

This time, a positive spike. https://t.co/6SmAx7pOKr

— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) June 10, 2020

A poll by Rasmussen yesterday showed 62 percent of likely American voters have a favorable opinion of BLM, higher than the numbers who approve of Messrs Trump or Biden.

Tucker Carlson is losing sponsorship for his TV show because he criticises BLM. A number of prominent people have lost their jobs for doing so or for prejudiced remarks, often on social media.

How will this impact the election? Lord Black says Trump should win but that does not now provide any certainty that he will.

Meanwhile in England Professor Louise Richardson, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, has told students that they can apply for “mitigating circumstances” if their performance in exams was affected by George Floyd’s death. She said that the university is “determined to support our black students in every way possible”.

There has been widespread disorder at Black Lives Matter demonstrations in France and at night disturbances involving Chechen gangs in Lyons and Dijon. In Dijon the Chechens have been fighting Arabs for four nights. Some reports suggested Chechens had travelled to Dijon from all over France to take part as well as from Belgium and Germany.

Quotations

From "Watermelons" by James Delingpole

 
Mark Thompson, Sky News reporter

Would You Care if a White Man Cured Covid-19?

That's the title of an article by Heather MacDonald published in the Wall St Journal on April 17, 2020, which someone sent me and I just got round to reading. It's more topical now, two months later, thanks to Black Lives Matters protests. The sub-headline precises the argument: Hiring researchers by sex and race rather than scientific prowess is dangerous nonsense.

'Scientists at Oxford University and King’s College London are racing to develop an inexpensive ventilator that can be quickly built with off-the-shelf components. Should it matter that all the lead researchers on the project are men? If you believe university diversity bureaucrats and many academic deans, the initiative will be handicapped by the absence of women among the project heads. If there is a silver lining to the Covid-19 pandemic, it may be to expose as dangerous nonsense the practice of hiring researchers by sex and race rather than scientific accomplishments.

How to have style

Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
Gore Vidal


A mind that is stretched by new experiences can never go back to its old dimensions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The real man

Sir Joshua having also observed that the real character of a man was found out by his amusements, --Johnson added, "Yes, Sir, no man is a hypocrite in his pleasures."

Boswell's Life of Johnson

The Guardian backed the South in the American Civil War

I have written a lot about slavery in America and about the US Civil War on this blog. As the Confederate heroes are being toppled, it seems topical to link to this post about the Liberal Guardian newspaper backing the South in the American Civil War, as did the British establishment, but not the Lancashire mill girls thrown out of work by the war. 

The Conservative magazine the Spectator, on the other hand, always opposed slavery and lost readers by backing the North, as its editor recently explained.

Lockdowns must never be repeated

It seems that Covid-19, fortunately, is not a very dangerous infection, though it can cause a very unpleasant death and possibly (we don't know) lasting harm to the lungs of patients.

We must not end up with a new normal but return quickly to the old normal. Whatever happens, the lockdown must never be repeated, even for a much more dangerous infection, in the future. 

Former British Foreign Secretary, Conservative Party Leader and destroyer of Libya William Hague agrees with me, but he spoils it by agreeing with Tony Blair on the efficacy of testing, which quite a few epidemiologists argue persuasively are pointless.

The top American epidemiologist Dr Anthony Fauci seemed impressive when he entered the stage, though perhaps his Jesuit education should have made me doubt him. He lost all credibility in my eyes when he suggested that mankind would have to stop shaking hands. 

I say this because the remark is obviously bonkers. Shaking hands is not something we Englishmen like doing. I do it a lot, but that is because I live in Romania where all men shake hands all the time except when they kiss each other. (Men used to air kiss women's hands but that seems to have entirely died out.)

Unfortunately lockdowns got entangled in politics, even though epidemics have nothing much to do with political philosophies, though admittedly the idea for lockdowns comes from the Chinese Communists. 

To quote the late Denis Healey, we were out of our tiny Chinese minds to close down the world economy. 

If we stop now things might be saved. I do not know but I know that we are on the brink of a catastrophe. 

The economic disaster caused by lockdowns, along with the BLM riots, does make it look like Western civilisation is in grave trouble - but there were already many other reasons to think this. The French left are gripped by the ideas of 'collapsology' and the French right by 'the great replacement'. 

Politicians must not shirk their responsibilities by delegating them to or hiding behind scientists, though I understand why they did. 


Politicians are in general cowards. They find safety in crowds and