The Centre For Social Cohesion

I largely agree with Anthony.

However, I would not compare left fervor with religious belief today-- perhaps, with pre-Lambeth belief, yes, but not belief today. I would not do so because, clearly, the C of E is falling apart, and the rest of Christendom (if it merits the name), worse than being fantastically divided, is blithely unaware of the sad state of its division. Only in such ruin, I would suggest, could the left flourish as now being mainstream. (Not that I see Christianity as the only ruin: there is the university.)

I would simply describe the left as an entrenched ideology--so far from being a philosophy--which has now has vigorous off-shoots: diversity and multiculturalism, which, as Anthony rightly suggests, should not be underestimated.

Intellectually, weeding should be easy: both isms reduce to nothing more than a third ism: an easy going relativism, which nobody truly espouses once made to think.

I am still impressed by the level of discourse in the U. K. (depressed by that in the U. S.). So civil debate has to be carried at all events.

Let the U. S. be an example of what the U. K. should not become. More than twenty years of partisan mud-slinging and demonizing in the U. S. has stultified the Congress (both houses) and the media. The right failure to engage with the left and the right failure to represent conservative idols--faith, the family, moderate government-- in word and in deed here have led to bad times for all of those idols. Times which are growing worse.

Civitas, quite literally, presents the voice of reason in this debate and so wins it. Unfortunately, to win per se, is another matter. The contradictions of left-wing ideology are so stark and unabashed. we might question whether this is a reasoned debate at all, so should be treated like one if the aim is to persuade?

Re the left: I refer to those who think that policing language and perceived sleights with laws and threat supports tolerance. Selecting racial groups for favourable (thus others for unfavourable) treatment tackles inter-racial divisions and racism.

The left have long sensed, I would suggest, minimal constraints from grounding principles or boundaries.

Ultimately, in this regard, it strikes me how the left's arguments have become more akin, not to political belief structures, but religious ones. And perhaps this is where the opposing voice has yet to be formed?

For instance, it could be argued that the left acts like it has a God in which faith is required and demanded before all else makes sense (i.e. its belief in the good of diversity and equality); It castigates itself for its sins, then rebukes those not blinded by the same light. It has parables and morals. Doubters are mistrusted, heretics scorned, blasphemers stoned. The mass are rapt in awe or fear. There is self-contained momentum thereafter, without need to reference “truth or logic”.

So, where science explains its observations about the world in alternate ways, the recourse to science itself becomes refuted. It only reflects a man's vanity and innate sin for taking that path. He fails to see the bigger God.

To argue against this in rational terms seems, I suggest, futile.

But, to understand it (which I don’t) seems imperative, if it is to ever be opposed.

Personally, I now struggle to see the left’s follower’s as “misguided do-gooders”, as many commonly describe them. This would be too naïve, it feels. The costs of the folly are too obvious for any true “do-gooder” not be racked with doubt.

Perhaps, however, we might get further with tackling proponents of these arguments by taking a leaf from their book – starting to talk with blind faith and unquestioned belief in our own goodness, the sins of the alternatives, instead of measured retrospection and introspection.

To these ends, I wonder about the best way to persuade someone from a false God? Might we create, for that person, a more appealing one - rather than trying to point out endless cracks in the sky to those already wearing blinkers?

The police have simply become an extension of the current political dogma.

An independant institution they are no longer, and the top dogs of said force are mere lap dogs. Interested in safegaurding thier gold-plated pensions, and Spanish holiday homes ready for an early retirement.

Staggering news all around, very intelligently handled by David Conway.

There could be historic point in the law being enforced first against, of all religions, the Roman Catholic Church. There are no direct descendents, are there, of H VIII and E VI?

There may be a larger force or logic at work: as secular law grows more and more apart from the spirit of religion --even from the spirit of Western philosophy-- it will more willfully, unjustly, and violently choose as its targets the institutions which represent truth openly and consistently. The RCC does that, as always, and is a counter-cultural as it ever has been.

A second force is the rise of Catholic bashing--in the U. S., at least--including direct legal assaults on the separation of church and state.

I am a Catholic.

England and her former colony, my native land, remain in my prayers.

Wel,l well. How you all feel strongly, just like me. But what can we do to Gordon Brown there, all to bothered about protecting their backs. We are a Christian/white country, yet we get penalised for anything we do, whereas the Sir Iqbal Sacranie's get away with it

I believe Simon Denis (see above comment) should write a book on his thoughts : I will both buy the book and automatically subscribe to his legal defence fund............

I know many PC's in the Met, and the absence of morale is heart-breaking : good people destroyed by the diversity agenda of the Left. When will Cameron stop proposing to reform the under-performing
police when it is (a) political-correctness , and (b)the lack of criminal punishment, that is destroying the Met and other forces?

Personally, I think a note of unreality entered the attitude of the police towards racism in the wake of the Lawrence affair. At that time the force seem to have collectively decided that they would rather be regarded as an institution that had problems with racism rather than one which contained some people who took bribes from rich criminals ( which I believe was what really lay behind the deliberate bungling of that particular case).Ever since they feel they have to be seen to be successfully tackling a problem which they had exaggerated in the first place, leading to almost surrealistic behaviour at times.

Clearly, this is no longer a free country. Expressions of opinion, taste and preference are now heavily policed - but not in every case. Oh, no. Take for starters the case of the Channel Four documentary which exposed the genuine religious hatred given voice by certain Islamic preachers. Instead of acting against the guilty, the police investigated the programme makers! What, I wonder, would their order of priorities have been had the preachers been Christian? Or white? Again, when Islamic extremists were giving utterance to death threats outside the Danish Embassy some months ago, the only people arrested or stopped were those white persons foolhardy enough to object. A Christian who distributed leaflets bearing Biblical texts hostile to homosexuality was subjected to all sorts official enquiry. Sir Iqbal Sacranie, meanwhile, airs his anti-gay opinions on national radio and nothing is done. Stand back from this cluster of events and we begin to see some disturbing truths: first, that the left has successfully eroded the liberal foundations of our society. Once we did not police thoughts and subjected utterance to minimal restraint. Our target was action - violent action and it was punished with swift severity. The result was a lively, stimulating and peaceful environment. Now the courts act on the assumption that most violent action can be excused, whilst crusading against any defendant whose motives might appear on the list of proscribed opinions. The second truth to emerge is that if any group in British society is now subject to prejudice and de facto legal disability it is the idigenous, white population. This is the logical outcome of so-called "positive" discrimination. It is the end result of a world-view which portrays the ills of the world as issuing from the culture of Europe. Not only does the present generation of Europeans have to expiate the sins of its forefathers but they are denied any sense of having forefathers at all. No wonder we are all so demoralised as to have given up the business of "generation" altogether. The monstrous but influential web of hard left opinion - which has come to oppose reason and objectivity themselves as merely "western" and therefore false concepts - is now threatening to asphyxiate our culture. The case of the bullied clergyman is now sadly typical of life in this country.

As a Catholic, I was greatly angered, and astounded, that this now happens in the UK. I agree this is New Labour-instigated & if these "complaints" are not aggressively countered they will lead to serious problems in the long term. The senior officer who agreed this action should be immediately censured, as quoted by the Police Federation themselves, when they described his actions as a possible abuse of power.