Lily of St. Leonards

Trump's Highland Charge

noreply@blogger.com (effiedeans) — Wed, 6 Nov 2024 06:49:00 GMT

There is a tendency in certain Scottish nationalist circles to obsess about the Scottishness of vegetables. If a bag of potatoes fails to have a Scottish flag on it letters will be sent to the National and the possibility of a unilateral declaration of independence will be investigated to save the tatties from a fate worse than being eaten otherwise known as being described as British.

Someone with a name like Faf de Klerk or Naas Botha may sing the just learned words of Flower of Scotland because of a distant relation from Achiltibuie that he is unable to find on the map and of who he was unaware until a week ago, but he too is as Scottish as Humza Yousaf when he pulls on the Scottish rugby shirt.

But one man is never Scottish.

Angus Robertson may have had a German mother and have been born in Wimbledon. Lesley Riddoch may have been born in Wolverhampton and grew up in Northern Ireland, but apparently having a mother whose first language was Gaelic from the Isle of Lewis does not a Scotsman make.

Donald Trump has just become only the second President of the United States to win non-consecutive terms after Grover Cleveland. Poor Grover was descended from English ancestors so you would think the Scottish nationalist potato worriers would be going on about the first Scottish president to win non-consecutive terms, but strangely they are silent about the Donald’s Scottishness even if it’s hard to think of a more Scottish name than Donald except perhaps Humza.

Why the horror when potatoes are called British when they are, while no objections at all are made when Donald Trump is not called Scottish which he is? Joe Biden based his Irishness on an ancestor who moved to America in the 1840s. Since then Joe had ancestors from everywhere else including heaven forfend England to the extent that his gene “Kelly” was liable to drown in the rain of Englishness.

But Donald Trump is half Scottish. He does not need to invent a new tartan. It may not be quite as Scottish as the Yousaf tartan, but Macleod is rather more Scottish than either de Klerk or Botha.

The reason of course why we have to ask Donald where’s your Scottishness rather than where’s your troosers is because the average Scottish nationalist as well as the average BBC journalist and Labour MP is this morning making a journey up the river into the heart of darkness where they meet Colonel Trump and find “The Horror, the Horror” that he has been elected President of the United States.

Trump may have more flaws than a lump of glass pretending to be a diamond, but his ability to drive the Left to distraction is absolutely flawless.

I think that Trump may be rather good for the US economy. He may be rather helpful to Britain as at least he doesn’t hate us. He will support Israel and be very good indeed at opposing both terrorism and mass migration. We will have to wait and see how he deals with Ukraine.

The free world faces two threats. The external threat comes from the alliance of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and other jihadists and malcontents. It is important that these are detached from each other and contained if not defeated. Israel has done more to do this in the past year than anyone else and must be encouraged and supported until it finishes the job entirely.

China can be tempted away because its primary interest is economic and because China will be pragmatic. Trump can perhaps make a deal that contains North Korea while protecting Taiwan by making clear that any Chinese aggression would have economic consequences.

Russia needs to be brought back to the fold of normality whereby you don’t go around poisoning people nor invading other countries. Normalisation of economic relations should be the prize offered to Russia for behaving itself.

The free world faces an internal threat that is at least as great as the external threat. The USA has for some decades been importing people indiscriminately without knowing who they are and what their intentions. The character of the USA has changed beyond all recognition much more than any country in Europe. There are parts of the USA where the majority language is no longer English.

But a country is not a landmass it is the people who have lived there over the centuries. You cannot radically change the nature of that people and expect the country to remain what it was.

The free world has become weak and decadent, obsessing about nonsense like men becoming women, apologising for our history, colonialism and slavery reparations. If you want an apology for colonialism then ditch all the computers, mobile phones and cars that colonialism brought you.

Perhaps President Trump can begin reversing some of this, because it may be in the decades ahead that we will need to be much stronger in order to defeat China, which is rising like Japan in the 1930s.

China does not apologise for anything and it does not have mass migration or asylum seekers. It does not obsess about gender and it is homogenous and united in a way that the United States no longer is.

China would be willing to take a million casualties in a war because it would not even notice the loss. The USA was defeated at the Battle of Mogadishu after losing 18 lives. It is not serious. It means that the free world can barely even compete.

Trump is a mad highlander charging the redcoats at the Battle of Prestonpans in his underwear. It’s a crazy way to fight a battle against muskets, but as the redcoats saw Trump getting closer waving his claymore you can understand why they wanted to run away.

The danger of this way of being a president is that it can all go horribly wrong. It’s not Lincoln, it’s not FDR and it’s not Eisenhower, but nor is it weak. It is the most Scottish way of being a president even if the SNP disowns Trump. It’s the presidency as Highland charge and Trump might just triumph over all his enemies. We need him to.

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Salmond created the SNP's failure

noreply@blogger.com (effiedeans) — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 06:59:00 +0100

For the past few days nothing of any worth has been written about Alex Salmond. De mortuis nil nisi bonum is a maxim that applies even to Nicola Sturgeon, but if it applies even to your greatest enemy it makes for very dull reading.

But the problem with Alex Salmond is that there is already too much mystery without adding yet more statements that we don’t mean. Above all with dead public figures we owe them the truth.

All Salmond’s achievements happened prior to September 2014. In the last ten years of his life, he achieved nothing whatsoever except see his reputation tarnished and like a contagion he found that that reputation infected others around him including Nicola Sturgeon and eventually the whole SNP.

The cause of the SNP’s success as well as its failure is ultimately due to Alex Salmond.

Scottish nationalism has never got further than “Scotland is a country not a county”. But the weakness of this argument is best illustrated by the fact that no one would dream of saying that “France is a country not a county”. If Scotland were a country in the same way that France is there would be no need to keep saying it. No one in any of the world’s countries asserts that theirs is a country rather than a county.

Salmond’s argument is obviously Scotland is a country and so should become a country. But this is the same as saying Scotland has four equal sides and so should become a square.

The word “country” in the case of Scotland clearly means something different from the case of France. In the case of France it means independent sovereign nation state, in the case of Scotland it means something more like Scotland used to be a country and is still called one and in a few instances like football acts like one. But you cannot use one definition of country to justify becoming another. That would be like arguing a rectangle ought to be a square even if it lacks four equal sides.

The Scottish nationalist argument is both powerful and trivial, but it depends on a dishonesty about the nature of Scotland a sort of self-deception that involves pretending that we are already an independent country in order to justify our becoming one. But it is not the only lie upon which the foundations of the SNP were built.

From the beginning of Salmond becoming First Minister there began the cult of personality that developed still further under Nicola Sturgeon. There were no dissenting voices when Salmond was leader. There were no leaks. It gradually became clear that so long as he offered nationalistic minded Scots the prospect of independence, he could do no wrong as they were completely indifferent to any other policies.

He began the process of conflating Scotland with the SNP. He expected employees of the state to act in his party’s interest. He began to argue that disagreeing with the SNP especially on the issue of independence was unpatriotic.

It was this that created the two Alex Salmonds the public and the private. We have a record of what the former did, but we know little about the true nature of the latter.

Something must have happened while Salmond lived in Bute House, which led to him being charged with a variety of offences against women who worked there. It may be that Salmond was lucky to avoid conviction or else it may be that his behaviour was exaggerated by the witnesses against him. But the important point is that nothing was said in 2013 or 2014 that might damage the cause of independence or its leader.

Salmond must have known when he was First Minister that no one would complain or leak anything to the newspapers. It must have given him a sense of power that meant he could get away with anything. He could lose his temper or say something dubious. He could try to pick someone up and if he succeeded it was fine and if he failed it was fine.

It was his pathetic little argument that Scotland is a country that gave him this power because it meant that anyone with any objection against Salmond would reflect that this is the leader of the independence movement and so would keep silent out of party loyalty and patriotism.

But Salmond did not realise that the monster that he had created was not merely his monster, it would be Nicola Sturgeon’s monster too and she could use it against Salmond not least because it became still more powerful under her rule.

Salmond should have stayed leader of the SNP and First Minister after 2014 unless somehow, he was forced to resign. The cult of personality under Sturgeon got worse. The secrecy increased and in time the same sense that she could get away with anything grew to consume her.

But this time what Sturgeon thought she could get away with was something quite different from what Salmond thought he could get away with. He could get away with straying hands a temper and one drink too many. She could get away with rather more.

“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” someone once said and soon appeared some loyal knights willing to do just that.

What Salmond himself created almost destroyed him. But then it went still further and destroyed both Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP.

It’s all very well appealing to people’s nationalism, but you had better mean it too otherwise they will feel foolish and turn again and rend you.

So long as the SNP remained a nationalistic movement dedicated to independence as it certainly was under Salmond then people would ignore all his faults, but under Nicola Sturgeon it became something quite different.

Scottish nationalists began to realise that Sturgeon was using “Scotland is a country not a county” to get away with anything and to gain everything and so they turned against her and her party as this was the only antidote to their previous folly in believing her.

Scottish nationalism is like birch bark it is thin and shallow, but it can when lit give a brief bright flame. Salmond did not realise that he had to provide more substantial fuel to win the argument. After all no one to my knowledge has ever claimed Scotland to be a county.

But during that brief bright flame the danger of nationalism is that it’s leaders can indeed get away with anything and gain everything. Salmond blew on the dry kindling and created the conflagration that almost enveloped him and indeed the rest of us.

Only now is it dying down. Perhaps in time we will find in the ashes of Scottish nationalism some truth and some justice. But the form of the branches of the Scottish legal system need to rise from those same ashes if we are to find either.

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Do you suffer from Islamophobia?

noreply@blogger.com (effiedeans) — Sat, 28 Sep 2024 09:23:00 +0100

We need to make a distinction between the believer and what he believes. It is wrong for me to discriminate against Jewish people or to act in a hateful way towards them. But I ought to be allowed to say what I please about the beliefs of Judaism. I can point out for instance that I doubt that God parted the Red Sea or created the world in seven days.

So too it would be wrong for me to discriminate against Hindus or to express hatred towards them. But I ought to be able to say what I like about the Bhagavad Gita.

While it would be sectarian if I expressed hatred towards Catholics, I ought to be able to say what I like about Catholicism. It is not sectarian to criticise the doctrine of transubstantiation or to doubt the infallibility of the Pope.

No one thinks it is antisemitic, anti Hindu or sectarian to criticise and speak freely about the religious beliefs of Jews, Hindus or Catholics.

The problem with the concept of Islamophobia is that it goes beyond this. While it is clearly wrong to discriminate against Muslims and to express hatred towards them simply because they are Muslims, it ought to be possible in the same way as Judaism, Hinduism and Catholicism to criticise Islamic texts and beliefs. But it isn’t.

What Muslims want is not merely that we don’t express prejudice against them or act towards them in a hateful way. They want also that we refrain from saying anything critical or indeed hateful towards Islam.

But this is quite different. There is no such thing as Judaismphobia, Hinduismphobia or Catholicismphobia and adherents to these religions are quite happy for everyone else neither to follow the rules of their religion nor to be respectful towards it. I can hate Judaism, Hinduism and Catholicism with impunity so long as I don’t hate Jews, Hindus and Catholics.

I can burn a copy of the Torah, the Bhagavad Gita or the New Testament and no one will pay much attention. I can mock God, Moses, Krishna, Vishnu and Jesus and depict them in a satirical way in any way I please and no one will call it a phobia. But if I do the same with the holy books of Islam or if I make even respectful pictures of the prophet let alone satirical ones Muslims want to call this Islamophobia.

This is the danger of this concept to our shared society where equality before the law is so vital. Muslims don’t want to be equal, they want their religious beliefs to be protected in a way that no one else’s are. But you cannot have equality before the law if one group and one group only has rights that no one else has.

Muslims like everyone else ought to have freedom of religion, but they cannot demand that non-Muslims must follow Islamic laws and duties. Jews do not demand that everyone else follows Jewish rules regarding the Sabbath, diet, or clothing. But Muslims demand that the Muslim rules of not depicting the prophet or the respectful treatment of the Quran apply to non-Muslims. If we don’t follow these rules we are Islamophobic.

But this is like saying if I don’t go to Church on Sunday I am being Christianityphobic or if I don’t wear a kippah I am Judaismphobic.

We must make a sharp distinction between the believer and the belief. While not being prejudiced against Jews, Hindus and Catholics I ought to be able to say what I like about the history of these beliefs or indeed how believers act today.

It is not Judaismphobic or indeed antisemitic to be critical of Israel so long as I don’t apply a standard of criticism to Israel that I apply to no one else. So too it is not Hinduismphobic to be critical of Hindu nationalism or the government of India. I should be able to say what I like about the history of Catholicism and how Catholicism is expressed in Catholic countries.

But it is just here that Muslims demand something that no one else has. If I express criticism of the history of Islam or how Islam is expressed in Saudi Arabia or Iran I am liable to be called Islamophobic.

But this is intellectually dishonest and makes free speech impossible. While the sacred texts of Christianity have been criticised and while the history of the spread of Christianity has often been condemned as colonialism, while Zionism and the process by which Jewish people moved to the Middle East is condemned, there is no similar criticism of the spread of Islam. There were after all no Muslims nor Arabic speakers in Palestine prior to the prophet.

It ought to be possible for British people to be critical of Islamic texts and Islamic history. It ought to be possible for us to mock and satirise Islam in just the same way as we do with Christianity. But if anyone were so foolish as to do so, he would be liable to arrest by the British police if indeed he survived long enough to be arrested.

It is not Muslims who need to be protected with regard to free expression about Judaism, Hinduism or Christianity. They can say what they wish about these religions and they will neither be arrested nor threatened. It is non-Muslims who need to be protected to speak freely about Islam. Here the threat is so real that merely showing a picture of the prophet to a class sends a teacher into hiding while no one who threatens him is sent to jail.

It is quite reasonable for this teacher to feel Islamophobia because he is indeed threatened and it is not as when someone has a phobia about something that is not dangerous. In this case the fear is well grounded as was the fear of danger that Salman Rushdie felt, which eventually saw him lose an eye in an attack which he was lucky to survive.

If I lived in Iran I would live in a theocracy. If I were a homosexual secretly living there or if I secretly brewed alcohol I too might have Islamophobia on the grounds that if I were caught Islamic laws might punish me quite severely.

But if I live in Britain I should not have any reason to feel Islamophobia. Indeed until the 1950s I might quite happily have lived my life knowing next to nothing about Islam let alone fearing it.

But many British people now view the continuing spread of Islam as something that brings with it new fears.

The concept of Islamophobia demanding special privileges and protections did not exist in Britain prior to the arrival of large numbers of Muslims. As these numbers continue to increase these privileges and protections are liable to increase also, but it is no doubt Islamophobic to fear that this will happen. We must continue to believe that Britain won’t change at all even while we watch how it did.

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