Thought for the Day - Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue.
Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsionwhen you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothingwhen you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favorswhen you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against youwhen you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrificeyou may know that your society is doomed.Francisco d’Anconia
Atlas Shrugged
by Ayn Rand
Fireworks and Parliament
Last night fellow blogger Andrew Ian Dodge, yours truly, and my girlfriend did the traditional British Nov 5 thing and marked Guy Fawkes’ night. A pleasant enough occasion, with some mulled wine and hotdogs to warm the constitution, plus a fire, and a bunch of reasonably loud and colourful fireworks. We were watching all this in Warwick Square, one of several nice leafy mini-parks in Pimlico, central London.
My girlfriend, who is Maltese and a Catholic, was a bit uneasy at the history of Guy Fawkes’ night. The event commemorates the execution of said Mr Fawkes for the crime of trying to blow up Parliament in the early 17th century as a part of a plot to restore a Catholic monarch to the British throne. The event has become part of the folklore of British life and helped spawn centuries of anti-Popish sentiment, which sadly retains a foothold to this day in places like Northern Ireland.
It was not until 1829 that Sir Robert Peel, then Tory Home Secretary, lifted the ban on Catholics from voting in British elections. The Monarch is still the official head of the Church of England, and the idea of Prince Charles, say, marrying a Catholic is still something to excite controversy.
But I hope the story of how Catholicism has become an ordinary feature of British national life in the past 200 years offers us hope about the ability of our country to assimilate those of different faiths and share a common national home. I hope the moral of this is not lost on those who are, understanderbly, worried about the impact of militant Islam on countries like the United Kingdom. In short, let’s take a leaf out of the Life of Brian and look on the bright side of life.
2 commentsMoby Dick II: the revenge?
From today’s Telegraph:
Not since Moby Dick has a great white whale been so bloodily harpooned. It took a shocked Michael Moore, director of Fahrenheit 9/11, until yesterday to comment on the US election result. When he did, he made a lame joke, offering “reasons not to slit your own throat”. But if John Kerry’s strategists feel like slitting anyone’s throat right now, it is Mr Moore’s.This was supposed to be the victory that the podgy sage of Flint, Michigan, delivered for the Democrats by winding up students into paroxysms of anti-Bush rage and propelling them into the polling booths. In the event, he achieved the first but not the second objective. The proportion of young voters did not increase on Tuesday. In the gleeful words of one anti-Moore website, “pot-smoking slackers are still pot-smoking slackers”: they meant to vote Kerry but, like, couldn’t get out of bed in time.
In 2000, Mr Moore’s support for Ralph Nader helped lose Florida for Al Gore. This time, he boosted President Bush by outraging Middle America. Take a bow, Mike: you’ve done it again.
Need we say any more, really?
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