It is better to die (laughing) on your feet than to live on your knees

I blogged before about reactions to a proposed small Manx mosque, and in particular the lack of moral fibre from ‘people of faith’ and some possible reasons (see Lies, more lies and moral cowardice ).
As I said, I never expect Manx biblebashers to show solidarity with folk of another faith, so their silence confirmed all we already know about their bigotry, moral cowardice and grasping attitude to everything.
Risk taking a moral stand and ruin the chance of more public funds? Not likely!
But at least, finally, the letter representing local minority faith views about a proposed mosque got printed (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/your-letters/Isle-of-Man-Examiner-June.5343489.jp). Sadly, that was a disappointment too.
What does it tell you when a letter, supposedly representing the views of numerous faith groups, appears without a single named signatory? To be credible, it could and should have been signed by people representing all the traditions involved in the group.
If they can’t speak ‘officially’ for their groups, they could have signed as individuals, and any local would recognise the faiths of at least some. I know, from my own experience dealing with them, that some of the groups involved are as riddled with racist white flighters as any other section of the community, but this was pathetic.
It’s a bit like the reaction of mainstream political parties to the BNP. ‘Deny them the oxygen of publicity’ and ‘Don’t share a platform with racists’ are the official line. Just stay silent, don’t talk about the issues and it will all go away.
No it pigging won’t!
If we’re ever to drive racist rats out of their holes and work out the balance between ‘respect’ for others (however crazed their beliefs) and abolishing the religious privilege which diminishes the quality of all our lives we need a stand-up public row every time an issue like this arises.
We won’t find the answer to social issues in the Bible, the Koran, Das Kapital, Mein Kampf – or even The Selfish Gene. We have to be prepared for the fact that we don’t get any answers at all except those we work out between ourselves in proper, adult, public debate.
On the Isle of Man all the political or social debate I’ve experienced for years is sub-kindergarten foot-stamping and ‘I’m taking my ball home’ nonsense, so ending that could, on particular days, either cause us to despair of humanity or die laughing. But if anyone else is as bored as me of geriatric racist retirees and superstitious halfwits running this place they’re welcome to join in.

War on the hard of thinking

Folk who know me know how irritated I get at the laziness of ‘liberal opinion’, and in particular the way in which there’s a conspiracy of blandness which stops anyone here asking proper questions about vital things like charities or the voluntary and public sector.
According to this fuzzy logic, all charities and social workers are nice and everything to do with the finance sector is nasty or crooked, so only nasty free market types ask awkward questions. It’s like being tazered by the Mothers Union some days trying to hold incompetent or just outright dangerous ‘charity initiatives’ to account.
The funny thing is, these are comfortable Guardianistas grumbling. I don’t even get this from the evangelicals or conservative clergy whose ideas and actions I am 'naturally' supposed to disagree with most.
In fact, only the other day one vicar, absolutely tongue in cheek, offered to pray for me when I have my op next month. He needs me to get out intact. Who amongst his own flock causes him to question everything he believes on a weekly basis?
So while checking out the sites on the sidebar I’ve been particularly inspired by folk putting minority views who make new arguments when the established one would probably get them a nice safe grant or steady employment.
Take Turkish journalist Ayse Onal, whose work has already got her blacklisted. When writing about honour killings it would be so easy to tap into a mainstream Western sentiment that the men who carry them out are just subhuman, or play on some hardcore feminist sentiment that ‘all men are bastards, so what do you expect?’
She doesn’t. She faces the hard fact that people who enable or commit such killings are also, while not exactly victims, at least socially trapped between a rock and a hard place. In a new book and documentary she talks to them too, and it sounds like stuff we should pay attention to when calling for national or international change to stop the killings. You can find out more about that at http://www.stophonourkillings.com/?name=News&file=article&sid=3603
Then there’s Peter Hitchens, the Hitchens brother who isn’t a secular saint and isn’t beyond putting a view that liberal atheist types find objectionable. Still, I was quite taken a while back with his account of being unable to take part in a university debate because some leftie rentamob or other thought a rightwinger like him shouldn’t be speaking in the first place.
As I recall, the debate was on legalisation of drugs and he was up against Howard Marks, but had recently sounded off about another topic – possibly to do with the right of David Irving to put his obnoxious views if only so that he could be slapped down by someone with at least half a brain. What was noteworthy was that while Marks could have just had a cosy chat with sympathetic studes, plugged his book and pocketed the appearance fee he also refused to go on if he couldn’t have a stand-up row and take the chance of having his views ripped apart by Hitchens.
So in an Index on Censorship piece at http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2009/05/15/peter-hitchens-bring-back-arguments/ Hitchens says that we’ve lost that ‘inch of difference’ between Left and Right that used to be the place where feisty but fruitful arguments took place between folk who hated each other’s views, but valued the chance to put each other straight without getting arrested or punched in the face before they could finish a sentence. As Hitchen says, what also matters is that the views on both sides were each radical, different or unpopular, and a polite 21st century ‘consensus’ means nothing serious gets discussed and there are no intelligent routes out of the grey muddle we seem to live in, even though nobody remembers consenting to it in the first place.
Crikey, me telling folk to go read the ‘wrong’ Hitchens brother for inspiration. If that doesn’t show how bad things are, I don’t know what does.