I saw Robert Ellis last night supporting Richard Thompson at Usher Hall, Edinburgh
Sing Along - guitar-picking song about being brought up as a Southern Baptist in the bible belt.
Nobody talks too loud in my home town Nobody stands too tall for fear of getting knocked down. .
And the flames of hell, they seemed so high I could barely see over the view I was just a boy when they told me that lie, But lord it seemed so true.
And that's a hell of a thing to do to a kid Just to teach him right from wrong You can burn in hell the rest of your days, Or you can choose to sing along.
Richard Thompson started off with songs from his new album Electric, including Salford Sunday
(He pointed out that Salford was the dirty old town of Ewan McColl's famous song.)
He still can write the songs though he did spend a lot of the evening doing guitar pyrotechnics - too much for my taste. I prefer him doing straight ballads. And he didn't do Beeswing or Vincent Black Lightening. But he did do this great version of Hey Joe:-
Overheard on a walk yesterday from a crowd of young people:- "If you're into Christianity, you should visit Roslin Chapel." Into Christianity, as if the religion which used to be half the consciousness of Scots and other Europeans was a diversion, like model trains or the history of the English Civil War. John Knox howled in rage. St Andrew fell off his cross.
What a horrible night Thursday was. I had vaguely expected to hear of another humiliation for George Galloway on the electoral trail, and with that, and Press TV being shut down I thought he would disappear from sight and hearing. But he comes screaming back. I have to give him a grudging salute for his strength and indefatigability. He certainly wrecked my sleep.
Socialist Unity were crowing over his triumph. I made a couple of comments on the victory evening:-
"How utterly wretched. Shameless pandering to religious prejudices wins an election in mainland Britain. I suppose if there had been an appropriate seat up for grabs in Belfast he could have pushed the Catholic buttons - gone on about being anti-abortion, say.
And even more wretchedly, a bunch of activists and politicos who regard themselves as progressive cheer him on."
"That little hint that his opponent wasn’t a good Muslim because he had had a drink in the past – how would he have managed a similar ploy if he had been chasing a Catholic vote? Once, in stricter times, he could have suggested:-
My opponent has eaten meat on Friday; My opponent has used a condom; or My opponent has considered divorce
but Catholics are far more liberal these days.
What would be a clever hint to make about your opponent’s impurity of religion in order to chase Catholic votes rather than Muslim ones?
After all, if politics are going to be conducted through communalism, we should start thinking of the tactical advantage of comparative religious observance. That Ed Miliband guy’s an atheist, isn’t he?"
Those comments were deleted of course.
I was disgusted at the religious communalism that ran through this election. I thought that was what the Yanks did, out-godding each other as they chase the Presidency.
But Galloway - all praise to Allah at his victory and that he's on a mission from God, and those that don't vote for him will go to hell. Saying of his rival,
"When I hear Imran Hussein say, you should vote for him because he's a Pakistani, because he is a quote, unquote "Muslim" I don't know whether to laugh or cry. On the question of Islam, God knows who is a Muslim or who is not. . . Everybody knows he's never out of the pub.
Rather missing the chance of saying, "Let's drop religion from this election. It shouldn't matter."
Politics as expression of religious tribalism is poison whether in Glasgow or Cairo. I added Bradford to the list of B's that Christopher Hitchens spoke of when asked about the peace-making aspect of religion:-
“I was to imagine myself in a strange city as the evening was coming on. Toward me I was to imagine that I saw a large group of men approaching. Now-would I feel safer, or less safe, if I was to learn that they were just coming from a prayer meeting? […] Just to stay within the letter ‘B,’ I have actually had that experience in Belfast, Beirut, Bombay, Belgrade, Bethlehem, and Baghdad. In each case I can say absolutely, and can give my reasons, why I would feel immediately threatened if I thought that the group of men approaching me in the dusk were coming from a religious observance.”
Galloway is coy about whether he has converted or will convert to Islam. A couple of theories:-
1. If he converts and then after losing Bradford West he needs a seat where he can play communalist Catholic politics e.g. Belfast or the west of Scotland, he would have to be received into Catholicism again. That might just make him look opportunistic and inconsistent.
2. If he converts and then unconverts, it could make it inconvenient for him in some countries he will no doubt be visiting eg Iran where apostasy is illegal.
Since my initial outrage I have read some analysis - that West Bradford is a peculiar seat; that the politics there were corrupt and clan-driven; that Labour has played communalist politics there for years themselves and this was now biting them in the bum ; that the voters are kicking all the main parties, as they often do in by-elections; that only a rock-star politician like Galloway could have pulled it off. So it is unlikely to be the trend towards communalist politics that I feared. You can only be communalist in constituencies which will accept it.
I am though pissed off with the Bradfordian for electing him. Galloway's over-blown rhetoric turns my stomach but a lot of them, especially the young ones, lapped it up. Bradford spring! for Chrissake. Who does he think he is? Answers own question - a kind of cross between Saladin on a white horse with a train of Saracens fighting the Crusaders and Lenin leading the masses. He really does see himself as a man of destiny, with God on his side.
When he says things like " From the Punjab to Palestine, from Bagdhad to Bradford, everyone will sit up and take notice for by the Grace of God . . .I have a strong voice." he believes in his own fantasies and gets his followers to believe in it as well.
By the way, note in this video that when addressing people in Bradford he doesn't adopt a cod Yorkshire accent, though when addressing Arabs for some reason he puts on a weird Arab accent eg in this one where he extols Assad and Syria's democracy and human rights record.
Well, he's got MP written after his name now, which will make him a more acceptable courtier to whatever particularly bloody, repressive despot whose hand he wants to kiss. Saddam is gone, Assad, the man who upholds the dignity of Arabs and Muslims*, will no doubt be gone soon. There's Ahmadinejad and sadly there will be some ugly Islamist regime established in at least one of the countries that have gone through the Arab Spring. He'll be at its leader's court, discussing "Zionism" and saluting this new lion with many Your Excellencies and that serious, respectful look and understanding nods.
Update:-
The newspapers are gleeful that Galloway tweeted "Shattered but happy after the Blackburn triumph.
Well, he is a rock star after all. There are times when the lead singer greets the crowd "Hullo Liverpool," when in Manchester, and "Hullo Madrid," when in Lisbon. (I know this has happened but "rock star" "wrong city" "hullo" isn't turning me up actual instances of this).
Being Galloway, he couldn't just say, sorry, stupid mistake. No, someone has to have hacked into his twitter account. I can't do the technology but it seems that is unlikely. But being Galloway he has to lie about it. No doubt it was an American and Zionist propaganda plot against him.
(*If you can bear it, read Amnesty's report on what Assad's security forces visit do to the regime's opponents)
I'm listening to Radio 4's religious round up programme, Sunday. They have just had a piece about the shortage of donkeys for the Palm Sunday procession. Everyone wants one, the price has gone up, and owners of donkeys who have refused cash offers for them from shifty characters, find the next morning that their donkey has been stolen.
Some scholars have gone back to the scriptures and found that, though tradition holds that Christ was taken in to Jerusalem on a donkey, in the verses that describe this it can be translated as "pack animal". So now happy-clappy vicars go and borrow llamas for the procession.
A vicar of the old school was fairly unamused about the use of a South American animal in ancient Judaea, saying that you have to draw a line somewhere.
Of course if Jesus Christ lived today it's clear what means of transport he would have used.
(It occurs to me that this could be an April Fool.)
This is an addition to Jim Denham's excellent post over at Shiraz Socialist.
Why doesn't Terry Eagleton come out as a Catholic? It's not like coming out as a Jehovah's Witness or a Scientologist or even a Mormon. Roman Catholicism is an ancient religion which has spread throughout the world, and so is not seen as weird or cultish. Also, a literary critic like Eagleton could consider the twentieth century writers in English who were Catholics – Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh and Muriel Spark just for starters. It's a creditable list of talents. And although Catholics have historically been in the majority in Western Europe – and an oppressive majority at that – in Britain post Reformation they were a minority and often persecuted. So he would have all the pleasures of being anti-establishment, and none of the dangers of earlier ages, which should satisfy a revolutionary spirit like his.
When I came across his piece ridiculing Alain de Botton's ideas of a genteel atheism I was firmly on Eagleton's side. It is a repulsive idea, that the elite should promote religion because it's good for the masses. Honest Christians don't think like that. C S Lewis frequently expressed his disgust at the idea that an educated caste of priests would keep one set of beliefs for themselves and another for their flock. Lewis himself went the whole supernatural hog.
I hate being on Eagleton's side, as he's a slippery slyboots, so like Jim I pounced on this paragraph:-
Liberal-capitalist societies, being by their nature divided, contentious places, are forever in search of a judicious dose of communitarianism to pin themselves together, and a secularised religion has long been one bogus solution on offer. The late Christopher Hitchens, who some people think is now discovering that his broadside God Is Not Great was slightly off the mark, would have scorned any such project. He did not consider that religion was a convenient fiction. He thought it was disgusting. Now there’s something believers can get their teeth into …
As Jim, and de Botton himself pointed out, this really is a hint at the sympathies of the writer and where his beliefs are heading. Imagine a sentence like this:-
The late Osama Bin Laden, who some people think is now enjoying 72 virgins. . .
The "some people" aren't the credulous or superstitious that are being ridiculed. Though Eagleton isn't straight enough to say, "I believe in an afterlife where souls are judged" - he has to do the jokey wiggle that shimmers through his writing and makes it both dishonest and irritating- you can guess he'd like there to be such a place for his adversaries to admit how very wrong their wrongness was.
(As an aside, Eagleton obliquely and George Galloway openly do show relish at the thought Hitchens may be burning in hell for eternity. I don't like either of them, but if I wouldn't them to suffer that fate for– not more than a week, anyway. )
The other Eagleton-trope in that quoted paragraph is:- Liberal-capitalist societies, being by their nature divided, contentious places, are forever in search of a judicious dose of communitarianism to pin themselves together, and a secularised religion has long been one bogus solution on offer.
Shame we're still not united by an enforced Christendom complete with burnings of heretics or a cult of the Great Leader Stalin. Also, is this being divided and contentious a distinction of "liberal-capitalist societies"? Ancient Rome, say, could be very divided and contentious, including a plethora of religions and peoples, but it kept itself together for quite a long time with an idea of Roman citizenship, which I suppose can be called "communitarian". But "liberal-capitalist" would not describe it in the slightest.
However this is typical Eagleton rhetoric. Do a diatribe against atheism or what have you and then garnish it with something vaguely Marxist sounding, so it appears as weighty analysis and not a run of the mill critique. You can see it here in after a incoherent and dodgy pieceabout multi-culturalism (we're all the same really and isn't that great! no we're not, and isn't that great!!)
Multiculturalism is not a threat because it might breed suicide bombers. It is a threat because the kind of political state we have depends upon a tight cultural consensus in order to implant its materially divisive policies.
That is a dubious statement, but it sounds like political analysis so gives more gravity to what could be instead mere cultural observation.
I don't know why Eagleton won't come clean vis-a-vis his own Catholicism. Is it because among the British academics and intellectuals who are his peers atheism and liberalism are the norm and religion a little backward (he would be better off in the USA)? Is it because, for all the talk of revolutionary priests "and the gospel of a preacher who was tortured and executed for speaking up for justice", it's associated with social conservatism? Does he fear seeming less like the impartial analyst and more the partisan on religious matters? Perhaps he doesn't really know himself - but if religion is attacked he reacts to the "twitch upon the thread" and arises, thrashing and gasping.
Patrick Hayes over at Spiked (12th April) had a closer look at that Observer story:-
Something very odd happened at the weekend. A 40-year-old member of the far-right British National Party (BNP) was arrested for burning a copy of the Koran in his own back garden. Yes, it is apparently now a crime to express your disdain for a certain religious faith in the privacy of your own home. But that’s not the end of it. What makes this case especially odd is that the man in question - Sion Owens - was reported to the police by a broadsheet newspaper that claims to be liberal: the Observer. Since when has it been the job of the respectable, left-leaning press to grass people up to the cops for alleged speech crimes?
It’s worth reading the whole article. Henry Porter, the freedom of speech campaigner who writes for the Observer, had this to say:-
On the face of it, though, it would seem a doubtful decision because handing over the video, which appears to have been made for private use and was in a sense a private expression of this individual’s views, is likely to inflame feelings more than if the matter was simply ignored. That is the practical aspect. ….
‘If there is evidence that the individual was about to publish the video, then I think there is perhaps cause for police action because of what happened a few days ago in Afghanistan where several people lost their lives. It is a delicate issue and by no means clear cut. However, it is the case that prohibition of an act, whether in public or private, often makes that act more likely to occur. That is why I am against the ban on the burqa in France.’
Spiked is predictably robust on this matter:-
Unlike Porter, I believe that Sion Owens should also have had the freedom to release the film into the public domain, if he so chose. Freedom of speech, the cornerstone of all our freedoms, is too often compromised on the grounds that people might be harmed as a result of it. But people should be trusted to make up their own minds about whether to act upon footage of some idiot burning the Koran, rather than prevented by the state from seeing such footage in case it drives them crazy. To censor is to treat the public as a pogrom-in-waiting, whose eyes must be protected from offensive words and imagery. It is an updated, perhaps slightly more PC version of the same patronising assumptions that were exposed in the Lady Chatterley Trial: ‘Would you let your wife or servant read it?’ The question some are implicitly asking in relation to the BNP Koran video is: ‘Would you let the white working classes watch it?’ or ‘Would you let angry Muslims watch it?’. Perhaps that is what Townsend was getting at when he said the video could have ‘serious violent repercussions’.
Spiked does love leaping on liberals for their patronising assumptions about the violent tendencies of the canaille. But in this case it’s a reasonable assumption after the reaction to Terry Jones’s burning of the Qu’ran. These incidents are opportunities that are ramped up by religious and state leaders and violence and deaths are the result.
Arresting people though for acts which if publicised are likely to cause violence and harm somewhere in the world is untenable. There’s nothing much we can do about it. The lynch mobs led by the witch denouncers are going to have their days of rampage in the global village.
McLuhan coined the phrase “global village” to describe the hyper-networked world that was already taking shape. He had no illusions, though, about the nobility of village life. Our newly TV-, telephone-, and radio-enwebbed multiverse could just as easily be ruled by “panic terrors … befitting a world of tribal drums” as by any bright pastoral harmony. And so it was and is.
The latest news I could find about the case against the Qu’ran burner was (12th April):-
Sion Owens, aged 41, was charged with a public order offence on Saturday.
When he appeared at Swansea Magistrates Court the Crown Prosecution Service said it was withdrawing the case against him.
But it said that investigations would continue and that "almost certainly other proceedings will ensue."
And of course I would never have googled this guy if the Observer hadn’t handed his video of the book burning to the police.
It’s a really good idea if you’re making a state visit that you say something nice about the country that is your host. When you go to China, you praise their ancient civilisation and their invention of all sorts of things like paper and porcelain; when you go to France you eulogise their contribution to philosophy, the arts and cuisine; when you go to Britain, you congratulate them on their fight against Nazis. That goes down a treat, especially when they’re commemorating the Battle of Britain seventy years ago end to end on the BBC. You do this especially if one of you team has recently called the place “third world” (a reasonable if ill-judged statement about some of the facilities eg the railways, nasty if applied to the population).
Then, with your hearers duly loved up, you can smuggle in a warning that atheism leads to Nazism.
Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives [as did a lot of godless Commies]. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny”. [What’s more reductive than regarding this world as only a preparation for the (non-existent) next? I‘ll give him public virtue, but excluding God and religion leads to Nazism? Bugger that.]
Now, some people could take exception to this on the grounds that when it comes to the chief characteristics of Nazism, that is, genocide and gross anti-semitism, Roman Catholics have had a good swing at the bat. Those conquistadors were very devout, weren’t they? . As for anti-semitism. . . And others spring to mind. The Nazis burned books, the Church indexes them. The Nazis murdered dissenters to their creed, as did the Church ("heresy" they call it). However, I wouldn’t assume that the four million Catholics in the British population were heading towards Nazism.
For an excellent short piece on Nazism, Christianity and religion in general read this over at Obscene Desserts. It’s one he prepared earlier for another German bishop. Evidently this atheism-leads-to-Nazism is a meme that German clerics are taught these days.
it is necessary when considering Bishop Mixa's comments linking 'aggressive atheism' to Nazism to differentiate two things: the Party's view toward religion and the views of religious people toward the Party.
While there is plenty of evidence in the former case of a hostility to Christianity among some party leaders, their alternative was hardly atheism but a mix of Nordic mysticism and esoteric paganism.
However, in the latter case, it is equally clear that the Nazis' road to power was paved by the best wishes of a significant number of observantly religious people who--regardless of what Himmler or Goebbels or Rosenberg might have had planned--saw no contradiction between their belief in a Christian God and their support for the regime.
Atheism, of course, is no more a guarantee of morality than is theism. But what the current 'aggressive atheism'--in the words of a press release put out by the diocese of Augsburg--has to do with the history of Nazism is a mystery to me.
It’s amazing the Pope gets away with this. I don’t know what proportion of the British population is atheist - my guess is that most are lapsed Christians or lazy agnostics - but there are probably more atheists than Methodists (a quarter million) and Hindus (half a million) combined. If the Pope had said that Methodism or Hiinduism could lead you to Nazism, he would be taken as vilely insulting a minority. In fact he could be prosecuted under our ridiculous religious hatred laws.
There have been distinguished British atheists. Dead ones - George Eliot and George Orwell, two of our most considerable literary figures and great moralists. Living ones - Richard Dawkins (okay, he‘s not much loved) and David Attenborough, a national treasure. They are /were all of them rational and humane - that is, as far from Nazism as any human being can be.
People do the logic:-
Atheism leads to Nazism,
David Attenborough is an atheist
Therefore David Attenborough is a Nazi.
Think of the lovely old gentleman delighting in any form of life, whether it’s dophlins swimming or bats excreting. Does he look like a Nazi? (Mind you, there was a big nature loving streak in the Nazis. . .)
So when I caught on the news that Cardinal Walter Kasper had said arriving in Britain was like landing in a “third world country” I thought that’s what he meant. Compared to the Schipol airport in Amsterdam, it is a dingy and slovenly cattle pen, which travellers I know will do anything to avoid. In fact some airports in the third world are a lot pleasanter because at least you are looking at sunshine and tropical trees rather than a general greyness.
However it seems it wasn’t the queues and lack of information that the Cardinal was talking about, but the Asians and blacks who work there, not just cleaning floors but stamping your passport or heading security teams. Pray for PR, my brother.
He was also groaning about the “aggressive atheism” of this country. He’s supposed to be the expert on the Church of England. “Indifferent agnosticism” covers most of us, I would have thought.
The Pope was in Edinburgh today and his motorcade passed my office. We all downed tools and gawped from the windows. I don’t know what proportion of my firm would be a) practising Christians; b) Roman Catholics but I would think very few. It was the celebrity and splash and the sense it was an historic event that got us all moving, including the high ups. However, except for the Pope mobile it wasn’t much to look at - just a pack of police on motorbikes in front and behind, with a few minibus affairs in between. Most of us wondered that a guy as old as that could stand for so long. Some of the streets had supposedly been repaved, so he wouldn’t be shaken over by potholes. I wish he had toured every corrugated and bumpy surface of the city, which are in a dire state at the moment, all the money having been spent on trams.
The Pope has been groaning about the secularism of this country and Europe in general. Ungrateful old bugger. If secularism hadn’t happened, ultra-Protestant Edinburgh would be rioting today with literal No Popery crowds. Jenny Geddes would be leading the charge shouting, "Dare ye say the Mass in ma lug ye son of the whure of Babylon.”
When you make your way through Arrivals at the nice little Edinburgh airport a huge notice greets you:- "The City of the Enlightenment". If I'd been in charge of the route I would have dropped the pothole idea and brushed him up close by the giant statues of Adam Smith and David Hume.
Every Monday I check Slate, and with relief see that Christopher Hitchens has turned out another 1,000 words. After the news of his cancer it's reassuring to see that he's still alive and still writing even though his Slate pieces don't show him at his best. They are too short, his writing is simplified and he doesn't relax into the literary allusions and the general amplitude and richness that distinguish his style.
But here he is, on excellent form with a piece of travel writing describing his journey “from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady“. He’s a good travel writer closely observing the unfamiliar scenery and customs, and sending back vivid descriptions.
I discovered that my cancer had spread to my lymph nodes, and that one of these deformed beauties—located on my right clavicle, or collarbone—was big enough to be seen and felt. It’s not at all good when your cancer is “palpable” from the outside. Especially when, as at this stage, they didn’t even know where the primary source was. Carcinoma works cunningly from the inside out. Detection and treatment often work more slowly and gropingly, from the outside in. Many needles were sunk into my clavicle area—“Tissue is the issue” being a hot slogan in the local Tumorville tongue—and I was told the biopsy results might take a week.
Working back from the cancer-ridden squamous cells that these first results disclosed, it took rather longer than that to discover the disagreeable truth. The word “metastasized” was the one in the report that first caught my eye, and ear. The alien had colonized a bit of my lung as well as quite a bit of my lymph node. And its original base of operations was located—had been located for quite some time—in my esophagus. My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a “race” life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.
Read the lot. His senses are as alert as ever and his humour is full on and stoic. There’s an interview here as well.
Hitchens: There are people who are praying for me to suffer and die. They have lavish websites relishing my. . . Then there are people much more numerous and nicer who are praying that either I get better or that I redeem my self, that I make my peace with the almighty, that my soul gets saved even if my wretched carcass does not.. Some pray for both. ..
Interviewer: Do you tell people not to do it for you?
Hitchens: No, I say if it makes you feel better then you have my blessing.
It's not as bad as hearing that a friend or family member is seriously ill, but I really do want to howl because we are almost certainly going to be losing that individual voice in a short time. It’s painful to see pictures of him made bald by chemotherapy, If I thought prayer, fasting and abstaining from drink would help him, I'd certainly be willing to make my contribution. However, I’m sure he wouldn’t want me to do that. . .
Some of his religious enemies are openly rejoicing at his suffering and likely death, seeing it as his deserts, some hypocritical shits are sanctimoniously offering to pray because it makes them look good (see Shuggy‘s take on this), while some pleasant souls with genuine kindness are praying for his health and spiritual welfare. Hichens receives this with grace, which most atheists would of course. We would assume that someone was wishing us well, in the same spirit that we thank friends who say they will cross their fingers for us when we go for a job interview and don't snap "Never mind your superstitious nonsense".
However, this is too much for the logorrhoeac freak at HitchBitch who is taking great umbrage at what he thinks is hypocrisy. Reading that hang out of giggling nihilists brings on as much nausea as chemotherapy ever did, without the curative powers.
My bête noire, Eagleton here reviews a book about Cardinal Newman. His review is a lively piece of work, and well-informed about the Victorian milieu. Eagleton, when not writing vapour, not making little asides about modern politics and not trying to be funny (aaargh), is worth reading. He has to get his dig in though:-
Militant atheists today regard religious faith as a question of subscribing to certain propositions about the world. Newman countered this theological ignorance, pervasive in his own time too, with the Romantic claim (and this from one of the towering intellects of the Victorian age) that ‘man is not a reasoning animal; he is a seeing, feeling, contemplating, acting animal … It is the concrete being that reasons.’ It is the imagination, he holds, which is primary in matters of faith. Yet this passionate subjectivity was never whimsical subjectivism. How could it be, in a Catholic thinker for whom faith and truth were communal and institutional rather than a matter of private intuition? Newman, like Kierkegaard, recognised that religious faith is a kind of love, and like love engages intellect, emotion, experience and imagination together. There is a ‘notional’ kind of knowledge, Newman argues in An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, by which he means a knowledge of abstract ideas, and there is ‘real’ assent, which involves one’s whole personality.
Yes, it's certainly true that love commands close and sustained attention, but love has to have an object. You have to love something, whether a person, a country, a movement, music, literature, physics or football. If religious faith is a kind of love, what is the object of that love?
Also, other “towering intellects” of Newman’s age eg George Eliot, were atheists.
He believed that pursuing any branch of knowledge for its own sake was a religious activity, since the whole of Nature was God’s creation. In The Idea of a University, he speaks up for an ‘intercommunion’ of all the principal academic disciplines and for disinterested scholarly inquiry. The task of a university is to foster intellectual culture for its own sake, which means that it can be the tool of neither church nor state. His book needs to be placed in the hands of the vandals, philistines and soulless bureaucrats who are currently destroying our places of higher learning.
I can go with this principle behind a university, and as to what’s destroying them everyone I know or read who works in a university agrees with Eagleton. Over every street, park and beach of our society the backed up sewer of marketing and Murdoch spreads its stinking muck .
