Thursday, October 22, 2009

Giving Griffin Publicity

Have just been watching the huge protests outside the BBC against Nick Griffin. His appearance has generated reams of publicity, yet the best thing that could have happened would have been......nothing. No protestors, no constant reporting of this tedious little man and his venomous opinions. He tugs at a chain and the whole media panoply, together with the large numbers of demonstrators seeking a row, respond - and Griffin must love it! We'll see just how effective a performer he is later on, although I'm not filled with confidence that the Tories have fielded Baroness Warsi, who is usually a pretty poor Question Time performer.

1 comment:

Lord Milky said...

I had a chat with one of the unwashed forcing their opinions on everyone else as I left work.

It's all a matter of basic morality apparently. As someone more eloquent than me wrote:

"There is no such thing as absolute morality and it’s wrong to imply that there is such a thing. Whilst most rational people would probably agree that racism is abhorrent, the only way that we can meaningfully arrive at this position is through debate. Otherwise a set of dogmatic principles will be rigidly stuck to for all time; in recent centuries, slavery was accepted as self evidently moral. It was only through self reflection and open debate that we progressed to the situation where we are now.

No matter how strongly you believe it, you cannot unilaterally declare that the moral position that you hold now is superior; instead you must constantly prove it through rational debate. Without this there would be no self-correction of views which are later found to be baseless and harmful. With an issue such as racism it’s likely that any counter position would be dispatched in short order, in which case I don’t see what you’re worried about. But it is not exempt from the process just because you don’t like it.

It is not up to any one person, or indeed any snapshot of society, to declare that anything is too immoral to debate. Morality is necessarily a fluid, self correcting, entity that evolves through constant exposure and debate; not through a global gagging order to suppress ideas that are contrary to the position you happen to hold now."


As for me, I'll probably vote BNP now though. Nick got me an hour off work thanks to the anti-fascists.

The retreat of liberalism goes on

As communism seemingly disappeared from view at the end of the 1980s, in a sudden and unexpected blow-out, there was plenty of triumphal...