Phillips on Barack Obama

I notice a lot of people are visiting this site by searching for information about Barack Obama. You might therefore be interested in a piece in the Spectator by Melanie Phillips entitled Princess Obama. Here are the central paragraphs:

Welcome to Planet Diana. It was only with the death of the People’s Princess that the extent of Britain’s transformation from a country of reason, intelligence, stoicism, self-restraint and responsibility into a land of credulousness, emotional incontinence, sentimentality, irresponsibility and self-obsession became shatteringly apparent. Princess Diana was an icon of the new Britain because she embodied precisely those latter characteristics.

It became clear that politicians could score remarkable short-term success if they too got in touch with their inner trauma and felt everyone else’s pain. Bill Clinton (hideous irony for Hillary) was the first to realise this and made it his political signature. Tony Blair, whose lip periodically quivered with precision timing, had it in spades. David Cameron has it; so too does Obama.

The effect is electric, but short-lived. That is because Dianafication is essentially empty, amoral, untruthful and manipulative; eventually voters see through it and realise they have been played for suckers. But while it lasts -- and it creates presidents and prime ministers -- reason doesn’t get a look in. Warm fuzzy feelings win hands down because they anaesthetise reality and blank out altogether those difficult issues which require difficult decisions. Obama appears to be on the wrong side of just about every important issue going; indeed, were he to be elected president he would be a danger to the free world. But hey – the guy makes people feel good about themselves; he stands for hope, love, reconciliation, youthfulness and fairies at the bottom of the garden.

A Royal Disgrace

As noted by the Telegraph and Archbishop Cranmer, Her Majesty the Queen today became the oldest monarch in British history, outliving her great-great grandmother, Queen Victoria.

Did the BBC make mention of this great cause for national celebration in its ten o'clock news? Of course not, it was too fixated on Diana.

God save the Queen.

Diana: The Soap Opera

As far as I am concerned, the birth of a son to Prince Edward and Sophie Countess of Wessex certainly ranks as news. But can anyone tell me why the BBC insists on inflicting on us daily installments of the Diana Soap Opera during its news bulletins? If I wanted to relive her final moments over and over, I would buy the Daily Express, not look to what is supposed to be a world leader in independent news coverage.

The Royal Christmas Petition

Further to this week's Christianophobia debate in Parliament, non-Christian Asian religious minorities are petitioning The Queen to protect Christmas and Christian worship:

Your Majesty The Queen, you vowed in Your Coronation Oath to both defend Justice and also to Defend The Faith in Your Realm, therefore we the undersigned urge you to formally call in Your Government ministers and instruct them on pain of dismissal to do the following by Christmas 2008:

1. End by Law the evil libel that Asian religious minorities are offended by Christmas or of peaceful public Christian worship;

2. End by Law the evil libel that Asian religious minorities in Your Realm are enemies of Christmas and Christian worship and education;

3. End by law that anyone can ban carol services in public or private places, nativity plays performed by children in schools or other Christmas worship;

4. Stop Your Government Ministers seeking to divide Your People in your Realm by emphasising and even inventing and fabricating bogus disagreements which cause needless resentment between religious groups;

5. Do all in their power to emphasise the huge areas of agreement and sincere goodwill between different religious groups seeking to express their faith by love for their neighbour and through acts of mercy and charity;

6. Put Merry Christmas on all Government Seasons Greetings Cards and official letters and websites issued in the month of December;

7. We also bless you Your Majesty and your family with a Very Merry Christmas and an extremely Happy New Year in 2008 in which we all pray that HOPE, FAITH and LOVE will re-emerge in our nation.

The petition will be presented to The Queen on December 21st and already has the support of Members of Parliament, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu and Christian leaders. Anyone interested in signing it should send their name to petition@apnalounge.com

Value For Money

The Royal Family cost the taxpayer just 62p per person last year — less than the price of two first class stamps ... If only the government delivered such impressive value for money from all our taxes!

With yet another report confirming today the extent of social divisions in our country, revealing that the top 20% of our secondary schools are effectively closed to those from non-privileged backgrounds, I can but note as I did yesterday that our tax burden must be decreased if our public services are to see the fundamental changes they require and the national decline in social mobility is to be reversed.

Tom, Dick & Harry

So, now the insurgents are using precision-made mines that fire "explosively formed projectiles" capable of penetrating the armour of even our soldiers' Challenger 2 tanks, with their nuclear- chemical- and biological attack-resistant compartments, Iraq is too dangerous for Harry.

I bet Tom and Dick are encouraged.

The American Dream

"Disagree from time to time we may; united we must always remain."

Her Majesty The Queen told President Bush at yesterday's White House banquet that, "If the Atlantic unites, not divides us, ours is a partnership always to be reckoned with in the defense of freedom and the spread of prosperity."

In a decade when the media appears to encourage anti-American sentiment here in Britain and America seems to have reversed fifty years of "support of a Europe whole and free" (at least with respect to its encouragement of Britain's closer integration with the continent), the Queen's words sound as much a warning as a celebration of our two countries' special relationship.

In his 1981 classic, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony, Samuel Huntington examined the persistent, radical gap between the promise of American ideals—liberty, equality, and hostility to authority—and the performance of American politics. He noted that, "American political ideals and values—the core of American national identity—have been continuously and overwhelmingly liberal, individualistic, democratic. American political institutions have reflected these values but have always fallen short of realizing them in a satisfactory manner," and concluded, "Critics say America is a lie because its reality falls so far short of its ideals. They are wrong. America is not a lie; it is a disappointment only because it is also a hope."

As the Queen seems to imply, we would do well to remember that hope, rather than focus purely on the disappointments, to recall the ideals, rather than just the lies—lest we awake to discover the fundamental values of our two great nations have been crushed by pessimism and cynicism.