Author: Ophelia Benson

So then there’s this other thing with this ‘junior dictionary’ (what’s a junior dictionary? why not just have a regular dictionary and use it as needed? what’s the point of having a special dictionary that won’t have the words that you don’t know what they mean?) that’s part of a sinister plot to get rid of words about Christianity and the queen and flowers so that there won’t be any more Britishness. Something like that.

Oxford University Press has removed words like “aisle”, “bishop”, “chapel”, “empire” and “monarch” from its Junior Dictionary and replaced them with words like “blog”, “broadband” and “celebrity”. Dozens of words related to the countryside have also been culled.

Really? How does Julie Henry know that OUP replaced the first words with the other words? Did OUP tell her that? Did OUP confess to having held editorial meetings in which everyone sat around saying ‘let’s drop “bishop” and replace it with “blog”‘ and ‘hoo ya let’s do that hey’?

The publisher claims the changes have been made to reflect the fact that Britain is a modern, multicultural, multifaith society.

Well, somebody should give them a good hard kick if they really said that, for sure, but I still doubt the whole replacement scenario.

An analysis of the word choices made by the dictionary lexicographers has revealed that entries from “abbey” to “willow” have been axed. Instead, words such as “MP3 player”, “voicemail” and “attachment” have taken their place.

Entries ‘from “abbey” to “willow”‘ – meaning what? All the words between abbey and willow? Probably not. But what then? Oh, you know – you can do the math – words like clerestory, and nuncio, and archepiscopal, and other words like tapir, and hystrix, and tamandua. But what the two categories have to do with each other…only a master at a private school could say.

Anthony Seldon, the master of Wellington College, a leading private school in Berkshire, said: “I am stunned that words like “saint”, “buttercup”, “heather” and “sycamore” have all gone and I grieve it.

Well quite. Children who want to pray to Saint Buttercup have nowhere to go now. It’s heart-rending.

There’s this Australian MP who can really spot a sinister coincidence and then having spotted it figure out that it’s not a coincidence at all but a joined-up sequence of events with one (after a gap of six months) causing the other. If only more people had talents like that, All would be Explained.

Labor MP James Bidgood, the first-time MP under investigation for selling pictures of a protester attempting to set fire to himself outside Parliament House, has declared the global financial crisis an act of God…”In 1987 there was another march for Jesus. That took place in April. And guess what happened in October 1987? The stock market crashed.”

Oooooooooooooh – I never noticed that before. Makes you think, don’t it? Makes the chills run up your spine? Ohhhhhhhhhhhh my my my – there was a march for Jesus in April, and in October the stock market crashed. It’s so obvious! Why has no one pointed it out before?!

Well I suppose that could be because some other things happened that April, and then more things in May, and some more in June, and so on…and also because some other things happened in October – so drawing all the lines that join up all these different things gets to be kind of complicated, and scratchy, so people didn’t spot the pattern. I can see where that would happen. But James Bidgood has a special talent that allows him to single out this one thing that happened in April and this other, larger thing that happened in October, and unerringly draw the solid heavy thick black line that joins them up. That’s why he’s an MP and you’re not.

So Cherie Blair is giving a lecture in Rome on Friday titled ‘Religion as a force in protecting women’s human rights’. So…..what’s she going to say then? What can she say? It would be interesting to know.

One wonders if she’s going to just…make stuff up. People do that you know. I’ve noticed it. They like women’s rights, and they like religion, so they want to say the one helps or supports or fosters or protects the other – but there is very little evidence of that, and quite a lot of evidence of its opposite. So what are they to do? Well…just say things, that’s what. Religion allows that, and most other institutions and bystanders allow it too. It’s even expected. Religion is a good thing (the idea seems to be); other good things are good things; religion should be associated with these other good things; therefore when saying things about religion it’s commendable to use a certain kind of verb (helps, supports, etc) between the word ‘religion’ and the good things. No need to look for evidence or consider the plausibility of the use of such verbs; just do the necessary. So Karen Armstrong informs us that ‘at the core of every single one of the world religions is the virtue of compassion’ – which just isn’t true. The seven deadly sins don’t even mention cruelty, which is just as well given how vindictive the OT god is, and Jesus is not much better. It’s the modern piety that religion is all about compassion – that compassion is ‘at the core of’ all religions, whatever ‘at the core’ of means – but compassion has not always been the important virtue that it is now; Armstrong is just blatantly reading her own modern morality back into the old religions. It seems unlikely that Cherie Blair will be attempting anything else.

The Cardinal talks the usual familiar self-pitying self-serving bullshit.

“Although the tone of public discussion is sceptical or dismissive rather than antireligious, atheism has become more vocal and aggressive.” Britain’s most senior Catholic leader says that the “unfriendly climate for people of all faiths” has united the country’s three major faiths, Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

In complaining about people who don’t share their baseless ‘faiths’ having the gall to speak up. Touching to see them unite though, when in the good old days they used to slaughter each other at every opportunity.

“The vocal minority who argue that religion has no role in modern British society portray Catholic teaching on the family as prejudiced and intolerant to those pursuing alternatives,” he says.

Yes, that’s right – because it is. ‘Catholic teaching on the family’ is highly ‘intolerant’ of homosexuality for no clear or convincing reason; it also endlessly tells women that we are profoundly different from men – equal to be sure, in some formal sense, but different different different – and must (yes must – they’re not shy) not attempt to be like men or in fact to be like anything other than the familiar limited maternal figure. That, you see, is why the ‘vocal minority’ don’t want to be told what to do by cardinals and rabbis and imams.

[T]he cardinal argues that moves to silence the faith communities must be resisted. “There is a current dislike of absolutes in any area of human activity, including morality,” he says.

It’s not a question of ‘silencing’ the ‘faith communities’; it’s a question of not submitting to them, and of not granting them extra political power on the strength of their ‘faith,’ and of not giving a free pass to ‘faith-based’ irrational unjust rules and ‘absolutes’ that oppress or subordinate people.

He blames the culture of individual rights, encouraged by the Human Rights Act, as responsible for creating a society that claims to be tolerant, but in fact denies the rights of religious groups to act according to their conscience and beliefs.

As always, that depends on what is meant by ‘act.’ In the case of some religious groups for instance it means families forcing children to marry total strangers whom they do not want to marry. The culture of individual rights does, when it is awake and attentive enough, deny the ‘right’ of religious groups to act according to their ‘conscience and beliefs’ in cases like that, and other similarly oppressive violent antiegalitarian cases. It does and it should; the only problem is that it doesn’t do it enough; it should do it more. Does Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor approve of forced marriage? Probably not – but then he shouldn’t talk kack about the rights of religious groups to act according to their conscience and beliefs. He should be more responsible.

Norm makes a very sharp and telling point.

Periodically, the Guardian newspaper carries an op-ed piece on how somebody or other, typically a Western government, is sowing fear for some nefarious purpose. If the piece isn’t by Madeleine Bunting, then it’s likely to be by Simon Jenkins. And so it is today. He’s talking ‘scaremongering’, ‘politics of fear’, ‘fear politics’, ‘the pervasiveness of fear’…

Yes isn’t he just:

The media’s fondness for describing any explosion as “al-Qaeda-linked” has turned what was a tiny, if efficient, cabal of fanatics into a global menace, ridiculously on a par with Hitler and postwar communism…At least organised crime and communism posed genuine threats to American liberties. Al-Qaida does not, yet it has become the ruling obsession of Bush’s courtiers.

Norm retorts –

As long as the squads are only kidnapping, torturing and murdering people, you see, law and liberties remain intact – even if not the liberties of those particular people happening to be now dead or horribly injured.

There is something deeply contemptible about this section of Western liberal opinion and its most consistent organ, The Guardian. Its spokespeople can assimilate everything done by Islamist enemies of the rule of law and of the liberties of the not-yet-murdered…[O]nly let there be blood on the streets caused by groups openly proclaiming their hatred of secular law and liberty, and the Simon Jenkinses and the rest of his Guardianista ilk can’t wait to impress upon you how very relaxed you ought to be about it.

Let me zero in on the stupidity of ‘At least organised crime and communism posed genuine threats to American liberties. Al-Qaida does not, yet it has become the ruling obsession of Bush’s courtiers.’ Let me zero in on the stupidity and callous brutality of those two sentences. Here’s the thing: ‘American liberties’ are not the only issue here. It is entirely possible to think that al-Qaeda is no threat at all to American liberties or American anything else and still think that al-Qaida is a very horrible phenomenon, on a par with Nazism morally if not in its power (so far) to murder millions. It is entirely possible to think that we in the US can get along just fine even if al-Qaeda flourishes like the green bay tree in South Asia – and to think that our ability to get along just fine is not the only issue, is not the point here, is not the deciding factor. It is entirely possible to think that what happened in Mumbai was appalling and worth being very shocked and worried about because of the people of Mumbai. It is entirely possible to think that the spread of Islamism in much of the developing world could well leave the US almost untouched and still think it’s an absolute nightmare because of what it will do to the people who live under its crushing punitive rule.

This isn’t a very subtle or sophisticated thought, surely. It’s obvious enough, surely. It’s simple enough. Bad things are bad even if they happen to other people far away. That applies to DR Congo, Darfur, Zimbabwe, Burma, Saudi Arabia – it applies to more places than one likes to contemplate – and it applies to Mumbai and Kabul, too, even if New York and Washington remain unmussed forever.