Attack views, not the person
In response to John Cooper, I have read all of Orwell’s essays and novels, and have no doubt that the comments he made about the British intelligentsia of the pre-war years apply equally to the current liberal elite.
As he said “England is perhaps the only great country whose
intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution”.
Mr Cooper asks for evidence, and one only has to look at the behaviour of that left wing icon George Bernard Shaw whose admiration for the tyrant Stalin lasted, undimmed, until his death. After a visit to the Soviet Union in 1931 he became an unashamed apologist, viewing reports of the Ukrainian famine of 1933 as “slanderous”. He supported the terror and said that the Old Bolsheviks, put to death after show trials “often have to be pushed off the ladder with ropes around their necks”. The individuals have changed but the mindset persists, now compounded by the humourless bigots of social media, who are determined to denigrate everything this country has done, ignoring the good for which we have been responsible, not least in spreading democratic ideals around the world. Mr Cooper may believe that to deny that these people exist is sufficient. It isn’t.
Martin Chandler need not concern himself with my soul, because anger is not a mortal sin, as is evidenced by the fact that our Lord himself displayed such emotion when he drove the money lenders out of the temple. In any case I am quite happy to dispute with those who hold strong views different from mine, provided that they are based on knowledge, rather than attempt to reason with those whose main method of debate isto make ad hominem attacks on those with whom they disagree, Guy Steward’s description of me as stupid being a case in point.
Contrary to what he claims, I do know that climate matters. I just question whether changes that take place are anthropogenic in origin.
Colin Bullen