Why does being a right winger, Christian and being anti-EU go hand in hand?

Yes, it's that man Cranmer again, the one who rather pompously always refers to himself as "His Grace".  He's waffling on about Ireland again, and how their new government is actually powerless in the grand scheme of things, despite trying to sound different.  He says "Gael or Fáil – it doesn’t matter which centre-right(ish) party is in office, their sovereignty has been removed: they have no power.".  But the point really is: Does "His Grace" realise we live in a fallen and inter-connected world economy?  Does he think that if Ireland had never joined the Eurozone or EU, they'd have more power?!

They would still be a small open economy, reliant on others to trade with them, and reliant on the interest rate decisions of larger neighbours due to running a flexible exchange rate and not having capital controls.  They'd have been in as much trouble in or out of the Eurozone, as their bankers would still have run riot in just the same manner - given the Financial Crisis was a pretty global thing, even "His Grace" can't pin that one on the EU.

So even had they not had the bail out, they would still have been crippled by the behaviour of their bankers, had their government done what others done, and bailed out the banks, because instead of having the current repayments, they would have much higher interest rates on any debt they wanted to take out.  And austerity, now a global by-word for economic illiteracy, is everywhere and hence even had Ireland not needed to, they would have been forced into it, in or out of the Eurozone.

I'm sure someone will say: But they could have devalued if they weren't in the Euro.  Sure.  Because the depreciation (that's the word these people are really looking for in this age of floating currencies) has really helped the UK, hasn't it?  Our manufacturing is really leading us in an export-led recovery, and we're loving how expensive all our imported goods are, aren't we?

So even were Ireland not reliant on the Eurozone/IMF after the bail out, they sure as anything wouldn't have had any more power than they currently do.  It's just not quite how a fallen (second best) world works.  But that kind of thing distorts the rabid anti-EU sentiment of many right wingers.  Why let the truth get in the way of a good story?

 

Hmm, He wasn't a left winger either

I wince when I read leftie commentaries like this one on Labour Uncut.  It's essentially a rant against faith schools, suggesting they produce extremists and help produce ghettos.  Now I grew up in North-East Manchester in the late 1990s, and it certainly didn't need faith schools there to create the ghettos that existed back then and still do.  The simple fact is that in particular areas the majority of kids that go to a school will be from a particular ethnic group.  Whether or not that school is a faith school, it will be filled with kids from particular ethnic backgrounds, and if you throw in some state propaganda via a secular school that will probably if anything have an adverse effect on kids, leading to them rejecting the system.  Many kids that grow up in Christian schools tend to reject Christianity, so perhaps actually, faith schools might not be a bad idea to enable kids to reject radical variants of Islam.

It would appear Marchant thinks it's actually possible to have a school that doesn't promote a particular faith, forgetting that if you remove the Christian worldview from a school, you must replace it with something else, and that something else will be an athiest worldview, the kind that presents evolution as the facts about how we all got to be here, instead of the theory that it is.

Anyhow, minor rant over.  I'm ashamed of left wingers when I read stuff like this.  Jesus would have been in the centre...

Right winger first, Christian second

I'm not sure why I do it, maybe it's some kind of sad thing where I need something to provoke me. Either way, I persistently check in Google Reader the feed from the Cranmer blog.

Everything I read there confirms to me more and more (it may be obvious to others but forgive me my denseness as I catch up!) that this chap is a Conservative first (and hence belonging firmly to the right), and then a Christian second - and I think a distant second at times. He makes persistent disparaging remarks about people on the left, despite from time to time noting how his hero Margaret Thatcher (I would have thought an Archbishop's hero ought to be Jesus but that's by the by) never claimed you had to be right wing if you were a Bible-believing Christian.

In his most recent flare up, he has taken on some rather outspoken chap called Mehdi Hasan. Cranmer describes Hasan as being pretty childish, throwing toys out of the pram. This kind of patronising attitude is all over Cranmer's blog, and really irritating and off-putting. No wonder people look at Christians who attach themselves to the Conservative party and are put off.

However, in Cranmer's original description of why he disagrees with Hasan, Cranmer contains not a single bit of evidence to support his assertions. It's a bit like reading the Daily Mail. Cranmer attacks Hasan about things that supposedly are self-evident, uses emotive language, but doesn't provide a single shred of evidence. It's the kind of stuff that convinces those already convinced about the prevalence of these supposed problems.

And of course, the bottom line is that Cranmer is against multiculturalism, something he blames Labour squarely for, as if it's something that only started happening in 1997. Multiculturalism is something for the left, it seems. Not fo right wingers in the days of Cameron preaching illiberalism on the same day the EDL marches through Luton.

The fascinating thing for me is this. Cranmer is fiercely opposed to a number of things that people from different cultures do, because they are an anathema to him, rightly or wrongly. He agitates that they must not be allowed to do them in a country as wonderful as ours (since when was a Christian supposed to be ever so tied to the things of this world and proud about them, exactly?). So we should be telling these people the bloody well do what we do, or else.

Yet at the same time, he argues for freedom of religious expression, particularly on the part of Christians. Now I happen to believe this should be allowed. But my point is this: If we have freedom of religious expression for Christians to do things that are increasingly counter-cultural (e.g. say homosexuality and sex out of marriage is a sin), then we have to allow others to be able to do counter-cultural things.

I just don't get the difference, and it really irritates me about this Cranmer chap. His economic illiteracy also bugs me, but I'll have to write about that elsewhere since this isn't a blog about economics...

Cranmer and Christianity

This chap is a funny character. He does regularly quote Margaret Thatcher as having denied that you have to be right wing or a Tory to be Christian - at which point those of us conservative Christians who happen to be anything but a Tory are relieved. I think a bit like advertising George W Bush is a Christian is bad publicity for the Christian faith, so too is advertising Thatcher was a Christian, given the general regard with which she is held in by much of the population (that doesn't vote Conservative).

Anyhow, he often writes, and I usually want a "dislike" button somewhere for his frequent lashings out at the left, since the tone of his stance is that one can't possibly be on the left and be a conservative Christian - a stance I do manage to take.

This article though, on multiculturalism, is perhaps the best of the lot. I find it hard to believe that multiculturalism is purely a phenomenon of the last 13 years - and Wikipedia partially supports me on this.

I'm not sure exactly what the Archbishop is proposing, it is hard to tell. He can't be saying end all immigration (although his comment on Peterborough is the usual right-wing hyperbole on immigration). He seems to be saying stop the ghettos emerging that apparently exist in Birmingham dominated by Muslims. He writes about them as if ghettos (defined basically as no-go areas in towns and cities) have only started existing since the Labour Party embraced multiculturalism.

I'm sure he probably doesn't really need reminding that they have always been with us in inner-city UK. I can remember many in Manchester where I grew up (incidentally in the mid-1990s before Labour's Multiculturalism came about). We haven't really got rid of them so why he thinks we can get rid of these ghettos I'm not really sure.

However, my main thought on this is that Cranmer in this article strays closest to being a parochial Anglican (i.e. someone focussed on the UK and worldly matters rather than Christianity) when talking about "bring a stranger in one's own land". This I noticed earlier in an article on a left-wing Vicar who dared to say something less than supportive about the Royal Marriage. Cranmer noted that the vicar's boss was not God but instead the Queen. I'm sorry, but a Bible-believing Christian minister's boss is not the King or Queen of England, but the Lord Jesus Christ, as is the case for any Bible-believing Christian.

Yes there are social problems in the UK, but are they really associated indelibly with immigration? I'm not even slightly convinced. We are all fallen sinful human beings regardless of where we are from, and we will always fail to get on. This doesn't mean we should put a stop to immigration, describe ourselves as strangers in a foreign land (does Cranmer think that the foreigner should be thought of as the stranger? Doesn't seem much like what Jesus would do to me).

Social Justice and Libertarians

I'm helping a friend organise a seminar at a Christian "retreat" (for want of a better word) next weekend on Social Justice: God's heart for the poor. It's thought provoking.

It reminded me of how I usually look at Biblical passages: They seem to be the complaints of the poor and oppressed and although the oppressors are not necessarily made clear (other than often those that are oppressing David and others militarily), it has always struck me that it chimes with a lot of what the Left rails against profit maximising business.

The hope is that in this seminar we avoid a bit left vs right distinction, but I suspect it may well come up. I think those on the left are guilty of overdoing their aversion to the word profit - the motive to create money-making opportunities needn't always be bad, and often the alternative is worse - concentrate power in the hands of sinful politicians as opposed to corporation owners.

However, I think the right is equally guilty of a panacea-like view of markets: They are perfect, and should not be meddled with. For better or worse, I regularly look at the Cafe Hayek blog (which has the most irritating picture of a waiter - do all Libertarians look as annoying as that?!), which is generally a succession of letters written by Don Boudreaux to various US newspapers. This one in particular is consistent with the general feel: Bill Gates has no more power over my life than I do over his.

Libertarians, to make a sweeping statement, are unable to accept the proposition of market power in the absence of government intervention. They won't accept that in local areas companies are able to act as effective monopolies. They won't accept that companies are creative and manufacture ways to manipulate customers in the name of higher profits and returns; for them, the market activity of the company is entirely benign, because the market will always correct for nasty players (e.g. Microsoft) by nicer, more innovative players (e.g. Apple - for a naive take).

I find it hard to support either viewpoint and I guess that's why I'm pretty near the centre. Markets are far from perfect and basic economic theory talks about how the disparity between a socially optimal market outcome and a privately optimal one can be stark. But also, just the existence of that externality, in economics jargon, isn't necessarily enough to justify government failure on top of market failure. Railing against profits as the left do can be just as dangerous.

I think the Bible's passages on Social Justice make it clear: It's not ungodly to be rich - it's the mindset you have about it. If you place your entire being - hopes and all that - in your wealth as opposed to the Lord, then you'll be in trouble. But if you have put your trust in the Lord, as the book of James points out, this has to manifest itself in terms of actions - doing something about the poor and oppressed (and not just pontificating about whether they should or shouldn't exist - a trait of the right I think), who will always be with us in a fallen world.

Confusing

So it was announced that a terror suspect in the US was convicted on only one out of 281 offences he was tried for in a US civilian court, and that this is a problem for Obama because Republicans are criticising the policy to try these guys in civilian courts.

Criticising based on the fact that when challenged to prove the offences these guys are charged with, the US was unable to convince a judge and jury about the charges levelled against them. That is as opposed to trying them in a military court presumably where "secret" evidence, or evidence procured by illegal means, could be used.

The main reason I write about this is because I'm a little perplexed about this move by right-wing folk in the US - supposedly the home of the Christian right. I wonder which side they are on in this?

Fairly Typical

This Cramner chap is a strange one. I'll move past his sycophantic ravings about Thatcher (I don't quite get how venerating one person to that level of glory is consistent with being a Christian - but then I'm really not sure where this guy stands).

Anyhow, it seems to me he is guilty of, like a lot of right-wing Christians, of spotting the faults on the left without accepting the same happens on the right too. This article on a couple in Nottingham who can't adopt because they are Bible-believing Christians and hence have un-PC views on homosexuality makes me angry.

For a number of reasons. First that it has come to this, that perfectly good couples are persecuted for a belief they happen to air and be up front about, whereas gay couples can adopt and slander Christians. There is something up there. But doesn't the Bible teach us to expect persecution as Christians?

What also angers me is: The constant attribution of all the legislation and societal norms that have led to this situation to Labour. Really? It may have happened that Labour passed the bill, but I don't see the Tories running in to repeal it right now, particularly now they are in power. You can point me all you like to websites showing some prominent Tories voted against such legislation, but the fact is power corrupts, and I seriously doubt the Tories would have acted any different had they held power in that 13 year gap.

The other rather obvious fact is the PC brigade didn't suddenly start in 1997, and stop once Labour were voted out earlier on this year. It does seem funny to me that right after the election, Theresa May suddenly changed her public beliefs on homosexuality.

I'm not writing here in any way to post something necessarily constructive, that somehow the left is better. The left though, is just as full of sinners as the right is, and I think that's the point I'm at pains to make, a kind of point that it seems Cramner and a number of my right-wing friends would try and deny.