The Sleepwalk of the West

French cinema is the high-visibility indicator of a great country’s cultural hara-kiri. Awards ceremonies are always fundamentally political, but in France they’re actually… fundamentalist. After winning at Cannes last years, the film A Prophet was fawned over at the Césars, with no less than nine awards. Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best… [...]

Q: Why does the Left like Communism, again?
A: Because the stock market’s down.
Joking apart, there’s also a selfish reason. The idea of Communism is so abstract now, so cleansed of reality, that it can be invoked at zero cost. It’s a faux-humble chat-up line with a double payoff: you get to look impeccably humane, [...]

Socrates said that he would not have survived in public office, that anyone true to their morals would reach conflict there, and that there is no politician who is not morally compromised. They put him on trial for his impious observations. Then they put him to death.
Even if you disagree with Geert Wilders‘ morals, [...]

A vast office and retail building is rising next to St Paul’s Cathedral, set to “transform the City into a seven-day shopping and leisure destination with a difference“. A friend in the trade told me the story:
The site was up for redevelopment (why? it looked grand as it was). Certain constraints apply around the Cathedral to prevent [...]

It’s official! The stylists of the French Senate, after a protracted squabble over what should/shouldn’t be accepted as French fashion, have announced:
Out: Burkas.
In: Hair Shirts.
Don’t bin your burka yet though; you can still wear it on the boulevards – it’s hipper than ever – only not on public transport or when picking up the kids [...]

If you haven’t seen Avatar, it’s a half-a-billion-dollar adaptation of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, where Mr Meek gets to be Mr Hero, kill Baddies, and get Big Chief’s ethnically-optimised uber-daughter into the sack. All in his sleep. Apart from being more visually stunning than anything you’ve ever seen, it’s nothing new.
Except, many claim [...]

In the US, the process whereby a hick church can become a Sunday school then “college” then “university” in only a few short years is trenchantly and hilariously documented in Paul Fussell’s Class: A Guide through the American Status System. An equivalent – only slightly less radical – change happened in the UK when technical [...]

The BBC’s moral relativism is epitomised by this joke on Radio 4’s The Now Show (iPlayler, 12:23):
“What’s the difference between nuclear proliferation in Iran, and nuclear proliferation in the US?”
(Prolonged silence.)
“Exactly!”

Oh, isn’t that good. Ha. Unbridled hilarity aside, what is the difference? Let’s see… one wants to use military might to impose democracy/capitalism across [...]

The news these last few days seems to belong to our religious leaders and their wrestle for our souls.
The Pope was dramatically thrown to the ground, but immediately bounced back. Muscling in on a defenceless position, the mighty Roman made a quick lunge for all those displaced by “hunger, intolerance or environmental degradation”.
The [...]

France is the word’s most popular tourist destination. 80 million people visit annually; 25 million more than the second-ranking USA, 15 million more than France’s own population – who holiday in millions in their own country rather than go abroad, or have chosen to settle in France rather than in their country of origin.
So… [...]

When national will (especially a Swiss “legitimacy-rich” democratic one) clashes with trans-national will (especially a European “legitimacy-poor” undemocratic one), who should win?
The answer seems transparently obvious; but the European project has never been too interested in transparency. (Witness the recent magical apparition of a new EU constitution and President. Or maybe I just mislaid [...]

Talking of Cannes festival winners – and the politics they embody – last year’s Entre les Murs (The Class) is another example of the agendas lurking in our culture, in this case French but more generally Western. The ideas behind the film are best illustrated by the perennial debate – or its paucity – over [...]

Allan Bloom traces the popular enthusiasm for criminality to the 19th century German philosophers. Culturally – according to him – the new appetite hits the mainstream with “Mack the Knife” from Brecht’s and Weill’s The Threepenny Opera, in 1928 Weimar Germany. It was the first time the bourgeoisie could blithely – almost compulsively – sing [...]

Last week a friend and I chatted with two pleasant American women for about an hour, in a café. Afterwards he – an American himself – turned to me and, pointing to where one of the women had sat, asked if I realised who she was. I said no. He said: “Monica Lewinsky.”
It wasn’t any [...]

The impact on the political discourse of the Nick-Griffin-on-Question-Time debacle was manifest even before the programme was over. Late in – and leaving the BNP leader entirely out of it – the ministers of the main parties launched into an impromptu cat-fight over which party had the “best grip” on immigration.
Instead of “celebrating diversity” [...]

Coventry Cathedral is one of those rare examples of successful Modernism, whose appeal transcends architectural fashion. Like another successful example – the Barbican Estate – it rose from the devastation of the German Luftwaffe, and now overlooks its previous incarnation, a crumbling, unrestored symbol of 20th Century cataclysm.
As a result of this traumatic history, the [...]

Leaders from Baha’ism, Buddhism, Christianity, Daoism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Shintoism and Sikhism gathered at Windsor Castle this week to save the planet. Most pressingly:
When people from nine faiths with special dietary requirements visit for a banquet, what should be on the menu? That is the dilemma facing the Royal Family as Windsor Castle hosts an [...]

Much has been written these last few days on Claude Lévi-Strauss. Le Monde devoted four pages to the Grandfather of Anthropology, who has died aged 100. In an odd irony – after reams of praise for his insights into ethnographic diversity and the rich taxonomy of humankind – an unrelated article in the same paper [...]

I respect Anjem Choudary. You basically know where you are with him. He’s not a Politician – i.e. someone who knows that they don’t mean what they say. Nor is he a Moderate – someone who doesn’t know that they don’t really mean what they say. Choudary, I think, means exactly what he says. And [...]

Witness – the autobiography of Whittaker Chambers’ – is the dramatic story of a Dostoevskian “lesser man” seeking redemption through suffering and rigorous moral integrity. It is a verbose but remarkable book, centering on his personal pendulum-swing from a tortured, austere, and passionately felt Communism – towards an equally tortured, austere, and passionately felt [...]