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Pansceptic

Listed below are comments made by Pansceptic between Monday, 24th November 2008 and Tuesday, 3rd November 2009.

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Czech president swallows bitter pill 7:03pm on 03 Nov 2009 What on earth is so wonderful about the people (British or any other), that bunch of economically illiterate racist bigots, or even national parliaments, who get themselves elected by pandering to the people? If power is seeping away from them to an élite that need not answer to the mob, so much the better.
Map of the Week: Forgotten white working classes 3:45pm on 19 Oct 2009 The brutal truth is that people in these decaying areas are no longer the reserve army of unemployed, but simply surplus to requirements for whom neither the private nor the public sector has interest in finding work except perhaps at the individual level. Add to that the fact that neither economic nor social liberalism was ever any part of their values, and how can they feel otherwise than excluded? There are policies that might change the situation, but they are completely unacceptable to all strands of educated opinion and therefore will not be adopted unless there is a serious need to head off the parties that believe in them. Otherwise, it will remain a police rather than a political problem.
Question Time and the BNP 2:35pm on 08 Sep 2009 Either the BNP, fascist, racist, and what you will, is a legitimate political party to be treated on a par with the rest, or it is not. If it is not, then why is it allowed to stand in elections as if it were? If other parties can't find a way of discrediting it that will resonate with its target voters (and not merely their own), then so much the worse for rhem. 'No free speech for fascists' may have been good enough for Troyskyite students of the previous generation; it is not good enough for either the Labour Party or the BBC. In any case, the objective conditions for a fascist takeover are no more present now than they were in the Britain of the 1930s, when the BUR was thwarted not by counter-thuggery in Cable Street but by the resilience of the existing political and economic order.
He failed to lead 2:32pm on 19 May 2009 Speaker Martin was the victim of snobbery, yes; he was also widely considered too tribally loyal to Labour, or hostile to Tories, especially the better-born. But his fatal flaw was loyalty to the House of Commons as it used to be, supremely self-confident in confronting all comers, whether Crown, Lords, or people, That self-confidence was already undermined when the House was frightened out of openly raising its salaries and instead adopted a system of expenses *intended* to be abused; it finally collapsed when the _Daily Telegraph_ revelations left members not only looking bad but in terror of their constituents. The most important question is not who sits in the Speaker's chair, nor even how members' remuneration can be made more presentable, but whether they can regain the self-belief to stand as a bulwark against democracy or must become mere servants of mass opinion, and on servants' wages.
Obama confuses his enemies 12:10pm on 05 Feb 2009 While Bush was taking the high moralistic line of not talking to those he classified as evil, all tensions hetween the USA and Iran could be blamed on him at will. Obama, by climbing down from his high horse, has forced the Iranian regime to revel that it does not want good relations with the USA, and therefore to shoulder the blame itself.
But is it art? 11:51am on 14 Jan 2009 Who care's whether it's art, or even whether it's amusing or insulting? To take money for organizing other people to do the work and then pocket the whole lot oneself is sheer embezzlement of EU funds, and should be proecuted as such.
Republicans vs. unions 2:54pm on 12 Dec 2008 The banks were saved, not because after their mistakes they deserved it, but because the USA could not afford them to fail. The auto companies, having made cars no one wanted, don't deserve to be saved either; the only question is whether the USA can afford to let them fail. If it can, to hell with them; if it can't, pay up.
Hard heads v soft hearts 4:38pm on 05 Dec 2008 Post 31: well said, Shtiffirgkram. Then there was the Satanic abuse hysteria, equally ill-founded, un which children were again taken away from their parents for nothing. And both these disasters were wrought by front-line professionals, backed up by their superiors; remember that even as you rightly condemn the bureaucrats of Haringey for their ineptitude. This is an area in which no error either way can be forgiven; how many people either wish to work on those terms or know someone else they'd trust to do so?
Is Obama's honeymoon really over already? 11:28am on 03 Dec 2008 The anti-Zionists rants were only to be expected whoever had been elected, since general non-Jewish opinion is far more sympathetic to Israel in the USA than anywhere else. As for the progressives, both parties have their loonies, but from what weve seen do far Obama isn't going to let Democratic loonies do to his adminstration what Republican loonies did to Bush's.
The Mormon backlash 4:06pm on 24 Nov 2008 So long as gay rights are a predominantly white cause they will lose in popular votes; the real lesson of Nivember 4 was that neither white conservatives nor white liberals are strong enough to defeat the rest of the nation.

But in a country that refuses to permit the establishment of religion there is a solution to the gay marriage question: let the law distinguish between civil unions for *everyone*, gay or straight, which is a contract between two parties creating certain rights and duties to be determined by the legislature, and marriage, which is a status recognized by each religion on its own terms. If you wish to be united in the eyes of the law, enter a civil union; if you wish to be united in the eyes of God, get married; if you want both, do both. Of course if unmarried partners in a civil union (gay or straight) wish to call it marriage, there's nothing to stop them.

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