Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 285

Who is an 'Alcoholic'? What is 'Alcoholism'?

Very briefly, for I am busy elsewhere today, I have noticed that a number of contributors declare or assume that there is such a thing as ‘Alcoholism’, and that it has ‘withdrawal symptoms’.

 

This sort of thing ( like the assumption that ‘addiction’ is an unchallenged medical-scientific concept) illustrates the deep difficulty we are in.

 

The ‘symptoms’ of ‘withdrawal’ they name seem to me to be mainly those long associated with long-term heavy drinking (delirium tremens, for instance). I think you can achieve these symptoms without any attempt to ‘withdraw’ from heavy drinking.  I also have reason to believe that you can be a long-term heavy drinker and not necessarily experience them.   It is also interesting to see how much of the literature surrounding alcohol ‘withdrawal’ involves the prescription of drugs (including worrying substances such as barbiturates and benzodiazepines, which gives us an idea which way the wind blows on this subject, and why modern medicine, and the modern academy might be so anxious to classify this as a ‘disease’. Follow the money, as they say).

 

I also note that ‘neuroscience’  and ‘neuroscientists’ are called in aid here. I am fascinated by this term ‘neuroscience’, which is a shrill warning bell to anyone interested in objective scientific study. It cleverly suggests an association with the precise and objective discipline of neurology, but turns out not be the same thing at all. It is not, like its parent river,  strictly biological, but trickles away into speculative and subjective streamlets including linguistics, philosophy and psychology ( another discipline which is not half so grand as it sounds).

 

But let us turn briefly to the expression ‘Alcoholic’ to describe a person, and ‘Alcoholism’ to describe an alleged ‘addiction’ or ailment. I haven’t seen any clear, consistent objective measure for establishing that a person is an ‘alcoholic’. The same goes for detecting the presence of ‘alcoholism’ in the human body.  Having myself been accused of being an ‘alcoholic’ after confessing a consumption (now long abandoned, alas) of half a bottle of red wine a day, I am interested in the borderlines of this concept.

 

Thanks to its polysyllabic grandeur, and the way that it lets heavy drinkers off the hook of personal responsibility, it goes largely unquestioned. But in what way, precisely, is an ‘alcoholic’ different from a person who just drinks too much? Is there any fact which stands in the way of the argument that ‘alcoholism’ is a pseudo-scientific medicalization of a human failing? If so, can someone tell me what it is?

 

 

Alcoholism - the Debate Rages On

A person on Twitter asks why I need to ask what ‘Alcoholism’ is when I can find out by skimming Wikipedia. Well, that is precisely why I need to ask. Wikipedia is crammed with conventional wisdom, and often lacks scepticism about the claims of the modern witch doctors who have moved into medicine in a big way since the invention of the serotonin theory of ‘depression’(unproven, by the way).

 

By the way, and perhaps relevant to the above,  I have no idea what Mrs Wyles is trying to communicate in her contribution about Librium. Perhaps she could explain.  Heather Tomlinson writes of a ‘syndrome for people who are dependent on a substance or sometimes a behaviour’.  Well, which is it? And if it is one rather than the other, how can it be the same thing in both cases? And if it is not the same thing in both cases, how can the same word justly be used to describe it?  How much real hard meaning can be found in such formulae?  Isn’t this guesswork and prejudice , masquerading as hard science by using long words?

Much like ‘disorder’,  ‘syndrome’ is one of those words that lends authority to the speaker or writer who uses it,  but that melts away, like fog, as you approach it.   Half my point in such discussions is to point out how much pseudo-science is deployed in these arguments, and how readily people, in awe of ‘science’ but unschooled in it,  swallow it.  It is used to cover for the fact that opinions are being presented as facts.  Proper science is experimental, testable and predictive and above all objective. That is why it tends to be quite limited.

 

Neurology, as opposed to its would-be usurper ‘neuroscience’  is a good example of this. Neurologists are very modest about the limits of their knowledge. ‘Neuroscientists’ make wide claims to deal with vast areas of knowledge.  Even that highly suspect thing Psychiatry, whose practitioners are required to have medical qualifications, is  much harder than ‘psychology’, which many people mistake for its more qualified big brother, but whose practitioners require far weaker qualifications.

 

The courageous ‘Mr X’ (he must be easy to find in the phone book) says : ‘Yes, you can suffer hallucinations, seizures, hypertension and tachycardia from things other than alcohol withdrawal. You can even die from things other than alcohol withdrawal. Does this mean alcohol withdrawal cannot cause these symptoms?’

 

I don’t know.   It just seems to me to be more than a little tricky to list,  as ‘symptoms’ of ‘withdrawal’ from alcohol,  illnesses which are at root caused by the person’s abuse of alcohol in the first place, and which he can suffer without making any attempt at ‘withdrawal’ . If long term abuse of alcohol can and does cause these symptoms (and I believe it does) to what extent can this so-called ‘withdrawal’ be blamed for them, and how correct is it to attribute them to ‘withdrawal’, especially in an attempt to argue in favour of the concept of ‘addiction’. I think we might have a causality problem here. What does Mr ’X’ think? Do his moral opinions influence his judgement on the causality?

 

The same person says : ‘addiction has a proven genetic component’. It does? That is to say, everyone who has this genetic component becomes an ‘addict’? Or is he in fact saying something else, which on examination turns out to be subjective manoeuvring, which wriggles round the point that people choose their habits, and choose whether to abandon them? Attempts to introduce genetic determinism into almost all areas of life are rife at the moment, and are clearly motivated by a moral rejection of individual responsibility in general.  They only work, however, if you accept the dubious proposition that people cannot resist or reject genetically influenced tendencies.

 

But surley they can and do, all the time. This heritage is not like ,say haemophilia, which you inherit whether you want to or not, and it is , once again, tricky to suggest that it is.

 

As for  Mr X’s argument: ‘and (like cancer) it does not affect everyone equally, hence you are wrong to state, “The habit-forming characteristic is in the substance (tobacco, say) not in the person and is easily avoided by not ingesting it” - it's actually a bit of both.’

 

I would question the logic.

 

Why, precisely does the fact that it does not affect everyone equally mean that I am wrong to state this? Thousands of variables must be involved in influencing whether someone takes up , maintains or abandons a damaging habit. But all of them are overborne by that person's ability to decide whether to do so or not. He eitehr has the free will to do so, or he does not. If he does, nothing else is decisive. If he has not, then addiction exists. Addiction and free will cannot co-exist.

 

The fact that, once they have made the foolish decision to take up smoking, some people will find it more habit-forming than others is irrelevant to the absolute fact that they have exercised their will in choosing to smoke, and they exercise their will in choosing to cease, or not to cease.  He is simply trying to deny free will, and replace it with a genetic determinism which is his opinion, but cannot be factually established.

 

Then there is Mr Lovell, who writes (Quoting and responding to me – my later replies marked **)

 

Me : ‘But in what way, precisely, is an ‘alcoholic’ different from a person who just drinks too much?"

Mr Lovell :’Medically speaking, there is not. 'Alcoholic' is a loose, lay-term for someone who drinks more than is generally agreed to be healthy on a long term basis.’

 

**Thanks for that at least. The term, then,  has no actual medical meaning, and is a grandiose, polysyllabic expression for ‘one who drinks too much’. Why then use it at all? My view is that the aim of doing so is to try to medicalise human will, a matter over which medicine has , and ought to have, no knowledge or control, and to give the impression of scientific knowledge where none exist.

 

Me : "Is there any fact which stands in the way of the argument that ‘alcoholism’ is a pseudo-scientific medicalization of a human failing? If so, can someone tell me what it is?"

 

Mr Lovell: I'm not sure how physiological/biological symptoms of withdrawal from a person whose body is dependent on a substance can be called pseudo-scientific.

 

**Nor am I, nor do I say so. The accusation of ‘pseudo-scientific medicalisation’ was applied specifically to the use of the term ‘alcoholism’ to describe heavy drinking , as he really ought to know, and as he can check by looking at the article.  But I will save him the trouble by reproducing my exact words : ‘Is there any fact which stands in the way of the argument that ‘alcoholism’ is a pseudo-scientific medicalization of a human failing?’.

 

Already, the argument is slipping away from direct engagement, straw men are being deployed, and misrepresentation has begun to rear its ugly head.

 

Questions are being answered which were not asked, and questions are not being answered which were asked, and the waters are being muddied by subtle changes of subject and bait-and-switch methods. Why does he use these ? I suspect it is unconscious, and no more rational or deliberate than the squirting of ink by an alarmed squid, which this technique so closely resembles. I will respond by sticking closely to the scientific method, of fact and reason.

 

He then veers quickly into various presumptions, of the kind this whole argument is attempting to address and question.

He *presumes* that the physical/biological manifestations to which he refers, and which I do not question, are incontrovertibly established as being  ‘symptoms’ of ‘withdrawal’ . 

 

 Are they? Can they be? How can he establish that these manifestations, which are undoubtedly symptoms of long term heavy use of alcohol (see below), are also ‘symptoms’ specifically of ‘withdrawal’ . Given that the development of a heavy drinking habit invariably takes some time, a large proportion of heavy drinkers (though not by any means all) will have become seriously ill by the time their doctors notice that they are heavy drinkers. Do these symptoms occur only during so-called ‘withdrawal’ ?  Do they occur following ‘withdrawal’  in long-term heavy drinkers who are otherwise healthy? Or do they only occur in long-term drinkers who are not otherwise healthy?  Do they also occur in patients who have not ‘withdrawn’ at all? (yes, they do, see below).

 

How long after deprivation begins can they usually be observed?  Would an immediate resumption of heavy drinking end the symptoms? Or would it worsen them?  If not, in what way are they symptoms of ‘withdrawal’ Where is the work on this?

 

 

Mr Lovell once again answers an argument that hasn’t been made , saying: ‘These people aren't faking seizures.’

**I never said they were.

 

He continues : ‘You may call these symptoms a result of human failing and I shan't argue with you,’ .

**I am glad to hear it.  But it is not much of a concession. I do not see how he could avoid accepting this. The problems to which he refers are the result of an irresponsible and selfish form of behaviour universally known to be damaging, and undertaken voluntarily.

 

Then, he says : ‘but denying the existence if a physical dependence is very strange.’

**In what way *is* it *strange*? It is contrary to Mr Lovell’s opinions. But that does not make it ‘strange’.  What is more ‘strange’ is Mr Lovell’s apparent inability to cope with the fact that somebody disagrees with him, or to imagine that a differing opinion might be valid, or require anything apart from a  lofty telling-off, such as he attempts to deliver here. He is, in fact, cross because his opinions have been formed through conventional wisdom and received opinion, rather than through unbiased investigation, he is unused to challenge, and (I suspect) because he doubts his own case. Now he must think. This is seldom welcome.

 

**The use of the word ‘dependence’ is itself an assumption which needs to be justified by evidence, and isn’t. The heavy drinker has (as discussed elsewhere) a craving, a desire, even a  greed, for his drink. If he stops drinking he will perhaps suffer in various ways, though he will benefit hugely as well. But far from ‘depending’ upon it, he is killing himself by his weakness, and he can stop when he chooses. The sooner he stops, the easier it will be, and the less damage he will have done.

 

Mr Lovell wags his finger again:’ The body (NOT the mind, please notice) becomes dependent on the substance and reacts very badly to abrupt withdrawal.’

 

**After the unsubstantiated assertion of physical ‘dependence’,  we get bait and switch again. The word  ‘abrupt’ is cunningly smuggled into the expression ‘withdrawal’. Does this perhaps mean that a gradual cessation is *not* met with very bad reactions?  If not, where did ‘abrupt’ come from? It is the first time, I think, that Mr Lovell has deployed it.

 

 

Me : " I think you can achieve these symptoms without any attempt at ‘withdrawal’"

Mr Lovell :’ I'm afraid on his one you are just plain wrong. The DT's are a symptom of withdrawal, not ingestion of alcohol. They carry a mortality rate of about 10%. This is fact. A cursory Internet search would have saved you from embarrassment on this one.’

 

**Would it, though? I made, as advised, such a  cursory search, and found as follows (the emphasis is mine)  : ‘Delirium tremens is most common in people who have a history of alcohol withdrawal, especially in those who drink the equivalent of 7 to 8 US pints (3310–3790 ml or 5.83–6.66 imp pt) of beer or 1 US pint (473 ml or 16.65 imp fl oz) of distilled beverage daily. *Delirium tremens also commonly affects those with a history of habitual alcohol use or alcoholism that has existed for more than 10 years*.[11]’

This, which makes plain that I am absolutely right (in saying that DTs can be achieved without any attempt at withdrawal, and are in fact a symptom of heavy drinking itself)  and Mr Lovell wholly wrong in telling me this is not so,  is from the Wikipedia entry on DTs, and is referenced to the Medline Plus Encyclopaedia, a reference I followed and checked. It comes as no surprise to me. In my childhood and teens,  before the pharmaceutical companies got into this business in a big way,  delirium tremens or ‘the DTs’ was well-known colloquially as something which the long term heavy drinker risked. It was never suggested that it was solely (or at all)  the consequence of ‘withdrawal’ from alcohol. And of course if it is not, then it must be rather hard to state with certainty that a long-term heavy drinker, who suffers from DTs, is doing so because of his or her withdrawal from alcohol.

 

 

Me: " It is also interesting to see how much of the literature surrounding alcohol ‘withdrawal’ involves the prescription of drugs (including worrying substances such as barbiturates and benzodiazepines, which gives us an idea which way the wind blows on this subject, and why modern medicine, and the modern academy might be so anxious to classify this as a ‘disease’. Follow the money, as they say)."

 

Mr Lovelll : ‘Firstly, barbiturates have not been used in modern medicine for many many years.’

 

**Is that so? According to the Medline Plus Encyclopaedia, among the treatments for DTs is phenobarbital, which I believe to be a barbiturate and is still, I believe, in widespread use ( diazepam and lorazepam, which I believe are benzodiazepines, are also mentioned) .

 

Mr Lovell: ‘ Secondly, follow the money? Who is making a profit here? Not doctors, not the NHS.’

**I didn’t, as it happens,  mention profit, though the answer to this question is so blazingly obvious (and is given below) that I am amazed that Mr Lovell cannot seen it for himself. .  The NHS does not seek profit. Doctors (see the organisation No Free Lunch, and many many media articles, including recent ones on the enormous fines recently levied on pharmaceutical companies in America for mis-selling ‘antidepressants’ ) are incessantly offered perks, travel and other benefits by the drug companies for prescribing their drugs. In that particular case, the Guardian reported that : ‘Psychiatrists and their partners were flown to five-star hotels, on all-expenses-paid trips where speakers, paid up to $2,500 to attend, gave presentations on the drugs. They could enjoy diving, golf, fishing and other extra activities arranged by the company.’

 

 

The pharmaceutical companies, of course, make gigantic profits, That is why they are able to pay these enormous fines without any great pain.

 

 

Mr Lovell :  ‘In fact treating biological dependence is an expensive business, representing a significant chunk of acute medical budgets. There is no financial incentive for us to give benzodiazepines.’

 

** Who is this ‘us’. For whom does he speak? How can he be so slow off the mark to understand how money is raised and spent in the health business and who gets it? The NHS, funded by us taxpayers, does indeed spend a lot of money on these ‘treatments’ . That does not mean that those who make and sell the drugs and (see above) those who prescribe them do not benefit in perks and other rewards from this colossal spending. As usual, it is the taxpayer who is the mug. There is clearly a huge financial incentive.

 

Mr Lovell patronisingly concludes : ‘I hope I have cleared up your mistakes/confusion.’

 And then he says ‘ I would reiterate that I am in no way pro-drugs.  But biological addiction is a stressing fact, not opinion. I see it all the time.’
**He certainly sees his opinion all the time. It is conventional wisdom, which is pretty much invariably wrong.  As to whether he can tell it from a fact, I urge readers to study carefully what I have written, and reach their own conclusions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Will Survive of Us? The Miracle of Chartres Cathedral

I sometimes complain that British people pay far too little attention to the glories of their own land and culture. They slog for thousands of miles on planes to view the Taj Mahal or the Temples of Angkor Wat, but it never crosses their minds to visit the Cathedrals of Durham or Lincoln.  They bore you to death about the beauties of the French countryside, and they have never visited the Malvern Hills or the North York Moors.

 

But here I make a wider criticism of the modern world. The modest French city of Chartres can be reached in a day from London, by train. The Eurostar will take you to the Gare du Nord, and then a direct journey on the Paris Metro (Direction Porte D’Orleans) will rattle you over to the Gare Montparnasse, where reasonably frequent trains leave for Chartres , an hour away.  On the way, especially if your train is a double decker and you ride upstairs, you get rather a good view of the great palace of Versailles. Yet I suspect most inhabitants of this country, and of Europe, will never visit it. This is their loss.

 

The Cathedral at Chartres is not just one of the greatest monuments to human thought and skill and faith in France, or in Europe, but in the world.  Yet it is not really announced as such. It is surrounded, in winter at least, by a quiet, modest and not specially prosperous town. Not far from it, in rather drab surroundings,  stands the haunting, almost desolate, freezing cold church of St Pierre which in any other place would be famous for its astonishing stained glass, but because of its nearby competitor,  is comparatively neglected. It was so empty and seemingly forgotten when I visited it that it brought to mind the M.R. James ghost story ‘Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook’, set in and around the echoing, shadowy, mysterious church of St Bertrand des Comminges  (a real place close to the Pyrenees). Fortunately for me, I did not find in Chartres what Monty James’s hero found in St Bertrand.    

 

What I did find ( for I had been there before long ago, callow and rushed,  and had not really taken it in) was so much concentrated thought, wisdom and glory that I had to take rests between visits because my eyes and brain became too full to take in any more.

 

I had, with rare foresight, remembered to take binoculars with me. These are, if not essential, very helpful in studying the stained glass windows which have, astonishingly, survived Reformation, revolution and war. Chartres is unique in many ways. It was built with incredible speed, an extraordinary act of worship by nobleman and peasant side by side, carting the stones to the site.  Designated as a shrine to the Virgin Mary herself (and probably owing something to a long-buried pagan worship on the same site centuries before),  it was never used for the burial of the dead. It is one of the earliest examples of the great achievement of late Gothic architecture, the flying buttress, by which our supposedly ignorant and stupid forebears solved the complex problems of supporting high walls and a great roof, while also having enormous windows through which the light could pour.

 

In these days of pre-stressed concrete, we are used to such things (though most concrete buildings are ugly because their strength is used to defy the law of gravity rather than to employ it as an ally). But in the 13th century, those benighted, superstition-ridden simpletons, our forebears, constructed a building 430 feet long, 150 feet wide, and 121 feet high, with two great towers capped with spires (one 344 feet high, the other 370 feet high) . And it was so strong that they were able to pierce its walls with 176 windows.

 

Many of these windows are so lovely, and so full of delicious detail, that you could easily spend hours studying them. My favourite illustrates the Parable of the Prodigal Son which ( as I explain in my book ‘The Rage Against God’ ) has always had a special resonance for me. But it is only one among many, whose colours, detail, serenity and, oh, what is it? , grace, peace, truth, all combine to compel the mind into thought.

 

Then there are the sculptures – not only the sombre, mysterious saints and kings and prophets on the porches, but many othrs, some unknown, and reminiscent, in their power and majesty, of the tremendous statues in the cathedral at Naumburg near Weimar in Germany). Job is portrayed on a dunghill in a portrayal of his extreme misery which is quite hard to look at because it is so graphic and unsparing. I did not have enough hours to examine all the detail in these, though I had a pretty good look at the great carved choir screen, which (being devoted to the Virgin) contains stories from the Golden Legend now more or less forgotten in Protestant England. Nothing like this has survived in Britain, and one has to wonder at the resolve of the Chartres citizens who managed to prevent the wrecking of this place during the Jacobin frenzy of 1789 and afterwards, when French churches were converted into Temples of Reason, and prostitutes were encouraged to climb on to their desecrated altars.

 

The sculpted part of Chartres is, as someone else has said, something like a mediaeval Acropolis. And, for those who enjoy dismissing religion was backward and opposed to science, logic and reason, please note that among the figures lovingly portrayed on the great west Front are Euclid and Pythagoras.  These bumpkins were not bumpkins. These backward people were not backward people.  These dark ages were suffused with light, and light filtered through the windows of  Christian teaching (the sight of the entire building illuminated through its great west windows at sunset is one I shall not easily forget).

 

What Chartres represents is a map and model of the cosmos (something similar can be said about Jan Van Eyck’s otherwise inexplicably fascinating triptych ‘The Mystic Lamb’ in the cathedral at Ghent) enabling anyone with eyes to see to find an explanation of the spirit which motivates the universe, which arranges the stars and the comets in their orbits and courses, and which also causes our consciences to burn within us, and our eyes and ears to recognise truth and beauty when we see them. It is not literal, and not for the literal-minded. But then again, nor are poetry or music. And it is almost a cliché to say that Chartres is poetry and music, frozen into stone and glass.

 

As I studied this great possession of our civilisation, I was reading (for I have been asked to review it) yet another anti-God book penned by a clever man of our age. I felt that this building was and always would be a sufficient answer to his case. Man gropes, in all ages, for an understanding of where and what he is, and what he should be and do. It seems to me that he will find, in Chartres, a more useful guide than he will find in the Charter of Human Rights, or in the other unimaginative, cold , dry attempts to construct justice and liberty without understanding where these ideas come from in the first place.

 

I am not a Roman Catholic, and did not attend Mass in the Cathedral. Instead, I slipped into the crypt on a windy night to hear Vespers ( similar to the English Evensong) sung. Fortunately, my French is bad, or no doubt I should otherwise have disliked the modern language in which psalms, Bible and canticles were (rather beautifully) sung. As it was, I could imagine that it was the equivalent of Coverdale’s golden trumpets ’My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my saviour …’  

 

In a moment of complete silence, the wind could be heard sighing through the spires and towers high above. Nothing else could be heard to disturb thought. We were doing what had been done, more or less without a break, since the beginning, centuries before, and what  (it is reasonable to hope) may still be going on centuries from now.

 

The modern city outside, of car parks, cafes, cinemas and pedestrian precincts was, by contrast, a thing that would be gone quite soon. The time would rapidly come when, seen in faded photographs or worn out film, the Chartres of 2013 would look quaint and long ago, its people oddly clothed and comical . What would abide would be the great mysterious church, filled with disturbing proclamations of seemingly absurd propositions, like a great rock in a river, with ordinary time rushing past it on either side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Myth of 'Addiction'

Mr 'W' seems to be one of those people who think that a dictionary definition has some sort of decisive force in an argument about meaning, because it sits between hard covers. On the contrary, dictionaries vary in their definitions, from time to time and from publisher to publisher, and are full of subjective statements influenced by the editor's view and the spirit of the age in which they are written. But let us look at the definition of so-called ‘addiction’ which Mr ‘W’ provides.

 

On the ‘Russell Brand Wriggles on Addiction’ thread, He says ‘The word 'addiction', according to the dictionary, means a "compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance (as heroin, nicotine, or alcohol) characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal."

 

This definition contains a whole series of claims which are themselves subjective, vague,  arguable and need definitions of their own.

 

1.‘Compulsive’ . What does this mean? Is it absolute? Does it therefore mean the person has no choice in the matter (compulsion generally means this)? How, then is this compulsion manifested and enforced? Was the person compelled to begin ingesting the substance under discussion? If not, in what sense can he possibly be said to be under compulsion? What force is then 'compelling ' him to carry on with his'addiction?  If he can end his 'addiction' by an exercise of will, how can it possibly, in logic, be a 'compulsion'?  It is plainly the opposite, a volition.   If not absolute, and it plainly is not,  is the sue of the word 'compulsive' not in fact a statement of subjective opinion, employed by the person involved, to excuse his weakness of will?    

2. ‘Need’ . This is just a way of dignifying a craving or desire. I *need* a certain amount of water over a given time, or I will fall ill and die. The same is true of food, of oxygen, and of light. If the absence of something will not cause me to fall ill or die, then I do not need it. I desire or crave it.But I may well tell you (or tell myself) that I ‘need’ it, because it is embarrassing, and even rude to admit to being driven by desire or craving (e.g. the person who comes home, flops on to the sofa and pronounces ‘I *need* a drink’. He doesn’t. He wants one.  But ‘I want a drink’ sounds a bit babyish, doesn’t it?).

 

3. ‘Habit-forming’ . I use this expression myself precisely because it makes so few claims for itself. It is a statement of fact. Some pleasures do become habitual, and people will claim to be ‘addicted’ to such things as sex, gambling and even TV-watching. Qualified professionals will indulge them in this belief, and take fees from them (or from the state) for ‘treating’ them for the supposed addiction. But everone knows athat a 'habit' issomething for which we are ourseves responsible, and which is sustained through our own weakness. It is in a way a direct contradiction of the whole claim, to use this expression. A 'habit' is not a synonym for 'adduiction', but a clean different thing.  

 

What is actually involved here? The will of the person involved is not exercised to reject the habit before acquiring it, nor to resist the habit once acquired, the person indulges in a pleasure which is well-known to be habit-forming, and so takes a decision to form the habit, believing its pleasures to be greater than its disadvantages. If, later, he perhaps decides that the disadvantages outweigh the pleasures, he is then free to abandon it if he wishes.

 

The one absolute determinant fact is this . *He will not abandon it unless he wants to do so*. Given that this is so, all the other characteristics of the alleged complaint are shown to be of no significance. The only consistent , unavoidable and invariable determinant of the beginning and the end of an ‘addiction’ is the exercise (or non-exercise) of the will of the person involved. In what way, then, can ‘addiction’ have any existence outside the subjective exercise of will? In which case, what use it as a concept, how could we objectively establish its presence in the human frame, and how can it be 'treated'?

 

Then we come to ‘characterised by tolerance’ . I suspect that many things which are not habit-forming are also characterised by tolerance. As for ‘well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal’  this seems to me to verge on exaggeration. What are these ‘well-defined physiological symptoms’ in the case of alcohol?  The word ‘hangover’ occurs to me. I have had very bad hangovers. They have not impelled me to start drinking again. They were symptoms of mild alcohol poisoning and moderate dehydration, not of 'withdrawal'. And the phrase ‘well-defined physiological symptoms’  seems to me to be a pompous exaggeration, designed to blind the gullible with fake science.  

 

 

Mr ‘W’ sarcastically sneers :’ I hope you understand what it means now.’

 

I might say the same to him. My general advice is that you don’t begin to understand something until you think about it, which I do not believe he has done. He has not thought about it, not because he cannot, but because he does not want to. He does not want to because his world view, in which people are not free actors but pitiful subjects of outside influence, who cannot be held responsible for their own actions, appeals strongly to him.

 

This is a perfectly understandable position for a non-Christian person, who believes neither in original sin nor divine grace, to take.  It is of course self-serving, asall such opinions are. But never mind. It is, in fact the standard post-Christian attempt to deal with human guilt.  But it is an opinion, not a fact, and it is one which can easily be demonstrated to be such. The concept of ‘addiction’, like the whole post-Christian system of criminal justice and welfare, is based upon this opinion.

In my own view, the catastrophic results of the belief in ‘addiction’ – the failure to deter drug taking, and the state’s subsidy and  indulgence of habitual drug-takers leading to an inexorable growth of drug-taking over the last 50 years – are strong evidence that this opinion is based upon a fundamental mistake about the nature of man and of the universe. It is precisely because the issue is so big, that people get so angry when anyone challenges the concept of ‘addiction’. They don’t want to hear their own doubts expressed.

 

 

Mr ‘W’ asserts ‘Therefore, if you have "well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal" you can be said to be 'addicted' to that particular substance.’

Well, you *can* be *said* to be. But you *can* equally well be *said* *not* to be, by someone with a  different opinion. Facts are not made or expressed in such sentences, only opinions..

 

He then says ‘ I don't understand why you are asking me how it can be a medical condition. When did I ever say it was a medical condition?’

 

It is the general view of those who believe that it exists, that ‘addiction’ is a medical condition which can be dealt with through various forms of ‘treatment’ . The courts of England believe this, as they are frequently to be found urging ‘treatment’ upon ‘addicts’.  If there is no illness, how can there be a treatment?

The same can be said of the drug liberalisation lobby, who relentlessly urge ‘treatment’ rather than what they bizarrely call ’criminalisation’ of people who have deliberately broken the criminal law, and thus ‘criminalised’ themselves.  If Mr ‘W’ does not think ‘addiction’ is a medical condition, what then does he think it is, that allows him to state that there is such a  thing, as a fact.

 

He says :’ I only said that addiction exists despite the fact addicts retain their free will.’

Well, he has said it, but he has not proved it with fact or logic. In my view, ‘addiction’ cannot co-exist with free will, any more than the famous immoveable object can co-exist with the famous irresistible force.  If one exists, the other cannot, by definition. Either there is free will, or there is not. If there is not, then we are slaves of circumstance who have no choice in our fates, such as ‘addicts’ are alleged to be.

 

And he finishes, with a patronising slap around the chops for me :’ Hopefully  (PH: ‘aaargh! Why will people use this awful, subjectless German-American formulation when they mean ‘I hope’? Or perhaps he doesn’t mean that’),  now the meaning of addiction has been explained to you, you will stop making your absurd assertion that it doesn't exist because as we both seem to agree the point that addicts can choose to give up is irrelevant to whether or not addiction exists.’

 

Well, now that the concept has been explained to *him*, he might also note that I absolutely do not agree that the fact that ‘addicts’ can give up their addictions is irrelevant to whether not ‘addiction’ exists. Far from being irrelevant, it is wholly central. I do hope that is clear now. I am, by the way, pleased that he is enjoying ‘Night falls on the City’.

 

I should also address here the comment by James Kabala, also on the Brand thread.  If he respects me, as he says,  he should read me more.  He says : ‘I think more often belief in addiction is cited as a reason why drugs ought to be illegal - since there is the fear that a hitherto good person convinced to try drugs once can quickly become a slave to addiction for life, we must take legal steps to make sure that he never has access to try it that first time. I think a proof that addiction is a myth might actually lead to an increase in support for legalization, at least in the U.S. - maybe in Britain the rhetoric on each side is different. In the U.S., the statement that marijuana is not addictive is far more often made by the pro-legalization side - the implication is often that cocaine and heroin are rightly banned since they are (supposedly) addictive, but marijuana is OK because it is not’.

 

This is one of the reasons why I refuse to accept it. The campaign to make marijuana legal has been predicated on the idea that it is a ‘soft’ drug, in some way less dangerous than the bogeyman drugs, Heroin and Cocaine . It seems to me that the unpredictable possibility of being insane for the rest of your life is probably worse than (and certainly no less appalling than) the dangers of any other drug, and that the marketing of marijuana as ‘soft or even ‘medicinal’ is a wicked lie which urgently needs to be countered.

 

I explore this propaganda falsehood in my book ‘The War We Never Fought’, but claims that marijuana is ‘addictive’ seem to me to be in the area of unwise exaggerated propaganda, of the srt that backfires on those who make it.

 

A lot of marijuana smokers seem to me to be able to take it or leave it depending on circumstances. If we tell them it is ‘addictive’ we will simply convince them we don’t know what we’re talking about. The danger of mental illness, on the other hand, is a real problem. The suggestion that a person who once takes a drug such as heroin will become a slave to it inevitably promotes undeserved sympathy for these wilful criminals, in the media, the culture and ultimately in the criminal justice system,  

 

Thus it undermines the law, by fuelling the lobby for so-called ‘treatment’, (usually indulgence, and sometimes a supply of an alternative drug) rather than punishment. This destroys the law’s deterrent force, and increases the risk that people will take illegal drugs.  I should have thought this was obvious,. It is certainly what has happened in Britain (again, see my book) . This sort of naivety is one of the reasons for the abject failure of the western nations to control or limit illegal drug-taking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back to Stalingrad - the Same-Sex Marriage Debate

As some readers have noticed, I have been away for a few days, mostly in France and particularly in the cathedral city of Chartres. I plan to write at some length about Chartres cathedral, and its importance to the human mind, but that will have to wait .

 

Today I will send a dispatch from the Stalingrad front, the terrible, doomed battle into which moral and social conservatives have been lured by the Sexual Liberation Front, on the subject of same-sex marriage.

 

But before I do so, I will deal with a couple of silly comments, which I had hoped long-standing readers here would answer, but they have disappointed me.

 

There is of course no necessary contradiction between believing that the great majority of MPs are no good, and seeking to become one myself. I would behave differently from the existing members, were I to be elected. I am very unlikely to be elected. I do wish people would pay attention to my repeated point, that ‘standing for parliament’ (see the index)  is almost always futile for genuine independents, because the great majority of votes are cast out of tribal loyalty, rather than from a reasoned choice.

 

And, as I point out in this week’s column, the crucial moment of selection is not the election itself, which is merely a sacrament of our new religion of ‘democracy’. The sheep-like voters feebly confirm the choice already made by the political party which owns the seat (most seats are safe, and those which are not are unloved by career politicians, as they are bound to lose them on a tribal swing). Worse still, local parties, in both Labour and Tory organisations, have now lost their freedom to choose their own candidates, and independent persons can be (and are ) vetoed from the centre.

 

When, in 1999, I mischievously put my name forward for the Tory nomination in Kensington and Chelsea, one of the safest seats in the country, I was an experienced journalist who had spent many years covering politics at close quarters. I knew perfectly well that I had not the slightest hope of robbing Michael Portillo of the nomination. So, as I have said before, it is ludicrous to characterise this as a genuine attempt to enter Parliament. It was propaganda, publicity for my (then new) book ‘the Abolition of Britain’, and a chance to point out the failings of Mr Portillo, who was the prophet of Cameronian ‘Modern Toryism’, though many dimmer Tories couldn’t see this, thanks to his Thatcherite credentials.   

 

People who seek safe seats are careful to be selected for, and fight, hopeless ones first, to show their mettle and to serve their time. I never did this. Nor did I ever make another attempt to get a Tory nomination before I left that Party a few years later. This doesn't seem to me to suggest a strong desire to become an MP.

But people frequently urge me to ‘stand for parliament’ having (and isn’t this strange in a  supposed advanced democracy) no real idea of what this action entails, how it is done or how MPs are in truth selected. Which is why the index contains a helpful article on ‘Standing for Parliament’.  

 

As for my mentioning Comrade Doctor Lord John Reid’s (Comrade Baron Reid of Cardowan, to give him his full title) past Communism, when I am myself a former Trotskyist, I will once again make a simple point. Everyone knows I was a member of the International Socialists between 1968 and 1975 because I tell them so.They know that I did a summer job for the Socialist Worker in 1972 because I put it in my Who’s Who entry. I do this to make it quite clear that I am not hiding my past and that it is an issue I can and will freely discuss with anyone who wants to know about it.

 

I do not believe that Comrade Lord Reid has ever been anything like so frank, nor so repentant. I regret my past opinions and actions, and clearly say that what I did and intended was wrong.   In this, he is like Peter Mandelson, Alan Milburn  and many other New Labour figures who have been, ah, closer to the revolutionary Left than they like to discuss.  In the cases of Lords Reid and Mandelson, who dallied with official Communism, the problem is in my view greater as, at that time they were associating with an organisation which is now known to have been in the direct pay of the Soviet government, one of the most unpleasant despotisms available in the world at that time.  A recent BBC Radio 4 programme, enquiring what had happened to the so-called  ‘Euro Communists’  of the 1980s, concluded that they had more or less transmuted into New Labour, whose ideas and ambitions were first set out in their journal ‘Marxism Today’. The programme was right about this but, as usual among those who were never themselves on the inside of the far left,  wrong about its significance.

 

It drew the conclusion that principled young men and women had dissolved their fervour in ambition and conventional politics. My view is, and always has been, that these young Marxists wisely adapted their Marxism to bureaucratic and parliamentary methods, and expressed their revolutionary intentions in a long march through the institutions. I always remember, just before a BBC Radio 4 discussion on whether the Left had won or lost, Comrade Dr Reid, then Defence Secretary, giving an interview in which he used the phrase ‘Pessimism of the Intellect; optimism of the will’.

 

I was the only person in the studio who knew that this was a quotation from Antonio Gramsci, the very clever Marxist who realised as long ago as the 1920s that the Bolsheviks had got it wrong, and that the left’s route to power in Western Europe was through cultural revolution. There were plenty of educated, plugged-in people in that studio, of my generation. They just didn’t know the code because, even if they’d been vaguely leftish as almost everyone was, they hadn’t been to the closed meetings or engaged in the intense study of practical revolution which the paid-up members had.  Here’s my point. It is precisely because I was myself a sixties revolutionary that I understand the language, tactics and aims of the movement to which I used to belong, and can see and explain its many and various successes. Creating a world in which nobody was shocked to have an ex-Communist as Secretary of State for Defence was one of those successes.

 

But back to Stalingrad. As it happens, it is the 70th anniversary of that turning point in the Great Patriotic War, as the Russians still call it and as we in this country still tend to view it. Alan Clark, in his fine book  ‘Barbarossa’ gives one of the most potent descriptions of this hell, far better than in some more celebrated and praised histories. Vasily Grossman’s indispensable novel ‘Life and Fate’ is also a moving account of this horrible war, in which the good person’s feelings must always be torn because of his sympathy for the Russian people and his loathing of the Soviet regime. I must also confess rather guiltily to thinking quite highly of the Stalingrad descriptions in ‘The Kindly Ones’, a rather nasty but very clever novel by Jonathan Littell, written from the point of view of a fictional SS officer. I threw it away after I had finished it,  feeling slightly disgusted with myself, but find that quite a lot of it lingers in the mind anyway.

 

The point here is that I don’t use the expression ‘Stalingrad’ lightly. It is one of the central events of our time, the pivot of the 20th century, and one which probably ought to feature more in art and literature than it actually does.

 

Perhaps if it did people might learns one of the lessons of it, which is not to be drawn into a trap, especially in search of symbolic rather than real victory, and never to forget one’s ultimate objective in any conflict. It’s nearly a year now since I declined to take part in the great battle against same-sex marriage, explaining my view in an article in ‘The Spectator’ which you can read here

 

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/7714553/the-gay-marriage-trap/

 

For me, the most important passage in this article is here : ‘The real zone of battle, a vast 5,000-mile front along which the forces of righteousness have retreated without counter-attacking for nearly 50 years, involves the hundreds of thousands of marriages undermined by ridiculously easy divorce, the millions of children hurt by those divorces and the increasing multitudes of homes where the parents, single or in couples, have never been married at all and never will be. If we are to have a Coalition for Marriage (or C4M as it is modishly called), this would be territory on which it might fight with some hope of success.

 

‘Why should we care so much about stopping a few hundred homosexuals getting married, when we cannot persuade legions of heterosexuals to stay married?’

 

It is only because a long secular revolution has hollowed out marriage that the idea of same-sex marriage is now both thinkable and practicable.

 

Some campaigners for homosexual marriage, such as the British-born American blogger Andrew Sullivan, have successfully persuaded many conservatives that the change simply extends the benefits of marriage (a laudable thing in itself) to more people.  Why should we stand in the way of this fundamentally conservative desire? Michael Gove,  the Education Secretary, writing in my newspaper at the weekend, more or less takes this view.  I am hoping to explore this later this month when I have been invited to moderate a debate on the subject between Mr Sullivan and Doug Wilson, a redoubtable Calvinist pastor and thinker, in the USA.

 

I’d ask such advocates if they think this argument would work if marriage were still the rather fearsome thing it used to be before the 1960s, let alone what it used to be before civil marriage existed at all, and all Wedlock was Holy.

 

The main thing about marriage until about 50 years ago was that it was, in practice, indissoluble. Divorce, though possible, was a major legal hurdle attended with many embarrassing and unpleasant features. If one party to the marriage insisted on continuing as promised, the other could not get out. Betrayal of the marriage vows was a major act of domestic war.  What was more, if you wouldn’t, or couldn’t get married, you were condemned to the fringe of the world.  Living in sin was awkward and unpleasant. People frowned on you. It was hard to get lodgings in respectable places. Any children of such a household would almost certainly suffer in various ways.

 

And I can already hear a lot of people saying ‘Well, quite, and wasn’t this exactly why we needed divorce reform? To which I reply that nothing good comes without a price.  If you value the freedom to divorce, then you must accept that it, too, has a cost.

 

Despite the self-serving litany of so many divorcees (you must have heard it) that ‘the children were far happier once we broke up. Divorce was far better than the constant rows. And now they have two homes instead of one’, we all know in our hearts that in most cases the children hate the divorce and are upset and damaged by it; that rows between grown-up people are not a force of nature, or the weather, but something they can control and prevent if they really wish to; that two homes are not necessarily better than one.

 

We also know that, where marriage is easily dissolved, it is more frequently dissolved, and that where divorce is simple and cheap, it will be resorted to more readily, and be seen as the normal and automatic response to marital difficulty; that the discipline of lifelong marriage, which compels husbands and wives to learn forbearance and forgiveness, can actually strengthen the moral muscles. We must also recognise that , where divorce becomes more and more common, and where the laws on distribution of marital property and custody of the children heavily favour the divorced wife regardless of who is responsible for the break-up (as they do, see my ‘Abolition of Britain’) , many men will become reluctant to marry at all.

 

And so cohabitation will increase, and yet more children will be vulnerable to sudden and devastating break-ups of their parents. Of course, the poorer and weaker the individuals are, the worse the consequences will most likely be, ending at the bottom of the heap with a distressing number of homes in which there is no permanent father in the house, just a succession of boyfriends who may well be hostile to, or exploitative of, children fathered by other men. It is in these households that child abuse, physical and sexual, has been shown by the Family Education Trust (which studied family court reports) to be greatly more common (about 33 times more likely) than in any other sort of ménage.

 

I suspect that it is also from these unhappy homes that so many of the wretched young men and women misleadingly called ‘homeless’ have fled to escape the secret horrors that can be (though obviously are not always) visited on the vulnerable by hostile step-parents.

 

These are considerable evils, which grow among us. It is really up to you to decide whether they are a worthwhile price to pay for the freedom from lifelong marriage which has been bought through this suffering, and the disturbed, distressed and in many cases ungovernable generation which has resulted from it. For me, it is quite an easy choice. I think we were better off when marriage was for life, and generally lasted for life. I don’t deny that this system had its grave disadvantages, but the thoughtful, responsible person must ask if they outweighed the advantages. 

There is another aspect, and that is the great expansion of state power (and the great loss of an important power in the hands of women)  involved in no-fault divorce, in which either party can dissolve the contract whatever the other thinks.

 

In both Britain and the USA, since the 1960s, the divorce law is such that if one spouse wishes to stay married, and the other does not, the state may now invade that house, backed with the force of law and prison, and expel the spouse who does not wish to leave .

 

Once the legal facts are expressed in this bare form, it is obvious that state power has attacked one of the most private areas of human activity, and conquered a crucial piece of territory. You may favour this. I do not. But whichever side you take, it is absurd to pretend that nothing important has changed.

 

Then there is what might politely be called the Lysistrata factor. Lysistrata, in the Aristophanes play of that name, forces the men of Greece to abandon war,  by organising a sex strike by the women of Greece. In a way, the old marriage rule was a permanent sex strike by the women of Christian countries, under which they demanded binding lifelong promises from men,  in return for their favours.

 

Well, this may seem crude and disagreeable to us now, but once again, look at the growing plight of older women in our society, embarking on grotesque plastic surgery, botox etc to stay in the market for male favour; look at the nasty development known as ‘the trophy wife’ , invariably involving the cruel discarding of a previous wife, and look in general at the number of serial divorces and at the Bridget Jones problem of young women who cannot find husbands.

 

These are deep social changes, and they are not in all cases beneficial. They are, as always in this subject worst of all for the children,  who are shuttled around from relationship to relationship and from home to home, for the convenience of adults. We are already paying quite heavily for this, and the bills have only just begun to come in.

 

Since the 1960s reforms, they have never really been revisited, despite the fact that they are almost 50 years old and have led to many serious problems, which weren’t anticipated by their framers.

 

Nobody in mainstream politics has said ‘This law had many bad consequences. Perhaps we could moderate them’. The principle of freedom from a lifelong, faithful bond was the thing, and that apparently cannot be reopened. Yet it seems to me that it should be.   I for one would be very willing to look into ways of reforming marriage, making exits for those who really needed them, while simultaneously making divorce particularly hard where young children were involved.  There could be different degrees of marriage, under which those who wished to could choose, in advance, a form which was much harder to dissolve ( I believe there have been experiments along these lines, of ‘so-called ‘Covenant Marriage’ in some parts of the USA), These would have to be their own reward since, like Nick Clegg, I really can’t see that marriage allowances in the tax system (though desirable in themselves) will influence anyone’s intentions very much.

 

In the midst of this, the contractual arrangements of a few thousand homosexual couples are a tiny matter. My own view was always that wise and compassionate reforms of inheritance law, tenancy transfers and the rules about next of kin, could have increased human kindness without raising a great political storm. But it’s not a battle I wish to fight , when the far more important war, for the survival of marriage itself, is being lost across that 5,000 mile front.

 

As for the political flim-flam of this week, Mr Cameron and his allies, of course, want to destroy *conservatism* while keeping the *Conservative Party* in being , as a safety valve for conservatives in a liberal society.  The same-sex marriage issue is a perfect vehicle for achieving this.  What he desires is a country in which all the parties are in fact the same, but have different names so as to absorb tribal energies and maintain the tragi-comedy known as universal suffrage democracy. As I wrote long ago, Communist East Germany had a multi-party parliament. The only thing wrong with it was that all the parties, though they had different names, agreed on all important matters.  I struggle increasingly to see any serious difference between the old People’s Chamber of East Berlin, and our current arrangements.

 

Mr Cameron does not care about losing votes and members, because (like all rich liberals) he personally has nothing important to fear from a Labour government, which is probably inevitable anyway. He is, as he told anyone who would listen,  the heir to Blair. He meant it. He said it. He has always acted accordingly, as I said he would.

 

The mystery is not why Mr Cameron hates conservatives, which is obvious and easily explicable. Liberals do hate conservatives. It is why so many conservatives still give their loyalty to him, and their votes to his party.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Russell Brand Wriggles on 'Addiction'

One of the things I love most about the modern left is that way they still think they are brave dissenters, when in fact they are the stodgy, complacent establishment. Fashionable scepticism about Christian belief, pretty much compulsory in media and academic circles, is still regarded as rather courageous.

 

If you want to get into real trouble, try dissenting from the Church of Man-Made Global Warming, or the Church of ADHD , or the Church of Addiction. I am still clearing up the puddles and blobs of slime after I dared to suggest, in an interview with the Guardian’s Decca Aitkenhead some months ago, that ‘addiction’ is in fact a fantasy.

 

I was immediately jeered at all over the Internet, on the basis that I was self-evidently wrong. None of the mockers thought it necessary even to offer an argument.

 

Addiction is Just So.  There is no need to explain it. It is a Holy Mystery of the Liberal Bigot’s Faith.  Like several other similar modern faiths (Dyslexia, ADHD, the serotonin theory of depression) it is accepted because it suits the believer to accept it. And it is defended against attack not with reason but with affronted rage and indignation.

 

Now Decca Aitkenhead has interviewed Russell Brand, with whom I have attempted to argue about drugs on a couple of well-publicised occasions. Arguing with Mr Brand, whenever I do it,  reminds me of Sir Laurence’s Olivier’s remark that trying to get Marilyn Monroe to take direction was like trying to teach Urdu to a marmoset. I sense Ms Aitkenhead also found it a bit of a challenge.

 

Ms Aitkenhead (who, as I often say, is no fool) records this exchange with Mr Brand in Monday’s Guardian (the whole interview, for those interested, can be found here http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2013/feb/03/russell-brand-irrelevant-what-other-people-think ).

 

 

But, for me, the key passage is this : ‘Brand's solution [to addiction] is abstinence-based treatment, along the lines of the programme his manager eventually frogmarched him into after catching him smoking heroin in the loo at a Christmas party. Brand is basically talking about 12-step fellowship programmes - Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous and so on - only he can't say so exactly, being "bound never to relinquish their anonymity", which leaves him in the complicated position of campaigning for something he can't name.

 

‘ “These programmes are highly successful, but more people need to be directed towards them. So without compromising the anonymity of the fellowships, we want to direct people towards these abstinence-based recovery programmes." But isn't AA the one thing everyone already knows about? “You say that, but people don't know really. People don't know it's available to them. The mindset of an addict is trenchant in its very nature; you're in a circuitry of neurosis that's very, very difficult to break. Impossible, almost. So you're not going to just wander in off the street. People don't do that. So with Comic Relief we want to raise awareness that it exists, then fund further treatment centres and counsellors and different ways of directing people towards it. 'Cos people don't know it's an option.”

 

‘To Brand's opponents such as Hitchens, the flaw in his thesis is obvious. A true desire to get better is the first principle of AA - but if addiction is really a medical disease, how can resolve be a necessary condition of recovery? “There are a lot of discrepancies,” Brand airily concedes. “If you leave someone on a desert island with cancer, they're going to die. If you leave a heroin addict on a desert island, they are not going to die. There are loads of distinctions. To tell you the truth, the rationale, the semantics and the intellectualisation of the condition aren't particularly helpful.”

 

‘Given Brand's own semantic insistence upon addiction's status as an illness, that seems a bit rich, and you can see why he drives Hitchens mad. "Doing stand-up comedy is a paradigm with which I'm familiar," as Brand says, so he tends to see off counter arguments as if they were heckles, deploying charisma in place of analytic discipline, which is effective and funny, if not always strictly legitimate. But he is absolutely sincere when he says: "All I care about is getting this help to people who need it." The success rate for abstinence-based fellowship programmes is better than most, but still only about 25%. Brand knows he's one of the lucky ones - but sobriety is unlikely to deliver the same happy ending to someone still stuck in a tower block, unemployable and destitute. So although he's the perfect role model for abstinence in one way - glamorous, seamy, the very opposite of a prig - his own story is so unusual that you wonder how much can be usefully extrapolated from it.’

 

Indeed you do. I love that bit about discrepancies. Once you actually start thinking about the matter,  instead of relying on faith and its all-too-frequent ally, rage against the faithless, , then you suddenly find that the heretics may have a point after all. But to admit that *they* are heretics (people you are supposed to admire) , you have to admit that *you* are orthodox ( something you are supposed to despise), and the funky sixties generation would rather die than do that (many of them have indeed gone to their graves without ever grasping how silly they looked). Perhaps they will all be buried in their jeans, and they will play ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ at their secular funerals. It is, after all, the central text of their lives.

 

 

 

 

Stalingrad Revisited - some responses to comments

Here are a few responses to contributors on the subject of same-sex marriage. First, I am told by someone ‘ I'm quite looking forward to gay marriage passing and seeing Mr Hitchens reaction when absolutely nothing happens in consequence. Don't worry though, I'm sure he'll find some way to fuel his persecution complex anyway.’

 

Has this contributor read a word that I wrote? I think not.

 

Then there’s Mr ‘L’Eplattenier, who notes ineffably :’ Mr Hitchens does not present us with a single argument against gay marriage. He says compassionate changes in the law would have been sufficient but does not enlighten us on why giving gay people full equality is wrong in his view.’

 

Again, has he paid any attention? My first 'Stalingrad' article does not offer an argument against homosexual marriage as such, because I believe this argument is a waste of time, a ballet on the head of a pin, while an enormous social change – the slow death of heterosexual marriage - goes on unobserved, unexamined and criticised .  That is the whole point of the 3,000 plus words which I wrote , and which he presumably read, or at least allowed his eye to pass over, before commenting.

 

Mr L’Eplattenier sets himself up as an intelligent contributor,  and he can obviously write clear, literate English. Can he read it? He seems to have come here looking for something he did not find, and been disappointed.  Thus his pitiable collapse into baseless personal abuse of his opponents at the end: ‘I cannot help but wonder why all these opponents of the new law are presenting us with such feeble (or sometimes non-existent) arguments if it is not because the real reason they are against it is a deeply seated underlying homophobia.’ Wonder away,  Mr L, but unless you can prove this charge, your evidence-free ad hominem wonderings will continue to sound like someone who is one or two propositions short of an argument.

 

In this he is much the same as the persons on Twitter who , on the passage of the Bill last night, speculated on how I would be enraged, in tears etc.  If they’d read what I wrote, they’d have known that I was absolutely unmoved.

 

I am however, interested. And I’ll come on to one or two aspects of interest in a moment.

 

Fisrt I will deal with contributors who feel that I should hurl myself into this doomed battle.

 

One Mr Noonan, asked : ‘"How do you square your view that homosexual marriage is a minor issue with the fact (reported by a leading legal expert today) that 40,000 Christian school teachers will be compelled by law to promote gay marriage or face the sack? It is simply a misunderstanding to say that changing the meaning of marriage only affects homosexuals. It affects the whole of society.’

 

Because the restrictions on what teachers and other public servants can say in public and on public premises already exist, and have existed for many years. This law will, I acknowledge, probably move the ratchet a little further on. But in how many schools  (state or private) does Mr Noonan imagine it is possible to state in class that marriage is preferable to non-marriage, without facing serious discipline?

 

The adoption under the Equality Act of ‘Equality and Diversity’ as the official ideology of the country, with the keen support of the trades unions (the only bodies which might be able to defend individuals against persecution on this matter) has placed the seal upon this. Speech on such matters is already unfree, thiough the censorship is enforced by threats to the offender's livelihood, rather than to his physical liberty. For some odd reason, people seem to think this threat isn't serious.

Note also the case of the foster parents Eunice and Owen Johns who were rejected  for fostering by Derby council, because they would not agree to tell any child that homosexuality was positively a good thing. Note, they were not required to silence any doubts they had, which would have been bad enough. They were required actively to endorse the new ideology, and the courts supported this decision, right up to the High Court which said on March 1st 2011  that homosexual rights "should take precedence" over the rights of Christians in fostering cases.

 

Mr Blades chides me thus : ‘Some people just want to fight same sex 'marriage' because it's right to do so regardless of whether it's possible to win. This issue isn't just about politics or conservatism but about standing for Christian morality and in those kinds of battles sometimes it's just necessary to make a public stand no matter what your enemy does or says or thinks. Personally speaking, if you don't want to get involved then I'd rather you just kept quiet instead of shouting from the sidelines and discouraging those of us who are fighting. ‘

 

What are these ‘sidelines’? On what way am I on them? I expose my reputation, and quite often my person, to opponents all the time. I would be more deeply engaged in national politics, were it possible for me to be. I have many times explained here why itis not possible( see 'Standing for Parliament' in the index if this discussion is new to you).

 

But apart from that,  what if you don’t just *lose* the battle ( which of course the conservatives have done, and will continue to do, on this subject)?  For you will lose it. You have lost it. It is over already.  

 

What if you also weaken your own side by allowing yourself to be made to look foolish and prejudiced, for no good reason? What if you waste, time, energy, resources, money prestige and emotion on a doomed cause, which are irrecoverable and cannot be sued elsewhere or in future? Aren’t you then guilty of self-indulgence, making yourself feel good about yourself without serving the cause you claim to embrace? 

 

A friend of mine ( I hope he won’t mind me mentioning this ) recently called me to ask for advice on taking part in a university debate on this subject. My main advice (offered jokingly since I knew the friend wouldn’t pay any attention) was ‘don’t go’.  What happened? Why, the opponents of same-sex marriage were treated like pariahs, and voted down derisively, losing so heavily that the Christian, conservative moral cause was left dead on the field of battle. What was the point of this? Does ‘going down fighting’ achieve anything for posterity?

 

Sometimes maybe. But i don't see how it does in this case. We are obliged to fight intelligently,. as well as coyurageously. Christ himself  was known to sidestep tricky arguments from the Pharisees. Read the exchange which ends with ‘ Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s’.

 

Oh, and to those who glibly maintain that children are happy when their parents break up, or at least not unhappy, I draw their attention to the terrible, heartbreaking messages sent by Chris Huhne’s son, Peter, to his father, and made public as a result of his court case.  I have seldom seen a more frightening and raw example of the damage that adults can do when they break their promises in front of their children.

 

Mr Colin Johnstone’s summary of my position seems to me to be broadly correct.

 

I’ll add here one or two points about the Bill which seem to me to be interesting. Some opponents of it now say that the Blair Government, when it implemented Civil Partnerships, claimed that this was not in fact a step towards same-sex marriage. This doesn’t appear to me to be  true . 

Check the House of Commons Hansard for the 12th October 2004 (this is now gratifyingly easy to do) and read what happens as  Jacqui Smith, then Deputy Minister for Women and Equality (note this is now a much more senior position, with a cabinet seat) , introduces the Second Reading of the Civil Partnerships Bill . Mrs Smith is taking interventions from opponents of the Bill:

 

‘Miss Ann Widdecombe (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con): The Minister has several times used the word "equality". Will she be very specific? Is the equality that she seeks that whereby a homosexual relationship based on commitment is treated in future in exactly the same way as marriage in law?

 

Jacqui Smith: If the right hon. Lady looks at the Bill, she will see that, in the vast majority of cases, it is the Government's intention that those people who enter into a civil partnership will receive the same rights and take on the same responsibilities as those that we expect of those who enter into civil marriage.

 

Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con): It would surely be much fairer to Members on both sides of House if the Government came clean and announced that they support gay marriage. Why will they not do so?

 

Jacqui Smith: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman heard me make the important point that civil partnerships under the Bill mirror in many ways the requirements, rights and responsibilities that run alongside civil marriage. I recognise that hon. Members on both sides of the House understand and feel very strongly about specific religious connotations of marriage. The Government are taking a secular approach to resolve the specific problems of same-sex couples. As others have said, that is the appropriate and modern way for the 21st century.’

 

Pretty clear, I think(Miss Widdecombe later thanks her for her clarity). And of course those who are now in Civil Partnerships will be able to convert them (presumably for a small fee) into marriages once the Act is law, clear evidence that there is no significant difference between the two.

 

This is not, in fact, a major change in law, only in terminology and so in the culture wars over language and its permissible use. Even then, as I point out above, it is not that significant, as the Equality Act 2010 pretty much expunged what was left of our former Protestant Christian system (this Act was based on the EU’s four major equal Treatment Directives, which, as sometimes needs to be pointed out, were directives, not suggestions).

 

The legislation’s principal purpose is to isolate and rout the remnants of the Tory Party’s moral conservative wing, so that, after the Tories lose the next election, which they are bound to do, the defeat  will be blamed on their obduracy in face of Mr Cameron’s enlightened heroism. they will then be howled down, Michael Gove or Boris Johnson (bafflingly seen as a figure of hope by so many conservatives)  will take up the mantle of David Cameron,   and the transformation of the Tory Party into a sky blue pink twin of New Labour can be completed.  As usual, the political reporters of the British media, who aren’t interested in politics and so don’t understand it,  are quite unable to grasp what is actually going on.

 

 

 

We need a Commons rebellion - not a stupid war in Timbuktu

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

This is why I despise almost all Members of Parliament: our Prime Minister is taking us into yet another stupid war, and most MPs do not even care. Where is the rebellion? Where is the Opposition? Where are the demands for an emergency debate in which our motives and reasons for this latest nonsense are examined, torn to pieces and flung on the floor?

There is no case at all for Britain to send soldiers to Mali, or any other part of North Africa. We have no interest there, never will have and never have had. If we truly fear terrorism so much, then this adventure is doubly moronic.

It will give terrorists a pretext to attack our country that they did not have before. Like the Afghan war, it will also allow terrorists to kill us without needing to travel here.
We will send our servicemen there, where the terrorists can more easily shoot them or blow them up.

If, three or four years hence, British soldiers are returning from North Africa in coffins, the empty-headed cretins of our political class will place their hands reverently upon their chests and burble solemn tributes, as they do now when the dead come back from our equally futile mission in Afghanistan.

Much less is said about the  far larger numbers of terribly wounded young men, each of them worth 10,000 MPs, who will remain maimed or disfigured or both, long after those responsible are drawing plump pensions or being applauded by American matrons on the lucrative lecture circuit.

How is it that people who know so little, and who are so incapable of learning anything from experience, dominate both politics and the higher levels of political journalism? In the past two years we have cheered on the installation of an Egyptian president who said in September 2010 that Israelis are descended from apes and pigs, and created a lawless, failed state in Libya so chaotic that we have to urge our own citizens to run from Benghazi for their lives. But you would barely know these things from either Parliament or the heavyweight media.

It is not just that the Premier and his senior advisers plainly know no history. They seem also to have been asleep during the Blair years, when crude propaganda and cruder lies drove an expedition so foolish that those responsible should be so ashamed that they never show their faces in public again.  Then there is Comrade ‘Doctor’ ‘Lord’ John Reid, the unrepentant former communist who gets hoity-toity when reminded that he sent British troops into deadly danger in Afghanistan while piously hoping that ‘we would be perfectly happy to leave in three years’ time without firing one shot’.

Remember that piece of naive drivel when you examine our current Premier’s sudden transformation into the Warlord of the Maghreb, which began with promises of no boots on the ground and continued with an almost instant breach of that promise.

Then go on to ask what all this is about. Once again, we are being told that we can, in some way, defeat terrorism. To know how foolish this is, you don’t even need to be able to read. You can go and see the new film Zero Dark Thirty, in which Jessica Chastain plays a gaunt, obsessive CIA woman on the trail of Osama Bin Laden.

In the end, after a lot of disgusting torture, she finds him, mainly thanks to an overlooked old file that nobody had bothered to study.

Bin Laden is killed, amid rather horrible scenes of weeping and terrified women and children, which are graphically and honestly shown. And, of course, the ‘War on Terror’ goes on exactly as before, because neither side particularly wants it to end.

Or you can buy the DVD of a much better film, The Battle Of Algiers (Mr Cameron should do this), and so learn the miserable history of France’s last attempt to stage a ‘war on terror’ in Africa. Once again, there is hideous torture, which corrupted poor France for decades afterwards.

There is also unspeakable terrorism. People do these ghastly things in the belief that they are doing good, and destroy themselves in the process. Then there is the illusion of victory, followed by the whole thing starting all over again.

Thank heaven we have no need to be involved in this latest bout of futile tragedy. The Americans forced us to surrender to IRA terror in 1998, so we have no debts in that direction. France is and always will be our rival, not our ally, and the only rational explanation of Mr Cameron’s War in Timbuktu is that he is trying to reassure the European Union that he is its loyal servant.

But why should anyone die for that?

Elections ARE rigged... in favour of robots

How funny to listen to the moans of the Useless Tories about the death of their scheme to change parliamentary boundaries. Who cares? The real rigging of elections in this country takes place when candidates for safe seats are selected by the parties. Anyone who looks likely to speak for Britain is rejected straight away in favour of some teenage robot or yet another equality and diversity merchant. And instead of turning away in disgust, you vote for these walking, talking insults to the intelligence.

You can't win with our hopeless police

I am haunted by the case of Suzanne Dow, the unhappy woman who, besieged in her home by evil neighbours, begged the authorities for help and received none. Believing that she was abandoned and without hope, she took her life.

God rest her soul, for she had no peace in this world.

As usual, and as in the case of Fiona Pilkington, everyone is terribly sad now. But they weren’t when it mattered. The truth is that in this country drugs are legal, violence is legal, intimidation is legal, theft is legal – provided you’re big and nasty enough.

And the same thing will happen again and again –  it is happening now, in fact  – to distressing numbers  of people who cannot afford to buy themselves a little distance from the seething, callous selfishness of  modern Britain.

The dim ‘police’ officer  who was so exasperated with Suzanne Dow’s pleas for help that he emailed a colleague ‘you just can’t win with  some people, can you?’  is widely condemned.

But he was only doing his job as it is now understood in the Land of Human Rights,  in which the police are a  sort of UN peacekeeping force mediating between victim and ‘offender’, not taking sides or being ‘judgmental’. That would never do.

Why, if we were judgmental, we might grasp just what a cesspool we have made out of our country, and do something about it.

If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, scroll down

 

Why I get Angry with People who Text and Phone while Driving

Riding my bicycle along a busy London street, I noticed a large car up ahead moving very slowly, not keeping pace with the traffic in front of it. Then it stopped altogether. Then it jerked a few feet forwards. I made a small bet with myself about what I would find when  I caught up with it. And I won that bet, for the driver was – as I suspected – busy peering at some sort of hand-held screen while driving.

 

I rapped on the window and told her she was breaking the law.  She jumped as if jerked from a doze, which in a way she had been. Again, as so often, she was unembarrassed and sulky, rather than ashamed or worried that she might be in trouble. I sometimes explain to these people : ‘It’s not you I’m worried about, it’s the person you are going to kill’.

 

It’s not just texting, though I think this has caused the habit. I was nearly sideswiped, quite a while ago now, by a bright red expensive car going at about 50 miles an hour through Kensington. I chased after it, and caught it up (as you usually can in London, on a bicycle, because all that aggressive speeding merely means shorter intervals between red lights) and found its owner was driving while filling in her application for Kensington and Chelsea Residents’ Parking. Far from being embarrassed or sorry, she was arrogant and dismissive.

 

Perhaps I’m sensitive about this because, at the age of 17, I caused a serious road accident myself – the great mercy being that nobody was killed, and the only victim who was badly hurt was me. I suffered a very painful twist fracture of the ankle, which was also very unpleasant to look at when I collected myself enough to inspect the damage. My pillion passenger, thanks to a great mercy for which I give thanks quite often even now, more than 40 years later, suffered no more than a broken toe.

 

I suspect that,  had the lorry I hit with my motorbike not been equipped with a two-way radio, and managed to summon an ambulance quite quickly in that pre-mobile phone era, I would probably have lost a leg. The experience has been useful to me ever afterwards. If you have ever experienced really severe pain, an electric blaze of red, black and orange agony just on the edge of blacking out, I think you are bound to be more grown-up than those who haven’t. This is one of the reasons why women who have given birth tend to be so much more sensible than supposedly adult men.

 

I am especially careful, on high mountain paths, not to scale any slope I am not confident of getting back down again, and this might serve as a good metaphor for life in general.

 

The point about this is that I caused all this trouble through a moment’s inattention, while in charge of a powerful machine on the public highway.  I am lucky to be alive and whole, and in a way even more fortunate to have nobody else’s loss on my conscience. So I am particularly distressed to see many others, far older than I then was, behaving in the same unforgiveably stupid fashion now.

 

A few years ago one of the Welsh police forces (Gwent) produced a video which is quite merciless to the viewer and (I warn you) very distressing - but unlike so many arty films which claim that their violence has a moral purpose, this one really does. It is here   

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUlY5YSdr60

 

and it should be compulsory viewing in every school, college and university in the country, but should plainly be shown to adults as well.

 

In my view, as well as about six weeks in a labour camp breaking rocks and eating gruel, any driver caught texting or phoning while driving should be compelled to watch this film, night and day,  till it gets into their dreams and they cannot forget it.

 

It is particularly accurate about several things. These are, the appalling speed with which normal life turns into ghastly tragedy, the way in which road accidents appear to go on and on forever if you're in the middle of one, and then the terrible silence when the thing is over, the way in which mechanical things carry on happening even when the crashing has finished, and the way in which the person responsible is also a pitiable victim, simultaneously receiving help and sympathy yet the object of righteous wrath, and of his or her own everlasting remorse.

 

It is (because it has to be, for dramatic purposes) very inaccurate about how long help takes to come. It is much longer than that, and feels even longer than it is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meet this week's biggest fake - and it's not Beyonce

This is Peter Hitchens’ Mail on Sunday column

How strange that Beyoncé Knowles gets into trouble for pretending to sing The Star Spangled Banner at President Obama’s inauguration, but David Cameron is lavishly praised for faking an entire policy on live TV.
Why do the remnants of the Tory media, not to mention Tory loyalists and voters, swoon repeatedly into Mr Slippery’s unreliable arms? Time and again he dumps them rudely on the floor. Time and again they come simpering back like besotted suitors.
I know that it is usually hopeless to try to explain to the lovestruck that their beloved’s greasy smile hides a cheating heart. But I will try, by the time-honoured method of straight questions and straight answers.
Does Mr Cameron want Britain to leave the EU? No. He has repeatedly said he doesn’t want us to, and he has never said he does.
If he fails to win any serious concessions from the EU in his promised talks, will he urge that we leave? Not a chance. The EU apparatus knows this, so why should they give him anything in these discussions?
 IN THAT case, what is the point of the planned negotiations? To provide the illusion of change when no real change is possible, short of this country leaving the EU. The EU does not give up powers that it has taken, any more than a crocodile gives up its lunch.
Will there be any serious rules to stop the promised referendum being rigged, as the last one was in 1975? No. The great bulk of the press, the entire BBC and the front benches of all three Establishment parties will campaign for us to stay in, cheered on by whoever is in the White House at the time.
So even if this dubious vote is held, is there a serious chance of a vote to leave? No.
In the remote event of us voting to leave, will Parliament obey the will of the people? Most unlikely. It will not be legally obliged to do so, and there is no majority of MPs for departure. Far more likely is another ‘renegotiation’ followed by a rerun of the vote to make sure we get the ‘right’ result. If you doubt this, look at what has happened when other EU countries have voted the ‘wrong’ way.
As it happens, these questions are largely irrelevant, as the Conservative Party will not win the 2015 Election, so Mr Cameron will not have his negotiations or his referendum.
Mr Cameron, and many Tories, have deluded themselves into thinking they won in 2010, but in fact they lost. And that was under much more favourable conditions than will exist in 2015. The country was in the grip of a strange frenzy of hate against Gordon Brown. A surge in support for the Liberal Democrats drew off a large slice of the Labour vote.
People believed that the Tories had a serious policy to cure the economy. Many convinced themselves that Mr Cameron was, secretly, a conservative – nobody can believe that now, surely? Even then, the Tories lost.
Mr Cameron (and his chief adviser on these matters, that six-cylinder, supercharged Europhile Lord Heseltine) know that this country’s slow subjugation by the EU, the loss of its independence, its borders, its laws and its traditions, is not at risk.
They hug themselves to sleep with the thought that, even if they do actually have to keep their promise, the resulting vote to stay in will close down the issue for 30 years to come.
This referendum pledge is such a blatant attempt to fend off UKIP that surely even the dimmest voter can see through it.
 UKIP voters, in any case, are actually far more worried about mass immigration than they are about the EU. As well they might be, since the current Government is actively continuing New Labour’s policy of ‘rubbing the Right’s nose in diversity’ by permitting immense, unrestricted, revolutionary migration.
This – the next stage is the unstoppable arrival of who knows how many Bulgarians and Romanians – is in fact a direct result of our EU membership and could be halted only by our leaving.
Yet our national understanding of this issue is still so poor that most people won’t know that when it happens. And so we struggle on, dragged ever deeper into an unfriendly empire we don’t even understand.

Britain is a friend to the terrorists
People who want a new Afghanistan War in North Africa should volunteer for it, and then they can come home from it in coffins, rather than other people’s sons, fathers and husbands.
But I note they’re also complaining  that the BBC calls the Mali terrorists ‘militants’, rather than terrorists. This  is bad, but even worse, it seems to me,  is the way the BBC calls Islamist fanatic murderers in Syria ‘activists’, because Mr Slippery (and the BBC) want us to  join that war on their side.
I hate all terrorists. But our Government doesn’t, and nor do the Americans, who rage so noisily about their ‘war on terror’. They renamed the IRA ‘paramilitaries’, and put them in government. And they put other terrorists in power in Libya,  so that we now have to advise British subjects to flee for their lives from ‘liberated’ Benghazi.
This is all obvious nonsense, yet nobody points it out.

You can always tell British governments have run out of ideas about law and order when you start hearing suggestions that the American police chief Bill Bratton should be brought in to fight crime.
The whole point is that American police methods are banned by British liberal laws, especially the codes of practice of the (Tory) Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, and our old friend the Human Rights Act.
By the way, may I just gloat here about the official confession, on Thursday, that police crime figures may not be entirely accurate? Of course they’re not. They’re ruthlessly fiddled and wholly misleading, as readers of this column know in detail. As for the National Crime Survey, it’s a glorified opinion poll that leaves out large chunks of the population.

Even if you believe Fawlty Towers was funny (and a vast but silent multitude never did), you don’t have to think  it right to transmit repeats of it in which two rather foul and prejudiced expressions are used.
Political Correctness succeeds precisely because too many conservative people can’t see that words such as these are just sheer bad manners, and shouldn’t be on the TV any more than the F-word should be.
The same goes for the name of the dog in the film The Dam Busters. You may argue that it was once all right to  use such words, and we will never settle that. But it is quite wrong to use them now.