On Meaning What We Say - and Saying What We Mean

The actual words, spoken or written, are the key to all debate. That is why my responses to critics sometimes run to thousands of words – because I take their actual words and respond to them.

 

This is yet another argument against that left-wing electronic mob, Twitter, where anonymous contributors make hit-and-run assaults in postings which cannot be more than a few words long.

 

Here, there is less excuse. So to those who have contrived to suggest that I somehow claimed that the abolition of the promise to God by the Girl Guides was comparable to, or equivalent to the establishment of the Hitler Youth by the German National Socialists, I say, read the article again.

 

One of these is ‘Corbow’ , who, when challenged to justify his first attack ( ‘Are you seriously arrogant enough to state that by not "conforming" to Christian values and traditions that such a stance is on par with Hitler's Youth? Yet, when parents "...bring up children to love God and country..." this is not conforming to a baseless, out-dated, hate-promoting tradition? I ask you this (though I highly doubt this comment will even be allowed), how can one manage to be a reasoned, logical, free-thinker while still maintaining accordance with a two-thousand year-old "guide-to-life" that hasn't once been updated to accommodate how society operates in the present?)...

 

 

...responded with his all-pervasive charm and generosity of spirit :

 

’ Are you daft? Or just playing coy? It's obvious the mechanism you're utilizing when you say such things as, and I quote,"...has been taken over by radical revolutionaries" or "But I can’t help noticing that youth movements have been hugely important in the political struggles of our age. The Russian Communists and the German National Socialists both banned the Scouts and Guides." Also, "The same people long ago captured the schools and universities, which are now factories of Left-wing conformism," followed by, "And both Hitler Youth and Communist Pioneers had one thing very much in common – recruits were urged and even ordered to attack the Church (something you clearly define as an attack in the idea they want to remove 'God' from the pledge ***Note by PH **This sentence seems incoherent to me. What is it that I ‘clearly define’ exactly? ****)." These quotes was clearly in direct relation (****PH again ‘what does ‘in direct relation’ mean here? Again, incoherent***) to the movement that you are detailing in the first section of the article. If it isn't=, then the only other way I can read it is that you arbitrarily (***See below for rebuttal of this claim***) began discussing Hitler's Youth which makes equally little sense.

 

'You could have compared the change currently underway in the Guides to any other possible youth movement in history (some might even say it's a positive change), but the fact is that you find a generation speaking up against your religion offensive, (***PH I have no knowledge of any generation doing any such thing. Nor would I find it ‘offensive’ if it did. Rather, I see adults taking steps to ensure that the next generation are brought up in ignorance of what was their national faith***) so the only two parallels you can draw to it are Russian communists and Hitler's Youth. If you don't understand the English mechanism that allows such an inference to be made when it's so painfully obvious the goal of this piece is to vilify the secular movement then I pity you.

'The fact remains that this change is in no way outlawing the scouts or guides (PH***Indeed not. That is the cleverness of the salami-slicing ‘soft totalitarism’ of the modern politically correct, ‘equality and diversity’ movement. They have more sense than to try to outlaw them, and in any case they have no need to do so, as they can alter them without serious opposition, As I pointed out, we haven’t the spirit to resist**)

 

, and is simply looking to update it by accommodating all who wish to join instead of remaining stagnant in a theology that has long been losing it's death-grip on creativity, logic, and rational thinking. The idea that you need a "god" to tell you how to live, and how maintain strong moral character attests to how weak that character truly is.’

 

Let me explain to Mr ‘Corbow’ that I meant exactly what I said, no more, and no less. The link between the description of the salami-slicing of Christianity and patriotism, and the conduct of the great totalitarian youth movements, was this :

 

‘I can’t help noticing that youth movements have been hugely important in the political struggles of our age.’

 

The banning of the Scouts and Guides by Stalin *and* Hitler would suggest to me that this isn’t just a matter of toggles, campfires and badges, but a very important part of national life, recognised as such by two people to whom power, and ideas, and the way they were communicated to the young,  were important - and who (I’m sorry to say) were highly successful in their objectives.

 

My next linking point was as follows: ‘And both Hitler Youth and Communist Pioneers had one thing very much in common – recruits were urged and even ordered to attack the Church’.  Thus I established that to the radical revolutionaries of ‘left’ and ‘right’, a central objective was to combat the influence of the Christian religion.

 

I believe that hatred of the Christian religion (which is subversive to any utopian plan, and to any state or movement which seeks dominance over the minds of men) is one of the crucial driving forces of the 20th and 21st century drive towards a combination of individual selfishness and increased state power, in the midst of which we now find ourselves. In fact there could be no better summary of the mess in to which we are driving ourselves, one of total self-indulgence in our own lives, which hands over all authority, power and conscience to the state. That is what all this surveillance is about. That is why the tear-gas spray, the water cannon and the armour-plated robo-cop are so rapidly replacing policing by consent

 

At no point to do I say that the modern Girl Guide organisation is like Hitler or Stalin, or anything of the kind. I say, rather that youth movements are very important, and that struggles over politics and religious belief have often involved them in more direct and ferocious ways. I also point out (though none of my critics mentions this, or notes my strong approval fopr this pluralist arrangement) that there have always been, in this country, youth organisations that have catered for those who regard the Scouts as ‘militaristic’ (as many once did), or the Guides as too monarchist or religious, and also those who think the sexes should be mixed rather than separated at this age.

 

I can recall left-wing parents quite often describing the Scouts as ‘fascist’ ( a silly designation, I always thought) and I seem to remember, though I can’t at present locate it, a passage that effect (quoting such a parent) in Richard Hoggart’s fine book ‘the Uses of Literacy’. 

 

But my opponents would like those who have not read my actual words to think I have said the crude things they allege against me (particularly on 'Twitter'), because they know that there is, even so, an important truth under discussion her, in which they are on the disreputable, intolerant side.  

 

Then I quoted Hitler’s great sneer at non-Nazi parents,  because it is (regrettably) a statement of truth. Those who control the formation of young minds in modern centralised societies can easily overpower the influence of home and they know it. Hitler’s frankness on this matter was unusual. He was , however, speaking a truth which is important to us, and which explains why battles over the pledges given in our youth movements have signgificance at all, and are worth commenting on in national newspapers.

 

This is why I strive so hard to get people to read my books. On pages 152-3 of the British (Continuum) edition, and pages 206-7 of the US (Zondervan) edition of ‘The Rage Against God’, I give a great deal of space to an article on Richard Dawkins Net, called ‘Religion’s Real Child Abuse’

 

You can find it here.

 

http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/118-religion-39-s-real-child-abuse

 

Check the bit about ‘priestly groping’ . I was amused when, some months ago, a number of newspapers discovered as ‘news’ that Professor Dawkins makes this (actual and direct) parallel.

 

Here he also strongly recommends a passage (‘What Shall we tell the Children?) in a lecture by Nicholas Humphrey (‘The Mind Made Flesh’ )

 

Which you can find here

 

http://edge.org/conversation/what-shall-we-tell-the-children

 

So you can check that it really does contain the following deeply shocking passage, a manifesto for censorship,  dressed up ( as so many awful things are) in the language of liberalism. Please read it carefully  :

 

‘Should we be campaigning for the rights of human beings to be protected from verbal oppression and manipulation? Do we need "word laws", just as all civilised societies have gun laws, licensing who should be allowed to use them in what circumstances? Should there be Geneva protocols establishing what kinds of speech act count as crimes against humanity?

 

'No. The answer, I'm sure, ought in general to be "No, don't even think of it." Freedom of speech is too precious a freedom to be meddled with. And however painful some of its consequences may sometimes be for some people, we should still as a matter of principle resist putting curbs on it. By all means we should try to make up for the harm that other people's words do, but not by censoring the words as such.

 

'And, since I am so sure of this in general, and since I'd expect most of you to be so too, I shall probably shock you when I say it is the purpose of my lecture today to argue in one particular area just the opposite. To argue, in short, in favour of censorship, against freedom of expression, and to do so moreover in an area of life that has traditionally been regarded as sacrosanct.

 

'I am talking about moral and religious education. And especially the education a child receives at home, where parents are allowed—even expected—to determine for their children what counts as truth and falsehood, right and wrong.

 

'Children, I'll argue, have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people's bad ideas—no matter who these other people are. Parents, correspondingly, have no god-given licence to enculturate their children in whatever ways they personally choose: no right to limit the horizons of their children's knowledge, to bring them up in an atmosphere of dogma and superstition, or to insist they follow the straight and narrow paths of their own faith.

 

'In short, children have a right not to have their minds addled by nonsense. And we as a society have a duty to protect them from it. So we should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible, or that the planets rule their lives, than we should allow parents to knock their children's teeth out or lock them in a dungeon .’

 

Ah, those Bible literalists.  But where’s the line?  I don’t believe in the literal truth of Genesis, but I certainly believe in the literal truth of Christ’s life, and think it the most important event in human history, philosophy  and literature.   What is to be permitted to be taught, and what not?  Am I, in his scheme, to be allowed to teach my children that Christ died on the Cross for our sins, and rose again from the dead?  Can I teach them the Apostle’s Creed?  Or is it, In principle up to him and his fellow ‘enlightened’ ones, to decide whether such acts are the equivalent of knocking their teeth out or locking them in a dungeon?  Once you have admitted the principle, that any such teachings are impermissible, then there is no clear end to what you license.

 

Pay attention to what people say. They may really mean it. That is, without doubt, one of the main lessons of history. And the New Left’s savage and self-righteous loathing of Christianity is a very powerful and growing force. Such people cannot even begin to understand my ( blazingly simple and obvious) point that belief is a choice, because they have, long ago, already made the choice *not* to believe, because they know in their hearts that belief is a threat to all they desire, and fear that, if people see it a choice, they may well choose the ‘wrong’ alternative.

 

As people see and hear what they want to believe, and conceal most diligently from themselves what they also wish to conceal from others, the very suggestion that the universe might have a benevolent purpose makes them exasperated and enraged. QED, here , every other week.

There is a passage on belief,  in C.S.Lewis’s  ‘the Silver Chair’ (one the best of the Narnia books) , in which a discussion of the kind some of you still bother to have with the endlessly evasive, sidestepping Mr ‘Bunker’ (a man who has been energetically avoiding the conclusions of his own arguments here for more than a year), is very elegantly and cleverly portrayed. The passage is towards the end, after the terrible Chair itself has been hacked to pieces by the newly- released Prince Rilian.