From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Two extracts from THE WEEK 17 June 2000 The word 'liberal' has come to mean the opposite of what it used to mean. It used to imply generosity and tolerance. Nowadays, as Minette Marrin observed in The Daily Telegraph last week, it is more often used to describe a 'guilt-ridden, sybaritic statist' or a 'patronising suburbanite'. In recent years, she argues, the word has been 'transmogrified' - one example of this new usage being William Hague's condemnation of the so-called 'liberal elite" in this country. What has happened is that in the name of liberalism something very illiberal has grown up. It has become known as political correctness, a rigid orthodoxy which had its roots in liberalism but now seeks to dictate what we think, feel and do. Its "insidious, pervasive ideas" have become ingrained in British public life. One example was the Walsall Jobcentre refusing to allow the words "enthusiastic and hardworking' to appear in a recruitment ad because they might be seen as discriminating against disabled people. But the same attitude is 'rampant' everywhere. In the name of "disability rights, or equal opportunities, or respect for the underprivileged, or race and gender grievances... a great mountain of legislation, requirements, guidelines and general bossiness has been thrown up'. This is the "enemy without an identity' that has infiltrated schools, undermined the teaching of history and 'dried up this country's folk memory'. It is certainly insidious. But it has nothing to do with liberalism. We should stop pretending it does. Jolyon Connell Well said Sir, KP Controversy of the week Hunting in peril Lord Burns must feel mortified, said The Times. Last November he was asked by Home Secretary Jack Straw to conduct an inquiry into hunting. His findings were supposed to inform debate and substitute sober analysis for heated passion and prejudice. Last week, after spending months and L6OO,OOO on his fact-finding mission, Burns submitted his report. Yet before it had even landed on his desk, Straw announced that the Government would be bringing forward its own bill, allowing for an outright ban, in the next session of Parliament. To call for evidence and then reveal there is no chance of letting the facts get in the way of politics is an extraordinary piece of arrogance even by this government's standards, said The Times. It clearly has "less to do with hunting than with the hustings". No doubt about that, said Matthew d'Ancona in The Sunday Telegraph. Labour's manifesto- committee, and Mo Mowlam in particular, have persuaded Blair that although a ban might cause outrage and risk civil disobedience, this will be outweighed by its populist appeal, especially among urban Labour voters. The pity of it, said the Ff, is that Burns really did offer an objective analysis, debunking the propaganda of both sides. He undermined, for example, the Countryside Alliance's claim that 15,000 jobs would be at risk - the more likely figure is 3,500 to 4,500 - and disputed the argument that hunting is a uniquely important form of pest control. But he also took issue with the idea that hunting is the preserve of toffs; in fact, most participants are working farmers. Burns's admirably dispassionate report has certainly strengthened my change of heart on the issue, said Anne McElvoy in The Independent. I used to be convinced by the libertarian case made by Voltaire: that even if we disapprove of a minority activity, "we should give our lives' to support the freedom of the minority that enjoys it. But that argument doesn't wash when the activity in question involves extreme cruelty, which hunting, as Burns shows, does. No reason- able person doubts that banning bear-baiting was an act of progress. The same is true of hunting. But any reasonable person also knows that the fox, unlike the bear 'is a pest, said Simon Jenkins in The Times. The issue isn't whether the fox suffers. It is how much more it suffers from hunting as opposed to other methods of pest control. And on this matter, Burns ties himself in knots trying to make up his mind. Here he is, for example, on the method of digging out a fox with dogs and shooting it: "Although there is no firm evidence, we are satisfied that [this method] involves a serious compromise of its welfare.' What gibberish. Of course death 'compromises the welfare' of the fox. Yet though Burns nowhere shows that hunting with dogs is more cruel than the alternatives, he suggests it should be stopped. In a civilised society it should take more than his lordship's 'satisfaction without firm evidence" to justify the suppression of civil liberty. The first paragraph - shades of Cullen Kenneth Pantling Nock's Grim Truth - In proportion as you give the State power to do things for you, you give it power to do things to you; and the State invariably makes as little as it can of the one power and as much as it can of the other. -------[Cybershooters contacts]-------- Editor: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website & subscription info: www.cybershooters.org
