How a so-called liberal reevaluated his beliefs as a result of 911:

Milne's savaging of American self-absorption was the most conspicuous example of an attitude that could be heard in plenty of sophisticated conversations, or should I say conversations between sophisticated people, and read in a number of left or liberal publications.

What all these reactions had in common, I realised, was not complexity but simplicity. For all of them this was an issue of the powerless striking back at the powerful, the oppressed against the oppressor, the rebels against the imperialists. It was Han Solo and Luke Skywalker taking on the Death Star. There was no serious attempt to examine what kind of power the powerless wanted to assume, or over whom they wanted to exercise it, and no one thought to ask by what authority these suicidal killers had been designated the voice of the oppressed. It was enough that Palestinians had danced in the West Bank. The scale of the suffering, the innocence of the victims and the aims of the perpetrators barely seemed to register in many of the comments. Was this a sign of shock or complacency? Or was it something else, a kind of atrophying of moral faculties, brought on by prolonged use of fixed ideas, that prevented the sufferer from recognising a new paradigm when it arrived, no matter how spectacular its announcement?

In the end I reached the conclusion that 11 September had already brutally confirmed: there were other forces, far more malign than America, that lay in wait in the world. But having faced up to the basic issue of comparative international threats, could I stop the political reassessment there? If I had been wrong about the relative danger of America, could I be wrong about all the other things I previously held to be true? I tried hard to suppress this thought, to ring-fence the global situation, grant it exceptional status and keep it in a separate part of my mind. I had too much vested in my image of myself as a 'liberal'. I had bought into the idea, for instance, that all social ills stemmed from inequality and racism. I knew that crime was solely a function of poverty. That to be British was cause for shame, never pride. And to be white was to bear an unshakable burden of guilt. I held the view, or at least was unprepared to challenge it, that it was wrong to single out any culture for censure, except, of course, Western culture, which should be admonished at every opportunity. I was confident, too, that Israel was the source of most of the troubles in the Middle East. These were non-negotiables for any right-thinking decent person. I couldn't question these received wisdoms without questioning my own identity. And I had grown too comfortable with seeing myself as one of the good guys, the well-meaning people, to want to do anything that upset that image. I viewed myself as understanding, and to maintain that self-perception it was imperative that I didn't try to understand myself.

But it's not just about foreign policy:

The scene outside the off-licence shocked and depressed me. Violence happens in all big cities and it is always shocking and depressing to witness. Or at least it should be. What made me feel particularly low, however, was the effortlessness and extremity of the attack, the apparent absence of compunction, the offenders' lack of fear of censure, their obliviousness to social constraint and the compliance, almost conspiracy, of the silent onlookers. Not only was it a savage assault on a young girl but on civic decency as well. Yet the more I thought about it - and I thought about it a lot - the more I realised that there wasn't an 'appropriate' response to what had happened. There wasn't a liberal vocabulary with which to describe the situation. Indeed, even a phrase like 'civic decency' sounded fuddy-duddy, uptight, somehow right-wing. There was a liberal way of talking about the culprits. It involved referring to their poor education and difficult home lives and the poverty they suffered. To have done so would have meant ignoring the expensive clothes and mobile phones that all of them had, or it would have been necessary to explain that these were signs of superficial wealth, the desperate avarice of the marginalised and underprivileged in a nakedly materialist world. But I had no appetite for that brand of reasoning. It blamed nebulous society and excused not just the individuals but also the community of which they were a part. Thus the problem was not local, communal, immediate, it was national, multifaceted, the result of innumerable political mistakes made by the powers that be. In other words, it was inevitable and effectively incurable. We were all powerless: the girl, the onlookers and the culprits who had been led by great social forces beyond their control to stick a broken bottle in a young girl's face.

I had trouble figuring out what to excerpt. Read the whole thing. It looks to be a good book.

Gracias a Dios.

Someone who has gone through the only detox that works with "those people" -- hypothesis, observation, analysis, conclusion.

I can only pray that his former fellow travelers (of all nationalities) can convert, too.

Personally, I think it isn't great social forces in play but the lack of such; the ones in question being hanging, flogging and long sentences at hard labour, the last to be served in an institution with no comforts or civilised amenities, disgusting food and brutal staff. Oh, and the probability of being caught and sentenced to the above.

FC,
I would agree with everything but the staffing. There's no reason for the staff to be brutal. The inmates usually have that covered anyway. Besides we are guaranteed, by law, no cruel punishment. If they abuse each other, that's tough.

But hard labor, no TV, no smokes, bland food, hard cots, those are all allowable under our laws. Add pink skivies and tents...you're in Phoenix.

But hard labor, no TV, no smokes, bland food, hard cots, those are all allowable under our laws. Add pink skivies and tents...you're in Phoenix.

Amen to that, except add no weight piles. If these guys want to work out, let them jog, it will keep them aerobically fit, but not letting them bulk up.

But hard labor, no TV, no smokes, bland food, hard cots, those are all allowable under our laws. Add pink skivies and tents...you're in Phoenix.

Amen to that, except add no weight piles. If these guys want to work out, let them jog, it will keep them aerobically fit, but not letting them bulk up.

I think catching and punishing, fairly and consistently people who commit crimes is a great idea. But when you start talking about pink underwear or banning the lifting of weights, you've lost perspective. If someone receives adequate punishment in a reasonable environment for a crime then there's no need to worry about these things. If they aren't, then there's something deeper at fault.

Karl, the point is that lifting weights is presumably something they want to do - so they shouldn't be allowed to do it. As for jogging - they should be too damn tired after a day of breaking rocks to have the energy to jog.

The point is that it should be as unpleasant, humiliating and embarrassing as possible to be in jail. Hence the pink underwear - which should be extended to the colour of their jumpsuits. A prisoner should have no control and no freedom whatsoever - that's the point. That extends to the provision of vegetarian food, by the way - and especially to the provision of halal food. If you have non-medical dietary restrictions, break them or starve.

I could never understand why the Broad Arrow was removed from British prison uniforms. If nothing else, it made it more difficult to stay at large after escaping.

I think catching and punishing, fairly and consistently people who commit crimes is a great idea. But when you start talking about pink underwear or banning the lifting of weights, you've lost perspective.

Pink underwear is going too far, I'll agree, but the thought is fun, ain't it? Banning lifting of weights though serves a purpose. Lifting is the avenue towards getting bigger (and more intimidating). It however, is not the route to fitness. Fitness is much more closely linked to a healthy diet and aerobic excercise. Why should we let these guys get huge at taxpayers expense, when we can fund excercise bikes for less and have them build their own jogging tracks for fitness?

If someone receives adequate punishment in a reasonable environment for a crime then there's no need to worry about these things.

Part of the punishment of jail time is loss of liberties you could enjoy on the outside. If you can do anything you want on the inside, what's the point of putting people in jail? Its not a hotel with free meals. Its prison and you shouldn't WANT to go there. Taking away the weight pile doesn't harm the prisoners at all, rather it does keep the inmates from bulking up and becoming more intimidating when they should be rehabilitating. Let them lift books and read. Let them excercise aerobically.