Category: Blog

Such was the caution issued by the political philosopher Eric Voegelin (né Erich Hermann Wilhelm Vögelin) with his Germanic heavy-handedness.

Adding the lighter touch demanded by his second language, English, this simply means: “Don’t try to create heaven on earth.” The Kingdom of God is an eschatological ideal, not a how-to guide to running world affairs.

That was a grave error committed by, inter alia, Tolstoy who insisted that political life be organised according to the Sermon on the Mount (hence his pet idea of non-resistance). Tolstoy tried to turn the commandments of one kingdom, that of God, into the constitution of another, that of the Caesar, an attempt doomed to failure even theoretically, never mind in practice.

A keen observer if a poor thinker, Tolstoy saw that his plea was being ignored so consistently that it was obviously going to be ignored in perpetuity. That observation led him to out-and-out nihilism, with him flailing away at, well, everything: the state in general, every state in particular, the West, capitalism, art, property, sex, marriage – and even the author of his favourite sermon. (For details, I selfishly recommend my book God and Man According to Tolstoy.)

However, the other road, that of a political society devoid of any shared ideals, preferably noble ones, leads to the same destination, nihilism. This understanding goes back to Aristotle, with his concept of homonoia, which can be loosely translated as ‘like-mindedness’.

This brings to mind the only words in the Declaration of Independence I really like: “We hold these truths to be self-evident…”. A nation does become a nation when a general understanding exists of what truths are indeed self-evident. That’s what turns a population into a people.

Homonoia is a sort of catalytic converter, turning an aggregate of atomised individuals into a political society or, to use today’s buzz word, a community. Like-mindedness here cuts deeper than simply so many people agreeing on so many policies.

Homonoia is a widely shared understanding of what it means to be a human being and, consequently, what kind of political arrangement should result from this understanding. It was clear to Aristotle, and Plato before him, that an erosion of homonoia would lead to a collapse of the state or, broader, civilisation.

Such like-mindedness can’t be legislated by government and enforced by coercion. It has to come from a collective understanding of common interests ultimately based on a shared metaphysical core.

Aristotle’s idea laid a foundation for all subsequent political theory, especially the kind that deals with civilisations rather than just the rough-and-tumble of electoral jousts. Thus, for example, Tocqueville:

“It is easy to see that no society will prosper without such belief… For without ideas in common, no common action would be possible, and without common action, men might exist, but there could be no body social.”

That was written before the nuclear age, hence Tocqueville’s optimism. When homonoia disintegrates these days, the result may be the demise not only of body social, but also of body physical.

While no state can be run on the Sermon on the Mount, Western civilisation was held together for many centuries by the spiritual premise of Christianity. That didn’t rid people of sin, including their propensity to kill one another, but it did create a cogent society sharing the same inner core.

Our civilisation didn’t become perfect but at least it became viable. Apocalyptic disasters, such as the two world wars, only happened when the West’s homonoia developed cracks.

It’s as clear as it is lamentable that Christianity no longer acts as homonoia in our civilisation. But what does? Anything?

If the answer to these questions is ‘nothing’, which seems plausible, then we are in deep trouble. Following Voegelin’s advice and rejecting Tolstoy’s pleas, we have refused to “immanentise the eschaton”. So what homonoia do we immanentise? (Yes, I agree: Voegelin’s word is unwieldy, but I did tell you he was German.)

What is the common spiritual core that holds our civilisation together, preventing the atoms of individual countries, parties or even people from spinning out of the collective molecule?

Since I’m writing a short article rather than a long book, I have to skip the intermediate steps and put my conclusion up front. As is becoming more blindingly obvious every day, Western man has been able to oust Christianity as his homonoia, but not to replace it.

Belief in the eschatological nature of liberal democracy, enunciated with particular obtuseness by Francis Fukuyama, doesn’t hold water. Western people pay lip service to it by rote, but deep down they see that these days democracy run riot is less likely to bring people together than to tear them asunder.

Trump’s shenanigans leave little doubt on that score – he is illustrating with every word and deed the divisive nature of today’s democracy. In the distant past, most people sensed that, even if their views were different, their interests weren’t. Underneath it all they shared a Mowgli-like understanding: “We be of one blood, thou and I”. Today, people holding different views look at one another through the red mist of hatred.

The West lost its homonoia long ago, but in the absence of a deadly crisis it has been able to paper some of the cracks. Now that a deadly crisis is looming, the cracks are becoming too wide to cover with pretence.

I am genuinely worried that we may not survive. This isn’t alarmist panic-mongering but simply an observation that a deadly danger exists. We may find a way around it or we may not, but denying it exists makes the second possibility more likely than the first.

Believing that unlike other great civilisations in history ours is immune to destruction is foolish arrogance at its most soaring. Ask those old Babylonians, Egyptians, Athenians and Romans for confirmation – they’ll tell you what’s what, shouting from their graves.

“Does any living composer write better for choirs, or more demandingly when circumstances allow, than James MacMillan?”

This obviously rhetorical question opens one of the reviews of James MacMillan’s oratorio Ordo Virtutum, premiered in the UK last Thursday.

I agree, but with one minor amendment: even of the composers no longer living only Bach stands side by side with MacMillan, certainly in his handling of vocal harmonies. Sir James has the misfortune of being our contemporary, which is why reviewers hesitate to place him next to the giants of the past. Let’s wait a century or so, shall we?

The Latin text of Ordo Virtutum comes from Hildegard of Bingen (d. 1179), medieval polymath with a fair claim to being the greatest woman in history.

Hildegard was a mystic visionary whose faith illuminated all her works, be it philosophy, theology, botany, medicine – or musical compositions. She was one of the few composers ever to write both the music and the words for her sublime chants, and many of them still survive.

Her Ordo Virtutum is a liturgical drama and also perhaps the world’s oldest morality play. Hildegard found poignant verbal and musical messages to depict a soul torn between virtues and Satan. One detects echoes of her personal fight against the devil, with his claims on her body, and one rejoices with Hildegard at the victory hard-won by her glorious soul.

Hildegard’s own chants, hymns and antiphons were monophonic, that is consisting of a single melodic line. Their drama is meditative and understated, drawing the listener in gradually and getting him in touch with his own soul note by note.

Anyone using her compositions as a starting point for his own faces the task of preserving Hildegard’s contemplative subtlety while adding the bold rhythms and dynamism expected from modern composers. That is what MacMillan did to perfection, and Hildegard would have been proud of him.

While Sir James did justice to Hildegard, the performance did justice to him. Both the choir and soloists of BBC singers were superb, as was the conducting of Sofi Jeannin. But I was especially impressed with the percussionist Andrew Barclay, the sole instrumental accompanist.

MacMillan has always treated percussion as a solo instrument, and Barclay played his crotales, vibraphone, suspended cymbal and tom-tom with subtlety and virtuosity. As a dilettante, I had never suspected that lurking within percussive instruments is so much range and finesse of expression. Hence I found the evening as instructive as it was moving.

The reviewer in question said most of the same things, and it’s always nice to see a kindred spirit sharing my aesthetic and spiritual tastes. However, if you look at the title above, you’ll know that he also found words of criticism.

Those words came across in the last paragraph: “… with the performers, however committed, facing us motionless, you’re also conscious that diversity is never the name in British professional choral singing, not even in the youth division.”

Excuse me? I’ve heard of non sequiturs, but this one stopped me dead. What in God’s name does this have to do with MacMillan, Hildegard, music, virtues, Satan, liturgy or anything else relevant to the performance?

Should the singers have turned their backs on the audience to conceal their irredeemable whiteness? I suppose that could have worked, especially with high collars covering their necks. Not sure about the acoustics though, but some things about musical performances seem to be more important than sheer sounds and the meaning they convey.

The reviewer had to send a message of political virtue ad urbi et orbi, but was it an inner compulsion or a diktat imposed from outside? I don’t know, and when I read that sentence I couldn’t think straight enough to ponder such questions. Distant memories came flooding in, and I shuddered.

When I was growing up in Moscow, no speech or written work passed muster if it didn’t contain quotations from Lenin. Alas, unlike Hildegard, the father of all progressive humanity wasn’t a polymath. He mostly wrote engaging texts on usurping power, using it to exterminate whole social classes and to rob people of whatever little property they possessed.

One typical statement was: “It matters not if 90 per cent of the Russian people perish so long as 10 per cent bring about a world revolution.” (90 per cent of the Russian population made up over 100 million at the time – Lenin thought on a large scale.) Regardless of what you think of such sentiments, you must agree they don’t fit easily into, say, research papers or concert reviews.

But Soviet leaders weren’t out to make life easy for scholars, writers or critics. They knew what mattered in life and had the means to enforce their view. Lenin couldn’t possibly be irrelevant to any subject, be it microbiology, music, physics, pharmaceuticals or, in my case, linguistics.

When I was at university, I once submitted a paper on the Great Vowel Shift, a sweeping change in English pronunciation that occurred between the 15^th and 17^th centuries. The work took much effort and long hours, what with the reference materials being almost impossible to find. In the end, I was quite proud of myself, a sentiment emphatically not shared by the academic panel.

They regretfully had to reject my paper because it contained not a single quotation from Lenin. My protests, such as that the great man had more important things to worry about than the articulation of English vowels, were in vain. My academic superiors shrugged and explained that such things were beyond their control.

Context be damned: even instructions on the use of electric appliances had to include Lenin quotations. Everything ever published was nothing but commentary on the 45 volumes of Lenin Collected Works.

That experience left scars, which open every time I see the same sort of thing happening in a supposedly free country. As they did the other day, when I read that review of a remarkable performance.

Do the editors of that paper demand expressions of wokery in every article, regardless of subject or context? I doubt it. Things haven’t degenerated quite as much yet, although they are definitely moving in that direction.  

So I don’t think the critic was censored prescriptively. The situation is much worse than that: he censored himself. His sensitive antennae caught the emanations of the Zeitgeist, sent electric signals to his brain, the brain to the fingers – and out came a statement of loyalty to a pernicious ideology.

But why did he stop there? The English translation of Hildegard’s Latin text was projected above the platform, but why just English? The organisers are guilty of blatant discrimination against people who may not understand the language of white colonialism.

NHS leaflets, for example, are available in 32 languages, including such essential ones as Yoruba, Oromo and Pashto, with not a whiff of Anglo-white supremacy anywhere in sight. (I wish I owned the translation agency handling NHS work – it must be raking in millions.)

Putting so many translations on during a concert would have been logistically difficult, but at least such ubiquitous languages as Urdu, Bengali, Mandarin and Arabic surely should have been accommodated.

Or do the organisers think concert goers are more linguistically advanced than NHS patients? Surely not – such thoughts are elitist, classist and discriminatory.

You can understand my frustration: When I left the USSR, I didn’t expect it to follow me everywhere I went. It now has, and things like re-education centres and labour camps may well follow. A harrowing thought, that.

Generally, I try to vary my subjects not to bore readers more than is unavoidable. Well, not now. Every other subject seems trivial compared to what’s going on in the Ukraine.

I’m convinced that the consummation of the love affair between Trump and Putin is by far the most pivotal event of my lifetime (I missed the Second World War by a few years).

Every day brings new outrages, each one pushing the world closer to a devastating global conflict, and the two lowlife personages are to blame. I’d even suggest that Trump is worse than Putin, if only because the United States is supposed to be the leader of the free world.

Trump’s effrontery is most refreshing. Yesterday he went so far as to blame Zelensky for the war, which is like saying that the rape victim egged her attacker on by wearing a short skirt.

Like a gangster holding a victim at his mercy, Trump feels he can get away with mouthing any gibberish. Who cares about words? He’s the one holding the big gun. Just look at his statement yesterday, when Trump sneered at Zelensky for protesting against not being invited to the negotiations on his country’s fate:

“I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat. Well, they’ve had a seat for three years and a long time before that. This could have been settled very easily. Just a half-baked negotiator could have settled this years ago without, I think, without the loss of much land, very little land, without the loss of any lives, and without the loss of cities that are just laying on their side.”

“Laying”, sic. All one can say is that Trump’s expensive education failed miserably. “To lay”, Donny, is a transitive verb in English. Saying ‘lay’ instead of ‘lie’ is a sure and, alas, widespread sign of illiteracy.

This is a minor quibble about a major problem: the United States is currently governed by a savage lout in Putin’s pocket. Every word in Trump’s tirade is a lie, including, to quote Mary McCarthy, ‘and’ and ‘the’.

The war could indeed have been prevented by the Ukraine’s surrender before the invasion or stopped at any time thereafter. But that wouldn’t just have involved “the loss of very little land”. Since Trump knows this, what he is saying is a boldfaced lie.

When pushing the button for the invasion, Putin declared that his goal was to “de-Nazify and de-militarise” the Ukraine. In other words, to stamp out her sovereignty. And the original thrust of the Russian offensive was aimed not at “very little land” but Kiev, which Putin said would be taken in three days.

Anyway, as far as Trump is concerned, it was the Ukraine that started the war: “Today I heard, oh, we weren’t invited. Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it three years – you should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”

“You should have never started it” – has there ever been a more mendacious statement uttered on who started a war? Oh yes, both Hitler and Stalin justified their 1939 rape of Poland by declaring the Poles had provoked it. Trump is in good company there.

You must understand that, when Trump says such things, he is merely being the dummy to Putin’s ventriloquist. Just think about it: the president of a free country is repeating verbatim words put into his mouth by a fascist dictator.

One cretinous claim that dictator makes and Trump repeats is that Zelensky isn’t a legitimate leader because there have been no elections since the war started. Of course, Zelensky could have ensured his legitimacy by doing a Putin: having ballot boxes stuffed all over the country. But he neglected to do that, so he’s no democrat.

Trump doesn’t question Putin’s legitimacy, only Zelensky’s: “Well, we have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law, essentially martial law in Ukraine, where the leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he’s down at 4 per cent approval rating and where a country has been blown to smithereens.”

Actually, Zelensky’s approval rating is closer to 50 per cent, but I did tell you that a gangster holding the big gun feels entitled to say anything he wishes. However, by Trump’s (or rather Putin’s) logic Churchill wasn’t a legitimate leader either, and Britain stopped being a democracy between 1935 and 1945 when no general election was held.

The Ukraine, according to Donald ‘Putin’ Trump, forfeited any claim to legitimacy by declaring martial law when coming under attack. The word ‘martial’, deriving as it does from Mars, the god of war, should have given him a clue: it’s a temporary law introduced at war time.

Following Pearl Harbour, Trump’s own country arbitrarily interned thousands of Americans for the crime of being ethnically Japanese. People who cherished due process winced, but they acknowledged that the measure was excusable. Democratic bets are off when there’s a war on.

Trump’s musings would be absurd if taken at face value. But, in fact, he doesn’t give a damn about the Ukraine observing democratic niceties.

Trump simply shares Putin’s hatred of Zelensky and, broader, of the Ukraine’s independence. Zelensky had the temerity to rally his country when Trump’s fascist friend committed an act of blatant aggression, and now he doesn’t deserve his post any more than his country deserves her sovereignty.

Trump-Putin demands elections as a precondition for any peace talks involving the Ukraine. Yes, but what if the Ukraine complies, holds elections, and Zelensky wins? Wouldn’t that be a slap in Trump-Putin’s face?

Yes, it would be. That’s why Zelensky would never be allowed to stand in any such mockery of a presidential election demanded by the partners in crime.

The Ukrainians would be told that what’s needed isn’t any old election, but one on which their wartime leader wouldn’t be allowed to stand. If they refuse, Zelensky would probably be assassinated, and it could be either Putin or Trump sending the murder squad out.

After that, an election would be held at gunpoint, just like the travesty conducted in the Crimea after the Russian invasion. Some Quisling would be elected, and the Ukraine would fall under Russian rule yet again, with America’s blessing. And then massacres would start, with thousands, possibly millions, murdered for having dared resist Russian invaders.

Other observers also noticed that Trump simply parrots Putin, and Trump hastened to assuage their fears: “You know, it’s been a long time since we’ve had an election. That’s not a Russia thing. That’s something coming from me and coming from many other countries also.”

Out of idle curiosity, which many other countries? Iran? North Korea? China? Other champions of democracy? Come on, Donald, the people have a right to know.

Meanwhile, Putin and his foulmouthed ‘diplomat’ Lavrov are making hay while Trump’s sun shines. For weeks now, it has been mooted that, following a ceasefire, an international peace-keeping force would move into the no-man’s land separating the two countries.

Trump said that no US troops would take part, but everyone confidently assumed that the contingent would come from European NATO members. Now, emboldened by Trump’s treachery, the Russians are saying that the presence of NATO soldiers in the Ukraine wouldn’t be tolerated. They don’t want peacekeeping because they don’t want to keep peace.

Yet again the world is approaching the brink of a global catastrophe, and yet again the world is reacting the ostrich way. For Trump gives every sign of delivering Europe to Putin the way Roosevelt and Churchill delivered the eastern part of it to Stalin.

That eventually put the world on the threshold of nuclear disaster, narrowly averted several times at the eleventh hour. Next time we may not be so lucky.

I won’t countenance the laments of some of my conservative friends who wish Thomas Matthew Crooks had shot straighter. But I understand how they feel.

Trump walks and talks like a two-bit gangster, whose whole education came from the school of hard knockers followed by Screw U.

Yet a hope flickered that at least he wouldn’t act according to type. That hope has now been dashed.

First Trump betrayed the Ukraine by cutting her out of the peace negotiations. She is being treated like a child sent out of the room while the grown-ups discuss serious business.

Now I haven’t read Trump’s book on the art of making a deal, but I wonder if he recommends relinquishing all the leverage by giving the other party everything it desires before the negotiations even start. If he doesn’t, then the ongoing spectacle will be covered in a sequel: Putin was already promised everything he wants.

Zelensky, on the other hand, is treated as a supplicant who has no say in the matter and must accept whatever crumbs he is thrown. Or else – we know where you live, where your wife shops, where your children go to school.

Trump’s version of such gangster talk differs in exact words but not in substance. If Zelensky plays silly buggers, he won’t even be allowed to keep the rump of his country: “They may make a deal. They may not make a deal, they may be Russian someday or they may not be Russian someday. But I want this money back.”

The last sentence is a reference to the reparations Trump insists the Ukraine must pay. Or rather “pay up”, which is his favourite way of putting it. The price of the country not becoming “Russian someday” has been established at a cool half-trillion, $500 billion.

Even assuming that the Ukraine is obligated to “pay up”, which is pay back every cent she has received from the US in aid, the number is fanciful. So far Congress has approved five packages amounting to $175 billion.

Trump, however, insists the US has spent $300 billion, and he isn’t so “stupid” as to approve any more. (“Whadja think I am, stupid?” I can just hear him say.) Even so, if my arithmetic is correct, 300 is still less than 500. So what’s going on is old-fashioned “we know where you live” extortion.

As a percentage of GDP, Trump’s blackmailing demand exceeds the reparations imposed on defeated Germany at Versailles, and you remember how well that worked out. It’s debatable whether Germany was the aggressor in that war, but she definitely was in the next one, and so was Japan. However, the reparations the two countries had to “pay up” after 1945 were minuscule. In fact, they came out as net recipients under the Marshall Plan.

Trump is magnanimous enough not to demand cash on the nail. Instead, he wants to turn the Ukraine into a US protectorate, but without offering any protection.

The leaked terms of the “deal” offered Zelensky are take it or leave it. And if you leave it, we know where you live.

Zelensky is told to turn over control of the country’s minerals to the US. And not just that.

The agreement covers every asset of the Ukraine, including “mineral resources, oil and gas resources, ports, other infrastructure (as agreed)”. “Other infrastructure” sounds a bit open-ended to me, but gangsters make such demands when they think the victim is at their mercy.

The US will take 50 per cent of all revenues from production of natural resources, and the same cut of  “all new licences issued to third parties” for future exploration. The US will set up a designated fund to handle such transactions, and the fund “shall have the exclusive right to establish the method, selection criteria, terms, and conditions” of all future licences.

This would effectively turn the Ukraine into an American colony, with the country having no money to reconstruct its cities and infrastructure destroyed by Russian fascists. Once Trump or his successors have squeezed the Ukraine dry, she will be left to the tender mercies of Putin or his successors.

Meanwhile Putin will get 20 per cent of the Ukraine’s territory and with it political control of the devastated, impoverished nation. A Russian puppet, such as Yanukovych, will be installed in Kiev and the freedom-loving nation will be enslaved politically by one power and economically by another.

This is the way to treat aggressors finding themselves on the losing end, except the victorious allies didn’t treat the vanquished belligerents that way in the two World Wars. Meting out this kind of punishment to a country that heroically resisted aggressive barbarians for three years, thwarting their dastardly aims, is worse than immoral.

It’s a criminal affront to honour – not Trump’s for he has none, but America’s, a country that likes to claim a moral high ground towering above the rest of the world. Now the country is letting a gangster president make her act as a criminal family, which has to sadden anyone who had high hopes for America.

And Putin still isn’t happy. “A lasting and long-term viable resolution is impossible without a comprehensive consideration of security issues on the continent,” said Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman. 

This Aesopian language means NATO rolling back to its 1997 borders. Since Trump has no time for NATO anyway, I shan’t be surprised if Putin gets that concession too. There have been reports already that Trump will remove American tripwire troops from the Baltics, and leaving all of Europe without an American umbrella is sure to follow.

It’s not just the Ukraine that’s being betrayed but Europe and, even broader, Western civilisation. If Trump goes so far as to withdraw America from NATO altogether, and I wouldn’t put it past him, that defensive organisation will disband, certainly de facto, but probably de jure as well.

Putin will then be able to pick off Eastern European countries one by one, starting probably with the three small Baltic republics. Whatever symbolic protection Article 5 of the NATO Charter offers will no longer be there, and every country will be left to fend for itself.

Even assuming European countries embark on a massive rearmament campaign, and Trump is right when saying they should have done so long ago, it will be years before Western armies will be able to deter or, barring that, defeat Russian hordes. And we may not have years at our disposal.

Europe is in danger of being plunged into decades of war, and Asia won’t be far behind. Seeing the preferential treatment received by the aggressor and the humiliation of its victim, China will be emboldened to attack Taiwan – after all, Chinese communists haven’t been creating the world’s largest navy just to fight India.

The US will cede her superpower status step by step, with evil predators accepting one surrender after another, the sort of thing Trump calls a “deal”. America’s interests will go the way of her honour, and the net effect of Trump’s presidency will be disastrous – regardless of how successful he is in trimming the federal budget and securing his country’s borders.

But gangsters don’t plan far ahead, and neither do old presidents with less than four years left in their term. Tomorrow they may be dead, so the time to grab all they can is now.

Trump is transparently acting in Putin’s interests and, perhaps unwittingly, against America’s. What do you think the Botox Boy has on him? It has to be something major, and I used to wonder about that in all seriousness.

Then, allowing for the possibility that I might be wrong, I pushed that thought to the back of my mind. It’s now pushing its way back to the very front. All I can say is that the free world can ill-afford as its leader a Manchurian candidate with gangster tendencies.

Can someone talk sense into Trump, explaining to him that it isn’t the Ukraine who owes us, but we who owe her? No, is the answer to that.

I feel sympathy mixed with Schadenfreude when watching dogmatic followers of any ideology in action. Sooner or later they run headlong into the stonewall of irreconcilable contradictions, and their brains scramble.

Since they can’t give up their ideology for, well, ideological considerations, they have to give up reason and any semblance of intellectual integrity. Instead they indulge in rhetorical calisthenics to put any circus contortionist to shame. Yet no twists and turns can lead them out of their predicament.

Take Left-wing ideologues, for example. They have a set of unchallengeable pieties, and I don’t have to give you the full list.

One such piety is the conviction that only denizens of the Third World have virtue. They may not be impeccably pristine but, compared to the vile West with its [colonialism, imperialism, misogyny, inequality and so on], they stand out as victimised paragons of goodness.

Muslims make up a large swath of Third World hagiography, which makes them saintly fighters against Western wickedness and hence ipso facto icons of woke ideologies.

But then the icons begin to crack, and seeping through the fissures are some disconcerting reports. For example, it turns out that Muslims treat women without the reverence demanded by woke, in this case feminist, sensibilities.

In fact, the status of women in some Islamic countries is similar to that of livestock. They are seen as strictly functional beings created by Allah for the sole purpose of waiting on men hand and foot, not to mention other parts of the anatomy. On hearing that, a woke ideologue begins to squirm.

And then – shock, horror. Apparently, rather than obediently treating same-sex relationships as equal, perhaps even superior, to the more common kind – Muslims tend to throw homosexuals off tall buildings. Squirming turns into agony.

Or take the sacrosanct human right to identify as any of the 100-odd sexes. Any doubt about the sanctity of that right brands the naysayer as an enemy. But then it turns out that feminists are perhaps the greatest opponents of accepting former men as women. Trans is good, feminism is a virtue, so how come they clash? And how do wokers of the world reconcile that conflict?

I could perhaps think of a way, but won’t. I enjoy too much watching conflicts of pieties from the sidelines – especially since it’s not just Left-wing ideologues who tie themselves in knots trying to untangle such conundrums.

I know quite a few people who treat Trump as a messiah. Their whole Weltanschauung is the flesh built on the skeleton of their deified idol. And deities can do no wrong by definition.

Anyone who attempts to find fault with anything the idol says or does is a heretic to be immolated in the pyre of fiery invective. If Christ could say “He who is not with Me is against Me,” then Trump and his zealots are also entitled to say the same thing.

But here’s the rub. Some of my Trumpist friends have been staunch supporters of the Ukraine from 2014 onwards – and avowed enemies of Putinism for quite a bit longer. And now that Trump is obviously trying to sell the Ukraine down the Dnieper by bypassing Zelensky and striking a deal (dread word) with the fascist aggressor, my ideological friends find themselves in a pickle.

They bang their heads against the wall trying to find a way out, but that door is nailed shut. Either you betray the Ukraine in your own mind, or commit apostasy by admitting that Trump is neither divine nor even angelic. He is a flawed individual with some good ideas, but also with many tragic failings that may yet cancel out whatever good he does.

The most current example of that is his concerted effort to throw the Ukraine first and Europe second under the bus, which supporters of the Ukraine’s heroic struggle try in vain to square with their hagiographic adoration of Trump.

Their last line of defence is saying that things aren’t what they appear to be. This reminds me of the Polish aphorist Jerzy Lec who once quipped, “Reality isn’t what really happens”. In this case, reality is for real. Trump is betraying the Ukraine, setting up the stage for a wider conflict in the near future.

My aim here isn’t Trump-bashing but ideology-bashing. The point is that no set of beliefs rates a dogmatic status on earth unless it comes down from heaven.

A cogent system of thought has to rest on a solid philosophical and theological base that alone enables the observer to look down on world events from a high vantage point, rather than being mired in their midst.

A bird’s eye view provides a clear sight of the vicissitudes and relativities of politics, leading the thinker to the realisation that, as often as not, the moral, absolutist solution to any problem also happens to be the most practical.

In the absence of that vantage point, petty relativities often take on aspects of the absolute – until they turn out mutually exclusive with other putative absolutes, proving that most of them are simply fallacies.

A propensity to succumb to ideological fervour is a symptom of intellectual laziness, a pandemic disease of modernity. What’s especially risible is various fire-eating ideologues claiming that their particular obsession is commonsensical and pragmatic, as opposed to pie-in-the-sky idealistic.

In fact, secular obsessions have nothing to do with common sense – and everything to do with worshipping a secular idol in defiance of reason and morality. The wages of that sin can only ever be disastrous.

The other day JD Vance correctly outlined the deleterious effect of woke ideologies on the core values of the West. However, he fails to realise that the ideological totem at which he worships, Trumpism, can be as damaging.

In his Republic Plato explored the concept of a state ruled by the philosopher king. That, as he himself knew, was only a hypothetical proposition. It’s not philosophers but men of action who tend to run countries.

But no action will succeed unless inspired by sound and dispassionate thought. Anyone capable of thinking about politics in that manner has to proceed, perhaps unwittingly, from a system of thought that transcends politics and supersedes ideologies. If he doesn’t, a disaster will never be far around the corner.

Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy is a good book whose author has to know everything I’m saying. Alas, his political ambitions force him into an ideological straitjacket that can’t be shaken off.

He hitched his wagon to Trump’s star against his own original instincts. Back in 2016, when Trump won his first presidential term, Vance publicly called him “reprehensible” and an “idiot”. Privately, he compared him to Adolf Hitler, which has to be put down to febrile polemical ardour.

Since then Vance has changed his tune by selling his soul for a pot of ideological message. Such transactions seldom end up well – ideologies, whatever they may be, are deadly toxins of the mind. And once bargained away, one’s soul can seldom be bought back.

Some of my readers are going to gasp in disbelief, but I’ll say it anyway: I am not perfect.

I’m overweight, I drink too much, I’m messy, and these are just my minor failings. But because I’m aware of them, I’m always grateful for criticism and advice – provided these are offered politely and in good faith.

Alas, when those conditions aren’t met, another weakness of mine comes to the fore: I’m short of temper and inclined to swear at the slightest provocation. Hence, even if I realise that my impolite critic is right, I’m certain to tell him exactly what he can do with his remarks.

Extrapolating from me to my country and then to my continent, I feel like swearing at JD Vance after the speech he delivered in Munich. This though I agree with many things he said.

Trump and his emissaries ought to remind themselves of Georges Buffon’s maxim: le style c’est l’homme même. The style is the man himself or, in the populist parlance they affect, it ain’t just what you say, but how you say it.

“There’s a new sheriff in town,” announced Vance in the language of Western flicks favoured by his boss. That I suppose is true, but it doesn’t mean American politicians should talk in the language of ill-bred gunslingers.

However, this once I’m prepared to overlook the censorious tone Trump and his people adopt when talking to their allies and concentrate on the content of Vance’s oration.

His heart is largely in the right place, but at times it parts ways with his mind. He started well:

“The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values: values shared with the United States of America.”

I couldn’t agree more. Great civilisations don’t perish just because of an outside threat. They do so when an outside threat coincides with a period of internal decay and concomitant decline in self-confidence. These can do their suicidal job even on their own, but an outside threat can make ruin faster and surer.

While objecting to the tone of Vance’s remarks and indeed his right to make them (if the US wants to leave Europe to its own devices, it thereby forfeits the privilege of offering unsolicited advice), I could happily sign my own name under most of them.

Yes, Europe should stop illegal immigration, and it should definitely spend more on its defence. How much more? When survival is at stake, there is only one possible answer to that question: as much as it takes. Europe has been riding America’s coattails for too long and it should learn how to stand on its own hind legs.

And yes, the ongoing orgy of wokery debauches Europe, undermining such vital aspects of Western identity as free speech. But what is the root of all such aspects, the ubiquitous sine qua non of this identity? In common with most Americans, Vance believes it’s democracy, a method of government he misconstrues as being co-extensive with virtue and hence self-sufficiently redemptive.

This leads him into conceptual cul-de-sacs. For example, Vance cites the case of a 51-year-old British veteran who was arrested, charged and fined for “the heinous crime of standing 50 metres from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.”

Vance is absolutely right: HMG’s commitment to protecting abortion clinics from even such innocuous opprobrium is indeed revolting. It strikes at the very foundations of our Judaeo-Christian civilisation.

However, one value the cordon sanitaire around abortion clinics doesn’t violate is democracy. On the contrary, the cops who arrested the veteran affirmed it by complying with an act passed by a democratically elected Parliament in full compliance with democratic procedure.

This should remind Mr Vance that, in the civilisational order of priorities, democracy appears low down the list, if at all. Other commitments supersede it by a long way.

As a practising and thinking Catholic, he knows this as well as I do. But, as an American politician, Vance worships at the altar of God only in private. In public, he worships at the altar of democracy – and the First Amendment that protects it from religious encroachments. Is he aware of the possibility of inherent contradiction? Perhaps not.

“We must do more than talk about democratic values,” continued Vance. “We must live them.” That, according to him, is something Romania failed to do:

“The Romanian Constitutional Court made a startling decision: It cancelled the country’s presidential elections… citing a newly declassified intelligence report that pointed to Russian election interference on behalf of Călin Georgescu, an obscure far-right nationalist who unexpectedly became the favourite to win after the first round of voting.”

Moreover, “the very same thing could happen in Germany too,” and this is something Mr Vance can’t countenance under any circumstances: “For years we’ve been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defence of democracy.”

Mr Vance’s commitment to democracy über alles is misplaced, specifically in the cases he cites. It’s also selective: before he became Vice President, Sen. Vance had been the most consistent opponent of any aid to the Ukraine, which is after all a democratic country heroically fighting against a fascist dictatorship.

The same fascist dictatorship invests billions in a massive disinformation and trolling campaign to promote extremist pro-Putin candidates in all European elections, including those Vance mentioned. Romanian authorities have laid bare the extent of Russia’s hybrid warfare aiming to undermine the very democratic institutions Vance holds so dear.

Unfortunately, they had failed to nip Russian interference in the bud. When they came to their senses, it was too late for half-measures. The only way to prevent their country from becoming a Russian satellite was to cancel the compromised elections and start from scratch. That’s unfortunate, but better than killing freedom in the name of democracy.

Vance’s reaction to that belated but correct decision is both frivolous and dishonest: “Now, to many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old, entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election.”

Putin’s puppets must indeed be prevented from winning elections in free countries. But not because they have “an alternative viewpoint”, but because they aren’t free agents. They are agents of a hostile power trying in word and deed to stamp out freedom in Eastern Europe, for a start.

If Vance doesn’t understand this, he needs a remedial course in European politics. If he knows it but still insists on upholding the rights of avowed enemies of democracy to impose their evil rule, he needs a remedial course in morality.

As for “ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation”, the Trump administration has indefinitely banned the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One. Why?

Because the wire service refuses to comply with Trump’s vindictive whim and refer to what has for centuries been called the Gulf of Mexico as the ‘Gulf of America’. That, according to Trump’s deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich, “is not just divisive, but it also exposes the Associated Press’s commitment to misinformation.”

Hey chaps, fair is fair. If the Romanian government is scolded for citing “ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation” when trying to curtail the advance of fascism in Europe, then surely Vance’s colleagues shouldn’t use such offensive terminology about a reputable wire agency? It does tend to be anti-Trump, but that’s just an “alternative viewpoint”, isn’t it?

In fact, the AP is taking a conservative stance against arbitrary name changes. This is a crime I’m guilty of myself (I did tell you I’m not perfect).

That’s why I sometimes anger my Ukrainian friends by sticking to traditional English usages and writing ‘Kiev’ not ‘Kyiv’, ‘Kharkov’ not ‘Kharkiv’ and ‘the Ukraine’ instead of ‘Ukraine’. I also write ‘Peking’, not ‘Beijing’, which would anger my Chinese friends if I had any.

Mr Vance commendably wants to be on the side of the angels, but he needs to sort out who they are in Europe. Otherwise he may end up supporting the cause of demons, such as Georgescu, AfD – and their paymaster Putin.

Many years ago, a dinner guest stormed out of our flat in a huff.  Or rather in hysterics.

She was married to an old friend, who was less intolerant of Left-wing sensibilities than I was. Alas, though we do choose our friends, we don’t choose their wives. They make that mistake on their own.

Anyway, the conversation veered towards political taxonomies, and such elusive categories as Right and Left or conservative and liberal. I was then writing my first book, How the West Was Lost, where one chapter dealt with language as a vital battleground of political conflict.

Whoever controls the people’s language controls their minds, a dominance I described as glossocracy, the rule of the word and by the word. When verbal volleys come in a steady barrage and tempers fray, political terms part company with their real meaning, both etymological and customary.

They are turned into shells fired at the enemy, acquiring the ad hoc meaning enabling them to act in that capacity. When the battlefield situation changes, so does their meaning.

That’s why, for example, liberal has got to mean illiberal; conservative, a libertarian – and the connotation of Right-wing and Left-wing became so jumbled that the same person could be branded as both or either in the same sentence.

That was the nature of the conversation that so excited my friend’s wife. She visibly winced every time the word ‘conservative’ came up, while I was playing host and trying not to upset her too much. I failed miserably.

We were talking about Texas, where I had lived for 10 years. My friend described it as a conservative state, which, I agreed, was by and large correct. But some Texans I knew called themselves conservative mainly because they disliked blacks.

When communicating that point, I imitated, badly, the Texan accent and, accurately, the pejorative term for the race in question. Had I written my statement down, that statement would have been enclosed in quotes, leaving the reader in no doubt that I was using someone else’s way of speaking, not my own.

But even in oral speech what I said couldn’t possibly have been interpreted as anything other than mockery of certain attitudes. But my friend’s wife, by then rather liberally oiled, as it were, didn’t even try to interpret or indeed understand anything I was saying.

The only word she heard was that pejorative term, and never mind the context. The dread word had the galvanising effect of an electric prod on the poor woman. She jumped up, shouted horrendous obscenities at all of us, including those who had taken no part in the discussion, and rushed out into the street, leaving her coat and handbag behind.

She was wearing only a silk blouse, and it was bitterly cold outside. Since she left her handbag behind, she had no money for a taxi or even a bus to get home. Death of hypothermia beckoned and would have occurred, but for Penelope’s lightning-quick response.

While the rest of us, including the lady’s husband, were momentarily too stunned to act, Penelope grabbed the woman’s belongings and ran after her at what by my estimation approached an Olympic speed. She came back a few minutes later, breath short, mission accomplished, a life possibly saved. Festivities were resumed, with my friend never missing a beat. He was used to that sort of thing, he explained.

Now, that woman was obviously hysterical and half-mad with ideological fervour. But extreme behaviour often provides a clue to general tendencies.

Political discourse nowadays tends to bypass reason on its way towards a realm ruled by emotions. In that realm it’s knee-jerk reactions that reign, not sensible arguments resting on a foundation of logic, analysis and facts.

When that tendency develops to its full maturity, one’s mind becomes cauterised and one no longer hears coherent human speech. One’s hearing latches on to a single word replete with either positive or negative connotations – and out comes that electric prod.

These days in the US and increasingly elsewhere such a word is ‘Trump’. I haven’t seen any sociological studies, but I don’t think there ever has been such a galvanising shibboleth consisting of a single man’s name.

Utter that word, and emotional outbursts will follow instantly. If you dare say something positive about the US president in ‘liberal’ company, the reaction wouldn’t be drastically different from that of my dinner guest. You’ll be instantly branded as a reactionary and a political dinosaur if you are lucky, a fascist if you are not.

Conversely, any attempt to criticise Trump among those who call themselves conservatives will get you castigated as a Leftie, preceded with an intensifying modifier. That has happened to me on occasion, when that transgression earned me the tag of a Left-winger.

When emotions take over, most people begin to think in strictly binary terms, for or against, us and them, friend or foe. Balanced, nuanced arguments need not apply.

In this case, the underlying logic, such as it is, is uncompromising and syllogistic. Trump’s nemesis was Joe Biden. Biden is Left-wing. Ergo, anyone who criticises Trump for anything is Left-wing.

The thought that reactionary conservatives like me can find fault with Trump’s actions and indeed may not recognise him as one of them doesn’t even cross the accuser’s mind. Nothing does, really. The buzz word has put his mind on hold.

Such primitive reflexes have been seen in action throughout modern history. That’s how, for example, Hitler acquired a Right-wing tag.

Unlike many such developments, this one can be traced back to a precise date: 22 June, 1941, when Hitler’s Germany attacked Stalin’s USSR. Until that date, the two totalitarian states had been allies, with commentators noting how much they had in common.

Since at that time the main demarcation between Right and Left ran through economics, analysts couldn’t fail to spot the startling similarities between Stalin’s Five-Year Plan and Hitler’s Four-Year version (FDR’s New Deal wasn’t all that different either, but this is a separate story).

Both were socialist, placing Hitler next to Stalin on the left side of the political spectrum. The Western Left had a warmer spot for Stalin than for Hitler because the latter was politically incorrect long before the term was coined. Yet both of them were undeniably on the Left.

However, that date in June had a polarising effect, with a syllogism taking charge. Hitler was Stalin’s enemy. Stalin was Left-wing. Ergo, Hitler was Right-wing.

Hitler was also a fascist, which is why this term is rather indiscriminately applied to anyone deemed Right-wing. Such as, for example, Margaret Thatcher, who was a Whiggish radical if she was anything.

Such are the political word games, but it’s vital to understand that they are akin to children playing cowboys and Indians with real guns. A fight for glossocratic positions can easily result in a political chaos that can only be resolved by a real, blood-letting war.

Emotions have a place in life, but they should be barred from entry into any political arena. When they sneak in, they’ll eventually take over, turning a symbolic fencing joust into a gladiatorial fight to the death.

Trump or any other politician says and does things. These ought to be analysed dispassionately and as deeply as the analyst’s mind allows. Since the things Trump says and does have already caused a turmoil, it’s vital that analysts keep their knees in check and their minds in full gear.

The fallout from the turmoil can eventually result in a prosperous and peaceful stability or in a devastating chaos. Which it will be largely depends on the mental acuity and self-restraint of the direct participants and their supporters.

A message to the Trump adulators I know: he who criticises Trump isn’t necessarily your enemy; he who praises him, isn’t necessarily your friend. Take it from me, the inveterate Left-winger of some people’s fancy.

P.S. Happy Valentine’s Day to all my women readers!

American commentators and even some of our so-called conservatives are trying to put a spin on what amounts to an act of gross betrayal. But surrender by any other name smells as vile.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said that America would “no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship” with her Western allies. “Europe,” he added, “must provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and non-lethal aid to Ukraine.”

Meanwhile, any peace negotiations “must start by recognising that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective”. The Ukraine will never be admitted to NATO, he continued, US troops will never take part in any peace-keeping force, Putin will get to keep the Ukrainian provinces currently under Russian occupation.

And oh by the way, Trump spoke with Putin on the phone, and the two friends ironed it all out between themselves. Zelensky can do only two things: grin and bear it.

A few empty reassurances followed after the truthful statement that the US “is no longer focused” on Europe: “’The United States remains committed to the NATO alliance and to the defence partnership with Europe, full stop.”

Experienced liars know that their fibs have a better chance of being believed if they contain a kernel of truth. Trump and his retinue are absolutely right that Europe has been too negligent about its own defence for too long. We should definitely invest more into protecting ourselves from our enemies, of which fascist Russia takes pride of place.

Trump demands that this commitment amount to five per cent of GDP, as compared to America’s 3.3 per cent, and he has a point: there is a lot of ground to make up. However, the long-standing disparity between America’s and Europe’s defence expenditures, though unfortunate, isn’t as appalling as Trump paints it.

The US derives enormous benefits from her position as the leader of the free world, which includes having the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. That, inter alia, has enabled America to amass an irresponsible public debt of over $30 trillion, which otherwise would prove ruinous. And, as we are taught, extra gains presuppose extra responsibilities.

But there is no denying that Europe should spend more on defence. That, however, must be a separate conversation from helping the Ukraine resist the fascist onslaught.

Even assuming that Europe embarks on a massive rearmament campaign, and I’ve got to see it to believe it, it’ll take years for it to build up to a level where it will no longer need American involvement. How many years is open to discussion, but quite a few in any case.

With the best will in the world, more than doubling defence spending isn’t something that can be done instantly – the logistic hurdles will take time to clear. And even when the spending is up to the desired levels, it’ll take years to convert more cash into more brawn.

This raises that $64,000 question of America’s past: why do Messrs Trump and Hegseth think Putin started the war in the first place? The answer will reveal the true enormity of Hegseth’s animadversions, justifying my use of the harsh word ‘betrayal’.

Putin doesn’t need any more land. He already has much more than he knows what to do with, and Russia has de facto ceded more Siberian terrain to China than the Ukraine possesses altogether.  

The war was started for the intermediate objective of restoring the Russian/Soviet empire to its former size and grandeur. What the Russians historically understand by their national grandeur is being able to instil fear into her neighbours and bully them into submission.

The ultimate objective, stated thousands of times by Putin and his henchmen, is to subjugate the West and establish Russia as the dominant world power. As a minimum, Putin would settle for dividing up the world with the US and China, with Europe becoming his bailiwick.

If Trump and Hegseth don’t understand this, they are either idiotic or, more likely, disingenuous. They are pretending to accept Putin’s assurances of limited aims, the better to sell the Ukraine down the Dnieper and Europe down the Rhine.

This runs contrary to the recently published report of Danish intelligence, according to which the Kremlin will take any ceasefire only as a way of rebuilding its military strength to be able to pounce again after a few years. The entire Russian economy is geared up towards that objective, and the underlying long-term commitment is unmistakable.

After two years, said the report, Russia will be ready to start another local conflict; after three, she’ll be able to take on a NATO country on her borders, testing NATO’s commitment to Article 5 of that organisation’s Charter. Should that commitment predictably prove tepid, after five years Russia will be ready to confront NATO in a full-blown European war.

The Ukrainians have been bleeding white trying to stop the fascist offensive, using their bodies as ramparts protecting Europe from evil hordes. Most Europeans understand that the Ukraine is fighting not only for her own freedom but also for theirs. Trump and Hegseth understand it too, but pretend not to.

Disgustingly, Trump has started negotiating with Putin without involving Zelensky. As far as he is concerned, all the Ukraine is entitled to is being informed post factum.

“We have also agreed to have our [American and Russian] respective teams start negotiations immediately, and we will begin by calling President Zelensky, of Ukraine, to inform him of the conversation…,” Trump said on his social media platform. 

That’s nice. A lesser man would strike a deal with Putin without even telling Zelensky about it, but Trump in his munificence isn’t like that. The Ukraine has a right to know how her fate has been decided by the big boys, and Trump respects that right.

What he doesn’t respect is the right of the Ukraine and other former parts and satellites of Russia to keep their hard-won freedom. The Ukraine, Trump said the other day, “may be Russian someday”, and he’ll do his best to make sure his friend Vlad gets what he wants.

If he wants all of the Ukraine first and most of Europe second, so be it. That’s what friends are for.

If Europe is no longer a “focus” for the US, what is? Hegseth obligingly provided an answer that was self-evident to begin with. “The stark strategic realities” are such that the US must reorient herself away from the Atlantic and towards the Pacific.

This tale of two oceans is all about competing with China, curtailing her ambitions to become the greatest superpower. Those ambitions palpably include an attack on Taiwan, and China’s massive military, especially naval, buildup points at that intention.

Trump may legitimately fear that America is spreading herself too thin and has to prioritise her commitments. But betraying the Ukraine first and Europe second isn’t the way to go about it.

A president who understands the nature of the geopolitical defence alignment after the Second World War would want to give the Ukraine maximum leverage to end the war on her own terms. He’d then agree to provide the security guarantees to make sure Russia won’t come again in the foreseeable future.

That could be done quickly and without jeopardising the American position in the Pacific. Then Trump could threaten to use Hegseth’s measures as a way of blackmailing Europe into boosting its defence spending. Then America could gradually diminish her military presence on the continent, pari passu with Europe building up its own muscle.

That would leave NATO in good shape to defeat any future aggression. By contrast, what Trump is doing now is being pennies-smart and strategy-stupid. Whatever good policies he is putting in place, and many of them do look promising, will be undone by this treachery.

Whether or not it springs from prior collusion with Putin should matter only to Trump’s future biographers. What matters to us today is that he is putting the survival of European civilisation at risk. But such incidentals don’t seem to concern Trump.

Finally, there’s no denying it. Britain has gone bonkers.

Or perhaps our judges misunderstood Trump’s idea of relocating Gaza Palestinians. I’m fairly certain the destinations he had in mind were Muslim countries, such as Saudi Arabia. Correct me if I’m wrong, but he didn’t mean that two million Palestinians should settle in Britain.

Yet an immigration court made such a development a distinct possibility when granting Palestinian refugees the right to live in Britain. Somehow they were deemed to qualify for a scheme created for Ukrainians fleeing from Russian aggression.

That scheme included provisions for families to be reunited in Britain if they had relations already living here. Now a precedent has been created for Palestinians also to take advantage of that welcoming generosity. This though few of them resemble Ukrainians, even those from the southern parts of that country.

When a family of six from Gaza – a mother, father and four children – applied under that scheme to join a fifth sibling already living in the UK, the Home Office said no. But an immigration judge has ruled that the family’s human rights were thereby violated.

That precedent, according to Home Office lawyers, issued an open invitation to Palestinians and other aliens living in war zones to come to the UK. I’ll spare you a why-oh-why comment on how that ruling may prove disastrous for the country.

All you have to do is look up recent history and find out what happened to Lebanon and Jordan when thousands of eternal Palestinian refugees settled there. Those countries were quickly turned into blood-soaked shambles, and one can confidently predict something like that happening here when Hamas supporters and/or members (aka Palestinian refugees) begin arriving en masse.

Judge Norton-Taylor’s imagination is vivid enough, and he is aware that his ruling runs contrary to “public interest”. But, he explained, since the family faced an “extreme and life-threatening situation”, its human rights took priority over such parochial concerns.

When brought to task, His Honour cited Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) that establishes the right to family life. Now, that’s a conclusive argument for leaving that contrivance if I’ve ever heard one.

When Britons overwhelmingly voted for leaving the EU in 2016, they did so to regain the country’s sovereignty. In Britain, this loaded word means not adherence to liberal abstractions but the rule of law laid down by Parliament… Sorry for being so vague. By Parliament I mean the legislative body sitting in Westminster, not the one headquartered in Strasbourg.

Judge Norton-Taylor obviously shares in the universalist outlook typical of the liberal mind. His Honour speaks the language of human rights with enviable fluency, and whenever he is stuck for a word, he can use EU documents for a dictionary.

The very fact that Britain didn’t withdraw from the ECHR at the time of Brexit shows that our liberal elite is hanging on to it as a rope it can use to climb back into the fold. The elite’s minds are poisoned by the toxins of modernity. As a result, they’ll always prefer the abstract to the concrete, the central to the local, the global to the national, ‘our planet’ to our neighbourhood.

As a side effect, they have to worship the sacrosanct principles of egalitarianism, which is why they refuse to see the difference between Ukrainian refugees and Hamas sympathisers (or even members).

Being a solicitous chap by nature, I’ll be happy to explain. There are several points of difference to consider.

First, Ukrainians are our friends who have fallen victim to a barbarian onslaught launched by our avowed enemies. Conversely, Palestinians are our enemies who launched a barbarian onslaught on our avowed friends – and lost.

Treating the two groups with equal consideration is tantamount to treating friends the same way as enemies and enemies the same way as friends. This isn’t equity. It’s amorality.

Second, Ukrainians are Christians and Palestinians are Muslims. Christianity is an essential, even formative, aspect of Western, and therefore British, identity. Islam, on the other hand, is infinitesimally marginal to that identity and, moreover, hostile to it.

With characteristic liberal mendacity, our opinion-formers proudly announce that all religions are equal, and none merits a privileged treatment. Yet Christianity deservedly enjoyed a privileged position for many centuries, whereas no other religion did.

Therefore, equalising them all in status is in effect dragging Christianity down to the level of religions of no consequence in British history. In other words, this is yet another manifestation of the anti-Christian bias that was the natal impulse of modernity.

Just imagine the confusion of children if told they must treat everybody with the same deference and affection as their parents. Before long, they won’t know who their parents are. Liberal egalitarianism creates the same confusion in grown-ups’ minds. They no longer know who their spiritual and historical parents are, nor can they easily distinguish between friend and foe.

On a more mundane social level, the presence of a large Ukrainian diaspora is unlikely to have an adverse effect on British identity, whereas another swarm of Muslim immigrants is guaranteed to do so.

This isn’t conjecture, but an observable fact, for we already have three million Muslims in Britain. Anyone who thinks they’ve improved life in the country and strengthened the long-term prospects of the British ethos should visit Leicester, Leeds or Bradford and admire signs saying that this or that area is governed by sharia.

This isn’t to say that Britain should turn away our friends in danger of extinction. That same religion that’s supposed to be equal with all others mandates against such cruel insularity. We shouldn’t forget that both Britain and the US were complicit in the Holocaust, when the two key members of the anti-Hitler coalition refused to accept Jewish refugees in sufficient numbers.

But, as I never tire of repeating, our civilisation is called Judaeo-Christian, not Universalist-Liberal, nor anything that includes the word ‘Muslim’. It’s that discernment again, being able to discriminate between good and bad, moral and immoral, beneficial and harmful.

I’m taking swipes at the very essence of modernity in full realisation that things are too far gone for opposition even much stronger than mine to change anything fundamentally. But certain things can still be done – and they should be done quickly before ‘liberalism’ advances any further.

Judge Norton-Taylor’s perverse decision must be overturned, and he should submit to a moral and legal MOT to establish his suitability for the bench. And, now we are talking in the automotive idiom, Britain should leave the ECHR in the rearview mirror.

The sovereignty of king in Parliament is the blood and soul of the British body politic, in fact of Britain tout court. And the ECHR, that distillation of liberal universalism, is the deadly contagion.

Here I am, no longer young but following my own advice. The inside front cover of my blue booklet reads:

“His Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State requests and requires in the name of His Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary.”

This statement is unequivocal: the British state intends to keep up its end of the bargain. It will do all it can to protect His Majesty’s subject when he travels abroad – and it “requires” that other countries follow suit.

“Or else” used to be implied, a threat that was then taken more seriously than it is now. You mess with a British subject at your peril – few countries tremble on hearing that nowadays, but the text still survives.

This is part of the broader contractual arrangement between state and citizen known since time immemorial as protectio trahit subiectionem et subiectio protectionem (protection entails allegiance and allegiance entails protection).

Like all contracts, this one is bilateral: we exchange our allegiance for the state’s protection. Our passports remind us of one side’s obligations, but what does the other side undertake?

This seems to be straightforward: we must remain loyal to the state, which for these purposes embodies the country. That implies any number of things, including our duty to defend the country when the country needs us.

If someone isn’t prepared to do that, the arrangement unravels. Since that person denies the state his allegiance, he is no longer entitled to its protection. By refusing to do his civic duty, he has forfeited his citizenship rights, such as the one to bear the passport.

Sorry to spend so long on such obvious things. My only justification is that for many of our young people these things aren’t at all obvious. In fact, they dismiss them out of hand.

A recent Times poll of Generation Z youngsters showed that only 11 per cent would fight for Britain – and 41 per cent said there were no circumstances at all under which they would take up arms for their country.

Let’s see. If a Russian airborne brigade landed in Kent and advanced on London, almost half of the people eligible to fight would refuse to do so, while most of the rest would only agree to defend their country if they thought her cause is just.

The view that Britain isn’t worth fighting for thus varies between widespread and dominant among young Britons. And what exactly has made Britain so unworthy?

Almost half of the respondents explained that Britain is a racist country mired in her awful past, against a small minority who felt otherwise. This marks a great shift from 20 years ago, when 80 per cent, almost twice as many as today, said they were proud to be British. Also, back then 60 per cent thought the country was united, against a mere 15 per cent today.

Assuming that the findings are statistically significant, the conclusion is dire. A revolution has occurred, and Britain has lost.

Before revolutions explode in city squares they detonate in people’s minds. Yesterday’s saints become today’s demons, objects of veneration turn into targets of mockery, old truths are seen as lies. And barbarians lie in wait, ready to pounce when the critical mass of nihilist anomie has been reached.

Hilaire Belloc described that situation poignantly: “We are tickled by [the Barbarian’s] irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond; and on these faces there is no smile.”

At some point, those creatures with unsmiling faces may decide their time has come: the revolution has already taken over people’s minds. Now it must claim its due in city squares.

That poll shows that we are now reaping the harvest sown years ago, when the liberal mind began to realise its full ideological potential. It was then that children began to be indoctrinated to accept new for old, abandoning spiritual and intellectual certitudes for what their teachers described as progress.

Patriotism gradually became ‘uncool’, British history got to be portrayed as generally evil and barbaric, equality was proclaimed the highest goal and everything standing in its way as a wicked hindrance. It wasn’t so much the long march through the institutions as the long march through the minds – and it has borne fruit.

If that poll is to be believed, and I see no reason not to believe it, Britain is lying defenceless in the face of any danger lurking in an ambush. It’s not guns that defend a nation, but the people firing them. If they aren’t prepared to do so, no amount of defence spending will ever protect the country.

Alarm bells should sound all over the land: our education has failed to inspire patriotism in our young. This isn’t its greatest failure, but one that can have the most devastating consequences should some barbarian regime fancy its chances against a morally enfeebled Britain.

Far be it from me to suggest that children should be brainwashed in the spirit of jingoism. One task of education is to help pupils develop a capacity for critical thought, and unquestioning nationalism isn’t conducive to that.

Moreover, patriotism is a relatively new virtue in the pecking order of loyalties. Pupils used to be taught to love their God, their families and their parish before love of the country even came up.

But come up it did, because it was logical to extrapolate from the particular to the general. Their country was a place where most people worshipped the same God, loved their families and their neighbours, helped one another.

A country was a sum total of communities just like theirs, and they knew that any failure to defend the larger entity would also put the smaller ones at peril. The liberal mind loathes all that.

It inculcates a generalised, impersonal, abstract love of mankind, ‘our planet’, ‘equality’, ‘diversity’ and so on, all the way down the list. No extrapolation from large to small occurs. The supranational large is all there is.

Children who grow up to become a generation with its own initial, in this case Z, learn to criticise their country but not how to think critically. Uncritical loathing precludes the development of that faculty as surely as unquestioning love does.

Pupils leave school as deracinated individuals owing no loyalty to anyone or anything: their God in whom they no longer believe, their parents whom they tend to resent, their community that they happily leave behind.

And their country? Oh well, it’s racist, isn’t it? Homophobic, transphobic, misogynist, polluting, torn apart by social and economic inequalities – all those things they’ve been brainwashed to hate as affronts to the ‘liberal’ mind.

When France declared war on Nazi Germany three days after the latter attacked Poland, Left Bank intellectuals would sneer: “Mourir pour Danzig?” Today’s young Britons pick up the Anglophone echo: “Die for Britain?” The idea sounds just as preposterous.

All we can do is cross ourselves, or our fingers if such is our wont, and hope that the need to defend Britain by force of arms never arises. If it does, we are in trouble.