True liberals must fight for Enlightenment values

In this week's Spectator Diary, Douglas Murray, author of Neoconservatism and director of the Centre for Social Cohesion writes about a dinner date in New York:

Though only ten years older than me, Ayaan Hirsi Ali continues to refer to me as some impossibly young child, still refusing to allow me to pay for meals until I am more advanced in years. We go to a terribly smart restaurant which pretends to have no room, so we loiter in a corner until another member of staff comes over, conceding that at least one of the empty tables might be going spare. We leave very late and hurtle back through the New York streets, high on laughter and friendship. Sometimes people complain to me that I seem too angry when I talk about Islamist terrorists. But this wonderful and brave woman is one of a number of friends who have to spend their lives under 24-hour protection because of what they think, say and write. If that didn’t anger me, then what would? I mind it - mind it deeply - and cannot pretend otherwise.

The pseudoliberals of the left who like to paint as racist those who "get it" where the threat of radical Islamism is concerned ought to pay some attention to Douglas Murray and the sort of people with whom he associates.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the former Dutch MP of Somali background who has been under threat of death from Islamic extremists for her part in the film Submission, which concerned the condition of women in the Islamic world, and which cost its director Theo van Gogh his life at the hands of a Muslim extremist in November 2004. She was forced to leave the Netherlands and Europe after attempts to strip her of Dutch citizenship in 2006. She now resides in the United States. If future generations of historians are obliged to identify the point at which the lights went out in Europe, the driving out of Ayaan would be a candidate.

Murray also refers to the Canadian feminist and Muslim activist Irshad Manji, a self-described "Muslim refusenik" and critic of radical Islam. She also faces daily risks to her security, but is nevertheless free to operate in North America, where she resides.

By contrast, Murray refers also to a confrontation on the BBC TV Question Time programme with the Conservative Party's new "Communities spokesperson" Sayeeda Warsi:

I am registered as a voter in Ealing Southall and have a problem. Though a member of the party, I could not vote Conservative. The candidate put up by ‘David Cameron’s Conservatives’ had been a Conservative for a matter of hours and been parachuted in over any number of dedicated, and equally ethnic, party workers. I might have reined in my objections if it hadn’t been for the earlier elevation of Sayeeda Warsi to the shadow Cabinet and the Lords. After a recent run-in with her on the BBC’s Question Time she attacked me for referring to Islamic terrorists. I thought she only minded me identifying terrorists with Islam, but - like the new Home Secretary - it turned out she minded me identifying terrorists with terrorism. And she refused, on air, to condemn the killing of our troops in Iraq. That was enough to drive me from the fold, and emails from our troops since the programme reinforce my feelings. I couldn’t abstain, though I didn’t much like the other candidates. I decided I must vote on a point of principle, and found myself ticking the box for Labour - perhaps the only voter to go over to Labour because of the Iraq war.

When a self-proclaimed neocon is obliged to vote for Gordon Brown's Labour Party, and Conservative front-benchers refuse to condemn the killing of British troops what hope is there for Britain, Europe and the West? The truth is, very little unless true liberals - those who will stand up for Enlightenment values - organise to turn the tide of illiberalism, intolerance and fear.

The tragic premiership of Tony Blair

Theodore Dalrymple delivers a blistering (and very thorough) attack on Tony Blair's domestic record and, indeed, the character of the man himself:

Blair, then, is no hero. Many in Britain believe that he has been the worst prime minister in recent British history, morally and possibly financially corrupt, shallow and egotistical, a man who combined the qualities of Elmer Gantry with those of Juan Domingo Perón.

Dalrymple's article is worth reading in full, lest we forget the full range of New Labour's iniquities under Tony Blair. The "purer than pure" government which became enmeshed in one financial scandal after another, Bernie Ecclestone, Peter Mandelson, Geoffrey Robinson, Lakshmi Mittal, the Hinduja brothers; the incompetence: passports, the Home Office generally, constitutional chaos, the voting reforms which have hopelessly compromised the integrity of our electoral system; the politicisation of the civil service, the sidelining of parliament, authoritarianism on a grand scale. And that's just scratching the surface.

Blair's domestic record is woeful, and Dalrymple is right to condemn it. How interesting, however, that he has focussed on the domestic situation and ignored international affairs. The received wisdom now that Blair has left to solve the problems of the Middle East is that he is a tragic figure: a good prime minister with a sound domestic record, but brought low by his foolhardy and maybe even criminal foreign policy.

Dalrymple illustrates that the opposite is the case. It was Blair's domestic record which lost him the trust of the British people before he needed to call upon it most. The argument for war in Iraq was rejected by the people most probably because the people already believed the government to be untrustworthy - forever hiding behind spin. In fact Tony Blair's courage in foreign policy simply masks his cowardice in domestic policy. He was brave enough to take on the threat of global terror in Iraq and Afghanistan - his program of domestic reform failed to take on and defeat his gravest domestic enemy: the Labour Party. A tragedy indeed.

Slaves of the state

The proposal by the Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson to introduce an opt-out system for organ donation in preference to the current opt-in system addresses a real problem. There are currently too few organs available for the current demand for transplants. The suggestion is that everyone should be presumed to have given consent to their organs being used in transplantation unless they have explicitly withdrawn that consent. This would then, theoretically, result in a much larger potential pool of organs available for donation.

This suggestion appears to enjoy a fair degree of popular support. A poll on the BBC website showed about sixty percent in favour of such a scheme, and anyone who knows anyone who has benefited from an organ transplant will no doubt feel bound to support any system which might be of similar help to others.

Remarkably little attention has been given, however, to the fundamental change which such a proposal presents. The implication is that each of our bodies is, in principle, owned by the state - or at least that the state has the right to harvest whatever organs it sees fit after death unless an individual goes to the lengths of formally withholding consent for this to be done.

It is entirely possible that many supporters of Sir Liam Donaldson's proposal are aware of the issues involved and consider that the benefit in saved lives outweighs the disadvantage of the effective transfer of power between the individual and the state - and there may even be some justice in this view. However, this is not a step which should be taken lightly.

The government's proposals for identity cards is also relevant here. It is suggested that a citizen's identity card might be revocable by the Home Secretary: in other words, it would be within the powers of the Home Secretary to withdraw a person's citizenship, which would in practice be enough to paralyse an individual within society (it is envisaged that even simple bank transactions might require a customer to present an identity card). What we are faced with here is a transformation of the relationship between individual and state. We are moving to a position where the concept of the state as a community of free citizens is being replaced by a state as controller - owner - of citizens who are no longer free but entirely dependent on the whim of state power.

In a free society, citizens are assumed to be masters of their own destiny. In the society being built around us, citizens are becoming the slaves of an over-mighty executive with its own agenda. This is worth considering when entertaining superficially attractive ideas which in fact undermine the very fabric of freedom.