Take the quiz.

(Hat tip to Freedom and Whiskey.)

There is a persistent myth, widely believed by the general public, though repeatedly debunked by anthropologists, that life in primitive hunter-gatherer communities is an idyll of peace and harmony.  In fact, primitive societies have sensational rates of homicide.  Geoff Blaine crunched the numbers in his history of the Australian Aborigines, and concluded that not even in exceptionally violent brief episodes like WW2 did any 20th-century nation have violent-death rates even close those in the Aboriginal outback.

It no longer should be news that defeatism is rampant among Western elites.  One thinks of the great news the other day that steel from one of the destroyed World Trade Center towers is being used to build a warship (we are at war, aren't we?)--and one notes the immediate attempt by defeatophiles to smear the noble effort. Some of us have been onto their game for a long time. 

Good to read, then, James Taranto, editor of the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web proto-blog, evicerating the "thoughts" of yet another defeat-minded contributor to the Times of London:


Good that Taranto boasts an intact mind, unlike the majority of his colleagues in the press, afflicted with some kind of "mad journalist disease" that, starting in the spine, works its way up to the brain, targeting pockets of historical knowledge. 

(Incidentally, it's Fleet Week here in NYC, and, as I write this, several military fighter jets are flying low over Brooklyn Heights.  Wonderful.)

Yup, that's me on Southern Appeal, THE Alabama legal blog.  Alabama ROCKS!  Jeff Sessions for President!  Bill Pryor for A/G!  If we start work now, we can get Alabamians into all the main positions of federal power in '08.

A snapshot from the BBC News Website. The headline has since been corrected, so that it agrees with the text underneath. However, the original version, if true, would certainly solve the funding problem.

Archaeologists believe they may have found the final battle site for the warrior queen Boadicea - on the site of a McDonald's restaurant.

Having spent her life in fierce resistance to one empire - the Romans - her last stand is thought to have been overshadowed by another one, this time corporate.

Little is known about Boadicea's last fight, or the way in which she died, but it is widely believed to have taken place in the West Midlands. The site unearthed by experts, in Kings Norton, Birmingham, lies close to the line of a Roman road, and fits many of the few facts available.

According to the Roman historian Tacitus, prior to battle Paulinus deliberately protected his legions by choosing a hilly area virtually surrounded by trees with a single opening.

Experts from Birmingham city council believe the Parsons Hill site matches this description with its landscape and mature woodland, and artefacts found in the dig indicate that Roman soldiers may have been there. The area of land next to the McDonald's is also near the Metchley Roman fort.

Cllr Peter Douglas Osborn, a conservationist, said: "I find it very exciting to think we may unearth something so intriguing right here in Birmingham. It would be bizarre if it is discovered Boadicea's last stand was next door to a McDonald's, but the site does fit the only descriptions we know of.

A spokesman for McDonald's said: "Obviously if a site next to one of our restaurants is found to be where Boudica fought her last battle then we would be quite excited. However, we'll have to wait and see what the archaeologists find."

The warrior queen was described as being "very tall, the glance of her eye most fierce; her voice harsh. A great mass of the reddest hair fell down to her hips. Her appearance was terrifying".

She has also inspired some great beer, although I don't personally believe that she is buried under platform 9 of Kings Cross station, the trains are not that infrequent, or that her chariot had knives on the wheels.  Despite my supermarket trolley pushing style.

I have posted links about Honour Suicides - the friendly alternative to honour killings before, here and elsewhere.  The Times has published another article today because the subject bears repeating.

ZULFINAN BAYCINAR died from a bullet in her back. Her husband’s family went into mourning for the 27-year-old’s “tragic suicide”. She was very happy, they said, they can’t imagine what got into her.

But now Baycinar’s husband is on trial for murder. Prosecutors say she was killed because she dared to oppose against her husband’s wish to take a second wife, refusing to bow to tradition and know her place.

“This law is a real improvement, but we did worry that tougher punishments would lead to this and were watching out for increased cases of suicide,” said Zelal Ozgokce, founder member of Va-Kad, a new women’s association in Van, near the Iranian border.

She says that where once there would be the occasional whiff of suspicion surrounding a suicide, now she hears of odd cases almost every other day.

One was startled and delighted to see, for perhaps the first time, in today's New Duranty Times, the complete list of those ethnic groups that constitute half the population of Iran, and all of which have their own grievances which, in the right conditions, and with the example of a completely autonomous or, still better, independent Kurdistan, could lead to local revolts against the Islamic Republic of Iran.  list which visitors to this site have long been accustomed to:

Azeris, Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs.

If you are an Iranian patriot, by now you understand that if the government of Iran successfully acquires nuclear weapons, then the regime will be impregnable, and Iran will be doomed to another quarter-century, or more, of the hideous regime it now possesses. And Iran as you once conceived it, will be doomed.

And you realize that if the Americans have to do all kinds of things to stop it, those things will include not an invasion (that is not wise nor possible), but support for those Azeris, Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs. And no appeals to Muslim solidarity by Ahmadinejad and others will work, and what remains of what was the Persian Empire will be considerably reduced in size, reduced as was Turkey after World War I, and it will be, especially if the oil of Khuzistan is lost, never again an important country.
And Iran, as you once conceived it, will be doomed.

Such an Iranian patriot, then, knowing full well that Sunni Arabs, still courted by the Americans, would love to have Iran completely dismembered, and wishing to prevent that outcome, should be working with other patriots to prevent, to sabotage, to reveal secrets about, that nuclear project and its scattered facilities, so that the Americans will be able to deal with it with minimally invasive surgery, and not rip the entire Iranian body politic, and body, to shreds by encouraging those Arabs, those Baluchis, those Azeris, those Kurds. It's up to the Persians. The hideous Islamic Republic was helped to come into existence by the Arabs (think of all the help extended by Arafat, the first official visitor, and the PLO, to Khomeini early on). Now the Sunni Arabs are smacking their lips over the prospect of the dismemberment of Shi'a Iran. It would not be regrettable for them if Iran, Persia, were to be reduced to its component parts, as Yugoslavia has been.

Nuclear bombs or the continued existence of Iran in its present configuration. For an Iranian in exile, or in Iran, one not Islam-mad, the choice should be clear. Or -- made clear.

Remember the film Stand and Deliver, the hit schoolroom drama of 1988?

If you do, you remember Jaime Escalante, the teacher portrayed by actor Edward James Olmos, and the school, East Los Angeles’ Garfield High School, where Escalante successfully prepped woefully unprepared, low-income Hispanic students for the AP calculus exam. That program was killed by the Clinton Administration, and the now-75-year-old Escalante eventually returned to his native Bolivia to teach in a private college.  Lucky for them.

Education Week caught up with him recently in Sacramento, CA, where he had gone to receive an award.  From their interview (reg req):


As Ezra Pound said, no discipline, no education.

Here's the latest on the big-hearted Barbaro:

"He's actually better today than he was even yesterday and he was pretty good yesterday," Richardson said, noting the colt was able to balance himself enough to scratch his left ear with his left hind leg. "He's walking very well on the limb, absolutely normal vital signs. He's doing very well."

The latest update was encouraging to the Jacksons, who live about 10 miles away from the center. Gretchen Jackson is on the board of overseers at the hospital.

A cartoonist sums up everything:

Is the following joke as old as I think it is?

A young couple had a fatal car accident on the way to their wedding.  When they met St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, they asked him if it was possible for them to marry in heaven.  He said he would make some inquiries and get back to them.

A year later, St. Peter found the couple and told them they could get married.  "Could we get a divorce if it doesn't work out?" they wanted to know.

"Good grief!" St. Peter exclaimed.  "It took me a whole year to find a priest up here--and now you want me to find a lawyer."

From The Scotsman.

Sick as a parrot or over the moon? For fans who want to express their emotions to foreigners during next month's World Cup in Germany, a new guide might be able to help.

It may not be widely known, for example, that the national dish of participating nation Ecuador is roast Guinea Pig or that brandy is the top tipple in Angola, but the free booklet from travel agent Thomas Cook puts those information deficiencies to rights.

Actually I did know that.  I remember seeing a picture of the interior of a church somewhere in the Andes where a local artist had painted a mural of The Last Supper. Surrounded by his disciples Christ was about to carve a roast Guinea Pig on a platter, flanked by a basket of bread and a flagon of wine. 

Fans hearing "rozhodci nestaci!" during a match involving the Czech team will be able to understand that it means "you've lost the plot ref!", while the Ghanaian term "ekoo yareni" translates as the well-known phrase "sick as a parrot."

Who's a pretty boy then?

But if favourite Brazil captures the Cup again there may be no need to look up a translation for "sobre a lua" because it will be self-evident that the team and its fans are "over the moon".    

God bless the Heritage Foundation — they are all over this appalling Senate immigration bill.

Andrew Bostom has another important piece up at The American Thinker where he point out that the Islamic revival we are witnessing is bringing with it a host of words and concepts we need to understand in order to understand things like Jews possibly  being forced to wear a yellow badge in Iran. The concept here is najis: the same pesky thing that has been tripping up acolytes of the good Ayatollah Sistani like Tom Friedman. Here's Andy:

Eliz Sanasarian’s important study of non-Muslim religious minorities during the first two decades after 1979 provides a striking illustration of the practical impact of this renewed najis consciousness:

In the case of the Coca-Cola plant, for example, the owner (an Armenian) fled the country, the factory was confiscated, and Armenian workers were fired. Several years later, the family members were allowed to oversee the daily operations of the plant, and Armenians were allowed to work at the clerical level; however, the production workers remained Muslim. Armenian workers were never rehired on the grounds that non-Muslims should not touch the bottles or their contents, which may be consumed by Muslims.

Thus, if formal badging requirements for non-Muslims were now to be implemented, these measures would simply mark the further retrogression of Iran’s non-Muslim religious minorities, completing in full their descent to a pre-1925 status.

Invoking the Nazis?

Many people have reacted to these reports with a comparison to Nazi requirements of Jews to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing. Major Jewish organizations, including both The Simon Wiesenthal Center (in an almost apoplectic statement by Rabbi Marvin Hier,

“This is reminiscent of the Holocaust…Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis.”

and The American Jewish Committee,

“…the story, with its chilling echoes of the Shoah, is another heinous example of the Iranian regime’s contempt for human rights”

have followed this rhetorical path.

I sent my original background essay on this sad state of affairs to ranking officials in the Wiesenthal Center, and the American Jewish Committee (AJC). Their responses were neither edifying nor reassuring. The Wiesenthal Center official acknowledged that my essay raised an “historical and Islamic context” which “factored in”, but was (apparently) trumped by this non-sequitur observation, i.e., the “…proliferation of Iranian websites and blogs that are appearing in the last two months that specifically embrace and promote  Nazism”. The official from the AJC rebuked me for even discussing “…legislation that to the best of our knowledge at this time does not exist.”

In response I posed the following five questions to the AJC official (and they certainly apply to the Wiesenthal Center as well), which remain unanswered:

• Why doesn’t the American Jewish Committee (AJC) discuss…what najis is, how najis (practices) have been restored under Khomeini (and continued under his successors), and thus why the initial report of “badging” was plausible?

• Why didn’t the AJC include this clear statement from Prof. Laurence Loeb’s study of the Jews of Iran (Loeb lived there to do his anthropological field work) published in 1977, as appropriate background?

[the] badge of shame [as] an identifying symbol which marked someone as a najis Jew and thus to be avoided. From the reign of Abbas I [1587-1629] until the 1920s, all Jews were required to display the badge

• What does any of this have to do with “Nazism”?

• Why can’t AJC and the other major Jewish organizations speak honestly based upon the real (and sadly living) history of such sanctioned Islamic doctrines—najis, the dhimmi condition, discriminatory badging, etc.—and their implementation for centuries (in Iran)?

• What is to be gained by such denial and obfuscation other than further isolating us (i.e., Jews—I was writing as a Jew, albeit a “lapsed” Jew) as a tiny minority from the rest of the victims of jihad hatred (in this case the Christians and Zoroastrians also targeted by the putative dress regulations)?

While memories of the Holocaust are fresher and more widely held than memories of traditional Islamic oppression of Jews, such comparisons should be avoided. To invoke the Holocaust blinds us to the far longer and much more deeply-rooted traditions in the Islamic world which predate the rise of Nazism by well over a millennium.

In our struggle to defend our civilization and our freedoms, we must understand our enemy. Those who insist that anti-Semitism be seen exclusively through the lens of Nazism and the Holocaust divert our attention and hobble our understanding of the forces against which we defend ourselves.

It is my fervent hope that I receive serious, informed responses to the five queries posed to the AJC so as not to squander this “teachable moment.”

Conservatives and others rightly complain that movies that reflect their values need to be made as a counter to the prevailing left-liberal ethos of Hollywood, a Hollywood which has embraced the most intrusive barbarism of our times, rap "music."  They complain, quite eloquently, that even the most celebrated art museums are awash in kitsch, drek and scatology (not to mention coprophilia,  auto-eroticism, and blasphemy).  The permanent playpens from which issue these steaming turds are often taxpayer-financed universities and institutes that, so far, seem impervious to complaint. 

In lieu of significant backing for art that builds on the bountiful heritage of masterful ancestors, the advice is to vote at the box office, buy music that inspires heart and not mayhem, and support those increasingly rare museum shows, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art's recent Byzantium show, which represent the permanent things and not the institutionalized nihilism that seeks to make a handsome buck while tearing down beauty.

One should also support more modest efforts--and by them I mean the literary arts, now hostage to those same universities, and to their graduates running the publishing houses, which for too long have enshrined the banal, the didactic, and the professionally rebelious because it's easy.  

Poetry, of course, is in a bad state precisely because it was captured by ideological, anti-esthetic academia a generation ago, in consequence of which the poetry buying audience has evaporated.  (Yes, the alarming growth of illiteracy plays a part.)  Poets themselves don't even buy poetry books, if I can judge by the poets I've known.  Not having studied what has come before, their eyes look in blankness at, say, anything published before they were adolescents (did I say "were"?). The enormous box of tools bequeathed to us gathers dust.

Still, there are outlets for exemplars of the craft.  National Review publishes a few poems a month, though, inexplicably, they stopped publishing them online a few years ago. The New Criterion regularly not only publishes poems but first-rate criticism of poetry.There are others, including First Things, a journal that aims to keep religion in the public square.

First Things is first rate. Here's editor Joseph Bottum promoting FT's efforts:

 

We've had Tracey Emin's Unmade Bed. We've had pickled sharks, dodgy lights, sheds that turn into boats (and back) and knobbly pervy sculptures. Just when you thought that the world of contemporary art could not get any more ridiculous, here's the latest from Tate Modern. Tracey Emin can't hold a candle to it. She would be ill-advised to, in any case, as will become clear:

CURATORS defended their decision to include a tape of flatulent noises as part of the rehang of Tate Modern yesterday, despite complaints from staff that it drives them mad.

Martin Creed’s Work No 401 is a recording of nine minutes of the artist blowing raspberries into a microphone, which is played back on a loop. It can be heard throughout the new Material Gestures wing, which contains works by Claude Monet and Mark Rothko.

Vicente Todoli, the Director of Tate Modern, said that Work No 401 was a case of art reflecting life. “This kind of acoustic — you hear it every day of your life,” he said. “This is not a cathedral with the relics of a saint in which you’re supposed to kneel down in front of it.”

Frances Morris, the permanent collections curator at Tate Modern, said that she expected Creed’s tape to draw ridicule. “Many of these great works of art were originally deliberately provocative and were met with utter derision. We wanted to rough it up a bit and keep it like real life.”

Creed is best known for Work No 227: The Lights Going On and Off, his Turner Prize-winning installation in which a pair of gallery lights were programmed to turn on and off at regular intervals.

One of the gallery’s staff said that she dreaded having to sit near the raspberry noises for her 30-minute shifts. “I think it’s horrible,” she said. “We move every half hour, but you can hear it all over the floor.”

Perhaps she should leave and claim constructive dismissal, as the lady did in the case of the flatulent chair.

Ms Morris said that it did not spoil the atmosphere in the rest of the gallery, despite being clearly audible in the Rothko room, which is designed so that visitors can sit in quiet contemplation.

This is art with a capital "F". Creed should combine this concept with the dodgy light theme and have a gas ring with an intermittent flame. The mixture could be explosive.

Anyway, it's good to see that the spirit of Josef Pujol is alive and well. Not to mention the Two Ronnies, whose Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town contributed far more to the sum of human happiness than most of the stuff in Tate Modern.

The Church of England was once derided as "the Conservative Party at prayer". However, this has not been the case for a long time now. Faithful Cities, a new Church of England report, published 21 years after its predecessor, Faith in the City, savaged the Thatcher administration, acknowledged that Labour had tried to alleviate poverty but said that it needed to do more, including introducing a "living" wage. In response, the Telegraph leader makes some very pertinent points:

Christians are commanded to love the widow, the orphan and the stranger, often translated these days to mean single mothers, children in care and immigrants. Sadly, the Church of England's report on how to cure urban deprivation is a curate's egg.

Faithful Cities rightly points to the excellent work done by Christian organisations in dealing with some of the most intractable social problems in Britain. Not only are they informed by a faith that places love and mercy at its heart; they live and work "on the ground", close to the people they care for, and are able to respond to them sensitively and morally. The report makes some good suggestions about how churches might extend their efforts, helped by a government that gives greater opportunities to their work.

But the overall analysis is socialism tinged with piety. Attacking "market-driven capitalism", sententiously proposing "a living wage rather than a minimum wage" and suggesting that any illegal immigrant who makes it to these shores should be entitled to work and welfare - this is not Christian compassion, but economic and moral childishness. (Speaking of children, where is the recommendation that would do most to arrest social breakdown - one which the Church should be naturally interested in: the promotion of marriage? Not a word about it)

 

It is proper that the Church engages in public debate on social policy. What is depressing is the resort to ideas long exploded by theory and experience, and the inexplicable blindness to policies that would give voluntary organisations, including churches, a central place in the delivery of welfare service.

For it is not the state's but our own responsibility to care for our neighbour. "Market-driven capitalism" is not just the way to make the money that the good Samaritan spent on the stricken traveller. With its emphasis on freedom, diversity and responsiveness to users, capitalism is the model that should also characterise the welfare system. If it abandoned its socialism, the Church of England would do God's work much better.

You don't need to be a Conservative or even a Christian to see the sense of these arguments. And if you do see the sense of them, it doesn't mean that you despise single mothers, children in care and others in need of help.

I've often wondered who it was who first referred to the Church of England as the Conservative Party at Prayer. Here is some information:

"The Church [of England]* should go forward along the path of progress and be no longer satisfied only to represent the Conservative Party at prayer."

* my brackets

Maude Royden (1876-1956) in The Times of London, 17 July 1917. Royden was a suffragette and outspoken advocate for improved role of women in church and for sex education for women.

It was right to be critical of the Church's political agenda then, and it is right now.

A 14-year-old Pakistani girl who was shot five times and left in a roadside ditch has died following an abdominal infection, doctors say.

Noor Jehan was allegedly shot by relatives after being declared guilty of adultery under an ancient tribal tradition in southern Pakistan.

Noor was shot in both legs, the left arm and the stomach before being dumped in the ditch.

Doctors at the government-run Jinnah Hospital in Karachi said initially her condition was stable.

But they say she developed complications in the last few days and succumbed to her injuries.

Last month the teenager regained consciousness in hospital and told the BBC News website her cousins had tried to kill her after her father had refused to let her be married to one of them.

And how does that possibly constitute adultery?

Noor's body has now been moved to the morgue of a charitable association, the Edhi Foundation, where sources say no one has arrived to claim it.

Police say they have been unable to trace her parents.

Too frightened? Or are they dead too?  With family like those cousins who needs enemies!

These days there is no excuse for not being happy. Not only is happiness now part of the school curriculum; it looks as if it will soon be on every politician’s manifesto. We are used to socialists pontificating on what is good for us, and those of us with any sense take no notice. But a Conservative Party leader? Yes, according to today’s Telegraph:

David Cameron will today seek to show that the modern Conservative Party is not concerned only with wealth by declaring "there is more to life than money".

The Tory leader will say that it is time to focus not just on GDP (the index of national wealth), but also on "GWB - general well-being".  

Mr Cameron, addressing the Google zeitgeist conference in Hertfordshire, will say that he wants to move "beyond a belief in the Protestant work ethic to a modern vision of ethical work".

Addressing the what? What on earth is the Google zeitgeist conference? A conference on the Google zeitgeist or a conference of Googlers on the zeitgeist? And why Hertfordshire? Whereabouts in Hertfordshire? Letchworth? Bishop’s Stortford? Baldock? No, not Baldock. Baldock is far too colourful. It was founded by the Knights Templar, its name is said to be a corruption of "Baghdad", and it used to be the last staging post before London, which was a day’s journey away. Stevenage, an ugly, characterless new town with a big branch of Toys “R” Us, is far more in tune with the Google zeitgeist.

 

And moving from a “work ethic” to “ethical work”? David, you are sounding like a touchy-feely socialist. This, of course, is the idea. Cameron wishes to win the fickle votes of the bruschetta-eaters of Islington, and so he needs to distance himself from the hard-nosed economics of the Thatcher era.

 

General Well Being is obviously a Good Thing, like motherhood and apple pie. But it is not the business of the Government. The best thing the Government can do for general well being – mine at least – is to stop taking so much of my hard-earned money in tax, and stop passing laws interfering in my life. Let me take care of my own well-being, or go to hell in my own way.

 

If Government can’t make you happy, you can always try Edward de Bono’s New Religion.

 

Global conflict, rampant materialism, social breakdown and a general loss of humour: the world’s in trouble; maybe a brand new type of religion could provide the answer. So believes Dr Edward de Bono, the author and guru renowned for his Seventies bestseller, The Use of Lateral Thinking…

 

De Bono’s creed is aimed primarily at the young. He has decided to christen it H+. It stands for Human Plus, which as far as epoch-making faith movements go is hardly snappy. Most religions end in an “ity” or an “ism”, which helps you to spot them. But maybe calling it Bonism wouldn’t help.

 

His new religion is revealed to the world in his latest book, H+ (Plus) A New Religion?, though it seems rather light on theology. So how does he plan to rescue our 21st-century souls? “I’m not quite sure what the soul is,” he replies…

“Most religion requires that you avoid sins and avoid opposing God: negative things. The main thrust of H+ is to accentuate the positive,” he says. So he has reinvented the idea of salvation through good works. He calls his good works “pons”, short for “positive actions”. While conventional religion says that good works boost your credit rating in the afterlife, de Bono promises that they will achieve self-help Heaven on Earth. “You set yourself a daily quota of achieving pons, acts of help to others and to the world, no matter how small they may be, and you get a sense of achievement through doing them. Four pons a day would be reasonable. From achievement comes self-esteem and a belief in yourself.”

Easy. I’ve made ten puns today and it’s only lunchtime. Wait a minute, though, it’s “pons” not puns. You’ve got me there. Four pons a day? As the Romans might say, a bridge too far. David Cameron shouldn’t have any trouble, though. His touchy-feely twaddle is ponsy enough for both of us. 

The Times carries an inspiring report (via Power Line News) about some creative recycling at a shipyard in New Orleans, "Warship built out of Twin Towers wreckage," by Tom Baldwin:


Baldwin, however, can't resist adding these "human interest" details:


And now for Baldwin's banal summing up:


Sorry, Mr. Baldwin, but Katrina didn't care where she made landfall; 9/11 was a series of attacks on soil the attackers knew was American.  That was the point. 

It has been a while since I last got on my soapbox about grammar schools. Perhaps I should give it a rest. I wish I could, but whenever I hear or read anything about this subject, I get fired up all over again. I am enraged - and rage is not an emotion I often feel - at the sheer vindictiveness of the Left in denying the education to clever children from poor homes that they happily purchase for their own children, either by sending them to a private school if they are bright, or buying a house near a good comprehensive school if they are dim.

This piece by Robert Crampton in today's Times, simply and eloquently written, states the obvious. US readers should note that in the UK, "public school" means private, fee-paying school:

It really is bizarre that your average Labour rebel, often the personal beneficiary of a selective education, dislikes grammar schools ... more than he does public schools. But this has long been the Labour way. Before Tony Crosland came along, all but the most prestigious public schools were withering on the vine. Now, 40 years on from 10/65, the biggest transmitters of privilege in Britain are booming again. Clever move, Labour Party! Another blow for social equality.

I went to a large, streamed comprehensive in a suburb of Hull in the late Seventies. My class formed part of the top stream. We were the sons and daughters of lecturers, trawlermen, teachers, sales reps, a painter and decorator, engineers, repairmen. A wide social mix. We arrived bright-eyed and keen, and we left, five or seven years later, well entertained, but not especially well educated. Yeah, we had a laugh, but we didn’t learn much. Enough to get by. Your status depended on your looks, your athleticism and your willingness to be disruptive. Academic ability was an irrelevance at best, a hindrance at worst.

Now, in a previous generation, or had we lived in a different LEA, my class would have gone en masse to a grammar school. When I think about this, I ask myself three questions. Would we have received a better education at a grammar? ...And ...which option would have most benefited the country?

The answer to the first question, as everyone knows, is yes. Even many opponents of grammars accept they were better for bright children than comprehensives have proved to be. The elite ethos, the raised expectations, the decreased likelihood of some strutting psychopath assaulting you in the lavatories at dinnertime, grammars were conducive to the stretching of minds and the pursuit of excellence. Not surprising, this: they were designed to make pupils feel special; comprehensives weren’t.

The people I’ve met who went to grammars learnt in greater depth and breadth than I did. Their lessons were more rigorous and more challenging. Roy Jenkins? Denis Healey? Harold Wilson? I don’t think they were baking sheets of paper in the oven to make them look like medieval parchment for history homework in the Thirties, as I was 40-odd years on...

By a roundabout route, after A-level retakes elsewhere, I got to Oxford. I sized up the other undergraduates, the majority of them from fee-paying or selective state schools, and I knew that the ten or twelve cleverest kids in my class at school would have had nothing to fear from them in terms of pure intellect. Nothing. But most of my classmates hadn’t even applied. Those that had, hadn’t made it. But it wasn’t prejudice that kept them out. It was that the other candidates, the ones from selective schools, were better prepared, better coached, better educated. Gordon Brown, take note. It wasn’t that Laura Spence’s rivals were cleverer than she was. It was that they almost certainly knew more and could express it better.

Of course they did, and of course they could. A greater proportion of children from state schools went to Oxford and Cambridge and other first class universities when the grammar school system was in place than do so now. The consequences have been far reaching. In order to get people from state schools into universities now, standards have had to be lowered, A-Levels dumbed down and even the definition of a university changed to include what at one time would have been a local technical college.

The people I was at school with have done OK. That’s what they always say about bright kids in comps, isn’t it? Oh, they’ll be OK. But we haven’t done as well as we could have done if we hadn’t been — there’s no polite way of putting this — shafted by Labour ideology for the past 40 years. The people I was at Oxford with, meanwhile, they’re running the country, some deservedly so, others not. How do you want to choose your elite? By family connections? By what your dad earned? Or by ability?

They should consider this, these Labour men and women who detest their leader and educational selection in equal measure. For more than 30 years, from the death of Hugh Gaitskell to the death of John Smith, when the grammar school generation was on stream, the Labour Party did not feel the need to choose a public schoolboy for its leader. Since 1994, when the comprehensive generation started to become available, they’ve had Blair from Fettes, and soon they’ll have Brown, the product of a ruthlessly selective fast-track education. And before too long, I suspect, we’ll have Cameron from Eton. He’ll be that school’s nineteenth Prime Minister. We’re still waiting for the comprehensive system to produce its first.

One point that Robert Crampton fails to make, in his otherwise comprehensive analysis, is that the Labour elite do not want a Prime Minister from a state school. Their attack on the grammar schools was prompted by social snobbery. Before the grammar school era, the privileged public school elite was largely unchallenged by clever men and women from ordinary backgrounds because these men and women were not educated. The few decades in which the grammar school system was in place were a time of unprecedented educational and social mobility. The privileged, particularly on the left,  felt threatened by this and closed ranks. A socialist needs the working classes to stay working class. We can't have them  getting all uppity, reading Shakespeare, or becoming Prime Minister, now can we?

Lawrence Lindsey has a good immigration piece , pointing up how insincere and ill-thought-out is the "guest worker" policy:

In this household, my wife is the expert on thoroughbred horse racing, having been a fan since discovering the sport as a child.  (I only started to watch in earnest with her.)  Her first encounter with the heartbreak of horse racing came in 1969 when Majestic Prince's bid to take the Triple Crown was stymied by Arts and Letters.  But there are worse experiences than seeing your horse lose the big race, and those are breakdowns. Breakdowns can entail everything from a bowed tendon, a fracture that can be repaired or more gruesome injuries which require humane destruction of the horse right on the track.

When a bone is shattered, the horse will die.  Subjecting a horse to surgery is problematic, to say the least.  A horse is just too big, its legs too thin (relatively) for three to support it standing when four are required.  Made to stand up and run, they die of various complications over time if they are prevented from doing what they are built for.  Hence, if a leg or ankle bone can't properly be set, the owner is forced to put the animal down to avoid causing further suffering to the animal.  Even if it can be set properly, the prognosis isn't always good.

Breakdowns have always been a risk, whether one is talking about thoroughbreds or draft horses or pet horses.  Animals--not just horses--steal our hearts, if we have a heart, and they don't live forever.  Hard lessons to learn, but one learns them--and we go on loving our animals.

Well, yesterday I witnessed my second breakdown, Barbaro at the Preakness (Pimlico, Maryland, the second event of the Triple Crown), and it may be a while before I watch another thoroughbred race. (Sports columnist Ray Kerrison describes the tragedy better than I ever could.)  The hard fact is, because these horses are bred for speed--and because speed and strong bones increasingly don't come together in the current bloodlines--breakdowns become more likely. And everybody knows it--owners, trainers, jockeys and fans. 

But of all this, the horse, as always, remains ignorant.

The mess surrounding the stalled, big-budget Ground Zero memorial turns thousands into cynics every day.  One wretches when one compares the heroes of 9/11 who sacrificed their lives with the massive egos who have done nothing but spar with each other for nearly five years over how to develop the site. But this morning there was some very good news delivered in the NY Post regarding the installation of a memorial that does justice to those heroes.  Writes Post Editorial Page Editor Bob McManus:

"President Hosni Mubarak opened the World Economic Forum in a booming Red Sea resort Saturday with a surprisingly tough speech that signaled deepening strains in the once-ironclad links with Egypt's American allies and benefactors.-- from this story

"once-ironclad links with Egypt's American allies"...

What "ironclad links" were those? Taking the money, and voting consistently against America in the U.N., and doing whatever else Egypt could conceivably do to prevent American foreign policy from working?

There never were, there are not, and there never can be, "ironclad links" between Egypt and the United States, or between any Muslim country, and the United States, or between any Muslim country, and any non-Muslim country. If everyone in Washington, London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, and even in the offices of the E.U., that will help. And if they realize exactly why that statement is true, and does not depend on a particular leader or regime in any of the Muslim countries, or Infidel countries, that would be even better.