Those Who Sentimentally Indulge Humanity

To Claim That Science And Religion Pose Different Questions To The World Is Not To Suggest That If The Bones Of Jesus Were Discovered In Palestine, The Pope Should Get Himself Down To The Dole Queue As Fast As Possible. It Is Rather To Claim That While Faith, Rather Like Love, Must Involve Factual Knowledge, It Is Not Reducible To It.

The Role Of The Intellectual, So It Is Said, Is To Speak Truth To Power. Noam Chomsky Has Dismissed This Pious Tag On Two Grounds. For One Thing, Power Knows The Truth Already; It Is Just Busy Trying To Conceal It. For Another, It Is Not Those In Power Who Need The Truth, But Those They Oppress.

I Liked Early Amis A Lot, But I Stopped Reading Him Some Time Ago. I Admire Hitchens On Literary Topics - I Think He Is Very Astute. Mcewan, I Read A Bit. But I Suppose It's More The Ideological Phenomenon That They Represent Together That Interests Me.

There Is No Way In Which We Can Retrospectively Erase The Treaty Of Vienna Or The Great Irish Famine. It Is A Peculiar Feature Of Human Actions That, Once Performed, They Can Never Be Recuperated. What Is True Of The Past Will Always Be True Of It.

Like All The Best Radical Positions, Then, Mine Is A Thoroughly Traditionalist One.