Dear Log,
«From the outside, it looks as if conservative Americans have made a fetish of a few isolated issues, while ignoring far harder and more painful questions. It isn't simply "religion": it is a convenient form of political denial by the richest, most environmentally rapacious people on the planet.Meanwhile...Another, more traditional view of morality demands instead a sense of proportion, fairness and civic-mindedness. The cheap land and sprawl of middle America may encourage an every-family-for-itself politics; in Europe's compact, crowded cities, other values have been needed and are now, more than ever. Modern Britishness is unthinkable without tolerance and give and take; we are too small, packed and diverse an island to live in any other way.»
--"We must reclaim morality from reactionary fetishists": In a rapacious, polluted world, ethics are about more than sex and drugs
«So why has this ideology resurfaced in 2004? Because it has to. The enrichment of the elite and impoverishment of the lower classes requires a justifying ideology if it is to be sustained. In the US this ideology has to be a religious one. Bush's government is forced back to the doctrines of Puritanism as an historical necessity.»
