The Left Make the 'Tea Party' Appear Eminently Sensible

Polly Toynbee: Concerned champagne socialist 

Well, I have something of a headache today, having met up with my old band and had one too many drinks (mea culpa). What I really needed last night was an arm of the State to come and pour my last pint down the drain as the police do for local homeless men and to be arrested for opening a new can, as Jason was very recently.

It is unlikely that the band will re-form  because, unfortunately, only about 6 people ever came to our gigs and five of them were in the band. Don't worry. Neither fame, nor fortune will change me, because neither are likely to touch me.

It has been, therefore, a highly unproductive day, but I've been reading some of the Telegraph blogs.  Yesterday, I took a look at Tina Beattie's Marginal Musings to see whether she had been hacking at the walls of Holy Mother Church with a pen knife lately and was pleasantly surprised that she seems to be in art critic mode, a mode in which she can do little damage, so I left her blog thankful that she had calmed down and maybe accepted the Catholic Faith.

No such luck, however, for later in the same day, Damian Thompson wrote a post concerning the great 'Roehampton reformer', whose eccentric ideas are more attractive to at least a sizable proportion of the Bishops of England and Wales than those of the currently reigning Supreme Pontiff.  It really is astonishing that the Bishops of England and Wales allow this lecturer in theology to lecture the Faithful and even Priests in Clifton on matters pertaining to the Faith, when she consistently makes it apparent that her agenda is ideologically motivated, rather than Christian in content. Tina, as we know, paints herself as a latter-day St Catherine of Sienna while maintaining that her outlook on the Church is 'progressive' and, such is the way in which words are leapt upon and hijacked like a Boeing 747 at Heathrow, you cannot be 'progressive' and hold views that are 'traditional' because the 'old way' of thinking, which is grounded in reason, as well as faith, must be discarded.

No. To be 'progressive' you must challenge even those opinions that are so deeply rooted in the Church's very being that they are stored as a treasure and guarded by the Successor of St Peter himself and find expression in the Catechism of the Church which you claim to love. To the 'progressive', nothing is sacred. The only thing that is sacred to the progressive is the wholesale rejection of your own tradition.

'Progressives': Do they deliver progress or anarchy?

In this sense, we can draw a comparison between Tina and 'progressives' such as Polly Toynbee.  To be a 'progressive' you must occupy the ideological left and mock and attack the traditions, beliefs and opinions of those you deem to be of the old guard, or 'regressive'.  James Delingpole writes today on Polly's denunciation of the 'Tea Party' movement in America and I must say that the more criticism they attract from the righteous left, the more attractive they become because they stand for beliefs about liberty and freedom which they view as timeless and from God. The 'Tea Party' is largely pro-life, pro-liberty, pro-family. Some may be rather simplistic in their worldview but then the left does tend to over-complicate even the simpler things in life, like love, marriage and family with 'progressive' ideas such as divorce, abortion and the promotion of the homosexual sub-culture into the mainstream.

I wonder whether there has ever been a variant of socialism which has not been 'champagne socialism', the crude ideology espoused by Polly Toynbee and many on the left. Capitalism may produce winners and losers, but I'm not sure those who died at the hands of Pol Pot, Stalin and the host of Marxist elites turned mass murderers would have described themselves as winners. The sad thing about champagne socialism is that that those who adhere to its credo rarely offer any champagne to the people they claim to stand up for. They live in mansions or expensive London penthouses and have the audacity to maintain that they believe in 'equality'! They despise free trade or the free market and bewail the fact that the poor do not drink champagne because no champagne 'trickles' down to them, while believing that it is not their own champagne that should be distributed out among the poor, but that the State should do it because the State must do everything, including calling time at the bar for Mr Jason Evans.

Analysts search for colour darker than black to describe Thursday

The State, that most impersonal and, in terms of recent human history, often quite terrifying and merciless force, becomes the organ that pumps money around the body of society.

Then, when the arteries become clogged and the organ fails, the 'progressives' still believe that this is the organ that is responsible for everything, including the rescuing of the diseased organs that led to its failure, the financial sector and huge multinational banks.

It is interesting, is it not, that between billionaire global financiers, speculators and investors such as George Soros and Baron Edmond de Rothschild, and Polly Toynbee, there is probably not even a hair's difference in political opinion, yet The Guardian still presents her as someone who speaks up on behalf of the poor and working classes. Pull the other one. Polly Toynbee actually defends the interests of a very small group of billionaires who have consistently flooded the 'progressive' campaign and the progressive camp with their money. The next time you see Bill Gates or Warren Buffet giving a load of their cash to some 'reproductive health' organisation in Africa, remember that Polly Toynbee is behind them, 100%.

The proponents of left-wing ideology consistently deride those who disagree with them as simple goons who need to be re-educated. The 'Tea Party' is a threat to them because the 'Tea Party' stands for values enshrined in the US Constitution and/or the Bill of Rights.  Americans are quite right to distrust the over-reaching State because history tells us that when it becomes too big it crushes human freedom, liberty and even religion itself. As it stands, US citizens cannot even go to an airport without being molested by the TSA officials. As it stands, the US Government bailed out major banking institutions who recklessly lended to those who were unable to pay back and few, if anybody, in the banking sector were called to account for the crisis that led to the 'debt ceiling', being raised, lest the Government default on its staggeringly huge debt. It is no wonder that the 'Tea Party' has many members in the USA and if I were given a choice of spending some time with them, or with Polly Toynbee and the billionaire financier abortion promoters who promote her 'progressive' causes, I know which choice I would make.

As for Tina Beattie, well, I expect that she and Polly Toynbee would see eye to eye on a range of issues. That's the really sad thing about Tina. She 'challenges' so much Catholic teaching that she might just as well be an atheistic, left-wing Guardian writer. You can just imagine them at a pub together in a plush part of London slagging off Pope Benedict and praising President Obama, that great 'progressive'. $14 trillion of debt. Now that is what I call 'progress'! Can I raise my 'debt ceiling' too? If I could do that I would have bought a whole round last night. I'm a simpleton, I'm not a 'progressive'. I just believe that the Lord loves a cheerful giver.

Oh dear...Bad news just in...Does Polly have any ideas for how the State can solve the 'Eurozone' crisis? I hope her shares won't be affected. That George Soros may be excited about today's events may be sick, but sadly it may also be true. Hey, what do you expect? He's a 'progressive', you know.