Category Archives: Politics and sociology

There’s been much discussion here recently about inculcating “British values”, especially into those communities that might, being recent immigrants, be in danger of missing out on them and becoming radicalised into jihadist ways of exploiting the weak, wanting foreign cars and so on. Maybe there’s a similar effort in America, although perhaps it’s less necessary as Superman has been promulgating Truth, Justice and the American Way (as separable items?) since the 1930s. Britain has, until now, always been more reticent about brandishing its values, celebrating instead generalities like fairness, decency and Christian piety. Oddly none of these are on the new lists of established British values.

No, I’ve not (yet) received any here, but I was musing about those received by that dentist who shot the lion a week or two ago. There seemed to be, in the general media, some idea that he brought such consequences on himself. Over here Louis Theroux, a telejournalist who has done documentary work on wildlife poaching in Africa, opined that he would now know what it feels like to be hunted for 36 hours, as his target was.

It was the fortuitous but timely reading of the early work of Meerloo (1956) and Ellul (1965) on propaganda that brought home to me forcefully how the total change in public morality, that has led so rapidly from sexual aberration being a criminal matter to its legally redefining marriage and the US Constitution, is essentially a text-book example  of how propaganda is done. I think that must become clear to anyone who takes the trouble to compare the public discussion with the scientific evidence.