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Anthony Horvath is a contributor at Laigle’s Forum, Christian apologist, pro-life author and speaker, and publisher.  To learn more about his latest project aimed at combating the philosophies discussed in the essay below and how you can help, click here.

Tina Fey, impersonating Sarah Palin, joked, “I can see Russia from my house.”

I can see the next holocaust from my house, and it is no joke.

In the decades leading up to one of the most horrific chapters in human history, the leading lights of the day openly discussed bringing about those horrors.  Eugenics was posited as the rational position of all intelligent, well-meaning individuals.  In journals, newspapers, academic conferences, public health offices and elsewhere, they talked about sterilizing people with or without their consent, segregating them from society, or even exterminating them.  And that was in America.

In a book written in 1920 by two German experts and applauded by American experts, it was argued that it was allowable to destroy the ‘life unworthy of life.’

Who was regarded as ‘life unworthy of life’?  The handicapped, the disabled, the diseased, the mentally ill, the ‘feeble-minded.’  Really, just about anyone the experts decided was ‘unfit’ could be deemed ‘unworthy of life.’  When eugenics morphed into the Holocaust, many of its proponents quietly went to ground.  Some asked ‘What went wrong?’ but few arrived at the right answer.

Fast forward sixty years.  Enter Julian Savulescu.

You probably don’t know who Julian Savulescu is, just as your average American off the street in 1910 wouldn’t have known who Charles Davenport was.  You probably don’t know who Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva are, just as your average American in 1920 wouldn’t have known who Alfred Hoche and Karl Binding were.

But you may recall a few months ago when two ‘ethicists’ quietly submitted an article in an ethics magazine arguing that the logic of abortion does not cease after the child has fully exited the birth canal.  For all the reasons that abortion on demand was justified, so too, the two ‘ethicists’ Giubilini and Minerva argued, was infanticide.  Of course, they preferred to call it ‘after-birth abortion.’

I hope that nobody misunderstands me:  Giubilini and Minerva were correct in their analysis.  If they are to be faulted for anything, it is for stopping at the newborn.

When people heard about this article there was outrage, and not a little of it spilled over onto the journal that printed the article in the first place.  That journal was “The Journal of Medical Ethics.”  Flabbergasted, the editor defended the publication of the article, saying:

“As Editor of the Journal, I would like to defend its publication. The arguments presented, in fact, are largely not new and have been presented repeatedly in the academic literature and public fora by the most eminent philosophers and bioethicists in the world, including Peter Singer, Michael Tooley and John Harris in defence of infanticide, which the authors call after-birth abortion.”

Yes, that is quite right.  The arguments presented were not new, and have been ‘presented repeatedly.’

He continued, “What is disturbing is not the arguments in this paper nor its publication in an ethics journal. It is the hostile, abusive, threatening responses that it has elicited. More than ever, proper academic discussion and freedom are under threat from fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society.”

This embattled editor of a renown journal of medical ethics is named Julian Savulescu. Read the rest of this entry »

No science used by the elites, just consensus of academics.

by Don Hank

The report at the NPR web site tending to exonerate Palin for her gaffe about Paul Revere is typical of how arguments are presented in the media these days. You will note that there is not a shred of new data here, just a prof’s opinion. (It should be clear that NPR is only throwing a sop to conservatives here as a way of staving off the effort to defund them).

Americans have stopped asking for facts and are accepting opinions of the “educated.”

We are no more educated now than we were in 1256, when Roger Bacon enumerated, in Opus Majus, the 4 causes of error:

authority, custom, the opinion of the unskilled many, and the concealment of ignorance by a pretense of knowledge.

In the case of the mainstream media (and also in most of the careers we insist on calling “professions”), it is obvious that all of these factors are involved in our grievous mis-education and the web of unsubstantiated myths we call the truth.

Roger Bacon then outlined, in later parts of this series, an almost perfect representation of what we today call the scientific method.

However, nota bene: this method, while still generally used in the hard sciences, is all but totally ignored by academicians in other disciplines, such as psychology, journalism, economics, etc, whose practitioners nonetheless pretend to rely on science. If in fact they did so, they would use some form of the scientific method as outlined by Bacon and as refined by later philosophers in arriving at conclusions and decisions.

In fact they only rely on a consensus of academics, whom they trust implicitly for some reason that they would be hard put to articulate.

Indeed, if you ask one of these practitioners by what cognitive mechanism they arrive at their conclusions and make their decisions, they will be at a loss for words, other than to quote some “authority.”

It’s like:

[such and such an academician] said it, I believe it and that settles it.

Yet, they fail to recognize that they are in fact adherents of a religious cult. They really don’t understand the tiny world that has been presented to them by their fellows as the universe, they can’t articulate what they believe, and they are therefore increasingly isolated from everyone as they grow older.

This is why old professionals often die lonely and miserable, not knowing to what it is they have dedicated a life of service, or whether it was in fact service at all or just effort expended on behalf of an unseen soulless ruling class.

The following commentary titled “The technique of reverse labeling” reflects a situation that is so absurd as to be almost laughable – that is, if it weren’t for the harm that is being done to at least one persecuted Christian, our good friend Julio Severo, who is in hiding thanks to a Marxist government that criminalizes all public speech unfavorable to homosexuals.

First, please read Mr. de Carvalho’s commentary on this and then my email to the professor who wishes to harm Julio even more. I had originally hoped Professor Nicolelis would respond, but he has chosen to ignore my email.

Pastor Severo is a perfect example of how a Christian minister who wants to help homosexuals break away from their dangerous lifestyle (70% of AIDS cases are active male homosexuals) is persecuted by influential Leftists who want to make sure they never break away and remain trapped. The death of these unfortunate people seems to make no difference at all to the callous Brazilian Left, which also wholeheartedly supports the murder of the unborn.

The fact is, these same leftists who want to keep homosexuals trapped in their unwanted lifestyle are the real homophobes, despite the fact that they falsely label others that way.

Emails for Dr Nicolelis if you desire an explanation for his actions:

nicoleli@neuro.duke.edu

and colleagues (be polite):

http://www.neuro.duke.edu/faculty/nicolelis/personnel.html

Don Hank

The technique of reverse labeling

by Olavo de Carvalho

Miguel Nicolelis is a neuroscience teacher at Duke University (USA), founder of the Edmond & Lilly Safra Neuroscientific Institute (Macaíba, RN) and member of the Brazilian and French Academies of Sciences. Added to that notable curriculum was his recent appointment by Pope Benedict XVI to the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The Viomundo website, directed by journalist Luiz Carlos Azenha, now introduces him in a still more attractive light, claiming the scientist is a defenseless victim of a vast hate and fear mongering campaign waged by the eternally abominable “extreme right.”

Shocked and intimidated by the murderous virulence of the campaign, Prof. Nicolelis, in a tone of spurious sincerity distinguishing him as an unconditional follower of the free and democratic debate, warns against the dangers of ideological radicalization:

“Your political, ideological opponent starts to be seen as your enemy. And that enemy is subject to any kind of punishment, even death. I cannot imagine that those people spreading hate, revenge and violent messages can at the same time be Christians.”

But, after all, what did the murderous campaign consist of? It consisted of two things: Firstly, a ten-line story, published at the Rorate Coeli website on January 5 (see: http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2011/01/pope-names-pro-abortion-and-pro-gay.html), stating that Prof. Nicolelis is a fervent defender of abortion and the gay agenda (and also, as of last year, of the candidacy of radical socialist Dilma Rousseff). His presence in an institution linked to the Catholic Church is therefore a little strange. Then, an article written by American journalist Matthew Cullinan Hoffman, published on the website Last Days Watchman (see: http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/defender-of-for-abortion-and-homosexualist-police-appointed-to-vaticans-to) and later reproduced with or without additions and comments on a few Christian websites, among them the Brazilian version of Lifesitenews, Notícias Pró-Família, administered by Brazilian writer Julio Severo (I will speak about him later on). Hoffman, who is a Catholic, commented, “Pope Benedict XVI is a staunch defender of the right to life and of family values, and it is unlikely that he was aware of Nicolelis’ record when he made the appointment.”

Was there some threat, any hint of injurious plans? Prof. Nicolelis admits, “No, there was none.”

In view of these perfectly inoffensive expressions of disagreement, how did Prof. Nicolelis react? By debating with his opponents? No way. He himself describes his argumentative procedures:

“My laboratory staff contacted Duke University, warned about those websites and the university police have already begun to monitor the case. The security of my laboratory was reinforced… Nobody enters there without going through security procedures.”

And he cautions: at the first threatening sign in Brazil, he will call the Federal Police immediately.

Among the potential aggressors of Prof. Nicolelis denounced by the Viomundo website, one has already been put under control. Julio Severo, wanted by Brazilian authorities for the heinous crime of having stated and insisted that homosexuality is a sin and curable, is hidden abroad, moving from one country to another, living in extreme poverty with a wife and four small children. Journalist Luiz Carlos Azenha mentions that fact with evident contentment. The Fórum website, by columnist Luis Nassif (http://blogln.ning.com/forum/topics/homofobia-em-preto-e-branco), also celebrates it as a sign that Brazilian democracy is progressing.

The logical premises forming the basis of Prof. Nicolelis’ statements and the reports of the Viomundo and Forum websites could not be more evident:

1) Uttering a single word against homosexuality, even in a generic way and with no threat, is incitement to violence, something unworthy of people professing to be Christians.

2) An informed citizen and lover of the free and democratic debate should react to those opinions by presenting himself publicly as a victim under imminent attack, calling police and having his unfortunate critics persecuted like criminals and hunted down like animals.

The brutally exaggerated reaction is expected to prompt the distinguished public to believe piously that the violent individuals are those who expressed opinions, not those who mobilized against them the armed forces of the repressive State system.

If the reader wanted a local illustration of what I have written previously on the technique of reverse labeling, this is it.

The constant and obsessive use of that technique is one of the most trivial manifestations of the general inversion of reality, characteristic of the revolutionary mentality.

Not by coincidence, but very significantly, Prof. Nicolelis had been railing some time ago against the “hysterical right.” Hysteria, by definition, is a hyperbolic reaction to some imaginary and false provocation. Therefore, when Prof. Nicolelis reacts hysterically, it is the others who are hysterical.

Translated by Julio Severo. Reviewed by Don Hank.

Portuguese version of this article: The technique of reverse labeling

Spanish version of this article:  La técnica de la rotulación inversa

Source: Diário do Comércio

Divulgation: Julio Severo in English

www.lastdayswatchman.blogspot.com

My email to Nicolelis:

Dear Dr. Nicolelis,

You have recently complained that groups of bloggers, whom you refer to as “ultra-right” have expressed concern that you, while serving as a member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, also are outspokenly pro-abortion and pro-gay marriage – positions diametrically  opposed to the Vatican’s positions.

It is not surprising that, given the Vatican’s approval of your membership (despite their disagreement with your views), this annoys you, as you have made clear. What surprises is that, in an interview with Viomundo you express fear that anyone who opposes your viewpoints on these issues is a potential threat to your safety or possibly your life.

I learned of this situation when I was asked to edit a translation by Olavo de Carvalho dedicated to your apparently intransigent viewpoint as expressed in that interview and elsewhere. I had intended to run the translation at my web site (Laigle’s Forum) but I then realized, I do not have a personal quarrel with you and it would perhaps be unfair to run this article before hearing your side of the story.

De Carvalho’s article says that, for you

1—Uttering a single word against homosexuality, even in a generic way and with no threat, is incitement to violence, something unworthy of people professing to be Christians.

2—An informed citizen and lover of the free and democratic debate should react to those opinions by presenting himself publicly as a victim under attack, calling police and having his unfortunate critics persecuted like criminals and hunted down like animals.

Obviously, Mr. de Carvalho is being ironic here. But he is conveying the impression, based largely on the aforementioned interview, that you are not in favor of a free debate on certain topics.

My question to you is:

Is an objective debate on homosexuality or abortion, for example, possible in your world or is Mr. de Carvalho correct in his ironic statement about your inflexibility in such areas? Such inflexibility would certainly seem incompatible with a questioning, scientific mind and with the image you otherwise project as a scientist dedicated to open and uninhibited inquiry. I therefore want to give you a chance to respond so that my readers can hear your side as well.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Don Hank

Editor, Laigle’s Forum

How Darwinist activists prove creationists’ argument

Don Hank

Early last year, I wrote a synopsis of “Signature in the Cell” which was posted both at Laigle’s Forum and at Amazon, and shortly after that I was invited to participate in an Amazon forum discussing the book.

The “scientists” I was debating with kept diverting attention away from the main topic — i.e., the absurdly high odds against the cell having “evolved” randomly. Stephen Meyer says mathematician William Dembski calculated that the chances of all the amino acids of a cell appearing in the correct sequence were 1 in 10 to the 41,000th power. On top of that, cells need machines to transport components from one part of the cell to the other, and these machines (organelles) are indispensable. Thus, the amino acid sequence and the cell machines would have had to “evolve” all at once, because without one of these amino acids or without the machines, the cell dies. These odds are insurmountable and no evolutionist can argue for a random evolution of the cell without sounding like an idiot. The only chance they have is to obfuscate, change the thrust of the argument, launch an ad hominem attack on the author and intimidate the debating partner. And this is exactly what they did. For example, they tried to paint Stephen Meyer as a fraud for claiming one of his papers was peer-reviewed that they claimed was not (the fact is, it had appeared in a peer-reviewed journal but was later attacked by the editors when Meyer was recognized as being for intelligent design).

I didn’t back down, did not allow any diversionary tactics, told them Meyer’s antecedents had nothing to do with the legitimate questions he raised and kept re-focusing on this one main issue of the impossibly high odds against Darwinist evolution of the cell. One of the sub-topics was “This book belongs in the religion section,” and I had the cheek to write “All books on microbiology belong in the religion section because they all point to the existence of a Creator.” But I believe the thing that really set them off was my contention that Darwinian evolution is a major pillar in the platform of the political Left.

For whatever reason, I eventually became a target on this forum.

Within a few days after I showed them I was not backing down, someone at Amazon re-activated an old seller account I had closed out 6 months earlier. All of a sudden, a “buyer” showed up and an Amazon rep emailed me saying this buyer was upset because I had not sent him the book he had “bought.” Obviously, Amazon had just re-opened the account without authorization at the time of the debate to harass me, because I had had no further action on the account for 6 months because I had closed it out and did not reopen it or indicate to Amazon that I wished to do so.

I also had linked in the forum to the DVD “Expelled,” which was available at Amazon. Now this movie was a big assault on the evolutionists who control Amazon, because it shows the dirty tricks used by evolutionists to silence ID advocates – people like me. And worse, I was using an anti-evolution material available at Amazon, making them complicit in this assault on them.

So what did some higher power at Amazon do in response to this? I discovered serendipitously that they somehow routed my link to what I suspect was a dummy site that looked exactly like the regular Amazon site and they showed the price of this $20 DVD as $999.99!

I mentioned this harassment at the forum and thanked them for doing it because they had proven that

1–evolutionists can’t debate with reason and logic and therefore need to resort to childish tactics.

2–the harassment of ID proponents detailed in Ben Stein’s DVD “Expelled” was not an exaggeration.

By failing completely to come up with cogent arguments and by instead diverting attention from the thrust of my argument and, failing that, by intimidating and harassing me, they provided me with more evidence against evolution than I could have gotten by reading a dozen books on the topic.

The Left truly is its own worst enemy and ultimately, by its irrational and diabolical tactics, points us to God the Creator more efficiently than any detailed study of natural sciences possibly could. After all, if there is a Satan (the best explanation for such irrational behavior), then there is necessarily a God.

Oh, one more thing. After I wrote this column, I went to Amazon.com to get a link to my review of Meyer’s book, which had gone up early this year and was up throughout the debate.

Although several reviews are still posted there, mine is now missing.

Well, it’s as Ann Coulter once said: You don’t want people like that to like you.

Edmund Burke by Dennis O’Keeffe

Continuum, New York and London 2010

IN THE SERIES: MAJOR CONSERVATIVE AND LIBERTARIAN THINKERS

Edited by John Meadowcroft,

In this eminently readable, intellectually stimulating and compact volume Professor Dennis O’Keeffe does an excellent job of introducing us to Edmund Burke, his life and family, the essence of his most notable works, his parliamentary career and manifesto writing and how apparent contradictions in his own life and philosophy are reconciled in his intellectual and political development.

“No one can read the Burke of Liberty and the Burke of Authority without feeling that here was the same man pursuing the same ends.” wrote Winston Churchill another Conservative who took his own Burkean internal conflicts (between landed conservatism and the power of the Empire on the one hand which he sought to preserve and individual emancipation and free trade which he promoted) to the point of twice “crossing the floor” in party allegiance.

In the case of Edmund Burke there were the additional conflicts of an Irish Catholic origin (although his father had converted to Anglicanism some 9 years before Edmund’s birth) and his protests at the demands by the protestant Irish Parliament of Irish Catholics on the one hand and on the other his Quaker education from the age of 12, his attendance at the Protestant Trinity College Dublin and his life long Anglicanism and admiration of the English Protestant polity based on the 1689 settlement and the preservation of the British Empire. The latter however never prevented him from espousing (for their time) radical views about slavery, economic corruption in India, discriminatory legislation in Ireland and sympathy for American Colonists whose freedom-loving independence of nature he identified as being too similar to their cousins in Britain for conflict to be a wise course of action.

Like most solidly based intellectual Conservatives Burke began his political life with an interest in radical thought, testing and probing the foundations of a social and economic structure which he would ultimately help to reform and defend – dissecting in Burke’s case the advances of the Enlightenment into the welcome principles of freedom of thought while rejecting the arid abstractions of excessive rationalism. Like my late friend Sir Alfred Sherman who saw “scientific” Marxism as a “self delusion beyond repair” and became a leading creator of the classical liberal Conservatism of the Thatcher Government so Burke saw that the hubris of de haut en bas French Enlightenment philosophes had led not only to the bloody excesses of the French Revolution but would, as he predicted, lead to the rise of tyrants and bloody revolutions on a vaster international scale in future centuries.

As Sherman ended his political journey fusing classical liberal thought with Conservative principles (a set of principles which even the Labour Government did not dare overtly to unravel) so Burke – having started by editing at Trinity College “The Reformer” and in 1756 writing A Vindication of Natural Society containing ideas hostile to the Church and the political order of the day – ultimately became a philosophical and political pillar of the growing British Empire.

Even at his most critical Burke always sought political balance, seeking to reform and preserve rather than to petulantly tear down for he saw in a just “natural development” of power in proportion to responsibility that social and economic progress which the totalitarian revolutionaries would for ever exclude as they swept aside not only religious and aristocratic leadership but religious and social foundations. With his cousin William Burke he wrote in 1757 “An Account of the European Settlements in America” in which he praised the “independence” of the “ordinary sort”, the free trade which allowed them to flourish and their aristocratic leadership – all ensuing, Burke thought, from the 1689 Settlement which provided a healthy balance between Government, Monarchy and Parliament whose sole justification was its accountability to the people. How Burke would have condemned those 20^th century British Parliamentarians who bypassed the true sovereigns in European Treaty Law to undermine their Parliament and nation!

It was in that vein that he wrote in 1770 (having previously formed the “New Whigs” from both Tory and Whig dissidents and writing their manifesto) “Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents” opposing George III’s Royal encroachment on Government. We must note how that Crown Prerogative has nowadays been usurped by successive British Governments under Treaty Law to sign away the voters sovereign rights. “The Commons answered to the People and not the King”, was the essence of Burke’s attack then – just as today the democratic nationists seek to re-assert the power of the true sovereigns (the people) over an out of control political class which delegated powers to alien control and foreign jurisdiction. Burke wrote:

“The House of Commons can never be a control on other parts of             Government unless they are controlled themselves by their constituents and unless these constituents possess some right in the choice of that Housewhich it is not in the power of that house to take away.”

Since the late 1960s the elected representatives of the British people have conspired to do just that. They have usurped the power of the people as represented in Parliament and transferred most decision making to a different legislature and judiciary through confusing, covert and unconstitutional means: Crown prerogative power, treaty law, administrative law, delegated powers and statutory instruments – all designed to bypass the representatives of the people. And how successful they have been! Burke who predicted the Napoleons, Hitlers and Stalins of future centuries would have immediately grasped the more covert and insidious revolutionary aims of Heath, Clarke and Howe, Mitterand, Kohl and Delors as they sacrificed the stability of nationhood on the altar of the corporatist Euro-State!

Burke would I think also have instinctively understood the nature of corporatism – that socialist form of capitalism which underpins both the supranational collective of the Euro-State and the philosophy of “World Government”. When we consider his radical attacks on corporate corruption in India, the encroachment on religious freedom in Ireland by the State and the taxation of the American colonists we see an instinctive rejection of State/corporate power but a defence of nationhood – albeit overseen (in his day) by a benign imperial power. O’Keeffe points out that Burke totally rejected all appeals to Jacobinism or Napoleonism to rectify any injustices. He would have been perhaps most supportive of the more modern idea of “imperial trusteeship” or the idea (if not the reality) of the modern British Commonwealth.

Burke is best know for his 1790 work Reflections on the Revolution in France and his critique of the rootless rationalism of many Enlightenment philosophers which underpinned, as he saw it, the extreme dismissal of the past and hence the inevitable extreme and bloody consequences. By rejecting the whole in revolutionary fervour the French, said Burke:

“chose to act as if you had never been moulded into civil society and had everything to begin anew…..by despising everything that belonged to you.”

In effect they engaged not just in destruction but in self-destruction, kicking away the historical platform on which the reformer would base his reforms. O’Keeffe contrasts the optimism of the Liberal Benjamin Constant (who sought to look beyond the excesses of the revolution to an idealistic legacy) with Burke who saw only an orgy of destruction which would feed on its own irrationality and have a permanent deleterious effect on political discourse and ideas.

For Burke the irrational blood letting was ironically caused by an arid rationality. He condemned Voltaire’s anti Christian form of Enlightenment and especially Rousseau’s “general will” and the implicit consent of individuals to a governed society.

“We are not the converts of Rousseau. We are not the disciples of Voltaire……. Atheists are not our preachers: madmen are not our lawgivers”

Burke was right to foresee the fruits of the supposed “reason” of the French Revolution transformed into further brutalities. For 19^th century Marxism, as O’Keeffe notes, added “science” to their “rational” certainties and forged a more efficient killing machine. We must be thankful for the resurgence of a new (however tenuous) liberal order to blow away the “scientism” (Hayek) of Marx’s children and establish a philosophy of an Open Society (Popper) for what prosperity and democratic freedoms we now enjoy.

Burke was equally suspicious of “new money” and the industrial and financial worlds which were taking over from landed wealth but O’Keeffe rightly surmises that in time Burke would surely, as a life long reformer, have recognised the advances afforded by industrial development – not least I suggest in employing the landed poor (as the agricultural revolution made their labour redundant) and the slaves for whose freedom Burke had himself campaigned. He would also have appreciated the at least partly successful modern attempts to combine the fruits of Conservative morality and property rights with the liberal virtues of individualism, entrepreneurship and free trade in the 1980s and 1990s.

Burke’s admiration of all things English arose out of his appreciation of the Rule of Law, its gradual Constitutional development (without the equivalent of a French revolution) the balance of powers between nobles, monarchy and Commons, an aristocracy constrained by constitution, the possibility of upward social mobility and the Empire (“Without Freedom it would not be the British Empire” he said.) Burke opposed “any abstract plan of Government or of freedom” – so he would undoubtedly have seen the modern concentration on “human rights” (which unlike freedoms are defined by the rulers, always imperfectly and incompletely and those who define can also take away!) and he would not have been surprised to see that the old Soviet tyranny had no end of stipulated “rights” nor that the builders of “Europe” have used human “rights” and an artificial “citizenship” to undermine the freedom of and freedoms within the nation states.

This excellent volume concludes with a series of summaries of how Burke would have seen and judged the modern political world. “Under Burkean Eyes: Burke and Our present blessings and woes” both seeks to bring Burke up to date and uses practical examples to illustrate his overall philosophy. This part of the book is of course partly surmise and extrapolation and is open to critique but it is a most stimulating provocation to Burkean thought.

O’Keeffe seeks to apply Burke’s “clear feet on the ground reasonableness” to inter alia the crudity of modern political discourse, the West’s triumphalism, the superiority of capitalist economics, the new rise of India, the fatalism of Islam and socialism, Rousseauian Green Movements and man made global warming and the attack on the family – an excellent introduction (as is the entire volume) to the modern relevance of Edmund Burke.

Rodney Atkinson

February 2010

Rodney Atkinson is a political economist and businessman, a former Merchant Banker, Academic and adviser to Ministers in the Thatcher Government. He is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Buckingham and the author of, inter alia,  Europe’s Full Circle and The Emancipated Society which proposed a fusion of Conservative and Classical Liberal thought on the basis of emancipated versus dependent societies.