Customer Reviews
From Harrys Place 22 October - Review of an extract - By: Jonathan Hoffman, 18 Nov 2007 
I cannot be the only one who was somewhat nonplussed to read the extract from the new book by Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacksin Saturday's Times ("The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society").
The extract begins with a declaration that multiculturalism has outlived its usefulness. True, but it's hardly a revelation. Trevor Phillips said it more than three years ago & it quickly became accepted wisdom among professionalsin the race relations field & at the Home Office.
There follow a string of assertions with little justification. Argument by assertion is not on, even from Chief Rabbis. "Liberal democracy isin danger"; "Britain is becoming a place where free speech is at risk"; "religious groups are becoming pressure groups"; "boycotts & political campaigns are infecting professional bodies". I'm only four years younger than Sir Jonathan & yes, some things have got worse but I just don't buy these ex-cathedra judgments (maybe not the most felicitous adjectivein this case). Yes, there are those who would prefer that we didn't have democracy but why doesn't Sir Jonathan name them? It's Hizb ut Tahrir & their ilk, isn't it? By failing to be specific, he only succeedsin losing credibility. Hizb ut Tahrir & the rest who want to establish a Caliphate are hardly a majority, are they Sir Jonathan? As for religious groups becoming pressure groups, `twas ever thus. Has he forgotten the role played by Churchmenin CND? CND was foundedin the rooms of Canon John Collins & Bruce Kent has of course been a major forcein CND over the years.
The Chief Rabbi then asserts the "slow demise of morality itself". Well we all know about the need for ASBOs & the hoodie-culture but has Sir Jonathan been on the Northern Line at rush hour recently? If he has, the number of people offering seats to the elderly & to women can hardly have escaped his notice. Compare this with 30 years ago, when it was a rarity. And smokers are no longer allowed to foul the air for the rest of us. Surely these things are an advancein morality, not a demise.
And why have we all become so amoral? Sir J: first we decriminalised suicidein 1961 (did we try & imprison suicides before then? - I seem to have forgotten). This was "the beginning of the end of England as a Christian country". Thenin 1967 we legalised abortion & homosexuality. Run that past us again, Sir Jonathan. We no longer force teenage girls to have children they don't want & we allow gays to live free of stigma. In what way is that amoral? As for "the end of England as a Christian country", am I mistakenin thinking that the Church has not yet been disestablished?
Stick with us a while longer. What happens when we have as a nation mislaid our moral compass? Well "morality is reduced to taste. `Good' & `bad' become like yum & yugh". You mean that Parliament can debate moral issues such as abortion, gay marriages & euthanasia & come to an informed decision, rather than base civil society on the Bible? Is that such a bad thing? Presumably Sir Jonathan would regard France - where under the laïcité convention, religion plays no rolein civil society - as morally degenerate. Agree, Monsieur Sarkozy?
The word that's missing from the 1700 word Times extract is "democracy" (Ok it appears - but only once). "In a debatein which there are no shared standards, the loudest voice wins. The only way to defeat opponents is to ridicule them." Well no actually - we vote. More interesting by far would be to learn from the Chief Rabbi how young people - notoriously unwilling to vote - might be made interested enoughin politics to participate.
And so on. "Western civilisation is not truth but the hegemony of the ruling elite. Therefore, it must be exposed & opposed. Western civilisation becomes the rule of dead white males. There are other truths: Marxist, feminist, homosexual, African-American, & so on. Which prevails will depend not on reason but on power. Force must be met by force. Lacking a shared language, we attack the arguer, not the argument". It's called debate Sir Jonathan & the advance of education since you & I were born 50+ years ago equips many more to participatein it. Long may that last.
It's nearly your turn but seeing as how you are all glued to your screens (well the ones who have not nodded off yet), you maybe need to know the Chief Rabbi's views on the Internet.
You'll need to concentrate for this bit. Here goes. We used to have a set of texts which defined our nationality. In the UK these included "the Bible, Shakespeare & the great novels". That meant that we shared "a set of references & resonances, a public vocabulary of narratives & discourse". And we only had a small choice of media: the newspapers & two TV channels (yes Sir Jonathan & I both remember when BBC2 beganin 1967). So things were simple, he thinks - people could not have got their views from anywhere else (eh?) so they had a variety of views but only a limited variety. You knew where you were then - the guy you were speaking to either read the Daily Telegraph or the Daily Express or (if he wore a coloured shirt) the Grauniad. Real toffs read The Times. But now - how's a guy to know from whence came the views of the guy opposite at dinner? It could be from any one of a zillion websites - even (heaven forfend) Harry's Place! And he might even be so narrow-minded as to only watch or read media with which he agrees: "If we see the world one way we will watch al-Jazeera; if another, we will watch Fox. We can filter out the voices with which we disagree. We are exposed to a selectively edited version of reality. This is massively amplified by the phenomenon of blogs, which often present the newsin highly tendentious ways. The result is that our prejudices are confirmed, & need never be disturbed."
Nearly finished. Now onto nationalism. Sir Jonathan has already told us how the nation state is a force for good, strengthening our moral compass. (Funny, I thought the two World Wars of the last Century were caused by nationalism & that worthy organisations like the Federal Trust were founded to try to stop it happening again). So now he tells us how the Internet is destroying nation states. "The new technologies, by uniting people globally, divide people locally. They strengthen nonnational affiliations. They can make people feel more Hindu or Muslim or Jewish than British. They turn ethnic minorities into "diasporas", people whose home & heart is elsewhere. The nation state was brought into being by one form of communications technology - printing. It is today endangered by another". So we should throw away our computers & become less Hindu/Moslem/Jewish & more British? The two are mutually exclusive then, Sir Jonathan? Norman Tebbit's loyalty test was right? You'll stop emailing us "Covenant & Conversation" each week then? And will you tell the Burmese bloggers, without whom we would never have known about the brutal repression suffered by the monks, that they should turn off their computers & become more Burmese? Or shall I do it? And can Christians keep their computers?
I don't mean to be disrespectful. I feel a bit like the little boyin Hans Christian Andersen's "The Emperor's New Clothes". Maybe the rest of the book is different.
Today we get `how to rebuild the national home' (apparently it's all about signing covenants). But if the home doesn't need complete demolition, why not just make the best of the one we have already?
