Outrageous Laziness

Over at the Independent, Shaun Walker frets over the “harsh life” that Pussy Riot can expect to enjoy behind bars. And he is convinced that the rest of the world shares his concern:

“The women say it was a political protest over the Russian Orthodox Church's support for President Vladimir Putin, but the court ruled it "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" in a verdict that has caused outrage across the world.”

Outrage across the world? Oh, come off it. When you think of something causing “outrage across the world,” what pictures come into your head? Furious citizens with placards crowding the streets, shouting slogans and throwing stones, if your head is anything like mine.

I’ve only discussed the case in detail with one person, who was of the opinion that two years was a rather light sentence. You can put that down to the circles I move in. But I work in a thoroughly secular environment, and there, too, I only heard one or two people mention the “band’s” self-inflicted plight in a casual, disinterested way before moving on to the more important business of the fiasco at Ulster Bank. Mr Walker is either guilty of strikingly lazy hyperbole, or else so entrenched in his left-liberal world that he really does think everyone shares his outrage. I don’t know which possibility is more depressing.

Good Riddance

So the Pussy Rioters have got two years behind bars. Since the time they have spent in jail already will count as time served, they should be out in, at most, 18 months.

Rupert Cornwell of the Independent thinks the fact that they were imprisoned at all was a "ludicrously excessive punishment." He also takes care to wag his liberal finger at Russian authoritarianism, which he believes is so much more repressive than the tolerant West:

"In any country, such a stunt would have caused considerable offence -- and not merely among the devout. But imagine the consequences, had it occurred in the West -- outrage on right-wing talk radio and much frothing on the warring cable-TV news channels, while the band's PR people would have had their work cut out to prevent a cascade of engagement cancellations.

But never would the affair have got within a mile of the courts."

Right-wing talk radio, eh? Where would that be? I know it exists in the United States, but I didn’t know we had it here in Europe too. Mr Cornwell might like to tell me where I could pick it up. It would make a refreshing change from the media drivel I have to put up with at the moment.

But – does he really imagine speech is so free in the West? What about the harrassed German radio assistant I blogged about a few days ago who pleaded with an outraged listener to take a DJ’s tasteless joke with humour, and was promptly fired? What about the Oklahoma police captain who was denied promotion, transferred and docked two weeks’ pay for refusing to attend a cultural event in a mosque? Neither of those two people did anything remotely as calculatedly offensive as the Pussy Rioters, yet both have had their careers seriously and perhaps permanently damaged. Pussy Riot, in contrast, will probably emerge from prison to a heroes’ welcome from the kind of morons who have been defending them publicly until now.

Actually, most of Mr Cornwall’s article is not really about Pussy Riot, nor about the Church they set out to besmear. It’s about what a bad man he thinks Putin is. He seems to imagine that Putin, and not the trial judge, is personally responsible for deciding the length of today’s sentence. You can read his sneering ramblings for yourself. It seems just a little sad, though. Pussy Riot, much as I detest them, did show some genuine idealism and courage in a public act of desecration of a church which they knew would have serious consequences for them. As C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape points out, a person needs some virtue to be truly and manifestly wicked. But as far as Mr Cornwell and his ilk in the anti-Putin media are concerned, they are just useful sticks to beat their favourite enemy with.When they are in prison and forgotten about by most of the world, Mr Cornwell will have found another stick.

Ultimately, Pussy Riot’s long-term legacy, apart from the desecration of a holy place that they committed, may simply be the enormous trouble they gave to a great many people who had done them no harm whatsoever. There are the faithful in the Cathedral on the day they performed their stupid stunt. There are the smashed windows in London, and the people who will have to clear them up. And there are people like me. When I was in Moscow just after Easter this year, I visited the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. You had to go through airport-style security to get in, complete with metal detectors and tetchy guards, all courtesy of those three idiots. Ironic, really, given that they see themselves as champions of dissent. The only cause they really champion is their own, and that of professional finger-waggers like Mr Cornwell.

"After all, there are Christian fundamentalists too!"

Reza Aslan says we shouldn’t be too worried about the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood are consolidating their power in Egypt. Calling the “significant role” they have to play in the country a “good thing”, he reminds us that, when you think about it, there is really not much separating the Muslim Brotherhood from US Republicans. Both, after all, want to see a greater role for religion in public life:

“In fact, when it comes to the role of religion in society, Americans and Egyptians are pretty well in agreement. An August 2010 Pew poll found that 43 percent of Americans believe that churches should express political views and play an active role in politics, while 61 percent agreed that "it is important that members of Congress have strong religious beliefs.”

He goes on to describe Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee as “two men whose views on the role of religion and politics are almost identical to those of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Hmmm.

In other news, Raymond Ibrahim reports that last week Muslim Brotherhood supporters crucified opponents demonstrating against President Muhammad Morsi on trees in Cairo (hat tip Jihad Watch).

Of course, US Christians like Rick Santorum are constantly murdering their opponents in the street and intimidating journalists into silence. Like Mr Aslan says, they’re just like the Muslim Brotherhood, really!

Stones In Glass Houses

Der Spiegel is waxing indignant over the trial of the blasphemous punk band Pussy Riot in Moscow. With that placid liberal certainty that their opponents will inevitably come round and see things their way in the end, the article assures us that "it has slowly begun to dawn on both the Russian Orthodox community and the Kremlin that they may have done themselves a disservice with this ruthless and bizarre prosecution of the anti-Putin band members."

Has it, indeed? This ruthless and bizarre prosecution? Der Spiegel is published in a society where, in the past few days, an athlete was sent home from the Olympics in disgrace because of her boyfriend's political opinions, where a radio presenter lost her job for letting the words "Arbeit macht frei" slip during a live broadcast, and where the presenter's assistant then lost her job for pleading with angry callers complaining about the slip to "take it humorously." Pussy Riot, on the other hand, quite deliberately staged a sacrilegious demonstration in a cathedral that had already been demolished once in its history during a time of almost unimaginable atheist persecution. What they did was coldly calculated to shock and offend strangers who had never done them any harm whatever. It was a far more reprehensible act than either Nadja Drygalla's choice of boyfriend or those unfortunate radio workers' choice of words. So Spiegel should give the finger-wagging a rest for once.

Rod Dreher too, however, thinks that the Pussy Riot trial is turning into an embarrassment for the Russian Orthodox Church. He quotes the Spiegel article and also a journalist from the New Republic who has fun sniggering at the simple souls testifying in court who were scandalized at Pussy Riot's act, and concludes by asking:

"How is it that Putin and the Patriarch have managed to make people feel great sympathy for a group of loony feminist slatterns heretofore known for staging an orgy in a museum?"

Well, I'm not sure that many people do feel "great sympathy" for the rioters in question. Even the Spiegel piece admitted that 47% of Russians polled by the Levada centre thought that the maximum sentence of seven years imprisonment would be an "appropriate" one.

That aside, however: a public order offence is a public order offence, regardless of whether there is a danger of the offender's attracting "sympathy" or not. And committing such an offence in a place which people hold in reverence and respect will bring a sterner punishment than committing one elsewhere. I believe that a hefty custodial sentence for Pussy Riot would both teach them to have a bit of respect for the religion and traditions of their country in future, and discourage others from copying their idiotic example.

Why This Blog?

Two recent events gave rise to the creation of this weblog. One was an article by Damian Thompson, a short time ago, in which he lamented the stubborn left-liberalism of the Irish media, saying that the Irish Times, in particular, "makes the Guardian look like the bulletin of the Prayer Book Society." The second was the news that a German rower, Nadja Drygalla, had been sent home from the Olympic Games in London because her boyfriend was a member of a far-right party.

Both stories make for depressing reading. In the case of Miss Drygalla, we have the spectacle of someone being punished and vilified, not for deeds, but for opinons. Not even her own opinions, but those of someone she was dating. It was an outrageous intrusion by the state in the private lives of two citizens, and a chilling example of how intolerable politically incorrect opinions are to our ruling classes. In the case of Damian Thompson's article, we have some of the sillier left-liberal utterances of the Irish media being scrutinized by an unsympathetic English observer. Reading it, I wanted to throw my hands up and shout: "We're not all like that!"

Hence my desire to finally speak up. In creating this blog, I wanted to create an alternative Irish voice to the liberal pieties that so depressed Mr Thompson. I wanted to do this, not just to make the likes of him feel better about this country, but strike a voice of protest against the kind of bullying political correctness that cut short Nadja Drygalla's stay at the Olympics. Since the Second World War, the idea that someone can be punished by civil authorities for the political views of a lover has been the stuff of dystopian fiction in the West, not real life. The Drygalla affair marks a change in that. It is in the hope of offering another voice against that stifling political correctness that I have rejoined the blogosphere. Time will tell how well I have succeeded.