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Unthinking dogmatism

James MacMillan

Wednesday, 30th January 2008

James MacMillan explains why he hates the assumption that he is a liberal left-winger

There is a growing backlash against this bullying, hectoring and unthinking dogmatism. More and more artists describe themselves as lapsed lefties or recovering liberals. There is a growing resolve to confront a liberal establishment in the Arts, media and elsewhere, responsible for the systematic trashing of much that has been our common heritage, including authentic socialist values handed down from Keir Hardie and others. As an ex-socialist I have seen the aspirations that motivated past generations of good, ordinary people discarded with a contemptuous, superior sneer. As a Catholic artist I am sick of the smug ignorance, the gross oversimplification and caricature that serves as an understanding of religion, particularly Catholic Christianity, in so much that passes for criticism and analysis. The destruction visited on schools and universities, the degradation of the media, the vulgarisation of culture, the deliberate and planned dismantling of the family — all this is a result of liberalism, not socialism.

I hope to God that I don’t see myself described as a liberal left-winger again when I go abroad.

James MacMillan is Composer/Conductor with the BBC Philharmonic.

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Alastair Simmons

February 1st, 2008 11:56am

Three cheers for James MacMillan's attack on the liberal left whose intolerant dogma has infected like a virus every level of decision making in our society - in particular their "their fundamentalist hatred of Christianity". I encountered it as a former Principal Teacher of Religious Education. I still encounter it today as a Pastor of an "evangelical" church in MacMillan's home county of Ayrshire - which gave us Robert Burn's memorable poem "The Cotter's Saturday Night" depicting a Bible loving Scotland which is now savaged and sneered at by today's PC police. Burn's closing comments seem very apposite - "From scenes like these, old Scotia's [Scotland] grandeur springs That makes her lov'd at home, rever'd abroad: Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, 'An honest man's the noblest work of God';

Rictus, USA

February 2nd, 2008 5:39pm

I am still on the left, but I agree wholeheartedly with this article. The sad irony is that much of this Pomo, identity politics, multicult "left" actually is a trendy elitist cover for the very market values they pretend to decry. How, for example, could modern advertizing survive without Debord and Situationism? The list could go on . . .

David Preiser

February 2nd, 2008 8:22pm

Brilliant, and well done. These things must be said. Thank you.

alan stoddart

February 21st, 2008 6:07pm

My generation of radicals and breakers-down never found anything to take the place of the old virtues of work and courage and the old graces of courtesy and politeness. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

Rick Walsh

April 3rd, 2008 11:11am

That a bloke who believes Jesus rose from the dead can accuse, without irony,'progressive elites' of lacking 'intellectual rigour' just takes the breath away. You couldn't make it up.

Arthur Pendragon

July 2nd, 2008 6:57am

I would rather an article that articulates what MacMillan does believe. I am tired of a media that is simply dominated by polemic, right or left, and seemingly cannot bear witness to what we might be for!