Friday 18 July 2008

 

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Clemency Burton-Hill
Clemency Burton-Hill

Clemency suggests


Unthinking dogmatism

Wednesday, 30th January 2008

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

In my travels I see myself frequently described in foreign media as a ‘left-wing and Scottish nationalist’ composer. The latter label is ludicrous, and I just put it down to a foreigner’s ignorance and justifiable disinterest in the parish-pump tedium of devolved Scotland. It doesn’t bother me too much. The first, however, disturbs me much more.

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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!


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