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Having It All
Where's the best place to find serious conservative commentary in the British press? We're thinking that the Telegraph's Political Blogs are picking up stories that the newspaper edition chooses to ignore.
Yesterday, we were impressed by Damian Thompson's look at the liberal elite. Today, Tory Euro-MP Dan Hannan reports on the shocking double standards of left-wing members of the European Parliament.
Yesterday, he says, his fellow Euro-MPs were outraged by the Polish government's demand that one of their number should step down following his refusal to admit whether or not he worked for the Communists during Poland's Soviet rule.
"One after another, Socialist, Liberal and — hilariously — Communist Euro-MPs rose to protest about the Polish government’s “witch-hunt”," writes Hannan.
It's the double standards and hypocrisy on the Euro-left that stinks, he says.
"Think of how Socialist Euro-MPs reacted when Austria voted for Jörg Haider, or when Italy appointed a foreign minister from the Alleanza Nazionale. The slightest connection with Right-wing authoritarianism, however historical and however putative, was enough to anathematise a party.
"Yet, when the elected conservative Polish government fulfils its manifesto commitment and asks former Communist spies to own up, they are somehow trampling over basic freedoms.
"It’s odd, really. If you point out that someone is a member of a party that is descended from a party that once had something to do with someone who knew Mussolini, you place the Mark of the Beast upon him. But if you point out that someone was himself an active supporter of a Communist tyranny, you are violating his basic rights."
Remember, too, the outcry over Silvio Berlusconi's choice of Rocco Buttiglione as Justice Commissioner in 2004: The leader of the parliament's Socialist bloc threatened to vote to bring down the entire EU Commission if the Catholic conservative did not step aside.
EURSOC wrote back then that whatever you thought on Buttiglione's traditional views, demanding his removal not only ignores the views of millions of conservative Christians in Europe, but casts an entire discourse which has been central to Europe's development into the outer darkness. It is, in itself, a totalitarian act.
No surprises here, but EURSOC share's Hannan's irritation that the Euro left can get away with such double standards.
