Tim Blair

Unless the leftist wins, there is Something Wrong With Our Democracy.

Gasp! Didn't you hear that? He called Berlusconi a fascist! I think an apology is in order.

Jacques is the former editor of Living Marxism, well that's someone you look to when discussing democracy.

He neglected the most important way in which our political systems have become less democratic, at least in the US and Canada. That is by judicial imperialism. The courts will decide what rights people have and what is a good law, not the constitution, the give and take of legislative action, or votes of the people. And these decisions are in accordance with the cultural ideas favored by the left, from Roe vs Wade to the current cases over "gay marraige."

Next year I expect a 5-4 majority in the US Supreme Court will declare smoking unconstitutional, with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor casting the swing vote.

That 'alternative logics' phrase jumped out at me too. Given the man's Marxist history and the context of "the triumph of market values across society, [and] the erosion of alternative logics..." suggests it's a wishy-washy euphemism for socialism of one flavor or another.

It's not a bankrupt and evil ideology, it's an alternative logic.

Heh. It just keeps happening. I'm too damned lazy to look it up, but there was an Italian last year who said (of Berlusconi, I think)something along the lines of "...but it's a different kind of fascism. It's a fascism of extreme personal freedom."

"Heh" just doesn't do it justice.

We badly need a jargon watch for the word "logic". Remember before the Iraq War when de Villepin kept rabbiting on about the US following the "logic of war", whatever the hell that is. Since then, I've been hearing about the "logic of peace" as an alternative, and now this abomination.

Isn't this just the Left's way of acknowledging that they're losing all the arguments? Traditional logic no longer works for us, so now--aha!--we have developed an Alternative Logic! And we'll keep developing them until we find one that works!

Martin Jacques is not just another leftwinger; he is a threat to democracy

What a joke all this is. I mean, Berlusconi might be a bit of turd and might be corrupt for all I know, but my take on the EU incident is this.

Some humourless German eco-nazi insults Berlusconi and he retaliates with a cutting jibe about getting a movie role as a concentration camp guard. Good on him! It seems like pretty tame stuff given the sorts on insults heard occasionally in our parliaments but there you go.

But Martin Jacques and all the other sensitive folk of the European left are outraged. He called our German Comrade a Nazi! And then they continue to call Berlusconi every despicable and slimy thing under the sun, as they have been doing for several years. No problem with double standards here!

One of Martin Jacques' most telling criticisms of Berlusconi is that "the opposition is branded in the most lurid and extreme language, accorded no respect, and dismissed as outside the parameters of respectable and civilised society". Pretty accurate description of his own article, I would have thought.

To use an expression every American boy learns when he's about 9 or 10 years old:

Fuck'em if they can't take a joke.

Another joke: tade unionism and psuedo-businessmen whose business is seeking to have markets closed down to all but themselves have gone hand in hand. This is examplified by the history of French guilds. Todays' IRC club is an heir to the malevolency of such crooks, thugs, shysters and shysters.

I think Berlusconi may have intended a pun. "Kapo" in German means concentration-camp guard, but it means "chief" in Italian (come on, you "Godfather" buffs).

Capo di tutti capi can be punned in German to Kapo, mir tut mein Kopf weh!

Yes, I know, I should be shot for that.