The war on terr....ible LibDems

In writing the bit about small schools, I found myself writing 'when one is fighting a political campaign....'. I changed the words to 'engage' and 'contest', maybe slightly clumsily and still with certain connotations.... But it's interesting how one gets drawn into using certain sorts of language. I'm not fighting John Robinson; he's a decent bloke and whilst I'm highly critical of LibDem inactivity over eight years in Avenue Ward where we are opposing candidates, it's not a fight. It's hardly even a contest because one is hardly engaged with the other side in any tangible way. Which is a shame really. Me and John rolling around mud wrestling would provide much more excitement that a local election. Anyway, I'm doing my best and if you are an Avenue Ward voter, I want to win!

But this language of fighting is very interesting. Of course a political campaign is not a military one, but the use of the word campaign?!? I'm very pleased that Gordon Brown seems to be turning away from the 'war on terror' terminology. I have mentioned in the biog, I think, that I work for the C of E. I don't read a lot of theology books; in fact I've read three and they are a trilogy by a yank called Wink. They aren't the bible and he's no Jesus, but they are bleep-bleep marvellous. I happen to believe in good and evil; its pretty evident to me that there are forces at work pulling in different directions. We are of course mixed up in a sea of grey most of the time, and we have to work out our own internal motivation and what's happening in the world and try to put our energy into getting things going in the right direction (which is left by the way, unless you are in the USA in which case, heaven knows). Or we don't.

Walter Wink says that we have to guard against becoming what we hate. He writes about 'the myth of redemptive violence' which is basically that you can't beat the baddy by being bigger and badder without winding up just like him/it/whatever. We'll leave non-violence (which isn't the same as pacifism by the way) for some other time. But a war on terror is never going to work. It just begets terror. And we have indeed become terrible to many people in the middle and farther east.

Of course, I don't really understand these things and should mind my own local business. Okay, well I want a contest of ideas and I want to persuade people that mine make better sense. They say that ideologies are dangerous, that religion causes war and so on. But, as I'm trying to say in my nearly-current leaflet (Feb08), ideas, guiding principles, what you really believe matters.... and should guide what you do. And then you try to sort the money. Not the other way round. And that's my beef with the LibDems.