It mystifies me why so many Americans – even those blessedly untouched by any tedious Yankee Brideshead fetish – still seem to view the Oxford Union as a barometer of all that is sweet and holy upon this sceptered isle. I would suggest that, with all due respect to those friends of mine who have been Presidents or office-bearers in that splendid society, this is the most desperate tommyrot. If the Oxford Union were ever a meter by which one could measure the thinking of the great and the good (sic) then those days died in August 1914.
Nevertheless, National Review’s Mona Charen complains:
A few weeks ago I was approached by the Oxford Union and asked to debate the proposition “Resolved [sic – no British debating Union uses this clumsy “Resolved” formulation] : This House Would Torture to Save Lives.” Sensing an ambush, I declined but offered instead to debate, for the negative, “Resolved: This House Would Grant Terrorists all the Protections of the Geneva Conventions.”
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