The death of decency

James Bartholomew on why bravery, kindness, modesty, generosity and restraint are fast disappearing from Britain — but not from George Bush’s America

Those who depend on the BBC for news are still puzzling over why America voted for that bad George Bush. One reason that got little or no airtime was that they liked his domestic policy. Our state broadcasting station gave the impression that this policy consisted mainly of being anti-abortion. In fact, there was more to it than that. Bush appealed to a traditional part of America — not ‘traditional’ meaning ‘gormless know-nothing mid-Westerners and rednecks’, but traditional as in ‘decent’.

Go to the Bush website (www.georgewbush.com) and you will find the President talking about the ‘spirit of citizenship’ and it is pretty clear that, again, the words need to be interpreted the right way. By ‘citizenship’, he does not mean, as people tend to here, paying lots of taxes to outsource kindness to the government.