SAVING LIBERTY

Peter Hitchens, conservative and thoughtful brother of garrulous and famed leftist author Christopher Hitchens, has written several thoughtful books – one titled “The Abolition of Liberty,” another titled “The Abolition of Britain” – both excellently setting out the decline of western culture, people’s manners, civility, and abandonment of order and justice by European countries -- and I would say the United States and Canada, certainly Mexico and most of South America as well. Liberty exists in few places in Asia and Africa, is burgeoning in Russia and former Soviet-controlled countries such as Ukraine and Georgia. But the global map of human liberty is really pretty bleak. One finding of Peter Hitchens: “The good news is that people around the world listen to music." I just found a French group called “Nous Non Plus.” Fantastic music, lyrics, and rhythm. From their song “Lawnmower Boy”: “Je suis un garcon, j’aime tondre les gazons. I am a boy. I like to mow lawns.” And there is “One Night In Paris”, with mischievous overtones: “I love Paris, she is an heiress. Who loves Paris, she’s an heir? She’s got good hair, vacationing on a yacht that her rich daddy bought. “C’est pas mal.” “I saw them playing with her dog. She calls her Tinkerbell, and she’s got a better life than mine -- making love in a banquette at a restaurant where I could not get a reservation. “What’s a soup kitchen? I don’t know either. But that’s hot, that soup is hot. “I want to spend one night in Paris.” “Mais c'est trop cher. I love Paris. She is an heiress. He’s got good hair. They fight in Greece, she runs away. They kiss and make up in Saint Tropez. C’est mignon. Such a long way, she has come from her video with Rick Solomon. I’ve seen the simple life. It’s pretty simple with an arse like that. What’s a soup kitchen? I don’t know either, but that’s hot, that soup is hot. “I want to spend one night in Paris. Mais c'est trop cher.” The guitar playing and voices on the Nous Non Plus album, Aeronaut Records, and the lyrics, are extraordinary to say the least. Lessons? One can listen to all kinds of lovely music from Bach, Bartok, Beethoven, Chopin Copland, Elgar, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Mussorgsky, Rachmaninov, Ravel, Respighi, Lloyd-Webber, Vaughan Williams, Verdi, to Frank Sinatra, the Beatles, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Eric Clapton, and glorious singers – Kiri te Kanawa, Michael Bolton, Paul McCartney, Lesley Garrett, Luciano Pavarotti, José Carreras, Placido Domingo, Jessie Norman; pianists Van Cliburn, Glenn Gould, and Julius Katchen; violinists Itzhak Perlman and Joshua Bell. It goes on and on. But it all comes back to basics. Individual liberty is being eroded. Creative arts and talent, public discourse, are being eroded by a tyrannical animosity for free expression and a “political correctness” in our society that is Soviet-style, “do it our way or hit the highway,” totally antithetical to liberty. It’s dictatorship by an elite group of snobs who think they don’t stink, and believe they are intellectual. But they are actually thugs in the mold of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. For liberty to continue being fostered, we have to call these thugs out and show them for what they are: Intolerant, selfish, elitist snobs, against true liberty and free expression. They are our real enemy.