http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ28.HTM

Going through Jesus Rediscovered and Vintage Muggeridge today and I'm really enjoying the crusty old curmudgeon. He is someone who will catch a certain kind of person's ear. And his searing wit
OhBoy!

caritas,


mm <*))))))><

Liberal minds flocked to the USSR in an unending procession, from the great ones like Shaw and Gide and Barbusse and Julian Huxley and Harold Laski and Sidney and Beatrice Webb, down to poor little teachers, crazed clergymen and millionaires, drivelling dons, all utterly convinced that, under the aegis of the great Stalin, a new dawn is breaking in the world, so that the human race may at last be united in liberty, equality and fraternity forevermore . . . These Liberal minds are prepared to believe anything, however preposterous, to overlook anything, however villainous, to approve anything, however obscurantist and brutally authoritarian, in order to be able to preserve intact the confident expectation that one of the most thoroughgoing, ruthless and bloody tyrannies ever to exist on earth can be relied on to champion human freedom, the brotherhood of man, and all the other good Liberal causes to which they had dedicated their lives . . . They are unquestionably one of the marvels of the age . . . all chanting the praises of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and of Stalin as its most gracious and beloved figurehead. It was as though a Salvation Army contingent had turned out with bands and banners in honour of some ferocious tribal deity, or as though a vegetarian society had issued a passionate plea for cannibalism.

{Confessions of a Twentieth-Century Pilgrim, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988, pp. 87-88}


There is something, to me, very sinister about this emergence of a weird kind of conformity, or orthodoxy, particularly among the people who operate the media, so that you can tell in advance exactly what they will say and think about anything. It is true that so far they have not got an Inquisition to enforce their orthodoxy, but they do have ways of enforcing it which make the old thumbscrews and racks seem quite paltry.

{Christ and the Media, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977, p. 91}

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Wow, I hadn't read Malcom Muggeridge (hmm . . . MM . . ) for a long time. He hearkens back to the Bishop Sheen/William F. Buckley era. Good minds and great writers.

Muggeridge was the only person distinguished with being on the Firing Line seven times. I remember viewing this for the first time about 20 years ago and it gave me goosebumps back then. Several of these appearances were reproduced on an audiobook, and I replayed them twice. It still has that special magic of a rapidfire dialogue between
two good freinds and great 20th century intellects
and Christian statesman. Buckley said that Muggeridge had few if any peers. mm <*))))><

Some good links to Muggery. No one else has a Mug like this bloke

http://www.doctrine.net/muggeridge.html

http://www.wheaton.edu/learnre...ollects/sc04/bio.htm

http:///www.pastornet.net.au/jmm/articles/4746.htm

cheerio,

mm <*))))><