Libby Purves can figure out why
1. it really is transgressive/ challenging/whatever to say nasty things about Christianity in a (lately?) Christian country, and
2. Why some obscure Christian teaching reduces the probability of satiricide.
Mark Steyn can't. Score one for convent education.
Also, maybe Denmark isn't part of the Western
world?
Gonnae link to where Libby says such things? And are you referring to Mark Steyn on Newsnight the other night, or something else?
In any case, it rather depends what one means by it really is transgressive/ challenging/whatever to say nasty things about Christianity in a (lately?) Christian country. On the one hand, within media circles in Britain it's hardly transgressive inasmuchas hardly anyone within said circles will be offended, protest, whatever. On the other hand, it is indeed biting the cultural hand that fed one, which I suppose is a sort of intrinsic transgressiveness. Maybe.
Am honoured to inspire post on your blog. But I still can't work out if you think one shouldn't read John Buchan owing to the deeply nasty things in which his caste participated.
Oh yes, the linked article is by Steyn. Sorry. Still, Libby Purves?
Here's Libby. Second para's the charm.
dunno about not reading him - nobody (well, hardly anyone) ever stopped reading Chesterton or Belloc.
Maybe Buchan's best understood as a sort of British Nikias. Nikias? Athenian general, immensely rich slave owner, and repulsively superstitious guy who's in Laches. The point: As somebody once forcefully explained, if you'd asked the ordinary ancient Greek who the best man of his age was, Nikias would've been a certainty. Not Plato or Socrates, or any of the usual suspects. I was invited to consider what this meant for my rosy view of the ancient Greeks.
Maybe Buchan's like that - somebody whose success is indicative of the temper of his time.
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