Product Description

The old rules of Left and Right no longer apply. Left-wingers keenly support the bombing of Belgrade and the invasion of Iraq. Tories warn against the threat to civil liberties. The 'progressive' BBC gives a fair hearing to the Conservative Party. Socialist journalists turn and rend Ken Livingstone. In democratic London, merely expressing your opinion can be seriously bad for your career, while in autocratic Moscow you can say pretty much what you like, provided you don't do anything about it. The tearing down of the old Iron Curtain may have allowed markets to sweep into the old Warsaw Pact lands, but it has also permitted revolutionary left-wing ideas to spread like a bacillus through the a??Westa??. Nobody really cares any more about the old shibboleths of state ownership. The British Labour Party - which opposed nuclear weapons, supposedly on principle, when they mattered is quite happy to spend billions on the same weapons now that they are unnecessary. The supposed Right is as confused and nonsensical as the supposed Left. Neo-conservatives run vast budget deficits at home and engage in utopian adventures abroad. They are actively opposed to old conservative ideas such as national sovereignty, strong families and rigorous selective education, and happy to bend the knee to left-wing orthodoxies from man-made global warming to egalitarianism. Hitchens argues that the political compass is broken, its needle swinging wildly and meaninglessly. The existing political parties have converged, or perhaps simply retreated in confusion on to what looked like safe territory, the often tried and repeated failed policies of Fabian Social Democracy, now worsened by 1960s sexual and social radicalism. They are no longer adversaries, their personnel are interchangeable and they struggle to find ways to distinguish themselves from each other. They simply ignore a?? or deny a?? huge areas of human experience and concern from mass immigration to the collapse of marriage and the disappearance of order and rigour in the state education system. Yet conventional wisdom continues to insist that formal politics can and should continue as it did before and that an exasperated and increasingly angry electorate should place its hopes in a mere change of personnel at the next election. Peter Hitchens argues for the re-establishment of proper adversary politics and the rediscovery of principle.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11379 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 236 pages

About the Author
Peter Hitchens is a British journalist, author and broadcaster. He witnessed most of the final scenes of the Cold War, and was a resident correspondent in the Soviet capital and in Washington DC. He frequently revisits both Russia and the USA. He currently writes for the Mail on Sunday, where he is a columnist and occasional foreign correspondent, reporting most recently from Iran, North Korea, Burma, The Congo and China.

Customer Reviews

An engaging broadside
The chapters are quite loosely arranged and more often than not the connections between them amount to themes, in this way the book reads like a collection of essays. This is by no means a bad thing, but if you are looking for an intricately argued work against the socialist political consensus then this is not it.

What you do get is a passionately argued polemic against the socialist political consensus, the Conservative abandonment of the battlements, and besides this, a well written and at times witty book. His treatment of education is excellent.

A superb analysis
Peter Hitchens has an unrivalled talent for reading the politial and social crosswinds that have led us to, and will eventually send us over the edge of, the abyss.

Given that in Broken Compass, he spares no criticism of lazy, pliant journalists, don't expect to see many glowing reviews of this book in the press, but do take the effort to read it. It gives plenty of food for thought for the free-thinker.

An insightful analysis of why Britain is the way it is.
As with Peter Hitchens' other books, he has correctly identified where this country has gone wrong. He easily shows that the left in politics has been completely wrong in what it has achieved. Hitchens seems to say that the main parties have been taken over by cliques of people who base their thinking ( or lack of ), on the ideas of the 1968 revolutionaries. Hitchens also easily exposes the weaknesses and inconsistencies the left has in it's intellectual arsenal, for example, how many who oppose selection for school places happily practice it for themselves, and try to delude themselves and others, that comprehensive education is a success. He also highlights many disturbing similarities between Britain today and life in many Communist states, and he also shows that many serving politicians have, until not long ago, been active in far left groups.
As with his other works this is well written and readable and even those who are not in agreement with Peter Hitchens will enjoy his style. It's probably not a good starter, it's probably best to read his "Abolition of Britain" and "Monday Morning Blues" first. These will give readers a good grounding in Peter Hitchens' thinking, as this book expands on his previous works. A thoughtful and interesting read.