“The basic point of such measures — or at least their obvious effect — is less to please minority religions and cultures than to suppress all inherited religions and cultures in the interest of uncontested social dominance by the market and the therapeutic managerial state.”

I don’t see what this decision has to do with the market. Obviously the market was not demanding that this item not be sold. The decision had to do with ideology, namely the prohibition against doing anything perceived as discriminatory against favored minorities. This points to the danger that important analytical concepts such as “uncontested social dominance by the market and the therapeutic managerial state” might in a given situation fail to convey anything specific.

Mr. Auster is right that the decision wasn’t based on concern for the market. British local councils tend to be leftist so it’s not likely it would be. I don’t see the objection though to pointing out that the systematic effect and thus function of such decisions and of multicultural sensitivity generally is to abolish particular cultural standards and so make money and the state bureaucracy the measure of all things.

This quote from the article concerning the menu “theme” for this Easter almost comically confirms Mr. Kalb’s general thesis about liberalism as technocratic management:

“‘We are not serving hot cross buns at all,’ said a spokesman. ‘Each term we try to come up with a menu which encourages children to think about different issues. This Easter term we chose information technology and did not even consider putting hot cross buns on the menu.’”

And here’s a passage that recalls my articles on conservatives (in this case, it’s an actual Conservative) calling PC “silly” instead of seriously opposing it:

“Ann Widdecombe, the Conservative MP and former shadow home secretary who is a Roman Catholic convert, described the ban as ‘appalling and absurd’. ‘These people are silly asses,’ she said.”

To me, the most striking thing about the article was that the banning showed eagerness to accommodate anticipated opposition. It’s reminiscent of one of Jean Raspail’s main points in CAMP OF THE SAINTS.

Ten or so years ago I went to an antiques show in a public school in Metrowest Boston, and there was a banner across the door to the auditorium that said: WE ARE MULTICULTURISTS AND PROUD OF IT. At that time no one had yet opposed the schools’ multiculturalism campaigns strongly enough to evoke the defensiveness manifested in that banner. But the teachers who put it up knew that they were defying the traditional values of their students’ parents and were therefore both defensive and aggressive in their defiance. In that region, at least, they’ve won totally.

Those teachers, and the British Local Councillors, are just the sort of “enemies” whom Islam-on-the-March must hope and pray for. The scorn expressed by the British Muslims for this gesture shows which side is run by grown-ups.

This episode makes understandable the vote in the current poll for NWO, although I voted for the first alternative for the same reason that Mr. Auster gives: we have to be alive if we’re to fight on the cultural front at home.

The article that Mr. Kalb linked says that hot cross buns go back to pre-Christian times, when the cross represented the moon and its four quarters. I found another informative article through Google:

http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Canopy/1956/hot-x-buns.html

It shows a photograph of hot cross buns (I never knew what they were before—which I hope doesn’t disqualify me as a defender of Western culture), a thick circular bun with a cross etched in the top, and it explains that “The cross represents the four seasons, or the four phases of the moon, and are on the sacrificial bread of the lunar goddesses of many cultures.”

This seems to me a very appealing symbol of the continuity and depth of true culture, and of the interrelationship of sacred cult and popular culture. The circle with the cross inside it, representing the phases of the moon or the cycles of the seasons, or some other aspect of cosmic wholeness, was a common symbol throughout the ancient world, but it was also made in the form of a ritual bread, so that one would, I suppose, be “eating” or communing with the cosmos. And then this same cross and bread, changed into a ordinary sweet bun, were “claimed for the Christian church in 1361 when Father Thomas Rockcliffe distributed the buns to the poor of St Albans. It became traditional to eat the buns on Good Friday after Elizabeth I passed a law limiting their consumption to religious festivals.” The meaning of the cross in the circle is transfigured by Christianity. Instead of symbolizing the four quarters of the cosmos, the “cosmos full of gods,” as Eric Voegelin describes the pre-Judeo-Christian cosmological experience, the cross now symbolizes the idea that there is a God higher than the cosmos who creates the cosmos, and that man must die to the cosmos to come to God, just as the Son of the God who created the cosmos must do. Instead of symbolizing life within nature, the cross now symbolizes spiritual life that transcends nature even as it perfects and completes it. And all of this symbolism is contained in an ordinary, unpretentious, fruit-filled bun which is served at Easter time, a part of the fabric of English traditions that go back through the whole of English history, back beyond the beginnings of Christianity to the ancient world, the cosmological symbolisms of which were both reversed and completed by the Christian symbolism that succeeded them.

And this wealth of meaning, contained in such a simple everyday object, and connecting the English to their common spiritual and ethnic memory, is what is now considered offensive and must be banned.

We should continue asking ourselves what has made people commit cultural suicide, as is so well illustrated in this episode, even before anyone demanded that they do so—I mean demanded with a lethal threat attached to the demand, which hasn’t really happened in England, or in the American schools which are equally eager to enact anticipatory surrender. I hope no Islamist fanatics are reading this, for they might get the (correct) idea that they really don’t need to commit mass murder—a little patience and they can take over peacefully. The future dhimmis can’t wait to assume their new status, having decided by the milliions that they deserve no better.

Wait, I take that back. The future dhimmis aren’t the majority in the United States. Despite a generation of cultural self-abasement, loss of pride in our history and heritage, and celebration of all cultures except our own, we still haven’t gone down the road as far as the English. I doubt that, if the 9/11 atrocity had happened in England, that fourth plane would have crashed in a field, owing to the heroism of the passengers; or that the English police and firemen would have shown the heroism of those in New York after 9/11. Despite all, Americans still have a built-in resilience and pride that seems gone elsewhere. That’s why we’re the ones who will bring down Saddam, and not the English or the French or the Italians or the Germans or the Russians. We have 20 allies, but Peter Jennings knows whereof he speaks when he still says we’re acting unilaterially; in a sense he’s right.

Does anyone else remember the nursery rhyme that went “hot cross buns” also? I remember learning it in grade school. I’m sure it’s on the ACLU’s “to do” list of things to ban next. Also maybe NOW’s list, since it might be considered sexist in some sense. Just make sure you aren’t facing a Mullah Omar should you recite this little ditty:

http://www.downingm.freeserve.co.uk/rhyme022.htm

Hot Cross Buns! Hot Cross Buns!
One a penny, two a penny.
Hot cross buns.
If you have no daughters.
Give them to your sons.
One a penny, two a penny.
Hot cross buns.

Frieda, that’s a terrific point. The US, despite all of what has happened, remains the last bastion of traditional Judeo-Christian culture. Europe is lost absent a great miracle. That is why we are the target of both the Tranzis and the Islamists. If they destroy America, the world is theirs - whether a dhimmitude under Islam or totalitarian slavery under a Tranzi ruling class. There is simply no other remnant of serious resistance to either global agenda. That’s why I support the war, despite my distrust of George Bush.