The Spectator

The neocons’ Iraqi ‘vision’From Correlli BarnettSir: Surely Con Coughlin (‘A bittersweet birthday’, 18 March) is in error when he states that it was only after the fall of Saddam that Washington adopted the neocon vision whereby Iraq should be ‘a beacon of democracy that would shed its light throughout the tired autocracies of the Arab world’. Surely Bush and co. came into office in January 2001 having already bought the idea of ‘the American century’, and having already committed themselves to a mission to spread democracy round the world, starting with the Middle East, and with Iraq as the first target.

Schools aren’t clubsFrom Nicholas NelsonSir: Have you given proper thought to the reason that we have an education system (Leading article, 11 March)? Our schools have an essential list of objectives which includes ensuring that young people absorb a body of knowledge and acquire skills that match their potential, and emerge as adults with an ability to assess their world critically and communicate with their fellow human beings. The way you would do this is to hive off 25 per cent or so into exclusive clubs so that they leave school with a strong body of knowledge but no clue about how to communicate with the other 75 per cent.

What sells winsFrom Peggy HatfieldSir: How exciting and unusual to see people in the media advising sexual restraint (‘Anyone for chastity?’, 4 March)! As Piers Paul Read reminds us, our culture is up to its eyeballs in sex — in films and also on the high street. But though I’m quite sure that most normal British people could secretly do without a bonking scene in every film, or vibrators in front of children’s noses in Boots, they daren’t say so, even to their friends, for fear of appearing ‘repressed’. How have we got ourselves into this unsettling state of affairs? Read suggests that feminism and the decline of religion are to blame, but I have a slightly different answer.

Genghis was a leftieFrom Daniel Hannan, MEPSir: Paul Johnson demolishes the ludicrous expression ‘to the right of Genghis Khan’ and wonders what the Mongol leader’s true politics might have been (And another thing, 25 February). I’d have thought Genghis was a clear-cut leftie. His tactic, on conquering a tribe, was to liquidate the aristocracy and elevate the lower orders. He was a proto-Europhile, mingling his subject clans so as to prevent the development of a sense of national identity. Where modern socialists want to use the education system to cut high achievers down to size, the Khan was more literal, forcing his vassals to walk under a yoke and decapitating those who were too tall.

Jackboots of New LabourFrom Philip FreemanSir: I expected a more robust defence of our liberty from the Spectator (Leading article, 18 February). Just because a majority of the snivelling puritans who populate Parliament today voted for the smoking ban does not mean we should shrug our shoulders and accept it meekly. Individual freedom and liberty are more important than democracry, which is more like mob rule in this country. I am a committed non-smoker, but I have a quaint belief in ‘live-and-let-live’. What’s it got to do with me if somebody smokes in a pub? I’ll go elsewhere if necessary. Are we really going to tell a war veteran that he may no longer smoke in his British Legion club?

A ‘Rhineland moment’? From David Jones OwenSir: You claim you will not publish the Danish cartoons because they are ‘juvenile’ and offensive (Leading article, 11 February). Does that mean that The Spectator will no longer publish silly cartoons with religious content, as it has done so often in the past? Or could it be that it is really the reaction to the offence that is causing you concern? You seem to allude to that when you refer to the risks not only to editorial staff but also to others who would be in the firing line in such circumstances. So there we have it: liberty is precious and must be defended, but not at the cost of life.

Plight of the Poles From Martin OxleySir: Anthony Browne’s article suggests that demand from UK employers is driving mass migration of new EU nationals to Britain (‘Invasion of the New Europeans’, 28 January). The British Polish Chamber of Commerce can certainly confirm this view. Last year the Chamber organised two recruitment fairs for British companies and recruitment agencies, which attracted over 11,000 Poles interested in working in the UK. This year — because of growing demand from British employers — we shall be organising at least five recruitment fairs. Yet the points made by Andrzej Tutkaj (‘The misery of the Polish newcomers’, 28 January) are also valid.

Poles apart From Lady Belhaven and StentonSir: I understand why Mary Wakefield decided to speak to the Federation of Poles in Great Britain (‘The misery of the Polish newcomers’, 28 January), but Andrzej Tutkaj does not speak for the Polish community as a whole. She would have been better advised to have gone to the Polish Consulate, which is the organisation which looks after Poles over here and has to pick up the pieces when things go wrong. The Federation of Poles was formed during the Communist period when few Poles would have considered approaching the Consulate, and the Polish community needed an organisation which could help people in trouble who could not return to Poland in the circumstances of that time.