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It’s occurring once more. After the demise of Humza Yousaf as Scottish First Minister and with perverse predictability, the witch-hunt inside Scotland’s wokerati is on once more. It’s time for the ‘Anyone however Kate’ marketing campaign as a result of whereas it seems that having a Muslim First Minister is one thing to be celebrated, a Scottish Christian Presbyterian in Bute House is to be feared, sneered at and viciously mocked.
The Daily Record’s Political Editor, Paul Hutcheon, kicked off with claims that voting for Kate Forbes can be voting for the ‘candidate of the nineteenth Century’ or ‘a kind of terrible right-wing Republicans within the US’. Such chronological snobbery and political illiteracy is unfortunately not surprising from some political journalists, though fortunately not all – the impeccably left-wing Kevin McKenna of the Herald, Guardian and National has really constantly condemned the anti-Christian bigotry of his fellow journalists.
This week, nonetheless, it reached a brand new low with a bitter, hateful, and ignorant hit piece of invective from Times journalist Kenny Farquharson. It was so surprising that even avowed political opponents and atheists have whispered how surprising it’s (after all such is the present toxic environment in Scotland that they dare solely whisper). Because the article is behind a paywall, I’ll quote extensively from it right here, however suffice to say it’s badly written, astonishingly incoherent, traditionally illiterate, and filled with dishonest hate speech. So, let’s dive into these murky waters.
First, word how prejudice colors political judgement. Farquharson recognises – as do the overwhelming majority of knowledgeable, clever commentators – that Kate Forbes is by far essentially the most competent of the SNP leaders.
“Forbes has concepts and power. She has a imaginative and prescient of tips on how to instrument Scotland for the challenges of the age: poverty; productiveness; synthetic intelligence; internet zero. She has proven herself to be open to a pro-business agenda whereas defending advantages for the poorest households. She speaks the language of public sector reform with a conviction absent in most of her friends.”
But none of this issues apparently, as a result of in line with Furquharson, “Whoever leads Scotland subsequent, it may well’t be Kate Forbes.”
Despite the truth that, by his personal admission, she would govern the nation higher than anybody else, and even supposing from a nationalist standpoint she is the one chief able to saving the independence trigger, completely none of this issues. And not due to her faith. No, it’s due to Farquharson’s – and Patrick Harvie’s, Nicola Sturgeon’s and Paul Hutcheon’s. It is the faith of all of the anonymous cultural Marxists who’ve taken over most of Scotland’s principal programs. No one should be allowed in any public discussion board except they bow the knee to the ‘progressive’ gods.
Although Farquharson talks about Forbes not with the ability to symbolize Scotland in all its range, that’s Orwellian newspeak for exactly the alternative. It is as a result of she is numerous and differs from Farquharson’s elitist opinions, that it should be anybody however Kate. Left or Right it does not matter. As lengthy as they settle for The Only Truth.
“Kate Forbes is unfit to be first minister of a Twenty first-century Scotland. A Twenties Scotland, possibly. A Fifties Scotland, maybe. But not Scotland in 2024.”
Note the chronological snobbery. It is a part of the Progressive Creed that being in 2024 robotically makes you higher than should you have been within the Twenties and Fifties. There are many dwelling in Scotland as we speak who despair at simply how far Scotland has regressed since these occasions, however for Farquharson the nightmare of his Handmaid’s Tale is that something fashionable should be higher. It’s not rational. It’s not able to any proof. But none of that issues. The mantra should be repeated as an infinite meme.
Farquharson then boasts that Yousaf being “the primary Muslim to guide a nationwide authorities within the western world” is “a unprecedented badge of honour for Scotland”. The inconsistency right here is astonishing. One assumes that Farquharson has no thought what Islam teaches on homosexual rights or abortion. But maybe as a journalist you’ll assume he would a minimum of have a passing consciousness of how homosexuals are handled in lots of Muslim international locations – together with Pakistan, the nation of origin of Yousaf’s father? Or possibly Kenny is so blinded by US tradition wars that he actually thinks ‘Queers for Gaza’ is sensible?
What he writes subsequent is simply as astonishing: “What message would a Kate Forbes first ministership ship? That single moms are sinners? That intercourse outdoors marriage is unsuitable? That ghouls must be allowed to face on the street outdoors abortion clinics muttering incantations? That most of us in secular Scotland are going to hell?”
The lies and misrepresentation are so apparent that it’s virtually pointless to level them out. But such is the extent of irrationality and disdain for reality in Farquharson’s Brave New Scotland that, level them out we should. A Kate Forbes ministership would say to single moms that they’re as liked as anybody else. It wouldn’t be making adultery or intercourse outdoors marriage unlawful – however one would hope that there can be some nod to the concept of sexual morality. In a Christian society it’s doable to argue that one thing is immoral with out criminalising it. In a secular progressive society – the place the State replaces God – it’s exactly the alternative. Everything disapproved should be outlawed.
Does Farquharson care concerning the many individuals’s lives, particularly among the many poor, who’ve been blighted and ruined by the middle-class immorality of the bourgeoisie he represents? Calling those that need to protest towards the dying of harmless infants, or provide assist and assist to pregnant girls, ‘ghouls’ is reasonable and ugly journalism. Besides which it’s an personal aim on condition that Forbes voted in favour of the ban on protests outdoors abortion clinics.
As for secular Scotland going to Hell, there are some in Scotland who assume we’re already nicely on the way in which there. They have created a desert and referred to as it paradise. The objective of Christians is to avoid wasting folks from Hell. The objective of propagandists like Farquharson is to maintain them there.
Next, Farquharson smears each Forbes and the Covenanters she is likened to in the identical breath. Perhaps we will forgive Farquharson for understanding nothing about theology or Islam, however as a Scottish journalist we absolutely have a proper to anticipate him to know one thing of Scottish historical past. The Covenanters, like all folks, had their faults, however with out them we’d not have fashionable Scotland. They believed in restricted authorities, Lex Rex (the legislation is king, not the opposite method spherical), and a point of non secular toleration. Yet hundreds of them have been judicially murdered. Take for instance the Wigtown martyrs, Margaret McLauchlin aged 63 and Margaret Wilson, simply 18, who have been executed by drowning as a result of they refused to bow the knee to the State’s edict on how they need to worship.
Kate Forbes is the inheritor of these girls. Kenny Farquharson is the inheritor of the persecuting Establishment who would likely have been writing a bit in The Times celebrating the elimination of such harmful girls who didn’t symbolize ‘Scotland’s values’ if he’d been round on the time!
Farquharson then goes on to jot down that he desires a Scotland the place “punitive Presbyterianism is taught as historical past somewhat than fashionable research”. Yet we do not and have not had punitive Presbyterianism for a number of hundred years in Scotland. For Farquharson to indicate that Forbes would need to carry this again (even when she may) is deliberate slander. The irony is that he’s writing in defence of a authorities which has simply introduced in a brand new extremely punitive blasphemy legislation, the Hate Crime Act. Punitive Presbyterianism is just not the difficulty in fashionable Scotland. Instead, it’s punitive progressivism, backed up by the total energy of the State, and cheered on by progressive journalists which is now the true concern.
In but extra evident inconsistencies, Farquharson then says he desires the Twenty first century “to be the very first in Scotland’s story the place spiritual perception and ecclesiastical energy didn’t routinely dictate the way in which folks have been ruled or lived their day-to-day lives”. But what sort of secular Scotland? One the place there’s real range and equality? Where a lady who believes the Bible may really be First Minister (why believing the Quran is appropriate however not the Bible I’m undecided)? Farquharson appears to be very completely satisfied for individuals who share his spiritual/philosophical beliefs to wield their secular energy and dictate to us how we’re ruled and dwell our each day lives (thanks Hate Crime Act), as a result of in fashionable Scotland we’re informed what to eat, drink, what we will use to warmth our houses, and now even what we will or can’t say inside the privateness of our personal households! The outdated Kirk Session has nothing on the brand new Secular Stasi!
Turning his consideration to abortion, Farquharson says he desires a Scotland the place there isn’t a must “worry any US-style curbs on a lady’s proper to decide on an abortion”. What is it about progressive journalists who within the identify of desirous to cease tradition wars, hold introducing US tradition wars? The solely method that US fashion legal guidelines on abortion can be launched in Scotland can be if Farquharson’s extremist views have been really put into apply. There are at present limits on abortion in Scotland. Does Kenny need the system in some US states the place there’s abortion on demand as much as beginning? What about partial beginning abortion? Is he actually arguing for no restriction on abortion? Anyway, why cease there? Why should not we simply regress a bit additional and return to the ‘proper’ to kill your undesirable toddler? Then we’d be again in pre-Christian Greco/Roman/Pagan occasions.
There is but extra insinuated falsehood when Farquharson writes that he desires a Scotland that “celebrates each youngster, no matter their mom’s marital standing or sexuality”, conveniently setting himself up because the celebrator of each youngster and mom whereas demonising the lady who’s a mom as some type of heartless witch. Besides which, does Farquharson actually consider in celebrating each youngster when he desires to allow some to be killed within the womb? And with regards to ‘celebrating’ each sexuality, one suspects that even he would have some scruples?
Further on, Farquharson says he “would favor a politician whose values chimed with the nation she or he sought to guide”. What Farquharson is actually saying is that he desires a politician whose values chime together with his – and he desires all of civic Scotland to share precisely the identical values. Those of us who don’t are ‘untermensch’ to be despised and disdained; no equality and variety in Kenny’s Brave New Scotland. I bear in mind a BBC producer telling me that he wished me to seem on his present as a result of I represented the views of a minimum of 50 per cent of Scotland’s inhabitants – a 50 per cent he admitted the BBC would by no means symbolize. In the echo chamber that Times journalists dwell in, I’m positive Kenny finds that everybody agrees together with his values however do not faux that that’s anyplace close to all the nation.
Farquharson then makes the astonishing accusation that Forbes has “forged herself as a sufferer” and “martyr” within the 13 months since shedding the final SNP management contest. “She has characterised her opponents as enemies of freedom of worship,” he claims. “This is misdirection. The drawback is just not religion, per se. The drawback is the way in which her explicit religion intersects with our public polity.”
Again, that’s only a straight out lie. Forbes has behaved with nice dignity and has by no means performed the sufferer card. Neither did she characterise her opponents as enemies of freedom of worship. It is one factor for Farquharson to disagree with Forbes’s views. It is sort of one other for him to make up her views after which disagree together with his personal fantasy model of them!
He continues that the “drawback” apparently is just not her beliefs however “her opinions”. In the deconstructivist world of columnist journalism, I’m positive that makes some type of sense. For the remainder of us it is simply meaningless babble. Why ought to a perception {that a} man cannot turn out to be a lady be much less offensive than the opinion {that a} man cannot turn out to be a lady? When Forbes says, (just like the Pope, the moderator of the Church of Scotland and so on) that marriage is given by God and is between a person and a lady, that’s not her opinion however somewhat a perception from her religion, simply as Farquharson’s views on marriage match together with his religion. If morality is only a matter of opinion, then it signifies that the wealthy and highly effective, the category represented by The Times readers and writers, will principally get to make up their very own morality.
He then means that younger ladies in single-parent households on troubled estates can be unable to have any pleasure below a nationwide chief “who disapproves of their very existence”. Of all of the lies, that is essentially the most breathtakingly audacious and merciless. Forbes doesn’t disapprove of anybody’s existence, least of all of the poor. The one factor about Forbes that places her streets forward of her opposition is her real dedication to the poor and the marginalised. Not for her the consolation of the metro-elites, discussing poverty within the summary, and luxury of their warmth pump-filled houses.
Perhaps rising up within the poverty of India, or maybe as a result of she really believes what Jesus says concerning the poor, Forbes is far more radical than any of her detractors. I lived among the many poor in Dundee, Scotland’s fourth-largest metropolis, and the progressive ideology espoused by Farquharson has carried out them nothing however hurt. The younger lady in Raploch goes to seek out much more in frequent with the younger mum from the Highlands than she’s going to with the Times journalist.
The double requirements proceed when Farquharson claims to “need a Scotland marked by generosity of spirit, not punitive social conservatism”. The irony of this being mentioned in an article that reveals little or no of this “generosity of spirit” can’t be misplaced. And as soon as once more we have now to level out – for the onerous of listening to – that it’s social progressivism which is essentially the most punitive in Scotland simply now. Exhibit one, your Honour, the punitive witch-hunt of this text.
He then asserts that the “genuine pressure of rural Scottish Presbyterianism” represented by Forbes “can’t efficiently reconcile the ethical strictures of the Free Church with the values of latest city Scotland in all its range and dynamism”. We’ve already seen that Farquharson has a considerably strained relationship with the reality, and an absence of historic and theological understanding. Now it seems he does not even know his personal nation.
The try to smear the Free Church as some type of rural Highland backwater (sure Farquharson, we all know the code – it is the implicit anti-teuchter racism so typically discovered within the Glasgow and Edinburgh metro elites) betrays an ignorance of each the historic and present Free Church which is essentially rising within the city centres. What Farquharson is telling folks like me, a fellow Free Church Scot, is that we have now no place in fashionable ‘numerous’ Scotland.
The reality is that Kate Forbes can be excellent as First Minister of Scotland, which is why the SNP institution does not need her to turn out to be First Minister of Scotland. One does should marvel, having learn this bile, what proper Farquharson must be employed as a journalist in a good newspaper like The Times. If he had written in the identical phrases about Yousaf’s Muslim religion, as he has about Forbes’, he can be out of a job and doubtless in court docket below fashionable Scotland’s hate crime legal guidelines.
So, I’ve determined, if you cannot beat them, be part of them. I’ve reported Mr Farquharson for a hate crime. There isn’t any different method. In making an attempt to interact with him and his anti-Christian bigotry previously, he simply ended up blocking me. I contemplate his article to be a hate crime towards Christians who consider the Bible and it has already resulted in vital abuse and mockery.
His solely motive for Kate Forbes not being match to be First Minister is her religion and her membership of the Free Church of Scotland. Under the Hate Crime Act, spiritual beliefs are shielded from those that need to fire up hatred. There is little question that any ‘cheap’ individual would see the hatred and abuse on this article. The police have promised they’ll examine such studies. I hope they’re good to their phrase. Feel free to affix me by reporting him as nicely!
More importantly pray for Scotland, pray for Kate Forbes and for all her enemies. And pray for Kenny Farquharson. There was as soon as a person referred to as Saul who persecuted the church. He later referred to as himself ‘the chief of sinners’ after he was blinded by the sunshine and in the end got here to be referred to as Paul – the good messenger of Christ whose affect ultimately reached and revolutionised Scotland itself. Lord, do it once more!
David Robertson is the minister of Scots Kirk Presbyterian Church in Newcastle, New South Wales. He blogs at The Wee Flea.
