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Trousers, not faith, in Britain When I write, self-comfortingly, that Britain is a very irreligious country indeed (for all its other vices), many of our more conservative readers are not at all comforted and don’t wish to believe it. Now comes some very impressive support for my view, from a proper poll conducted on behalf of a Christian think tank.
“42% think faith is as evil as smallpox” is the stunning headline from UKPollingReport.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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That would fly if smallpox was evil, which it isn’t.
Someone releasing smallpox in the tube, thats evil. Smallpox, being a virus and not having any kind of free will cannot be evil, it just does what it does because it cannot do anything else. Are guns evil? Or bricks?
Or chavs?This either says something about the intelligence of those polled, or the intelligence of the pollers. Or it could just be me being pedantic.
RIP
Faith is automatically religion? I suppose it does have a narrower meaning, but much of the masses have just as much faith in Government. In fact every association entered upon is done so on faith. But exiting, or being allowed to, once the evidence shows the evil nature of what is believed is what is necessary. Once comprehensible data is at hand, rationality must be at the forefront.
A better term would be blind faith; the refusal to see harm being done, and perhaps taking an active role in its prosecution, regardless of mounting evidence.
Everybody has faith. When people lose faith in God, they tend put their faith in government. This is why communists fought religion everywhere; God’s authority is inherently subversive to the collectivist structure. At any time an individual may choose to act outside the acceptable statist norms because of faith in God.
Obviously, collectivists can misuse religion just like they do everything else and try to sanctify their own beliefs, but how long does that really last? It seems a direct relationship; less faith in God means less freedom in Britain because few can see any reason not to allow the government to do what it wants to do. After all, the government tends to legislate morality, so it gets to decide what is right.
Always subscribed to the notion that while I don’t have a problem with God per se, it’s his effing awful fanclub that I truly despise.
Have to make the same point that August made… it’s not like it’s possible to have a culture that has no faith or no religion. It’s an inherent part of human social behavior.
As North Korea shows you, or the more raving loony left, even atheist societies have very strong faiths and the crusader like belief that they should be implemented for Your Own Good.
So sorry, Guy, but what you posted isn’t good news, it’s just the confirmation that Britons are being herded into a religion of the State.
August:
Do you mean communities like the Shakers, Hutterites, Israeli Kibutz, Brook Farm or any number of the monastic christian communes within the roman church?
Seems to me religion and a gods authority are very much supportive of a collectivist structure.
Faith has cost many more lives than small pox.
“All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil. ” Galt’s speech, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.
I like the way Richard John Neuhaus phrased it: “Socialism is the religion people get when they lose their religion.”
These small communities of faith, like the early Christians in the Book of Acts, agreed to live together and share things in common. It’s when you try to increase the scope of the community to encompass the whole of society, and bring in the government’s monopoly on the use of deadly force to coerce people to participate, that the bloodbaths start.
Trousers, hmm….
Trousers–it’s such a stumbling word. It epitomizes the British bumbling and inability to be streamlined and coherent. In the States they have pants and jeans, but in England we still have trousers.
— Roger Ruskin Spear
Mandrill,
But how about when God, a morally responsible being, created smallpox?
August,
Faith (of a sort) is a practical necessity with too little time to check everything. People will put their faith in any authority figure who comes along – government, a political creed, the BBC, scientists… I’m not sure why God is any better, though. If you don’t believe, then the word of God is just people anyway, and how is that different from government, or the newspapers? The worrying thing about God is that there is no arguing with it. If God said raped women require four witnesses to prove rape, and must be flogged if they cannot produce them, then you cannot change it or argue that it is wrong; it is right by definition. It is the archetype of authoritarianism. You can argue for a more benevolent dictatorship with other Gods, but it is still a moral dictatorship.
I’m not convinced by the idea that without religion people wouldn’t see any reason not to let the government (or anyone else) do what they want. I can see plenty of reasons, and I’m not religious, which seems to me a sufficient disproof by counterexample. Christians, on the other hand, arguably ought to take Romans 13 seriously, which seems to say the opposite, and even if not the temporal authority, they do often demand obedience to the spiritual. Religion is perhaps no worse a master, but I don’t see how it is any better. It is a way of avoiding answering the hard questions.
Atheists are as moral as any other human – having morals is instinctive, not religious.
Why is everyone assuming that people cannot live outside some sort of collectivist structure? Surely you don’t apply that limitation to yourself, do you? Or else you admit you can do nothing else but announce the faith of some collective. In which case you are setting up a divide between the commoner and yourselves – and I didn’t think this place was suddenly becoming populated with acolytes of Leo Strauss.
There is a problem of collectivism, but the answer isn’t to return to other forms of primitive collectivism – it is to try to liberate people as far as possible from collectivisim. I am sure that most people have the potential to exist with a modicum of independence and rationality and that is all that is required to oppose all forms of collectivism.
As pointed out there is nothing wrong with collectives, so long as they are voluntary, so it is not as if someone of a highly communal disposition is going to reject individualism so long as their own personal communal choices are respected.
Very interesting article the other day by Paul Johnson, the historian, contending that it is secularism which is the danger, and faith the antidote. I don’t agree, but it was an interesting position. I linked through NRO, although I think the article originally appeared in a British newspaper.
Very interesting article the other day by Paul Johnson, the historian, contending that it is secularism which is the danger, and faith the antidote. I don’t agree, but it was an interesting position. I linked through NRO, although I think the article originally appeared in a British newspaper.
The more centers of power the better. With the collapse of the Church in England and Continental Europe moral power has devolved upon the singular state. Where will the next White Rose come from? Compare sensible atheist Gunter Grass (SS) to Willi Graf (White Rose), “[a] medical student and a devout Catholic who never joined the Hitler Youth and refused to acknowledge those who did.” Willi looks better than Pope Benedict, for that matter.
“Everybody has faith. When people lose faith in God, they tend put their faith in government.”
Yawn. So, what exactly should be done – should all us heathens be locked up for being dissidents to the great libertarian dream?
If atheism is good enough for libertarians like Ayn Rand, Penn and Teller, Christopher Hitchens (who seems to be getting increasingly libertarian in reaction to a world which isn’t), Robert Nozick and F. A. von Hayek, it’s good enough for me.
It’s strange how this kind of pro-God, social conservative overhang among libertarians is far more prevalent in Britain than it is in the United States. Some of the utter bollocks that people write on here would never be posted on U.S.-based libertarian blogs like Hit and Run or Volokh. That’s because too many libertarians in Britain are old Tories who can’t get to grips with the fact that God is as make-believe as the Tooth Fairy. They’ve got their head around economic liberty, but they still don’t think that people are capable of running their own lives without divine guidance. Or, perhaps, because it was more valuable for the Thatcherites to push through business deregulation than to fight for individual rights. That’s why we got a lot of things turned over to the private sector during the 80s – but no step back on the failure that is the War on Drugs. Liberty is good for the guys in pinstripes, say the Old Tories, but everyone else is too irresponsible for liberty. Sorry, but I believe in liberty for all. That means liberty for the business leader to run their business without the government poking their nose in, and liberty for the individual to buy marijuana or to hire a prostitute.
I can live my life without Tony Blair and Parliament – and I can live it without the Pope and the Vatican also. Quite why libertarianism needs religion, I do not know. The vast majority of active Christians I meet are rampant socialists with quite strong social conservative views – they are about as anti-libertarian as you can get. I’ve shocked roomfuls of Catholics by saying that the best drug policy is no drug policy – and by saying that we should make all schools private.
Religious folks are just another interest group. So long as they keep getting their peanuts from the government (ie. faith schools, ecclesiastical types in the House of Lords, the chance to bend the ear of politicians on whatever dull “moral issue” they are pushing), religious groups won’t have any reason to oppose the government. Who needs liberty when you can have taxpayer-funded faith schools?
Pa Annoyed:If God said raped women require four witnesses to prove rape, and must be flogged if they cannot produce them, then you cannot change it or argue that it is wrong;
That, to me, is it in a nutshell. Any number of Statist or collectivist constructs formed by people can be challenged by other people, as it is on an equal footing. When you have The Supreme Being involved then any human challenge to its validity and reasoning can be dismissed by The Believers as subordinate. Witness the Koran.
“Allah said…”. No he did not. Some bloke said that Allah said. Everything else is unproven and thus hearsay.
It’s strange how this kind of pro-God, social conservative overhang among libertarians is far more prevalent in Britain than it is in the United States.
I doubt it. My impression is that most of the pro-God stuff we get is from the American social conservatives among our commentariat. Samizdata covers a lot of different angles and is not a ‘doctrinally pure’ libertarian site, though most of its writers have pretty strong libertarian tendencies.
There is a myth that suits control freaks everywhere that says we need the threat of God’s punishment to make us behave morally. So how did humans form any sort of society when we worshipped the weather or whatever? Humans have a disposition toward “moral” behaviour or at least conformity, that is, I think, necessary for any herd (or flock) animal.
The necessity for religeon is promoted by the priesthood, who are nothing more than a subset of the group “politicians”.
I am not sure a secular Britain that is blind to believers in the form of Islamists is necessarily a good thing. Just considering them backward and misguided will not make them any less likely to blow the hell out of you given half the chance.
TM: I agree with you that most Christians I have met or have read are basically socialists under another banner. I have always believed that Christianity the way it is practise today is socialist through & through. I am not quite sure if Gnosticism is socialist in outlook; I rather think not since it streses a personal relationship with a higher power and shuns the whole “collective” thing of Paulian tradition.
Then again Islam is basically fascistic in its outlook which is possibly far worse.
It sounds as if some of you would be prepared to chuck your libertarianism in order to demand legal regulation of religious belief.
In my opinion, a time of serious persecution of Christians in Europe is coming. In the current 3 way struggle in Europe between Islam, Christianity and secularism I predict that Isam and secularists will join forces for a time to eradicate Christianity. Each will then hope to inherit the remains.
Given the context in which the question was asked, it would have been clear to the poll subjects that “faith” meant “religious faith” — which is the default meaning of the word in English anyway, when it is not modified by an adjective implying something else.
I haven’t seen anyone demand regulation of religious belief. Why is it that Christians so often interpret any assertion of non-belief in Christianity as a call for oppression of it?
Nor do I see any sign of secular people supporting Islamists against Christians. That would be totally irrational. An Islamized social order would treat atheists more harshly than it would Christians. There is far more evidence of Christian true-believers echoing at least some of the Muslim attacks on secularism. The Pope criticized the Danish Muhammad cartoons, and it is common for Christian clergymens’ criticisms of Islam to include a few barbs at secularism too.
I know lots of people who don’t believe in God. None of them are Communists and I don’t think most of them incline toward socialism. Arguments of this form are pretty desperate and feeble, anyway. Even if it were true that “not believing in God causes people to do/believe bad things”, this would have no bearing on the issue of whether God exists or not.
I think Guy’s post, which I agree with, has triggered what is always seems fundamental (no pun intended) fault line in commenters here. You can be as rude and insulting about Islam, socialism, the EU or any institution you like, but don’t mention Christianity…
Everybody has faith. When people lose faith in God, they tend put their faith in government.
I never really had faith in god to begin with. And I certainly have no faith in the government.
From what I know of jesus… and it isn’t as much as some I guess.. he seems pretty lefty, socialist leaning to me.
I don’t understand how devout Christian types, can be conservative, libertarian and hate the state meddeling in their lives and telling them what to do, and yet be totally cool with the idea of god which I can only see as being set up as the biggest most powerful dictator of all.
Mike Davies and some others here seem to misunderstand secularism. I certainly don’t see secularism as being in anyway antagonistic to individual faith. It is notable that the most religious of all Western societies – the USA – is founded upon a secular constitution. For me, secularism is letting people make their own minds up on this stuff.
I’m an agnostic and don’t give two hoots about religion. I don’t think in any way it ought to dictate in civil or criminal law how I ought to behave. Afterall, if you’re a believer then surely my sinful actions will bve dealt with in a far higher court than any English law can furnish?
I know and like some Christians. Many I have a great deal of respect for. Some are, frankly, utter twats but that goes for people I have met from all stripes of religious belief. Aggresive atheism (step forward Prof Dawkins) leaves me feeling slightly queasy and seems to me to be almost as doctrinaire as the beliefs of the most strident member of Opus Dei.
It seems to me that only within the context of a secular state can religion really be a genuine freely held belief of the individual and therefore worthwhile. Compulsion in religion is as nonsensical and petty as holding your kid brother down until he solemnly swears that you really are the, “King of the World” (or whatever).
I think a large number of Christians believe this intrinsically. Some don’t but those that don’t don’t believe doctrine or standards of behaviour ought to be enforced upon others because they’re Christians. They believe in forcing their ideals upon others because they are just that kinda person and that kinda person is found throughout almost all belief systems.
I rather hope Libertarianism is an exception to that. Libertarianism is (or should be) the absence of judgemental action upon others (except, obviously, when they directly impinge upon you as an individual).
Individual freedom is all that matters.
I am a philosophical agnostic and a functional atheist but I must say that the idea that religion is more dangerous than secularism simply flies in the face of the empirical evidence.
Starting with the French revolution, a definite pattern has emerged wherein the more antagonistic a political ideology is towards religion, the more dangerous it is to its own people and foreigners when it gains power. Atheistic communist were the biggest killers of the 20th century and National Socialism was a secular ideology hostile to traditional christianity (even if individual Nazi’s expressed various degrees of personal deistic views.) Communist threatened the human race with extinction. By comparison, Islamist are merely an annoyance.
Moreover, Christians can claim some significant moral victories over the last two centuries. The anti-slavery movement of the 1800’s was driven by Christian zeal. Slavery was wiped out nearly world wide by those whom secular Leftist would consider the trifecta of evil: Christian, Capitalist, White-males.
Frankly, the secular Left (who comprise the vast majority political atheist) hasn’t accomplished much positive even by their own standards. The vast welfare states of Europe were voted into place by those we could collectively call Christian Socialist. It was the idea that Christian charity was so important that it justified using the coercive power of the state that created the modern welfare state not atheistic Marxism. Only dumb luck prevented AIDS from turning the sexual revolution into the greatest cultural disaster of all times.
Traditional religions function just like Common Law. Like Common Law, they evolved over the course of centuries and have a kind of inertia which prevents any particular individual or even an entire generation from making to great a change in the basic system. Secularist by comparison can turn on a dime. If they reason themselves to a point where a lot of people have to die, such as Paul Eichmen’s famous claim in the Population Bomb that we would just have to “write off” India and let its population starve, then there is nothing preventing them from implementing it. By comparison, a religious person couldn’t carry out such act even if they reasoned themselves to the same point. Their “irrational” moral code would require them to attempt to save lives even if reason told them they would fail.
Most Secularist hate traditional religion for the same reason they hate Common Law. Both prevent the immediate implementation of whatever untested idea they have plucked from their posterior. They simply don’t want to admit that figuring out how the world works and what is the best action in any particular situation is simply incredibly difficult. They don’t want to admit that it requires a great deal experimentation and that most experiments will fail. They rather arrogantly believe that if they can’t create a “rational” explanation for a particular idea or behavior then no rational explanation exist.
In short, having a secular or atheistic world view doesn’t prevent anyone from making horrifically bad decisions. The idea that it does is simply the result of two centuries of political marketing.
No, most secularists hate traditional religion because its followers use it as justification to boss us around by writing its taboos into modern law (abortion, stem-cell research, assisted suicide, etc.). I don’t have a problem with the religionists who don’t do that — I think their beliefs are silly, but as long as they aren’t harassing me with them, it isn’t a problem.
Communism was to all intents and purposes just another religion, even if it didn’t have a god (as Buddhism doesn’t). Same dogmatic irrational belief system, same holy texts (Marx’s writings), same priesthood (the Party), etc.
Atheists aren’t a coherent group with a common agenda the way adherents of a religion are. One might as well talk about the common agenda of all people who don’t believe in flying saucers, or ask what flying-saucer non-believers as a group have accomplished.
Somebody once said that a religious war is a fight over who has the best imaginary friend. The one thing they can all agree on is to beat up the guy who points out that their imaginary friends are imaginary.
Infidel753,
You sound like someone religious types who excuse the excesses of co-religionist by saying, “well those aren’t real (fill in the blank)”
Dawkins et al divide the world into those who believe in some kind of supernatural and materialist who do not. The record of the last 200 years is very, very clear. Materialist have killed many, many times more people than supernaturalist. You can’t just eject certain groups from the materialist fold when they embarrass you.
What makes people dangerous is certitude. The more confident people are of their own rectitude and competence the more likely they are to kill. Such certitude can arise from religion or flawed reason. If Dawkins ever bothered to make the separation clear I would have little argument but he does not. Neither do most vocal atheist.
Everybody imposes their own morality and taboos on others via the political process regardless of their belief or non-belief in the supernatural. The idea that religious people are uniquely bad about that is laughable given all the irrational crap the secular Left has tried to force upon us in the last century. Beside, religious types in the developed world usually make secular arguments when arguing for policy in the public arena. They don’t just say, “because my imaginary friend doesn’t like it.”
If religious faith is more evil (dangerous, lethal, whatever) than smallpox, should it be eradicated, just like was attempted with smallpox? If so, by what means?
I would never claim that a bad atheist isn’t a real atheist, just as I would never claim that he isn’t a true disbeliever in flying saucers. I just don’t think the existence of bad people who are unbelievers has any relevance to the question of whether disbelief in flying saucers is a bad thing.
Jaakko — religion is an infection of the mind, not of the body, so the best remedy for it is education and increased knowledge of the world. It’s working, even if slowly and fitfully. The trend of growing knowledge and declining religiosity over the last 400 years in the West is clear, even if there have been some temporary spasms of religious resurgence such as roughly 1980-2000 in the US. In most of Europe, Russia, Japan, and even some parts of the US, religion is pretty much neutered except among a noisy minority. Time will pass and it will disappear, or at least fade down to the size and sociological importance of flying-saucer fan clubs.
“Atheist” just means “person who does not believe in the existence of God”. Since humans seem to be somewhat hard-wired to incline toward illogical but reassuring belief systems, a few such belief systems have developed which do not involve a belief in God (Buddhism, Communism, flying saucers). Which of these, if any, one chooses to call “religions” is a semantic question which I don’t find terribly interesting.
I’m mostly concerned about Christianity because in the place where I live (the United States) it’s the main irrational belief system and the main ideology advocating restrictions on personal freedom. If I were living in a society dominated by Communism or Islam I’d be more concerned about those things.
There is some fluctuation from decade to decade, but if one compares the overall pervasiveness of superstitious (including religious) beliefs in the Western world in, say, 1500, 1800, and 2000, the overall trend is clear.
Infidel753,
I don’t believe that superstition is on the decline in the West. It just takes on different forms. Look at the frankly insane prejudice against nuclear power, the Holy Church of Climate Chaos, the MMR panic, crop circles, Dan Brown, Creation Science*, Holocaust denial, faked moon landings, 911 conspiracies, Diana conspiracies, GM crops, scientology, homeopathy, fad diets…
The drawback to the secular society is that at some point it became standard practice not only to allow people to hold mad-cap ideas but to actually respect these ideas. It is none of my business what folks choose to believe in but I sure as hell aren’t going to respect their beliefs if I think them bonkers or dangerous.
To be honest I prefer the prejudices and odd ideas of Christians because they are at least founded in a coherent system. You can at least have a rational debate with a Christian (mostly). You have zero chance with some nutter who can prove to you that 911 was a Mossad/CIA/Teletubbies operation.
* I don’t mean creationism per se. I refer to some of the utterly bizarre twists of logic some creationists use to justify their beliefs “scientifically”.
Shannon made a very good and specific point, and it’s being glossed over by the general antipathy to religion very evident here.
The danger is fanaticism, of whatever stripe or faction.
When one has found the TRUTH, and it answers all questions and solves all dilemnas, of course that revelation must be shared, and legislated, and acceptance required. Why bother to pursuade when one can compel?
But in that sequence, where does the threat to me or any other dissenter come from? At the point in which political power is melded with true belief to facilitate, and justify, anything the believer wishes to do in pursuit of his mandate.
Whether the mandate is from god or mammon, the end result is always the same.
I am not threatened by Amish farmers, who wish only to be left alone. I am not threatened by some commune dwellers who are trying to remove themselves from the rat race of modern life.
I am threatened by any visionary, regardless of his faith, creed, or ideology, who demands the use of the powers of the state to enforce the dictates of his vision. Whether intended to produce heaven or utopia, hell on earth is the inevitable result.
The genius of limited government is the fact that it accepts, and tries to set, limits on the uses of politcal power. Fanaticism neither admits nor recognizes that any limits exist. And so the corpses pile up.
Liberty is sacrificed on many altars, both religious and secular, and the daggar is always the power of the state.
How is it that whenever someone like Shannon Love speaks up and points out the blindingly obvious historical facts relating to the relative danger of religion versus atheist ideologies there’s a brief collective silence from the assembled rabid atheists followed by crass denial? I see it again and again. Five minutes later they’re all coming out with the same statements which have just been exploded.
Grow up and get real! Your arguments don’t fly. They’re about as logical as most of Nietsche’s nonsense.
“How is it that whenever someone like Shannon Love speaks up and points out the blindingly obvious historical facts relating to the relative danger of religion versus atheist ideologies there’s a brief collective silence from the assembled rabid atheists followed by crass denial?”
I didn’t comment on it because I had already said what I thought needed to be said, and don’t have a problem with people having their say, even if I think they’re wrong.
Shannon appeared to be making an argument along the lines of “socialism is atheist, socialism killed more people than religion, therefore atheism killed more people than religion.”
The question is, did socialism kill all those people because it was atheist? I mean, Hitler was a vegetarian animal lover, and killed all those people, therefore vegetarian animal lovers killed all those people… doesn’t fly, does it?
There also seems to be some confusion between the ideas of “religion” and “Christianity”. When we say religion, we are not always talking about Christians. Thus, when Shannon says “By comparison, a religious person couldn’t carry out such act even if they reasoned themselves to the same point” he is dead wrong, because all a religious person has to do is reason that this is what God wants. Christians have some difficulty in doing so because of their particular beliefs, but Romans, Vikings, Aztecs, and Muslims did not. Indeed, Christians have also generally managed to find excuses – Protestant/Catholic wars for example – and there are people today like the Lord’s Resistance Army who claim to be Christian too. Atrocities are committed not because they are religious, but because their values allow such things. The fault of religion in this is in giving such people a powerful mechanism for justifying and resisting change to those values. Secularism is far more malleable, which can be bad if used unwisely, but is better to the extent that existing morals can be improved upon. Considered worldwide, I think they can be improved greatly.
I don’t think the deaths brought about by Socialism have anything to do with it being atheist. Nor do I think that being religious would have stopped it once people had reasoned themselves round to believing God wanted it, and people are very good at that sort of reasoning. I also think that citing Socialism/Communism as being in any way representative of atheist thinking would be akin to me tarring you Christians with the Jihadist brush, on the basis that technically, you all worship the same God. Most atheists are sensible, tolerant, and moral people.
There are valid points to be made regarding the flexibility of moral values implied by secularlism – which can be answered – but other than that the argument that secularism is any less moral than religion doesn’t work. The ad homs flying around (from both sides, I must say) don’t help or impress either.
Now, do you want me to go through Shannon’s other arguments? Slavery? (The printers must have missed out that commandment in my Bible. Maybe it’s in the Koran?) The sexual revolution and AIDS? (Wrath of God, perhaps?) Who saved India from being written off to the population bomb? (Was it… erm… Godless scientists tinkering with creation… or a convocation of Bishops who prayed really hard?) Common Law? (We could go through some of the things Common Law used to allow.) Or this idea that atheists don’t want to admit there are no easy answers to the big questions, that it takes a lot of work and experimentation to get them, and that if you can’t immediately find a rational explanation in terms of physical law they just give up and say there isn’t one?
Gabriel,
As a general response. The purpose of this threead seems to be to demonstrate that British people aren’t terribly bright.
On the contrary, the point of my posting was to suggest that they are surprisingly bright. (Even in the rather icky Dawkins/Dunnett sense.)
I was also under the impression that the biggest dick and most potent force for evil in British politics for a very long time is the first PM in a century to make a big deal out of his religious faith.
But then I’m English, and so thick I can’t work out how a decline gets you to an apogee.
Leaving aside obvious falsehoods, I’d take Blair over Cameron as many times as I was asked.