Nietzsche, bounderism and the London Tellie

A historical joke: scene, an English gentleman's club.
Telegraph reader: It says here the Americans have taken umbrage.
Gin drinker, colonel, ret: The devil they have! Where the deuce is that?

Point is, the London Telegraph had an image once, their ideal reader being an elderly, red-faced man who'd served in Injuh and thought Maggie Thatcher was a dashed communist, though he probably (pulls lemon face) fancied her. But either I've morphed into that grotesque figure, or the Tellie has done the changing, because I've just read four Tellie paragraphs, from Andrew Marr, and thought, huzzah, sir, well said!

They go:

"The estimable Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time on Radio 4 is engaged in a poll which should have every right-thinking reader calling up to influence it. The credibility of the British people is at stake and time is running out.

"Bragg's team ask simply, who was the greatest philosopher ever? We are about to give the wrong answer: I have reliable reports that those two anti-democrats Plato and Nietzsche are vying for the lead. Horror! It's true that Plato has the attraction of being a philosophical early bird, touched by the light of ancient Athens and all that. But his Republic is the original totalitarian fantasy, a proposed state based on rigid class division, eugenics, thought police and fear. Our elders and betters spent much of the previous century fighting people who took Plato half-seriously.

"As for Nietzsche, taking him seriously is an indisputable sign of bounderism. A clever man, and a swanky stylist; but he bears the same relation to truth as Eric von Daniken - and attracts the same sort of admirers. He's Madame Blavatsky with moustaches. He's Khalil Gibran turned to the Dark Side. He's Kaiser Bill on LSD. I don't know about drink-soaked but he was probably a popinjay. To choose Nietzsche would be a national catastrophe; he must be stopped.

"And by whom? The obvious answer is Karl Popper, herald of falsification as a sufficient principle of scientific truth; champion of the free society against its many twentieth-century enemies. If being right is important in philosophy, the choice is clear: vote often, vote Popper: you know he made sense."

Well heh, ouch and read the whole thing, as they say, but I personally will not say again. Actually don't bother reading the rest, because the relevant paras are all here, especially that corker of a third para, on Nietzsche. But if you doubt my word, madam or sirrah, go: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/05/25/do2503.xml

My shortest post. Good.

Chars!


Laon