January 28, 2005
NOT THE FRANCO YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO PHILE:
The dictator, the saint and the minister (Andy Beckett, January 28, 2005, The Guardian)
Just over half a century ago in Spain, a new kind of politician began to appear. As government ministers, they were young, energetic and highly competent. They were confident without being overbearing. And they seemed relatively free of fixed political ideas, except for a general desire to turn their old country into a modern, business-driven one.During the 50s and 60s they opened up its economy to foreign trade and its poor southern coastline to lucrative tourism. They made themselves potential role models - complete with a suggestive group name used by some of their associates: the"third force" - for future generations of reforming European politicians.
Yet two things about the Spanish modernisers have hindered their reputation since. First, they did their work as part of the dictatorship of General Franco. Second, many of them were members of a new, highly conservative and highly controversial Roman Catholic movement: Opus Dei.
Since 1997, Ruth Kelly has been a similar modernising presence in British politics. As a Labour MP, Treasury minister, and now education secretary at the precocious age of 36, she has been busy, effective and - working closely with both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown - seemingly undogmatic. But being a British social democrat is rather different from being one of Franco's lieutenants. And so the revelation over the past five weeks, via a series of distinctly grudging admissions, that Kelly is also "in contact" (the organisation's words) with Opus Dei, and (in her words) receiving "spiritual support" from them, has been one of the stranger political shocks of recent British history.
You just can't challenge that many liberal pieties--Franco bad; Church bad; conservative bad; Blair left-wing; Third Way left-wing; etc.--without causing heads on the Left to to implode.
MORE:
Ruth Kelly, Myth-Breaker (George Weigel, January 12, 2005, The Catholic Difference)
The Opus Dei crowd also contributed to modernization in Chile and remain a powerful group in that nation's politics. Had it not been for the work of Manuel Fraga and other Opistas in Spain, the Communists might have been in a position to take over after Franco's death. In the mid 50s, before turning things over to the Opistas, Spain was an economic disaster area.
Posted by: Bart at January 28, 2005 2:56 PMYes the leftist heads explode as the pat formulas of their ideology correspond less and less to life. But nothing more quickly trigers the detonation than the slightest mention of The Work. Can't blame them though. Living in terror of a sudden visitation by an albino hit-man would unsettle even the brightest bright.
Posted by: LUCIFEROUS at January 28, 2005 5:13 PM