Funny old place, the internet....
I am, as may have been noted, slowly easing into Facebook, God knows why. (By the way: should you wish to 'friend' me there, please do make certain I know you by whatever name you use there, I'm appalling with remembering names when not actually staring at the associated LiveJournal and its iconography.)
Evidently, there is a mechanism by which Facebook suggests persons with whom one might wish to become friends. Fair enough. But I must say, I was taken aback yesterday when it suggested David Miliband. A quarter of a century ago, for a brief knee-trembler behind the fives court, possibly; but befriend the banana-wielding little poon? I should rather think not.
Although, as a courtesy, I have commonly taken to putting partisan statements on another journal (speaking of friending) here, I happened to mention this morning that it would not have been difficult to guess with whom my sympathies were in the recent Massachusetts Senate by-election. I should note that it yet seems to me odd to be wishing well any politician, even a Yank one, whose surname is 'Brown': Gordon has spoilt it. In any event, what I mean to get at here is that, either because of a glancing reference to that by-election, or because I commented upon the case of Rifqa Bary, in terms that indicated that I regard 'honour killings' as savage and barbarous and consider that it wd save everyone annoyance if CAIR (Cair, in proppah English) wd simply change its name to begin with the words 'unindicted co-conspirator', I have, not for the first time, lost someone from my friends-list.
So be it. I mention this only because I have acquired some new readers of late, and there is, I think, a widespread belief on LJ that orthodox-leftish political comment is expected and unexceptionable, and right-leaning comment, however muted, is cause for a fit of the vapours. I do not complain; rather, I feel it my duty to warn. Persons who have first come to this journal and to my acquaintance through having seen my fiction, or critical essays, say, may be unduly shocked to find that I am - well, see icon: precisely what it says on the tin. Please do be aware that I am in fact a Conservative, although outside party conventions I were better labelled a classical liberal, fairly libertarian, very much a free-market sort of chap and All That: Mises, Hayek, Burke. (Sadly, there is no longer a Rockingham Whig Party.) In that I have locked perhaps two entries in my time here, and have as a courtesy posted for some months my partisan / party-political statements on a separate journal, it is not necessary that you 'friend' me to read me, and if you wish to read me without 'friending' me, please do so. Equally, do not resile, if such is your need, from de-'friending' this journal whilst continuing to read its public posts, which is to say, damned nearly all of them. I shan't condemn you, nor think less of you, nor feel aggrieved.