'Nother Solent

"It's not just Palestinians who peddle insults."

This letter to the Telegraph, written in response to Alan Judd's article, cites in return two instances of extreme Israeli abuse against Palestinians and Arabs.

All talk of this type is bad. The first, by the Shas leader, seems the less serious to me - colourful racist abuse is common enough in the world. If Arab abuse against the Jews were limited to this sort of thing I would scornfully say, "look at the way they talk," but would largely dismiss it. The second is much more serious. I don't speak Russian and haven't checked it out, but I assume it's correct. It is a wicked proposal.

Now to the point. I am limited by ignorance of both Hebrew and Arabic, but I read a fair bit of both the Arab press and the Israeli press in translation or English-language originals.

Here is today's Ha'aretz. Read an article approvingly describing how Shin Bet, the Israeli Security Service is hunting down Jewish extremists who plot violence against Arabs. Read the editorial passionately urging the Likud party not to make opposition to a Palestinan state part of party policy.

Here is today's Jerusalem Post. A somewhat tougher line, but still thoughtful. Read this opinion piece where a chap from the Israeli broadcasting service who has met Arafat describes him as "relevant but no nation-builder. Not so different from the newspapers of many other countries, are they? Note that these are simply today's papers. I have performed no other selection. Also note that they have Hebrew editions (Correction: Alex Bensky informs me that the Jerusalem Post is just an English language paper) - but no-one has even suggested that the Hebrew editions differ systematically from the English ones, or that the Hebrew press generally says things that the English language Israeli press conceals from the world. Not so for the Arabic-language press. The differences between Arafat's utterances in English and what he says to his own people have been widely reported.

Not a week goes by without MEMRI printing some new hate-drunk outrage. Just scroll down the archive of this blog, or Damian Penny, or many others. The point is that this poison does not come from the lunatic fringe but from (and this is frightening) government sponsored newspapers. I haven't yet seen what today's Egyptian, Palestinian or Syrian government newspapers have on offer, and won't until MEMRI gets busy. But I guarantee, sight unseen, that there will be something Nazi-like there. "Nazi-like" is no exaggeration. I used to have what I thought of as a purely academic interest in Nazi propaganda. Read some, it's instructive.

While I'm waiting I will make do with the comparatively mild English language Arabic press. Here is today's (Saudi) "Arab News". Now let's be fair, it does have an article by a Jew: The Last Action Heroes by Israel Shamir. The Arab press also has recently featured articles by eminent Americans. You know, Lyndon La Rouche, Noam Chomsky. Israel Shamir is an admirer of Edward Said (although I wouldn't swear to it being mutual) and a wacko. If you don't believe me go to Israelshamir.net and read the four most recent articles. "UFO terror" is the one where he hints the Jews carried out 9-11.

You will find Israeli fanatics pumping out hatred in their press. You can't avoid their Arab equivalents. You will find courageous - very courageous - Arab voices preaching moderation and reason. You don't have to even look for their Israeli equivalents; they are part of the fabric of Israeli society. For present-day society in the Arab nation that is not the case. That's the point.

Close.

Luckily no-one was hurt in this story of a vehicle planting itself in a building. Christopher Johnson of MCJ was on the other side of that wall. Makes you think, doesn't it?

6 dead in train crash

at Potters Bar. Read Patrick Crozier's UK Transport Blog. Also BBC Talking Point includes a letter from someone who says her father is dying, now. I will submit a reply to that one if I can think of proper words.

Surprise!

The Democratic Dude tells me that the admirable Victor Davis Hanson is also a Democrat. Aye, but a man's a man for a' that.

Also, the world wants to know why I didn't flag up the cute picture of me and Brian. Answer: I meant to but I forgot. Distracted by the awfulness and depressingness of world affairs. That's what happens to you when you spend too much time on the internet. Hug therapy is the best cure.

Don't give in to despair about the Arabs.

John Derbyshire has. In this NRO article he admits to extreme compassion-fatigue. His conviction that the Palestinians and Arabs generally are incapable of reform amounts to a despairing racism in some paragraphs, although he pulls back from this in others. In fact Derbyshire seems unaware of the contradiction between his statements that certain cultures are forever unteachable and evidence he himself provides that environment makes all the difference. For example, he says that there are Arab names on Nobel Prize citations (he means for science, not the morally worthless "peace" prize, obviously), which show that Arabs, like everyone else, can achieve great things when living in a free society. Next he cites Hong Kong where he grew up. The contrast between Hong Kong and the West Bank is certainly instructive and he is certainly right that the refugees who built Hong Kong and those who rebuilt post-war Europe should thank the Lord they had no welfare bureacracy to "help" them in 1949. But just across the border from hardworking Hong Kong, Mao's China sunk as low in its ideological madness, worship of violence (think of the Cultural Revolution) and factionalism as any Arab society - and killed millions by politically-created famines to boot, which the Arabs haven't done. Yet men and women of the same Chinese blood built Hong Kong and Taiwan and fill Western universities. And present-day China is ruled by amoral thugs but getting richer and more open, the latter despite all the thugs can do.

I don't throw around the charge of racism lightly. Derbyshire's attack of it may well be a temporary phenomenon brought on by an understandable mood of despair - or by a bad head cold, for all I know. I quite agree with him and David Pryce-Jones that Arab culture has deeply intractable problems that predate Islam. But he should remember that Scotland and Spain, to name but two, once were clan-based societies plagued by feud, machismo and vendetta. Culture casts a long shadow, but people can learn better ways.

Snake Oil.

Hey, perhaps this is why the dep. ed. of the Indy apparently can't get his stuff-the-NHS story printed in his own paper. Perhaps it's because as soon as you walk through the door of Independent House the dreaded swamp gas - no wonder they call the street "Marsh Wall" - seeps into your brain and you become Jeremy Laurance, or even worse the happily anonymous sub-editor who composed the headline for his latest column. "Too much choice can be bad for your health," it says, and recounts a little story about some guy and his dog who each got a snake bite. The dog got better treatment than the man - they didn't dare give him a certain medicine for fear of a bad reaction and negligence claims. The point is, Jeremy, that the man couldn't choose to risk the reaction and get the relief, because of so-called consumer-protection laws made up by concerned folk like you. After waffling on about how bad the US system is because of negligence claims and throwing in a bogus party political point (which party is hotter on endless new "rights" laws here in the UK, huh, Jez?) he then turns round completely and waffles on about how bad the French system is because they don't have enough medical negligence claims and finishes up with a little homily on how nice good old British waiting lists are because unassisted nature is so often its own healer. Aaaaah, so sweet. Unassisted nature is its own executioner and torturer too, my love. Nature's like that. Doesn't give a monkeys.

The days of the NHS are numbered, thank God.

First it was the Health editor of the Observer* who said that those who support the NHS in its present form have blood on their hands. And now, as blogged by Public Interest and England's Sword, the Deputy editor-in-chief of the Independent says that the NHS is a wasteful, cruel behemoth despite or even because of all the money spent on it. He speaks from the heart; his daughter is mentally and physically disabled.

So a senior editor in each of our most left wing newspapers says the NHS command economy must go. The writing is on the wall.

But why isn't it in the Independent? Ian Birrell has written this article for the Spectator rather than his own paper. It can't be that he can't get the Indy to print the story, can it? Or have I missed something?

*Yup. You have seen it before. But now that two progressive editors have said much the same thing, I can introduce some variety.

Germany plans to invade US

! Don't panic. The plans were drawn up a hundred years ago, by Kaiser Wilhelm.

For some reason the mere knowledge that the Kaiser's Germany was seriously bad news in its own right correlates very highly with political views of which I approve. All the "liberals" think that Nazi Germany came out of a clear blue sky, or was created by the Versailles Treaty, and that all the stories of German atrocities in the First World War were made up by the Daily Mail. OK, so there is some truth in the assertion that Versailles helped turn Germany Nazi. And the Daily Mail did tell a lot of lies. (Fortunately it is now going straight, M'lud, and off the drink. Except for a wee lapse every now and then, M'lud.) Still, the correlation seems surprising. Why is so little known about the Kaiser's Imperialism by people who do know all about about British Imperialism?

It's not new. Orwell mentioned how sick he got of people in his time who wouldn't even place a fragment of the blame for the Great War on Germany. And it's still going on. I've lost count of the number of times that I have explained that there is simply no doubt that the Germans shot and bayoneted hostages in their hundreds at Louvain, Dinant, Tamine and Namur to name but a few. They proclaimed their deeds themselves. The whole point was that potential resisters should know their likely fate. This Irish Times article by Kevin Myers (It is "Myers"; the "Myes" in the headline is a misprint) tells more.

And perhaps the context of this article - it is administering a good slagging off to romantic Republican defenders of Patrick Pearse - tells us something about the Great Kaiserdom Cover-up. No, I'm not claiming a particular Irish link. The link is that for a lot of people Britain or the US (if the speaker is American) cannot, must not, shall not ever be right about anything.

BTW James Reuben Haney is a big Kevin Myers fan. Good enough for me.

About time.

In today's Telegraph Alan Judd writes on the vile stream of anti-semitism being pumped out of the Arab press. Of course anti-semitism is rather too mild a word. It is the word you use for the malice that tarnished the works of T S Eliot, or Saki or Belloc. Jean-Marie Le Pen is anti-semitic, and it is regrettable that many millions of Frenchmen chose to vote for him anyway. Anti-semitism is the stuff of snide remarks and spite, and it is a vice. But compared to the self-described Nazism featured in the Egyptian government newspaper it is peanuts.

Not that I want it banned. On the contrary, I want it published far and wide. Let the world see. Then let's ask the people who (rightly) hit the streets and the presses to condemn Le Pen, or the BNP, or the former apartheid regime in South Africa - where the hell are you now?

Explained.

The real reason why GWB is acting wobbly can be found by clicking on the words crack a grin at Dawson.com

Crappy jobs. (the -py is American.)

Random Jottings takes up the theme. Ever distractable, my mind has now been taken over by a program that attempts to isolate the times when even a Brit such as I would use "crappy" as opposed to "crap". I think "crappy" refers to cheap and easily broken physical artefacts. You run crap software on a crappy computer.

Memo to self: clean up blog.

The dignity of labour (even in polyester)

. Reader Anne Edelmann writes:

"All this talk about menial labor has evoked memories of my introduction into the taxpaying workforce, at the age of 16. My uncle managed to secure a summer job for me as an usher at an outdoor municipal theatre. There I stood on ramps and aisles in miserably humid St. Louis weather, in white oxford shirt, black and burgundy bow tie, and a heat-absorbent polyester skirt that did not flatter my figure in any way at all. On the positive side, no one looked good in these uniforms, and I developed a healthy disdain for most musical theatre. Lyrics from "Oklahoma!" haunt me to this day. More saliently, I eventually made a few good friends there. Those results, in my estimation, prove that working has a variety of salubrious effects.

Spoken by one who has been through the fire. There are experiences of which former Disney World Mickey Mouses, Playboy bunny girls and checkout staff for style-challenged department stores will speak only to fellow survivors. No counsellor can truly feel our pain. As for the lyrics of Oklahoma!, during WWII Gone with the Wind was so wildly popular and was shown for so long in the cinemas that it was said that the ushers could recite the entire three hours of dialogue by heart...

"We had no idea." "Seemed a nice enough bloke." "Quiet. Kept himself to himself."

This "animal freedom" website carries a few words from Pim Fortuyn's alleged killer, Volkert van der Graaf. I feel genuinely sorry for his co-workers (and wife and new baby, according to some accounts), little though they and I have in common. He doesn't come across as anything worse than your standard animal rights gusher, and I don't suppose they had any idea of what he was going to do. (I dare say I ought to weave in a few more "alleged"s throughout all this, but what the hell.)

I don't go in for guilt by association. On the other hand, there is such a thing as creating a climate of approval for violence. Smell the thunder in the air when a person describing themselves as a "Matt, a libertarian socialist" says, in BBC News 24's Talking Point that

"Anyone deserving the name libertarian does not restrict people's liberty to live where they want. It's good to see people taking direct action against the far right. If Hitler or Mussolini had been killed in the twenties, when they were still 'respectable' and adored by such UK papers as the Daily Mail, who knows how many lives would have been saved?"

To update an old but true joke, Matt boyo, you can have a "libertarian socialist" like you can have a "carnivorous vegetarian". Or a killer vegan as we say nowadays.

UPDATE: Dan Hartung of Lake Effect says, "It's actually a fairly old roundabout way of saying 'anarchist'. Or 'Chomskyite'. The overlap is basically in their anti-statism. Chomsky himself prefers 'anarcho-syndicalism'. Link here.

A hard awakening.

There should be nothing but sympathy for the French after this. Suicide bombing of bus in Karachi; French and Pakistani victims. The bus belonged to the Pakistani navy and the Frenchmen were construction workers. I had thought that the bombers would have the political nous to steer clear of European targets, thus exploiting the gulf between US and European opinion. Apparently not.

The other suicide bombing last night was in an Israeli club. Sad to say this one just followed the now-familiar pattern. There have been fewer recently.

I can't stop talking about it:

more from me about crap jobs over at Samizdata. This time I'm wishing there were more servants about for the increasing numbers of elderly and infirm people. We're not living in the eighteenth century (still less the nineteenth, which was a surprisingly mobile society), and there is no reason to suppose that the servants and the employers need be utterly separate and mutually contemptuous groups of people. Why shouldn't they be largely the same people at different stages in their lives? Nowadays you must be little short of a millionaire to even consider having live-in help. A great many old people would be able to stay in their own homes rather than institutions were this not so. The young carers would benefit too.

Crap Jobs again.

Reader Larry Anderson writes,

"...This has been a hot button for me for a long time. I am in that highest paid 1% of American workers. My first job off the farm was literally digging ditches. My Dad arranged the job which was with the company he worked for. He made a few cents an hour more than I did as a summer worker. I cooked college meals and delivered newspapers to pay my way through college. As I look back, I cannot find any damage caused by these "undignified" jobs. In fact, I learned that showing up on time made you a good employee and actually doing anything made you an outstanding employee. My children started at low level jobs as early as the child employment laws allowed as did their friends. Today they all are doing well at good paying IT, management and engineering jobs, except for those working toward higher degrees. The degree seekers are to a person working some job that would be classified as crap but which pays the rent. I guess I too dense to see the problem. Oh, I forgot, you have already been told that people like us cannot possibly understand what it is like to work for pennies."

Actually, I'd put it slightly differently (while enthusiastically agreeing that everyone should do a low-prestige job at some time; there are things you learn nowhere else.) A primary effect of the welfare system is to kick away the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. People like us can jump. (It's interesting that I unhesitatingly put myself in the same category as Mr Anderson, despite the fact that we have disparate incomes. As I said, the big divide is between the unemployables and the employables.) Others, less fortunate, cannot jump. And the idea of jumping is killed off too.

Just a quickie: World War III breaks out.

Among the blogs I mean. Winds of Change, Iain Dale's Diary, Dodgeblog and Give War A Chance discuss the Palestinians, the Israelis, the IRA and possible parallels between the any two of the three. Their particular debate is a little too far gone for me to insert myself into it easily, but I will say that parallels between the Israelis and the Protestants in Northern Ireland do exist. Majority world opinion is that both them are illegitimate nations, which should be demolished as states. A quite high proportion of that world opinion would want to expel both groups physically although they might shy away from such ethnic cleansing were it to come close to reality. Faced with such denial of their legitimacy both groups do tend to talk the same. For one thing they loudly declare that they don't give a fig for world opinion while actually their feelings are very badly hurt. I am aware of the inadequacy of the cutesy phrasing there, but that is the best description I can give.

An influential section of Arab opinion also wants to physically kill all the Jews. I grind my teeth before saying anything nice in even a negative sense about the IRA, whether Provisional, Real or Official, but at least no discernable current of Republican opinion proposes that for the Protestants of Northern Ireland.

McJobs.

Further to my earlier post, I had an e-mail from Geoffrey Barto of Turkeyblog. He writes:

"We need more of 'em. I don't know about Britain, but it used to be that one could get one's gas pumped for an extra nickel a gallon. I don't think I've seen it outside the big city in ten years.

I've also worked a few crap jobs myself, including several summers at McDonald's while working through college. It was there that I learned to follow the gradual increase of the minimum wage without needing a newspaper. What you do is look back into the kitchen of the local McDonald's every so often. If there's a piece of equipment there that you hadn't noticed before, the minimum wage has gone up in the last six months and another worker has been replaced. What's more, those that are left will have to have the intelligence to master another machine, which means the guy most desperate for the kind of job McDonald's has to offer is the one who just went out the door, more likely in frustration than from being fired."

Don McArthur wonders if I am not being just a wee bit hypocritical in my praise of honest, humble work:

"Not being accusing, but your bit on work reminded me of a favorite quote (from quite the rascal, too): 'Each class preaches the importance of those virtues it need not exercise. The rich harp on the value of thrift, the idle grow eloquent over the dignity of labor.' - Oscar Wilde"

A point worth responding to. As it happens I do have some personal experience being a welfare layabout, working at crap jobs and poverty. Naturally, though, all three felt quite different to me than they would to a person who had no way out. Being a welfare layabout is dangerously seductive for anyone who loves books, and I thought of my various crap jobs as mere pauses in a journey rather than definers of self. The poverty angle was (and to some extent is) slightly more painful, but of course there has always been something rather chic about bookish middle class shabbiness. The big difference between me and the guy who's just been let go from McDonald's is that, not being on welfare, I lose nothing by taking on work. Eventually that economic difference becomes a class difference. So far as I can see the old classes, working, middle and upper, are drawing ever closer together culturally. We all watch the same TV and buy from the same shops - at least, that's the way it's going. The new divide is between us and the unemployables.

30,000 people, Jews and Gentiles, filled Trafalgar Square

for the pro-Israel rally. So can anyone tell me why the one the BBC picked to interview was that disgraceful charlatan Uri Geller?

Pim Fortuyn has been shot dead. He was the Dutch gay sociology lecturer who had moved into anti-immigration politics. Although this BBC News 24 story describes him as "far right" I had put him in quite a different (much superior) class to Le Pen. God knows what this will mean. There is no news yet as to who shot him or why - but the "hit" sounds professional to me. (UPDATE: apparently not. An animal activist has been arrested, and it appears that he acted alone.)

There will undoubtedly be a large sympathy vote for Fortuyn's party in the coming elections. On the other hand, when you lose a charismatic leader, you lose a lot. I never heard that his party had anyone else who came close in star-appeal. Thus I predict that after a while his party will fizzle out. However if his killer is a Muslim there will be a permanent anti-immigrant tilt to Dutch politics.

BTW, I don't know what I think about immigration. I know what I want: a world without border guards. Why should it matter when you're hiring a candidate for a job what colour his or her skin is, or what particular breed of little booklet called a "passport" he or she has tucked in a pocket. In a libertarian world without welfare to suck in freeloaders, immigration would be fine, no problem. In our world... well, what turned Fortuyn off immigration was democracy. He feared that if there were too many Muslim votes in Holland then they'd vote against homosexuals. This is a subset of the more general fear that in a society run by votes it really does not pay to have new people come in who might vote in ways you don't like and can't affect. Is Jim Bennett's "Democracy, immigration, multiculturalism: pick any two" in the Dictionary of Quotations yet, and if not, why not?

One thing I do know: things go better if you are allowed to speak freely. Decisions are saner. Passions are calmer. Peaceful people do not get their heads blown apart. Rest in peace, Mr Fortuyn.

Ground your heels in any good faces recently?

Of the suffering poor, I mean. We capitalist running dogs just love doing that.

Last Sunday I finished up a post with the words, "Most of all we need the return of the crap job." In writing that I had naughtily hoped for some outraged e-mails which I could then demolish. Not a peep, though. Either my readers are the aforesaid unrepentant running dogs who just plain get a kick out of exploiting people, or else you, like me, have long realised that there is nothing humane about a welfare system that condemns people to a violent childhood, a parasitical and sordid adulthood and an old age wracked by fear, frequently of your own children and grandchildren.

It doesn't have to be that way. There's an age old solution: crap jobs, McJobs, menial labour. Whenever I say a word in praise of such work (and may I stress I have done my fair share) someone always says, ho, and how would you like to do fifty years as a toilet cleaner, or a road sweeper? My answer is that I'd like it better than welfare. A roadsweeper on his deathbed can look back on a decent, respectable life doing honest and useful work. Most people until only a few generations ago did exactly that. Who at the end of a life on welfare can look back with satisfaction? Furthermore a McJob provides for many the first step into much more exciting work. One reason our social mobility is so low nowadays, lower than in ages of open and explicit snobbery, is that there is no way for a young man or woman without formal qualifications to prove themselves. A fine result for a hundred years of socialist effort, I must say.

Of course, I am not the first to observe this. Here's a chunk from one of Brian Micklethwait's Libertarian Alliance Pamphlets, Economic Notes No. 40: Against Charity: Charity, Favours, Trade & the Welfare State. The first part is all about the pressures tending to make charities wasteful. Many good points, plus one or two I could argue with, but the wastefulness of charities is not what I'm talking about here. Keep reading. In the second half you get to this:

In Praise of Casual Labour
"But suppose that by a "job" you mean something like: Hey, kid, there's a fiver for you if you deliver this letter, now, to my mate twenty minutes walk from here, and if you bring back what he gives you that I've just asked him for on my portable. And there's another fiver if you are back here for more in twenty minutes, i.e. kid, if you run. GO!!!" That's the sort of risk a person might be willing to take on a dubious looking teenager he's never seen before, because if it goes wrong it's no big disaster, but if he finds himself a useful servant then it's a big plus. Once you see work as something that is continuously negotiated, continuously done in small gobs, and continuously paid for - once you see it, in other words - and to use a disastrously misleading and impoverishing word - as "casual" - then you are in the proper frame of mind to start getting it and to start doing it. One of the saddest aspects of the Struggle for the Rights of the Working Man in recent decades is that "casual" work has been rubbished. Instead, proletarians have been encouraged to stand around announcing that they have a right to work - to a "job", that is - to which the inevitable response from the fiver-flaunting classes has been to say that they have a right to ignore these useless parasites.

"Now your average bearded Oxfam helper might well say at this point that "people ought not to have to live like that". But the best way for people to get themselves real jobs complete with Volvos and suits is in the meantime for there to be an abundance of the kind of jobs I have just described. How else can the lowest of the lower classes prove their worth to their fellow men. How else can they prove their ability to keep their promises, repay favours, and generally behave like straight-up people. Making casual work illegal, by such devices as minimum wage laws and ludicrously restrictive safety regulations, is a complete disaster for the poor, because it destroys the first few rungs of the economic ladder. It guarantees that millions will be permanently left off that ladder, with nothing left but to seek out welfare, to beg for charity or to become thieves.

"Once you see a "job" as something you do now, in the next half an hour, you also realise that all of those allegedly useless and hopeless people who will supposedly die without the welfare state have almost all of them got something to offer. Hey, granny, watch the barrow while I go see Billy, I'll see you right, don't attack any robbers, just try to get a look at their faces." "Jason, you educationally subnormal wanker, get in here and sweep this floor, or no supper tonight." "Kylie, keep an eye on Jason, would you, and while you're about it, see if you can mend that sign." Jobs. Even the lowliest of us can usually manage something along these lines. Those formerly poor countries which have got rich in recent decades, and given everyone suits to wear and regular years-at-a-time jobs to do, have been the ones where this sort of "casual" economic activity has been allowed rather than forbidden. The disaster areas have been where anti-capitalistic despots have tried to abolish poverty by making illegal the jobs that poor people are actually able to get and to do."

If an opinion can't be shouted from the rooftops it will sure as hell leak out through the gutters.

Jim Bennett reflects on why Britain has not adopted Le Penism (Perfectly respectable neologism! How dare you suggest otherwise! To the pure, all things are pure.) He argues that in Europe a current of opinion including Euroscepticism, concern about immigration and lack of assimilation, fears about crime by minorities and so on has been excluded from debate. As a result frustrated voters turn to the far right.

I agree. The little aphorism up top was invented by me several years ago to express the same idea. Yet sometimes I worry that whatever protective amulet Britain is wearing might be losing its power. Some friends of mine were involved in Eurosceptic politics a few years ago. They met some great people, but also a worrying and incredibly persistent fringe of anti-semites and racists. Real nasties, not just unsophisticates who'd come a-cropper of the latest PC diktat. Trying to keep out the infiltrators was a task not unlike Signourey Weaver's task in Alien: no sooner had you zapped one than another one popped up someplace else.

I keep meaning

to tidy up my left hand column, which will involve taking away some of the weird quotes (and replacing them with other weird quotes). So as a sort of farewell to Caliban upon Setebos, here's the whole poem.

UPDATE: I just re-read the explanatory note at the end, provided by the Department of English at the University of Toronto. It's pretty good:

Their [Victorian Secularists'] favourite theory was that all religion was a projection by man of his own qualities. This is the theory which the text chosen as motto condemns, and which Caliban's musings illustrate. Throughout he looks at his own characteristics, and then ascribes them to his god, Setebos: "So he." What is conspicuous in the poem is that there is no glimpse of what to Browning is true theology: the theology of a God of Love. This comes to man (as to David in Saul) by revelation. The highest conception Caliban can achieve by natural reason is of the Quiet--an indifferent, absentee, Epicurean God. His Setebos is merely a God of arbitrary and jealous power.