Kathryn, Mr. Blair’s speech is an elegant reflection of his own religious faith, and that’s fine, of course. Each to his own. This passage, however, is, well, a little odd:

Today, religion is under attack from without and from within. From within, it is corroded by extremists who use their faith as a means of excluding the other. I am what I am in opposition to you. If you do not believe as I believe, you are a lesser human being. From without, religious faith is assailed by an increasingly aggressive secularism, which derides faith as contrary to reason and defines faith by conflict. Thus do the extreme believers and the aggressive non-believers come together in unholy alliance.

“From without, religious faith is assailed by an increasingly aggressive secularism.” Oh boy. It is true that a few secularists (Dawkins and his ilk) have been a touch more vocal than in the recent past, and in ways not always to my taste. Again, each to his own. It is also true that we have seen too many examples of separation-of-church-and-state prudery in the U.S. (not to speak of the grotesque spectacle of those asinine civil servants who didn’t want Blair to conclude a speech with “God bless the British people”) and, adapted for local conditions, elsewhere, something that ought to appal anyone with even a basic understanding of history or, for that matter, the ways in which a society knits together.

Nevertheless, the picture Blair paints of faith under siege is, to put it at its kindest, a wild exaggeration. Sadly, it’s all too typical of the mindset of a man always deeply uncomfortable with the rough and tumble of dissent and debate. This, after all, was the man who, in a stunning combination of authoritarianism, PC, and cowardice did so much (primarily in the interests of appeasing Muslim extremists) to try to stifle any criticism of religion that believers might find “offensive.”

Mind you, when it comes to what is or is not, to repeat that ridiculous word, “offensive,” Blair’s equation of “aggressive non-believers” with, by implication, the loppers and choppers of the Islamic extreme, takes some beating.