This is Peter Hitchens's Mail On Sunday column

If the Devil had his own bible, it would probably take the form of a computer game. It would be sly and witty, enjoyable and slick. It would start with small, almost funny misdeeds.

It would offer the player the joys of money, successful violence and easy, responsibility-free sex. There would be drugs which didn’t fry your brain or burn holes in your nose.

You would be made to feel brave, while not actually needing to be. None of your pleasures would be paid for in coin, pain or grief.

Everyone else in the game would be disposable and forgettable. And it would contain one big lie. You would come out at the end happy and unharmed, and wanting more.

As I understand it, this is roughly what happens in the new, much-praised Grand Theft Auto V, now being played by thousands of 14-year-old boys in bedrooms near you.

Officially it’s for those aged 18 and over, but nobody takes that seriously in modern, child-hating Britain. If you haven’t got it, you’re not cool.

The shops were ready for the rush with great stacks of it. Parents who refuse to buy it for their sons can expect ballistic rage, stamping and sulking. Perhaps it will turn out to be a human right.

Would anyone care to say that this doesn’t matter?

It’s a curious coincidence that Aaron Alexis, the man who massacred 12 people in Washington DC last week, liked to play such games for hours on end (Call Of Duty was apparently his favourite).

As usual, the liberal media are more interested in the fact that he had guns than in what was in his head. Oh, quite – lots of people do this and don’t go out and murder their school-fellows or workmates.

I strongly suspect that the wretched Alexis (who was plainly unhinged in other ways, with voices in his head) was yet another victim of supposedly harmless and ‘soft’ cannabis, now virtually legal in much of the USA. And plenty of British 14-year-olds are playing that game, too – often with the connivance of their parents.

But these increasingly frequent incidents seem to me to suggest that what you put into someone’s mind makes a difference to the way he behaves.

For every one who goes on a rampage shooting, there are thousands whose school work goes off the rails, thousands who treat girls like toys, thousands who consider callousness, dishonesty and bad manners as normal.

Many years ago in a French seaport town, I saw what I still think was a vision of evil. In a grubby cafe a boy of about 11 or 12 was ceaselessly feeding coins into one of the crude gaming machines then available. His eyes were blank, the skin of his face was dry and horribly pale. He looked as if he rarely ate. He was (this was, after all, France) smoking a cigarette. I swore at that moment that I would protect any child under my authority from this influence.

Around the same time I found myself in a famine-stricken country – Somalia – and saw for the first time the great round eyes and swollen stomachs of children dying of hunger. In many ways the worst thing was that I was not shocked or moved enough. I had seen this too many times on TV.

I have known ever since that seeing things on screens desensitises us. There is no doubt. If evil is familiar, it is easier to bear and easier to do. It is in our imaginations that we use our consciences and work out how our actions will affect ourselves and others. Conversation, storytelling and reading strengthen our imaginations.

These games kill our imaginations, which help us to be kind, and replace them with the liquid manure of pure selfishness, which helps us to be cruel.

The police deserved their drubbing

Are we allowed to criticise the police? My article on the subject last week was followed by squawks of outrage, to which I have replied at length on my blog.

Some claimed that I know nothing of the subject, when I have researched and written a substantial book about it. Some urged me to go out on patrol with officers (as if I haven’t done so here and abroad).

Many claimed – without a scrap of evidence – that my motives were low and greedy. Some sought to use emotional blackmail by mentioning the many officers who have died in the course of duty.

I grieve for these brave, much-missed men and women as much as anyone, and revere their memory. But their sacrifice doesn’t mean I cannot criticise the police or their methods.

Some journalists have died bravely too, but that does not put my trade above criticism. Far from it. And heaven forbid that it ever should be.

A welcome few of those who commented were thoughtful and reasonable. But to the others I say that they sound very like the BBC, another nationalised industry trading on a reputation gained many years ago and no longer entirely deserved.

Both these bodies need to remember that they serve the public, not the other way round.

Britain will continue to vanish behind the veil

Not many years ahead, the full Islamic face-veil, the niqab, will be as common here as the headscarf (the hijab) is now.

And quite a lot of non-Muslim women will probably have adopted the hijab too, as they will find it wise to do so in the areas in which they live.

This is going to happen. Nothing can stop it.

Islam is at home in this country and grows stronger every week.

When we replaced Christianity with ‘Equality and Diversity’ as our official belief, we abandoned the only argument we might have had against it.

I couldn't care less which of the three Left-wing parties is in government.

I doubt if Labour would ever have dared smash up the Armed Forces as the Coalition has done, but that’s the only difference I can see, and it’s happened now.

But my sense of fairness compels me to defend Ed Miliband against the babyish attacks now being made on him, mainly by media folk who bought shares in his Blairite brother David, and are still furious that their man was beaten in a fair fight.

Actually Ed’s shown real guts. He was the first party leader for years to refuse to toady to Rupert Murdoch’s papers.

He wants to get rid of the iniquitous political levy – something Margaret Thatcher tried and gave up because she was too scared. And whether he meant to or not, he stopped the Prime Minister taking us into a wholly idiotic war.

As far as I can work out from the feminist sisterhood, it’s not sexist to kill girls in the womb because they are girls. Beats me, but these people are a lot cleverer than poor old medieval me, stuck with my certainty that such killing is murder, and wrong.

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