Conservative mayor praises Taliban

Peter Davies is like the Jim Naugle of Britain: He uses his mayor post as a bully pulpit for his strange right-wing ideas but never seems to hear the citizenry telling him what a laughingstock he is.

As mayor of Doncaster, England, he's already raised ridicule from his townsfolk by trying to imply that climate change is a hoax.

Now Peter Davies may be in over his head.

Davies is now praising the Taliban for what he sees as its defense of "family values."

He says that under the violent rule of this militia of religious extremists, Afghanistan enjoyed an "ordered system of family life."

He said that "they don't have hundreds of cases of children under threat of abuse from violent parents as we do in Doncaster."

Are we sure Davies is talking about the same Taliban that threw acid in the faces of little girls because they wanted to learn to read? Is Davies talking about the same Taliban that ripped antennas off cars and used them to flog people in the streets on the spur of the moment? Yes, it's the same Taliban.

Davies's so-called reasoning for his stance is that he was just underscoring what he considers to be the failure of the welfare system and "lax social policies."

It speaks volumes when conservatives let the mask slip like this. It was already clear that right-wingers in Western democracies have supported some of the same policies as the Taliban, but rarely do they make the mistake of praising the Taliban outright.