Saturday 29 June 2019

Liberalism is thankfully dying

SHARE
Theresa May wastes British taxpayers'  money attending things like the G20 summit when she is no longer the British leader. Had she resigned in time Boris could have been there, which would have been useful. She took time to berate Vladimir Putin, but no-one cares what she says.
"Name dropping, I think Mr. Putin is probably the nastiest man I ever met and I have met him on about a dozen occasions."
Lord 'Chris' Patten said this on Jonathan Dimbleby's last 'Any Questions' programme on BBC Radio Four last night. Lord Blunket, who is blind, then said that his dog started barking when he met Vladimir Putin at a reception. He said he hoped he was not breaching a confidence when he said 
"I said to the Queen, 'I'm sorry, your majesty' to which she replied  'Dogs have interesting instincts, don't they, Mr Blunket?'"
The dog was right. Vladimir Putin is a very unpleasant man indeed, a street thug, the man who invaded Ukraine and provoked several proxy wars in defence of what he saw as Russian interests. He seems unrepentant about the attempt by his secret service to kill a former Russian spy on English soil in Salisbury, a very mysterious story.

He attacked liberalism in an interview with the Financial Times just before the summit. I quote from it.
"One can criticise Trump for his intention to build a wall between Mexico and the US. It could be going too far. Yes, maybe so. I am not arguing about this point. But he had to do something about the huge inflow of migrants and narcotics. Nobody is doing anything. They say this is bad and that is bad as well. Tell me, what is good then? What should be done? Nobody has proposed
anything. I do not mean that a wall must be built or tariffs raised by 5 per cent annually in the economic relations with Mexico. This is not what I am saying, yet something must be done. He is at least looking for a solution.

"What am I driving at? Those who are concerned about this, ordinary Americans, they look at this and say, Good for him, at least he is doing something, suggesting ideas and looking for a solution. As for the liberal idea, its proponents are not doing anything. They say that all is well, that everything is as it should be. But is it? They are sitting in their cosy offices, while those who are facing the problem every day in Texas or Florida are not happy, they will soon have problems of their own. Does anyone think about them?

"The same is happening in Europe. I discussed this with many of my colleagues, but nobody has the answer. The say they cannot pursue a hardline policy for various reasons. Why exactly? Just because. We have the law, they say. Well, then change the law! We have quite a few problems of our own in this sphere as well. We have open borders with the former Soviet republics, but their people at least speak Russian. Do you see what I mean? And besides, we in Russia have taken steps to streamline the situation in this sphere. We are now working in the countries from which the migrants come, teaching Russian at their schools, and we are also working with them here. We have toughened the legislation to show that migrants must respect the laws, customs and culture of the country. In other words, the situation is not simple in Russia either, but we have started working to improve it. Whereas the liberal idea presupposes that nothing needs to be done. The migrants can kill, plunder and rape with impunity because their rights as migrants must be protected. What rights are these?

"Every crime must have its punishment. So, the liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population."
Peter Franklin commented on this in Unherd 
"This is obvious rubbish. No western politician of any standing, no matter how liberal, argues that migrant rights involve allowing them to “kill, plunder and rape with impunity”."
But though, of course, no-one argues in favour of murder or rape, allowing a million young men mostly without papers to enter Europe has led to murders and rapes. The childish obfuscation of people like Peter Franklin, and so many other people, on the subject of migrants is the obvious rubbish. 

What Putin said, like it or not, is not. It made good sense.

This is what makes some people take Putin's self-interested side. They see that liberalism is not protecting them or the nations of Europe from outsiders.

Putin was not speaking candidly - he never is. He is a pathological liar. He was making a calculated attempt to win support in the Western democracies and he will have succeeded with some, probably many people. 

He is also painting himself as a soul-mate of Donald Trump and the populists. The Financial Times, which hates Brexit, made a link between Putin, Trump, populists and Brexit, though Brexit is a separate issue.

Make no mistake, Putin is not Salazar or Franco, not a Christian conservative, not a white nationalist whatever that is, not a Tsar or any of the other delusions right-wing people have about him. He is an old-fashioned Bolshevik who became oligarch in chief of a kleptocracy run by the former KGB. 

A Romanian friend said to me that he is the best leader Russia could have at the moment. We can't know that, and I wish she had a genuine Christian conservative in charge, but none is available.

Putin is right about liberalism. Liberalism has outlived many of its reasons for existing and is dying. 

This is a good thing. It is time not for dictators or for Putins but for genuine conservatism (not the liberalism of Mr Macron or the social democracy of Mrs Merkel or Mrs May) to take over in the West (Russia is not ready). 

That does not mean having less freedom or democracy, but I hope much more. 

One of the surprises of history, for many middle class people but not for me, is that people who are least well-off are usually most conservative. The most well-off and best educated in the West are increasingly the least conservative. 

Eastern Europe is different but liberalism is coming here too via people educated at Western universities.

Chris Patten once admitted to being a liberal internationalist, asking
'What else is there to be?'
That sounds reasonable, until you learn that he said in 2011 that the EU, by accepting Turkey as a member,
'would show that we could embrace an Islamic democracy and build a strong bridge between Europe and Western Asia. That, in turn, would create a new European identity and narrative, a new reason for the EU to exist in this century, a way of rejecting the divisive politics of old.'
This is not the European ideal of the E.E.C.'s founders, but it was a position eagerly embraced by British liberal politicians of all parties, most notably David Cameron.

Lord Patten is not a left-winger, but a liberal conservative. He is a good man, unlike Mr Putin, and probably a good, though liberal, Catholic. He sticks up for the British Empire, which he said was as great as the Roman Empire, and he tries to stick up for free speech in Oxford University, of which he is Chancellor. 

He tried to do his best for England and, when he governed it, Hong Kong, but his sort of liberalism and Theresa May's much more authoritarian variety will come to an end. 

The music of the spheres ordains it.

32 comments:

  1. Tell me if you can argue with this:

    What is happening in the West? What is the reason for the Trump phenomenon, as you said, in the United States? What is happening in Europe as well? The ruling elites have broken away from the people. The obvious problem is the gap between the interests of the elites and the overwhelming majority of the people.

    Of course, we must always bear this in mind. One of the things we must do in Russia is never to forget that the purpose of the operation and existence of any government is to create a stable, normal, safe and predictable life for the people and to work towards a better future.

    There is also the so-called liberal idea, which has outlived its purpose. Our Western partners have admitted that some elements of the liberal idea, such as multiculturalism, are no longer tenable.

    When the migration problem came to a head, many people admitted that the policy of multiculturalism is not effective and that the interests of the core population should be considered. Although those who have run into difficulties because of political problems in their home countries need our assistance as well. That is great, but what about the interests of their own population when the number of migrants heading to Western Europe is not just a handful of people but thousands or hundreds of thousands?

    As for the liberal idea, its proponents are not doing anything. They say that all is well, that everything is as it should be. But is it? They are sitting in their cosy offices, while those who are facing the problem every day in Texas or Florida are not happy, they will soon have problems of their own. Does anyone think about them?

    The same is happening in Europe. I discussed this with many of my colleagues, but nobody has the answer. The say they cannot pursue a hard-line policy for various reasons. Why exactly? Just because. We have the law, they say. Well, then change the law!

    So, the liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population. Or take the traditional values. I am not trying to insult anyone, because we have been condemned for our alleged homophobia as it is. But we have no problems with LGBT persons. God forbid, let them live as they wish. But some things do appear excessive to us.

    They claim now that children can play five or six gender roles. I cannot even say exactly what genders these are, I have no notion. Let everyone be happy, we have no problem with that. But this must not be allowed to overshadow the culture, traditions and traditional family values of millions of people making up the core population.

    Vladimir Putin’s interview with The Financial Times

    June 27, 2019 22:00The Kremlin, Moscow
    http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60836

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I meant to copy that in the first place but then I lost it. No I cannot argue with a word of it. Nor can any reasonable man.

      Delete
  2. Forget Putin, take this:

    The point to grasp is that the ruling classes of the EU’s former imperial states have stopped trying to project their influence at home or abroad by mobilising nationalism. Instead, they do it through participation in the supranational empire of intergovernmental cooperation and by opposition to the alleged nationalism of others (particularly of Russia and of their own populations).

    The EU is a default empire of nations in denial
    Peter Ramsay, Professor of Law at the London School of Economics
    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2019/03/14/the-eu-is-a-default-empire-of-nations-in-denial/

    Although the end of the EU can be predicted with certainty, it could be years before it falls over. It is well-entrenched and holds all the cards. Look at Brexit, or what goes for. The entire British national establishment bar a tiny minority is in cahoots with the EU. The same can be said of almost every national government and bureaucracy in EU member states. Support for the project is bought. The nomenklatura resist reform, the gravy train is long, the bureaucracy in almost every member state is comprised of mostly supporters of the EU federalisation project. For years, dissenters have been weeded out, heretics are hounded out. There is only one hierarchy of political power and it will fight until the last, taking everything possible down with it. It’s human nature.

    The European Union is a liberal empire, and it is about to fall
    By Wolfgang Streeck, emeritus director of the Max Planck Institute
    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2019/03/06/long-read-the-european-union-is-a-liberal-empire-and-it-is-about-to-fall/


    Behind the constitutional crisis of the European Union lies the conjuncture of ‘authoritarian liberalism’,
    when politically authoritarian forms of governing emerge to protect the material order of economic liberalism. This constitutional conjuncture can be grasped by integrating into constitutional enquiry the material dynamic between democracy and capitalism, as recently theorised by Wolfgang Streeck. Authoritarian liberalism can then be explored across a much deeper and longer constitutional trajectory, from the interwar breakdown of liberal constitutionalism, to its post-war and post Maastricht reconstruction, in each case represented by a de-democratisation of the economy. From this perspective, the recent assaults on democracy in the Euro-crisis appear to be a continuation of, rather than divergence from, the normal path of integration. Where this will end remains to be seen. Although authoritarian liberalism is increasingly accompanied by authoritarian illiberal responses, there has not yet been any definitive rupture, with the possible exception of Brexit.

    Authoritarian Liberalism:
    The Conjuncture Behind the Crisis
    Michael A. Wilkinson
    http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/87542/1/Wilkinson_Authoritarian%20Liberalism_Author.pdf

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for finding two wonderful quotations and amazingly you found two conservative academic blohhers on the infuriatingly left-liberal LSE Blogs (I subscribed for a long time till my blood pressure rose too high.)
      The third extract one was unintelligible to me.

      Delete
    2. That's an abstract by the good law professor... Bit dry... This is better:

      The material conditions for this decade of multiple crises were set in place in the era of the Treaty of Maastricht and the geo-political reconfiguration of Europe that accompanied it. It marked a change in the material balance of power, re-unification inaugurating the path to a ‘German Europe’, and the end of any ‘really existing alternative’
      to liberal capitalism unleashing a neo-liberal ideological hegemony...

      I have tried to capture the constitutional crisis of the current period as
      representing a reprise of ‘authoritarian liberalism’, revealing the politically
      authoritarian face of economic liberalism. This phenomenon was identified by Hermann Heller as characteristic of the late Weimar regime before its collapse in 1933.

      In this conjunction, then as now, norms of democratic constitutionalism (especially representative democracy and
      legality) are bypassed in order to maintain economically liberal commitments to currency and price stability, austerity and fiscal discipline, competitiveness and the avoidance of moral hazard. But this inflection is not merely formal or impartial; it serves various class and – within the geo-political context of European integration- national interests.

      If the capitulation of Greece suggests authoritarian liberalism may survive, developments elsewhere, as rightwing Eurosceptic parties surge in popularity, suggests that the authoritarian liberal suppression of the democratic voice may, once again, tend not only to the victory
      of capitalism, but also to the resurgence of reactionary forms of authoritarian illiberalism.

      Whether any reprisal of the inter-war breakdown of liberal democracy
      will more closely resemble tragedy or farce remains to be seen.

      http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/87542/1/Wilkinson_Authoritarian%20Liberalism_Author.pdf

      Delete
  3. Putin "probably the nastiest man" Lord 'Chris' Patten (!) ever met?

    "a very unpleasant man indeed, a street thug and a murderer, the man who invaded Ukraine and provoked several proxy wars in defence of what he saw as Russian interests?"

    Nothing like Tony Blair and David Cameron then?

    Its lucky Blunketts dog was not around when HMQ entertained monsters like Ceausescu, Mugabe, Abdullah, Xi, etc. The beast would presumably have torn their throats out.

    What sickening virtue signaling!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think he was saying as he found - Blair and Cameron are nice enough people, for all the bloodshed for which they unintentionally are responsible.
      But Putin was acting like heads of state often acted until recently - Frederick the Great, Napoleon, William II, etc.

      Delete
  4. From the "These might be of interest" bar on the rhs of your blog:

    "The Gospel truth about Russia
    The shocking inability of the Western media and political elite to understand what is going on in Russia continues to astonish me.
    Lionel Barber – editor of the grandiose, Left-wing Financial Times – was, by his own account, amazed during an interview with Vladimir Putin when the Russian President told him: ‘We’re a society based on biblical values.’
    Mr Barber then quoted back at him Karl Marx’s dismissal of religion as the opium of the people, as if he expected Mr Putin to be a Marxist, and to be embarrassed or derailed by this. Of course he wasn’t.
    For all his grave faults, Putin’s Moscow glitters with the restored gold domes of dozens of churches, many full of worshippers.
    Why are so many Western people so slow to grasp that Putin’s Russia has totally cast off Communism, knowing in grim detail what it really means, and is more Christian and less Marxist than we are?"

    https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2019/06/peter-hitchens-conservative-values-they-are-vanishing-in-a-cloud-of-cannabis-smoke.html



    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Much of what he said was good to hear, such as this, hypocrite though he is.

      "Sometimes, I get the feeling that these liberal circles are beginning to use certain elements and problems of the Catholic Church as a tool for destroying the Church itself. This is what I consider to be incorrect and dangerous. All right, have we forgotten that all of us live in a world based on biblical values? Even atheists and everyone else live in this world. We do not have to think about this every day, attend church and pray, thereby showing that we are devout Christians or Muslims or Jews. However, deep inside, there must be some fundamental human rules and moral values. In this sense, traditional values are more stable and more important for millions of people than this liberal idea, which, in my opinion, is really ceasing to exist."

      Delete
    2. 'hypocrite though he is'

      Why?

      "Russia is an Orthodox Christian nation, and there have always been problems between Orthodox Christianity and the Catholic world. This is exactly why I will now say a few words about Catholics. Are there any problems there? Yes, there are, but they cannot be over-exaggerated and used for destroying the Roman Catholic Church itself. This is what cannot be done."

      VP
      https://pvewood.blogspot.com/2019/06/quotations_27.html#comment-form

      Delete
    3. "Much of what he said was good to hear, such as this, hypocrite though he is."

      Oh Paul, we are all hypocrites, the only difference between us being that some of us admit to it.

      Delete
    4. Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat, — Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère! —

      Delete
    5. I like Peter Hitchens a lot and agree with him often.
      "Why are so many Western people so slow to grasp that Putin’s Russia has totally cast off Communism, knowing in grim detail what it really means, and is more Christian and less Marxist than we are?"

      They are less Marxist by a long way than the UK but Putin thinks the end of the USSR a catastrophe, admires Stalin if only as a war leader, and if the stories about his corruption are true - not to mentions the wars he has needlessly began - he very far from being a good Christian.

      Young Russians I spoke to the last time I was there, about 5 years ago, love Stolypin and want a constitutional monarchy. I completely agree with them.

      It's very telling that the only time I heard Pope Francis condemn single sex marriage was when standing next to the Russian Patriarch at a meeting organised by Putin.

      Delete
    6. 'Putin thinks the end of the USSR a catastrophe'

      Because it was... for millions of people... not for him personally... He did rather well, don't you think?

      From the same FT interview:

      As for the tragedy related to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, this is something obvious. I meant, first of all, the humanitarian aspect of it. It appears that 25 million ethnic Russians were living abroad when they learned from the television and radio that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. Nobody asked their opinion. The decision was simply made.

      You know, these are issues of democracy. Was there an opinion poll, a referendum? Most (over 70 percent) of the citizens of the USSR spoke in favour of retaining it. Then the decision was made to dissolve the USSR, but nobody asked the people, and 25 million ethnic Russians found themselves living outside the Russian Federation. Listen, is this not a tragedy? A huge one! And family relations? Jobs? Travel? It was nothing but a disaster.

      I was surprised to see the later comments on what I said, in particular, in the Western media. They should try to live through seeing their father, brother or any other close relative finding themselves living in a different country, where a whole new life has started. I assure you.

      One of the reasons, the internal reason for the Soviet Union’s collapse was that life was difficult for the people, whose take-home wages were very small. The shops were empty, and the people lost the intrinsic desire to preserve the state.

      They thought that it could not get worse no matter what happened. It turned out that life became worse for very many people, especially at the beginning of the 1990s when the social protection and healthcare systems collapsed and industry was crumbling. It could be ineffective, but at least people had jobs. After the collapse, they lost them.

      http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60836

      Delete
    7. They are less Marxist by a long way than the UK but Putin thinks the end of the USSR a catastrophe

      It was a catastrophe. As long as the USSR existed there was a balance. The world reined fairly sane. Without the USSR to balance things the United States has become a totally insane incredibly dangerous rogue state. It is better to have multiple great powers or multiple superpowers. One single dominant power is always dangerous.

      Isn't that why Britain opposed Louis XIV and Napoleon?

      But I don't think Putin necessarily wanted the USSR to remain communist. I think his preferred outcome would have been the end of communism but with the USSR remaining intact. That would have been the best outcome for the whole world.

      admires Stalin if only as a war leader

      Well he was a successful war leader. Much more successful than Churchill. Without Stalin it's likely that Hitler would have conquered the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany might have controlled an empire stretching from France all the way to the Pacific.

      Young Russians I spoke to the last time I was there, about 5 years ago, love Stolypin and want a constitutional monarchy. I completely agree with them.

      Constitutional monarchy has a dismal track record. I'd love to see a Tsarist restoration, but not as a constitutional monarchy.

      Delete
  5. It is time not for dictators or for Putins but for genuine conservatism

    Unfortunately old-fashioned conservativism is completely obsolete. It's completely obsolete because it was never anything but liberalism. All the principles of conservatives were actually liberal principles. Conservatives failed to conserve anything because they never actually believed in anything.

    The problem with conservatives is that they are moderate liberals. And you can't be a moderate liberal. That's like being moderately pregnant.

    I think that the whole edifice of liberal democracy is going to end up in the rubbish heap of history. It cannot lead to anything but decadence, atheism, hedonism and nihilism. But liberalism is not dying. It will have to be killed.

    To save civilisation we're going to need Putins rather than Chris Pattens or Boris Johnsons.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Certainly not Chris Pattens or Boris Johnson though both of them are more Tory than the vile left-wing woman who is spinning out her time enjoying herself in the only way she can. Those £990 trousers she bought tell you so much about her vanity and narcissism.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Off topic, this is well worth copying and pasting in your browser. https://order-order.com/2019/07/01/hunt-calls-ramping-no-deal-preparations-policy-last-year-called-deeply-damaging-regret-generations/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+guidofawkes+%28Guy+Fawkes%27+blog+of+parliamentary+plots%2C+rumours+and+conspiracy%29

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Is he really 'desperate to burnish his Brexit credentials' as Guido is saying, or just signaling his availability for a position in the next cabinet?

      Delete
  8. I wish more decent, moderate leaders would make a case for lower immigration, not just pig-eyed, sadistic crooks like Trump and Putin.

    Russians are a lot less Christian in everyday life than Romanians are. The giant churches are symbols of Russian state power.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That would be nice, but Trump does nothing about immigration except use it to fire up his base, though the Republicans in the Congress can be blamed to a large extent. Why on earth doesn't a Democrat break ranks and say that immigration must be curtailed and illegal immigrants kept out? But Trump's biggest achievement might be that some (few) Americans now dare discuss the issue.
      Please see my latest post.

      Why does America take such ridiculously large numbers of legal immigrants (Trump doesn't discuss this) and why is the Southern border effectively an open one?

      I don't think either men are sadists.

      Delete
    2. caroline, is this you?

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdZ9weP5i68

      Delete
  9. @David

    We are practical beings, each of us with limited functions and duties to perform. Each is bound to feel intensely the importance of his own duties and the significance of the situations that call these forth. But this feeling is in each of us a vital secret, for sympathy with which we vainly look to others. The others are too much absorbed in their own vital secrets to take an interest in ours. Hence the stupidity and injustice of our opinions, so far as they deal with the significance of alien lives. Hence the falsity of our judgments, so far as they presume to decide in an absolute way on the value of other persons' conditions or ideals.

    William James, On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings
    https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/jcertain.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I love and highly recommend his 'Varieties of Religious Experience' which I bought for 10p from a stall in Oxford.

      Delete
  10. "Russians are attracted to liberal values, but those are the values of an older liberalism: the values of a free press and the separation between politics and business, the value of the individual against the machinery of the state and a career open to talents. By identifying liberalism with feminism and gay and transsexual politics, Putin is effectively telling Russians: this is what liberalism has become, do you still want it?

    "....Putin has therefore placed all his hopes in a European change of heart. If the conservatives and reactionaries gaining ground in Europe would become the dominant force there, Russia and the European Union could join hands, without the need for any contrition in Moscow. Every time I visit Moscow I am treated to a series of detailed questions about whether I think populism is growing.

    "It would be 1989 in reverse. This time it would not be Russia but Europe to go through a traumatic conversion to foreign ideas. It is easy to see how the prospect would please someone who has never really accepted the collapse of the Soviet Union."
    Bruno Maçães in the Moscow Times

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Russia represents the values that progressive Westerners seek to overcome within their own countries. It is, quite literally for liberals, a nation of deplorables. Now that in the West one’s attitude toward LGBT rights has become the most important determinant of one’s moral standing, the refusal of Moscow and other cities to give official approval to gay pride parades, and the law passed by the Duma in 2013 that prohibits content depicting homosexuality as a normal practice have earned far more hatred and hostility for Russia among liberal and progressive circles than at any time in the past, including in the aftermath of Stalin’s purges. Russia, in moving away from state socialism towards social conservatism and traditional Christianity, has in effect reversed the course of history as imagined by liberal progressivism.

      Russophobia, Western Liberalism, and the Hysterical Side of History
      by Peter Paik
      http://theagonist.org/essays/2019/06/28/essays-piak.html

      Delete
  11. “It is time not for dictators or for Putins but for genuine conservatism (not the liberalism of Mr Macron or the social democracy of Mrs Merkel or Mrs May) to take over in the West (Russia is not ready).”

    But the UK is ready? This week a Scottish schoolboy was expelled for saying there are two genders. Adverts depicting women doing women’s stuff is banned in the UK. Such things would be inconceivable in Russia.

    “That does not mean having less freedom or democracy, but I hope much more.”

    Putin has actually taken practical measures to run George Soros out of town and has made it very difficult for him to operate in Russia. As has Orban in his country. This means more state authoritarianism and less freedom.

    Shutting down gender studies pseudoscience is using state power to stop the free flow of ideas. Ideas and concepts which are manifestly destructive. And I applaud him for that.

    Orban could have gone the other way and allowed more “freedom” . Ordinary Hungarians would be forced to engage with pro-refugee propagandists in debate, having to justify their own existence in their own country, while also having to deal with the transsexual agenda, white privilege agenda etc. Over time as more of their people became infected by the liberal mind virus their country would be riven by the same cultural trench warfare that is tearing Britain and the West apart.

    I know this doesn’t sit well with your boomercon ideal where more freedom always = better but that’s not the way the world works.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Preventing adverts showing women being women, while not thank God backed by force of law, is exactly the sort of restriction of free speech that I hate. Many horrible ideas take root in the West because people are frightened of arrest if they denounce them. Being forced to let your children be taught that homosexual acts are not sins (and therefore that Christianity is mistaken) is very authoritarian.

      Delete
    2. Being forced to let your children be taught that homosexual acts are not sins (and therefore that Christianity is mistaken) is very authoritarian.

      And it's happening under a Conservative Government.

      I don't think a country that is as far gone as Britain can be saved by nice respectable genuine conservatives who cling to liberal principles like freedom of speech. It also cannot be saved by opportunistic clowns like Boris Johnson.

      We are in a state of ideological total war. It is a war of extermination. The objective of the Social Justice Warriors (and of Woke Capital) is the complete elimination of all resistance. Those nice respectable genuine conservatives desperately clinging to liberal principles like freedom of speech are not going to beat those SJW fanatics and their corporate backers. It's going to require hard men. Men like Putin.

      In fact my problem with Putin is that he's not hard enough.

      Delete
  12. I don’t think they liberalism has outlived its purpose , but it seems true it is dying…from having undergone a pathological mutation.

    Most worrying to me in this pathology, is that it has affected not just a party and a political tradition but the whole body politic. Western capitalist democracy isn’t itself, it is diseased.

    However, an alternative should not be sought - especially if it means digging into the fancy dress of premodern, pre capitalist ideas.

    It needs a reset , a restoration of boundaries around permissiveness - a reset of respect for nation , people and sovereignty , family and faith .(the latter I say without irony as an agnostic atheist.)

    Maybe reset the clock to the moments before 1967 ,for Britain, and one might proceed more cautiously again towards societal change and progress. It should have limits; keeping in view that there can be no rights without duties.

    ReplyDelete