tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post1016713374451464159..comments2024-03-28T09:46:24.020+02:00Comments on A Political Refugee From The Global Village : The free society and its enemiesUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-39947484889122323952013-07-27T11:13:07.481+03:002013-07-27T11:13:07.481+03:00Very interesting Paul, especially the comments on ...Very interesting Paul, especially the comments on WWI which I admit to being ignorant of. This is priceless were it not farcical and worrisome. "Oxford undergraduate who spent a night in the cells for making a homophobic remark by telling a mounted policeman that his horse was gay." Seems like PC, political correctness is strangling free speech, causing us to live in some kind of nameless fear of offending people. Where are moderation and temperance?! Let them appear forthwith. England seems to be forgetting its identity. AlisonAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-2176563994407912782013-07-26T19:22:28.744+03:002013-07-26T19:22:28.744+03:00Do you suppose Popper had these kinds of people in...Do you suppose Popper had these kinds of people in mind when he wrote his books?Tancredhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16015531337154301560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-43388847571857741172013-07-26T19:09:40.402+03:002013-07-26T19:09:40.402+03:00Works for me as well. But surely Mr. Risdon doesn...Works for me as well. But surely Mr. Risdon doesn't believe that the state was less intrusive then than it is today.<br /><br />Virtually every nosy librarian and offended civil servant is also a policeman in addition to all of the bristling apparatus of the surveillance state.Tancredhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16015531337154301560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-86605884207795684502013-07-24T12:29:53.377+03:002013-07-24T12:29:53.377+03:00I agree completely with the Wood comment about WW1...I agree completely with the Wood comment about WW1 and gradual state encroachment. The AJP Taylor quotation is one to which I frequently refer.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-3149708839631454612013-07-22T04:48:21.342+03:002013-07-22T04:48:21.342+03:00That sounds good to me; With all due respect.That sounds good to me; With all due respect.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-61901284240078534282013-07-21T13:22:44.804+03:002013-07-21T13:22:44.804+03:00The past wasn't as tolerant as you're sugg...The past wasn't as tolerant as you're suggesting. The Lord Chancellor's office was busy censoring novels and plays, inconsistently and irrationally. Remember the trials of Ulysses and Lady Chatterley's Lover? The idiotic prosecution of Oz and International Times? Sexuality was persecuted in bizarre ways; the occasional periods of puritanism have never been representative of the broader English tradition, which is bawdy. And of course when pornographic magazines and videos were suppressed, inevitable corruption saturated the police force and sloshed through the corridors of power.<br /><br />This piece is, therefore, really just saying that the persecutions and un-freedoms you like have been replaced by ones you dislike. <br /><br />I'd prefer to see a genuinely free society.Peter Risdonhttp://www.peterrisdon.com/blog/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-38343822782383475142013-07-21T12:14:30.194+03:002013-07-21T12:14:30.194+03:00I think your remarks in the comments on WOI are mo...I think your remarks in the comments on WOI are more interesting, you should an article about that. Jacques de DraakAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-15391810077996712592013-07-20T16:03:48.727+03:002013-07-20T16:03:48.727+03:00Liked the article. Well reasoned.
I can attest to...Liked the article. Well reasoned.<br /><br />I can attest to the radicalization due to the first World War. My grandfather certainly experienced that but I suspect that veterans were susceptible to political agitation after the conflict. <br /><br />Certainly between 1890 and 1914 was a more fanatical period that the sybaritic drug toking draft dodging culture of the 1960's. Once the Vietnam War was over it lost its head of steam. I think what we have experienced subsequently is an unconscious creeping of ideas — a self-righteous aping that became institutionalized as the young acquired the positions of power from their parents. Mark Pattonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08844760963166963663noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-33159333294309384292013-07-20T15:56:29.482+03:002013-07-20T15:56:29.482+03:00UK is so much further down the Orwellian rat hole ...UK is so much further down the Orwellian rat hole than I thoughtAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-17020845264114588682013-07-20T15:44:51.230+03:002013-07-20T15:44:51.230+03:00This comment has been removed by the author.Mark Pattonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08844760963166963663noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-87423920792349993452013-07-20T15:44:38.471+03:002013-07-20T15:44:38.471+03:00This comment has been removed by the author.Mark Pattonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08844760963166963663noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-55977456164482062302013-07-20T14:43:53.707+03:002013-07-20T14:43:53.707+03:00I agree but many of those changes would have happe...I agree but many of those changes would have happened without a war. I think WW I destroyed civilisation - gave birth to Communism, Fascism and a huge state, destroyed traditional societies like Russia Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. But do I blame WWI for recent authoritarianism? Perhaps via Frankfurt School.Political Refugee from the Global Villagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03523068770529814044noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-67566561912891759542013-07-20T14:35:26.080+03:002013-07-20T14:35:26.080+03:00Theology, Psychiatry, Art, Music...Theology, Psychiatry, Art, Music...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-20105623411340978362013-07-20T14:35:05.844+03:002013-07-20T14:35:05.844+03:00That is part of it. I have recently been 'read...That is part of it. I have recently been 'reading', via Audible, John Keegan's 'The face of battle'. It is the first time I have just started at the beginning after listening once. <br /><br />I cannot do it justice in a few words, but everything was turned upside-down by Passendale, Verdun and the first day of the Somme. <br /><br />It was not what happened to the citizens on the home front that mattered, it was what happened to the citizens.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-33474488692536225012013-07-20T14:33:29.120+03:002013-07-20T14:33:29.120+03:00Is that the point you were making?Is that the point you were making?Political Refugee from the Global Villagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03523068770529814044noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-70128404053542846832013-07-20T14:17:58.141+03:002013-07-20T14:17:58.141+03:00A.J.P. Taylor said: Until August 1914 a sensible, ...A.J.P. Taylor said: Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. Unlike the countries of the European continent, the state did not require its citizens to perform military service. An Englishman could enlist, if he chose, in the regular army, the navy, or the territorials. He could also ignore, if he chose, the demands of national defence. Substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service. Otherwise, only those helped the state who wished to do so. The Englishman paid taxes on a modest scale: nearly £200 million in 1913-14, or rather less than 8 per cent. of the national income. The state intervened to prevent the citizen from eating adulterated food or contracting certain infectious diseases. It imposed safety rules in factories, and prevented women, and adult males in some industries, from working excessive hours. The state saw to it that children received education up to the age of 13. Since 1 January 1909, it provided a meagre pension for the needy over the age of 70. Since 1911, it helped to insure certain classes of workers against sickness and unemployment. This tendency towards more state action was increasing. Expenditure on the social services had roughly doubled since the Liberals took office in 1905. Still, broadly speaking, the state acted only to help those who could not help themselves. It left the adult citizen alone.<br /><br />All this was changed by the impact of the Great War. The mass of the people became, for the first time, active citizens. Their lives were shaped by orders from above; they were required to serve the state instead of pursuing exclusively their own affairs. Five million men entered the armed forces, many of them (though a minority) under compulsion. The Englishman's food was limited, and its quality changed, by government order. His freedom of movement was restricted; his conditions of work prescribed. Some industries were reduced or closed, others artificially fostered. The publication of news was fettered. Street lights were dimmed. The sacred freedom of drinking was tampered with: licensed hours were cut down, and the beer watered by order. The very time on the clocks was changed. From 1916 onwards, every Englishman got up an hour earlier in summer than he would otherwise have done, thanks to an act of parliament. The state established a hold over it citizens which, though relaxed in peacetime, was never to be removed and which the second World war was again to increase. The history of the English state and of the English people merged for the first time.Political Refugee from the Global Villagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03523068770529814044noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-49664133882744984242013-07-20T14:16:52.009+03:002013-07-20T14:16:52.009+03:00My view is that it was not the Sixties that change...My view is that it was not the Sixties that changed everything, but WW1. WillisAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com