tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post4789275227348830317..comments2024-03-29T09:09:46.823+02:00Comments on A Political Refugee From The Global Village : Liberalism is thankfully dyingUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-6501475421963996632022-12-27T12:13:50.226+02:002022-12-27T12:13:50.226+02:00I don’t think they liberalism has outlived its pur...I don’t think they liberalism has outlived its purpose , but it seems true it is dying…from having undergone a pathological mutation.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />However, an alternative should not be sought - especially if it means digging into the fancy dress of premodern, pre capitalist ideas.<br /><br />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.) <br /><br />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.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-69971520242058843802019-07-04T03:41:37.322+03:002019-07-04T03:41:37.322+03:00Being forced to let your children be taught that h...<em>Being forced to let your children be taught that homosexual acts are not sins (and therefore that Christianity is mistaken) is very authoritarian.</em><br /><br />And it's happening under a Conservative Government.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />In fact my problem with Putin is that he's not hard enough.dfordoomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02306293859869179118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-45908873464336014652019-07-03T09:36:26.502+03:002019-07-03T09:36:26.502+03:00@Toma
Thanks, I think :).@Toma<br />Thanks, I think :).David In Waleshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12442479878591522298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-63949198798376426812019-07-03T09:20:19.244+03:002019-07-03T09:20:19.244+03:00Preventing adverts showing women being women, whil...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.Political Refugee from the Global Villagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03523068770529814044noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-81193973260779067352019-07-03T01:17:38.328+03:002019-07-03T01:17:38.328+03:00“It is time not for dictators or for Putins but fo...“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).”<br /><br />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. <br /><br />“That does not mean having less freedom or democracy, but I hope much more.”<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. Rupert Meadowshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15886194902488499205noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-77974452109007509742019-07-02T20:56:34.448+03:002019-07-02T20:56:34.448+03:00Russia represents the values that progressive West...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. <br /><br />Russophobia, Western Liberalism, and the Hysterical Side of History<br />by Peter Paik<br />http://theagonist.org/essays/2019/06/28/essays-piak.html<br />Tomahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14355268309169462651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-30166519107052285862019-07-02T20:40:43.036+03:002019-07-02T20:40:43.036+03:00"Russians are attracted to liberal values, bu..."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?<br /><br />"....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.<br /><br />"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." <br />Bruno Maçães in the Moscow TimesPolitical Refugee from the Global Villagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03523068770529814044noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-29791776086479924422019-07-02T20:39:29.595+03:002019-07-02T20:39:29.595+03:00I love and highly recommend his 'Varieties of ...I love and highly recommend his 'Varieties of Religious Experience' which I bought for 10p from a stall in Oxford.Political Refugee from the Global Villagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03523068770529814044noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-29126186738665352412019-07-02T13:06:06.655+03:002019-07-02T13:06:06.655+03:00@David
We are practical beings, each of us with l...@David<br /><br />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.<br /><br />William James, On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings<br />https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/jcertain.htmlTomahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14355268309169462651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-85478059911256990982019-07-01T19:55:04.613+03:002019-07-01T19:55:04.613+03:00caroline, is this you?
https://www.youtube.com/wa...caroline, is this you?<br /><br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdZ9weP5i68Tomahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14355268309169462651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-54577051838265598302019-07-01T17:48:57.972+03:002019-07-01T17:48:57.972+03:00That would be nice, but Trump does nothing about i...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.<br />Please see my latest post. <br /><br />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? <br /><br />I don't think either men are sadists.Political Refugee from the Global Villagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03523068770529814044noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-24665587860345519152019-07-01T17:47:38.138+03:002019-07-01T17:47:38.138+03:00They are less Marxist by a long way than the UK bu...<em>They are less Marxist by a long way than the UK but Putin thinks the end of the USSR a catastrophe</em><br /><br />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.<br /><br />Isn't that why Britain opposed Louis XIV and Napoleon?<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><em>admires Stalin if only as a war leader</em><br /><br />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.<br /><br /><em>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.</em><br /><br />Constitutional monarchy has a dismal track record. I'd love to see a Tsarist restoration, but not as a constitutional monarchy.dfordoomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02306293859869179118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-11713456015386004072019-07-01T17:08:41.478+03:002019-07-01T17:08:41.478+03:00I wish more decent, moderate leaders would make a ...I wish more decent, moderate leaders would make a case for lower immigration, not just pig-eyed, sadistic crooks like Trump and Putin. <br /><br />Russians are a lot less Christian in everyday life than Romanians are. The giant churches are symbols of Russian state power. carolinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01134221554348743714noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-34208832477977992522019-07-01T16:16:28.175+03:002019-07-01T16:16:28.175+03:00Is he really 'desperate to burnish his Brexit ...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? Tomahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14355268309169462651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-23953896405063261452019-07-01T15:47:05.414+03:002019-07-01T15:47:05.414+03:00That's an abstract by the good law professor.....That's an abstract by the good law professor... Bit dry... This is better:<br /><br />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’ <br />to liberal capitalism unleashing a neo-liberal ideological hegemony...<br /><br /> I have tried to capture the constitutional crisis of the current period as<br />representing a reprise of ‘authoritarian liberalism’, revealing the politically<br />authoritarian face of economic liberalism. This phenomenon was identified by Hermann Heller as characteristic of the late Weimar regime before its collapse in 1933.<br /><br />In this conjunction, then as now, norms of democratic constitutionalism (especially representative democracy and<br />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. <br /><br />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<br />of capitalism, but also to the resurgence of reactionary forms of authoritarian illiberalism.<br /><br />Whether any reprisal of the inter-war breakdown of liberal democracy<br />will more closely resemble tragedy or farce remains to be seen. <br /><br />http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/87542/1/Wilkinson_Authoritarian%20Liberalism_Author.pdf<br />Tomahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14355268309169462651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-13064034404506487502019-07-01T15:20:18.460+03:002019-07-01T15:20:18.460+03:00Off topic, this is well worth copying and pasting ...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%29Political Refugee from the Global Villagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03523068770529814044noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-41293538499249180782019-07-01T14:36:22.727+03:002019-07-01T14:36:22.727+03:00'Putin thinks the end of the USSR a catastroph...'Putin thinks the end of the USSR a catastrophe'<br /><br />Because it was... for millions of people... not for him personally... He did rather well, don't you think? <br /><br />From the same FT interview:<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60836Tomahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14355268309169462651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-25604512057943208362019-07-01T13:52:57.928+03:002019-07-01T13:52:57.928+03:00I like Peter Hitchens a lot and agree with him oft...I like Peter Hitchens a lot and agree with him often.<br />"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?"<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.Political Refugee from the Global Villagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03523068770529814044noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-35270880495758751132019-07-01T13:42:28.578+03:002019-07-01T13:42:28.578+03:00Certainly not Chris Pattens or Boris Johnson thoug...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.Political Refugee from the Global Villagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03523068770529814044noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-25502942060880364892019-07-01T13:39:51.728+03:002019-07-01T13:39:51.728+03:00By conservatism I have in mind Signor Salvini.By conservatism I have in mind Signor Salvini.Political Refugee from the Global Villagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03523068770529814044noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-40451873852056107402019-07-01T13:39:07.633+03:002019-07-01T13:39:07.633+03:00Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat, — Hypo...Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat, — Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère! — Political Refugee from the Global Villagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03523068770529814044noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-35060258471574846612019-07-01T13:30:16.368+03:002019-07-01T13:30:16.368+03:00I think he was saying as he found - Blair and Came...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.<br />But Putin was acting like heads of state often acted until recently - Frederick the Great, Napoleon, William II, etc.Political Refugee from the Global Villagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03523068770529814044noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-46638226480843216272019-07-01T13:26:44.996+03:002019-07-01T13:26:44.996+03:00Thank you for finding two wonderful quotations and...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.)<br />The third extract one was unintelligible to me.Political Refugee from the Global Villagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03523068770529814044noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-44175725248078054322019-07-01T13:22:01.721+03:002019-07-01T13:22:01.721+03:00I meant to copy that in the first place but then I...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.Political Refugee from the Global Villagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03523068770529814044noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-9205631423684550302019-07-01T04:30:20.697+03:002019-07-01T04:30:20.697+03:00It is time not for dictators or for Putins but for...<em>It is time not for dictators or for Putins but for genuine conservatism </em><br /><br />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.<br /><br />The problem with conservatives is that they are moderate liberals. And you can't be a moderate liberal. That's like being moderately pregnant. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />To save civilisation we're going to need Putins rather than Chris Pattens or Boris Johnsons.dfordoomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02306293859869179118noreply@blogger.com