Sean Gabb
Note: We are determined to abide by the spirit as well as the letter of our legal status. Therefore, while I do not believe there is anything questionable about it, I will not publish this until after the polling stations have closed. SIG
The Libertarian Alliance takes no view of the present election. Our legal status forbids us from making any recommendations on how to vote; and all the main parties are at least deficient when judged by libertarian standards. For this reason, when explaining my decision on how to vote today, I am speaking wholly as a private individual, and not for the Libertarian Alliance. I will add that what I am about to say is almost certainly a view not shared by a majority of our other Officers. One of these is a member of UKIP. Another is a Liberal Democrat. Another will under no circumstances vote for anyone. Our former Director, Chris Tame, was a member of the Labour Party for a couple of years in the 1990s. I speak for myself alone, and you should take this as a subject for debate rather than a call to action.
I have read no newspapers, nor watched any television, since the election was called – indeed, I stopped reading newspapers several years ago. At the same time, news does drift in via the Internet, and I usually listen to the Radio 3 bulletin at 6:30am. Because I have not followed the campaign in detail, there is much that I do not know. But there may be much more that I can see without distraction.
I did intend to wait until election day, and look at the predictions for my own constituency. If my sitting Conservative Member of Parliament was obviously winning or losing, I would vote UKIP. If there was any doubt regarding the contest between Labour and Conservative, I would vote Conservative. My reasoning was that, while it was unlikely to win my constituency, UKIP had the closest policies to what I believe, and that helping to ensure a good overall vote for UKIP would make it clear that there was a large body of opinion hostile to the leftist police state.
I now must accept the possibility of a hung Parliament, in which the Conservatives will have trouble forming a majority Government. This means the possibility of a Labour Government with some kind of SNP support. If I look only at the differences between the Conservative and Labour Parties, I see little reason for making a choice. The Conservatives are marginally better on issues like press regulation and home schooling – or so it appears. But, overall and on the larger issues, there is more difference within the main parties than between them.
The big differences are the survival of England and of political accountability. If the Conservatives remain in government after today, they will allow another reasonably free election in 2020. If Labour forms a government, it will fix the voting system to keep itself in power till street protests are needed to remove it. This fixing will be dressed up as “electoral reform.” Moreover, if Labour must rely on Scottish support, the price will involve some Balkanising of England. In or out of the United Kingdom, Scotland cannot be an important entity in the British Isles so long as there is an England. Therefore, any reasonable Scottish nationalist will need to press for the dissolution of England into a group of devolved and squabbling territories. Only the Conservatives stand in the way of this.
My vote is unlikely to determine who wins the election in my constituency. But it may add to a Conservative victory in England in terms of votes if not of seats. This will give Mr Cameron the right to insist that he is the real winner today, and that he should be allowed to stay in government.
Judged by libertarian standards, the Conservatives in government have been half useless and half malevolent. I despise them and I hate them. But I fear Labour. For this reason, I see it as my duty to vote for the lesser of evils. Voting is more of a public duty than a private right, and I see it as my duty to vote for the people I hate to keep out the people I fear.
In closing, I will repeat that this should in no sense be regarded as a recommendation from the Libertarian Alliance. I am speaking not ex cathedra as Director of the Libertarian Alliance, but as a private individual. I also accept that I may be wrong.
Well just personally I feel pretty gutted. This was the first election in some time that I felt a sense of hope. Unfortunately, largely apparently due to Nicolaphobia, the sheeple voted for the Tory party. When even the director of the Libertarian Alliance will vote progressive-left-with-a-blue-rosette due to tribal terror of The Labours, it is just proof that there is no hope of a considered anti-progressive coalition or movement forming. Maybe, as the right argued during the “libertarian internet surge” before 2010, there are no real libertarians or liberals, just an anti-labour government tendency.
Right now, my slogan is “I give up”. I doubt I will live long enough to see the complete end of anything recognisable as Western Civilisation. I have no children. It seems pointless for me to worry about the future, when people with apparently something vested in it can’t see beyond minor worries about their tax bill.
To hell with it all. Enjoy five more years of Proggie Dave. Never have the people more got the government they deserve.
Ian,
The choice in this election has always been either Labour or Conservative. It may not have been a straight choice, as there was some chance of a hung Parliament, followed by a Labour or Conservative majority-led coalition.
I agree that the Conservatives are living filth. But forget things like taxes and immigration, etc, etc, etc. Though it won’t be libertarian, they won’t turn the country into a leftist total state. They will allow a freeish election next time round. Above all, they won’t let England be Balkanised. All the awful things they will do can be reversed without street violence. Under the Conservatives, the losing game continues. A Labour majority, or Labour kept in power by a set of deals with the SNP, would have ended the game.
At the worst, we have a little more time. At the best, the way has been cleared for a political realignment. With every year, as its braindead prole vote dies off, Labour becomes more the party of the ethnic minorities and the public sector workers. So long as Cameron dares to clear the Scotch members out of the the Commons, there won’t be another Labour Government in England, not even if the SNP eventually bombs in Scotland. With no more threat of Labour, people like me can dare to try something better than the Conservatives. It is possible that the next few years will see the restoration of two party politics – Establishment Tories v a UKIP that is a dirty mix of populist libertarianism and English nationalism.
If this happens, people will take a brighter view of what happened last night than you have.
Now, welcome back, and, if you aren’t too out of sorts with me, I’d be grateful if you were to e-mail me privately. I have a nagging issue that I’d like to call on your help to resolve.
I am very disappointed. The progressivism will continue at full place under a now vindicated Cameron, just with a bit of kicking benefits claimants thrown into the mix to make the usual suspects clap like seals. The mythology that Miliband or even Sturgeon are of the hard left, when they are far to the economic right of the Labour heyday is absurd.
But politically this is a tipping point of failure. The only useful purpose of UKIP was to split the Tories. But the Tory vote held firm and increased (the latter largely due probably to the fear of Edola) while UKIP seem to have just replaced the Liberals as the “neither of them” party; which was the reason the Sky engineer fitting my dad’s new box this morning gave for his UKIP vote (an opinion poll sample of one), but also what the vote shares seem to show. It appears, as was always suggested, that most Liberals were not liberals of any stripe, just “protest voters”. If UKIP is now the protest vote, this is useless. In other words, there is no significant change occurring in English politics. Even in Scotland, the SNP surge seems to be little more than a fashionable enthusiasm, like the rubik cube.
As I said, Western Civilisation will probably outlast me. Screw the future generations. Their parents are beyond salvation.
I suggest you wait and see what happens over the weekend. I have never been noted for my optimism, but I suspect this result is nowhere near so bad as you currently think.
Unless Charles I and his zombie army are going to rise from the sod and beat the Parliament this time, I see little cause for hope.
I also accept that I may be wrong.
This may explain why you don’t have much success. If Lenin or Trotsky had had that attitude, they would not have been able to create a socialist paradise-on-earth. And you seem to believe in objective truth. Another great handicap in politics. Need I instance Mr T. Blair?
Btw, Ian: If hostility to Christianity in Britain is imported from the US, how do you explain the French and Russian revolutions? You’re right to some extent, but without taking the Jehovah’s Witnesses into account, one can’t explain either hatred of Christianity or hatred of the European races who have traditionally been Christian.
This has nothing to do with the matter. I’d be grateful for your silence on your favourite issue, especially when it has no relevance. I’ve shown my teeth once this week. I will show them again if pushed.
Nothing in my comment suggested any of that.
In a sense I do understand Ian B’s frustration. For intellectuals (such as we are here – let us admit the fact…it’s what we are; we “see through a glass, not darkly but clearly, and in an instant) it is an astonishingly weird and enraging thing that millions and millions of ordinary people cannot see what’s glaring at them in front of their noses.
But they can’t see it, they really really can’t: we can…and we wonder in our tragic frustration why they cannot. You see – “for f***’s sake! There are MILLIONS of the slow uncurious bastards! Cannot even _some of them_ see what we see?
Not even the ones in the _Front Row_ then? Not even just about ten million out of 75 million? (it doesn’t see much to ask, does it.)
If Ian is right in his Puritan Waves Hypothesis, then this time and in this wave the bastards got right an underplank of their main strategy. This was do _proactively-pre-diseducate_ what they call “The Masses”. The Masses failed them rather badly even in 1906 and subsequent liberal-winning elections, and didn’t give them a socialist administration till 1922, and even that failed. So The Masses have had to be “dissolved”. The process is almost complete, and Blair’s Nazis had then found they can replace dissolved masses (who can’t even be arsed to go out to vote) by other masses from elsewhere and by sacks of pre-filled-out “postal votes”.
If I ever become Sean’s War Secretary, I’ll terminate “postal voting”. Let alone “internet voting”. I feel that the Lord Protector will not intervene in my decision here. It will remain the one thing you have to go out of the house for, to a designated location, with some form of commercial ID that certifies you to be (or have been recently) a Taxpayer. You can even get food sent in by takeaways or the supermarkets, but you’ll have to _go out to vote_ .
There is only ever one problem: most people choose not to think and are therefore as thick as pigshit. This is nothing new Ian–it is a human constant, a given. Short of landing from outer space with an invincible army of robots and beating the shit out of every human being on the planet there is nothing to be done with that. Other than work with it. UKIP is now number three. The future will be no kinder to the Tories than to Labour. There are still possibilities.
The thing for me that this election proved is that, contrary to hopes (my hope at least) there is no political change underway in Britain. It turned out to be a common or garden LabCon competition with UKIP playing the Liberal role as “other party”. There is no “people’s army” nor thirst for an alternative to GramscoFabiaNaziPuritan whatever. No political or social enthusiasm. I don’t mind people being thick, but they could at least have the decency to be enthusiastic thick like SNP voters.
Instead we got five years of Mr Soapface and, in my view, the last chance to do something before the Tipping Point. The English deserve the obliteration they voted for.
I think the only element of humour is UKIP formally taking on the LibDem role by deciding to bang the Proportional Representation drum. If ever there were a sour grapes policy, it’s the “change the system in our favour” one.
“The English deserve the obliteration they voted for”.
Really?
What chance do we stand with self-hating crapolla like this emanating from spokesmen for “our cause”?
Other of your arguments make sense and I can understand your sense of disappointment—though I personally incline towards the view articulated by Sean—but this is utter garbage.
a) I’m not a spokesman for anyone but myself
b) I don’t hate myself. I just think the rest of my people are a lost cause.
Why people voted as they did is not easy to say. In my case however, and that of many friends, we chose to vote Tory because it seemed the least bad option in terms of the abolition of liberty. We may have been wrong in our belief, but I have no doubt that many others did the same. Still others voted UKIP for the same reason. Some may even have voted Liberal Democrat for that reason. We can probably say that no one with any common sense voted Labour in hope of a more liberal state, or perhaps SNP. But you have no good reason to believe that there is no dissatisfaction with the leftist police state.
I would imagine that the number of people, possibly including libertarians, who voted for liberty could all meet in one small saloon bar. Perhaps it has been naïve of me, but watching with increasingly bleary eyes the graphs of Ms Emily Maitland last night, I realised something I had not realised- or at least accepted- before. There is no political discourse, at least in our electoral politics.
The two main blocs had voted in their short term personal economic interests- which boiled down to whether or not they wanted to risk a tax rise or two. The Liberal voters were resoundingly revealed to be, as it has always been claimed, just a “neither” vote with no shared value beyond that and whose membership varies from election to election; with the Lib Dems having been a part of government (and thus not now either neither), the neithers had gone to UKIP, who ironically appeared to have gained a negligible number of their stereotypical supposed “angry old Tory” vote.
None of the issues we discuss mattered to anybody. There was no revolution on the right, or indeed anywhere; no shift of public opinion, no demand for change of any kind, whether our kind or the Brandian left wing type. There is no revolutionary potential in the proletariat; no consciousness to raise. Not even the vaguest of populisms. There is nothing to work with. The wipeout of the Orange vote in favour of the Purple vote in constituency after constituency was all we needed to know.
Should be “Emily Maitlis” of course.
If your pessimism was all Ian we would all still be crawling on our bellies before the Pharoahs.
Dissatisfaction is dissatisfaction–UKIP are not the new Liberals and what do you mean by tipping point? Most people have no regard for Liberty because they are comfortable and thus want to do as little as possible. Pain will be required to get them moving–and there will be pain.
The lesser of two evils won.
The upcoming financial apocalypse will still happen; it will just take longer to happen.
We’ve got maybe 4 or 5 years instead of the 2 or 3 years under Labour; and that’s got to be a cause for celebration.
ps I’m a Scottish civil servant – you should see my colleague’s faces! They’re gutted – lol.
I sympathise with Ian B, in that a fairly weak corporatist-authoritarian government has now been replaced with a somewhat stronger version of the same thing.
I tend to disagree with Sean that there is really much difference between Labour and the Tories. Both are corporatist parties that pursue a neo-conservative foreign policy, distrust free markets and have an illiberal domestic agenda; any group, providing it is small and unpopular enough, is liable to be thrown under the bus at any time to garner a good tabloid headline.
Perhaps the best that can be said for the Tories is that progress towards collectivist goals will be somewhat slower under their leadership.
Because they are political enemies, it is often tempting to think of Labour and Tories as political opposites. Of course the competition is real enough, but it arises because both parties want to enjoy the trappings of power rather than due to any great ideological differences.
In this regard, it is worth having a careful read through Hayek’s essay “Why I am not a Conservative” and Spencer’s “The New Toryism”. It also also well worth remembering Hayek’s comment in his “Road to Serfdom” that conservatism’s “power-adoring tendencies are often closer to socialism than to liberalism”.
Simon Jenkins, although hardly a liberal icon, touched on some of these points in an interesting essay in the Guardian earlier this year:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/29/where-real-tory-party-voters-left-with-thatcherism
But friends of liberty should not be too dismayed by this apparently frozen political landscape. Change will come, because the current corporatist system is not sustainable. Although Tim Morgan’s solutions may not necessarily satisfy the typical visitor to this website, the issues that he raises here:
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2015/04/19/49-politicians-voters-and-mutual-contempt/
and here:
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2015/05/04/50-everyone-a-loser/
are real ones. As they make themselves felt, it will not really make much difference which of the current parties is in power.
As corporatism fails, people will start to ask questions. It is encumbant on liberals to start thinking now about how they will answer them.
“the dissolution of England into a group of devolved and squabbling territories” Outstanding! I say that as an anarchist not as SNP.
Labour and SNP will bury their differences with ill-grace in the interests of a greater socialist econazi utopia, Tories will be buried by the collapsing economy. You read it here first.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3074168/Dave-s-12-month-honeymoon-s-chance-radical-blitz-welfare-schools-early-referendum-Europe.html
Well, at least I can say I didn’t vote for it.
Many of us didn’t vote for the Conservatives, as we may have done in the 1980s. We voted against a Labour-SNP killer blow. The drift into a total state has not been stopped, but will now continue at a slower pace than it otherwise would have, and will be more hesitant and opportunist. When the good is not currently on offer, you choose the lesser of evils. Saying it is still evil is beside the point. I’d rather be mugged than murdered. That isn’t to say I have any affection for the mugger. It is just an alternative answer to the same question you ask.
Turning to the Conservatives, the majority is small. The Fixed Term Parliaments Act, or whatever it is called, takes away the Prime Minister’s main weapon of control. Without this, DC will be cautious about what Bills he introduces. He and his friends are naturally lazy. They will want to get through the next five years with a minimum of fuss. Things could be worse.
Except that you did vote for the Conservatives Sean, because that is the solitary thing that the cross in the Con box on a ballot paper means. And at the next election you will do the same, and the next; each time there will be some reason why not voting Tory will be letting the unthinkable in. This time it was the SNP bogeyman as an excuse. Next time, maybe it will be some policy by Ms Cooper (or whoever the Labour leader is). And so on.
As I said above (in garbled form), there were many barbs from the Left against the libertarian internet “surge” near the end of the New Labour regime that all this “Libertarianism” was really just anti-labourism, and once the Tories won an election it would largely evaporate; and indeed most of it did.
There is no shame in voting, as around 37% of the voters did, against the slightly higher direct taxation that would result from a Labour government. You are a man with a family and a bank account to protect. But perhaps considering that, it might help libertarians (if there really are any who are not just anti-Labourites) to understand that winning for liberty is not about grand philosophies at all, but in accomodating the high time preference of the ordinary man and woman who have little appetite to risk the near future in the pursuit of a greater ideal, and our philosophy, campaigning and strategy must reflect that if we are to make any progress at all.
I think it quite likely that the Fixed Term Parliaments Act will be repealed. It seems unlikely that such a small majority can be sustained through to 2020 (due to deaths and lost by elections). Before the majority is gone entirely, won’t they find it quite attractive to revive the PM’s right to call an election at a time of his choosing? Particularly if the alternative is running a minority government for 2-3 years, that would likely be portrayed as weak, unstable, and held hostage by backbenchers and other smaller parties.
Every Tory MP likely to lose his seat would vote against repeal. And Labour is unlikely to want another election for years to come. I suspect the FTPA will be with us for some tome to come.
Bet you a fiver it gets repealed in the next five years.
If I were a betting man, I’d have laid money on the Tory victory I’d been predicting ever since 2010.
Me too. But had ZaNu won do you think it would have been different?. From the party of ID cards? Short of a UKIP victory snooping is on the agenda. And BlueRinse didn’t win because he is popular. He won because lots didn’t want the return of ZaNu with Uber-ZaNu backing them up.
Talk of 12 month “honeymoon” is foolish. Yes he can force thro shit claiming a “mandate” but so could whoever won. The evil that is democracy. But the economy is going to come apart. It might start here, might not. There is plenty to choose from. The US, Japan, the EU etc–the list of broke and counterfeiting porkers is a long one. The idea that it is all going to be plain sailing for the BlueLab gang down to Tory Teatime Tyranny is a naïve one and not worthy of your usual incisive powers of analysis Ian.
No, it wouldn’t be any better under Labour. But in political terms, the project at the moment should be to split the Right, as part of the process of ending the current progressive-dominated politics.
The right cannot be split so long as there is a credible threat from the Labour Party. We must deal with that before we can say goodbye to the Conservatives.
Not with people like you around it can’t. Am I being snippy? Why yes, yes I am.
The Left are not going to go anywhere soon Sean. If the “credible threat” from the Left has gone, we’ve already succeeded. It’s remodelling the non-right that matters now. Or did. As I intimated above, I think it’s actually now too late anyway. This was the Tipping Point.
We are now I think into the 4th century. The Empire is already falling; it is just not apparent to all, indeed many think things are on the up. The Imperial garrisons are still stationed here. Commerce still flows. Fine goods from the Mediterranean are still for sale in the marketplaces of Britannia and fine villas dot the landscape, with their mosaics bearing positive inscriptions. But it’s already over.
It will be a little while before Romulus Augustulus cowers in Ravenna, waiting to be quietly put away. But it is now inevitable, I think.
5th century. Bah.
Also should be “remodelling the non-left” not “non-right”. I’m all over the place today.
The 4th and 5th centuries seem to have been ages of economic recovery. The Western military collapse was largely accidental.
That’s my point Sean. The warehouse appeared to be filling up, but its floor was rotting away. I’m all metaphors today, by the way. Roman civilisation (in the West) was collapsing, but nobody saw it until far too late. We’re there now. This really is the twilight we’re living in, Sean. I’m now convinced.
I don’t think anyone deliberately plans a military collapse by the way. They’re always accidental.
First, let me join in the chorus of “welcome back” to Ian B.
As you might expect given my previous statements, I didn’t vote. As I have written elsewhere: “To vote for a political party is to underwrite both that party, and the system within which it exists. It will be taken as an expression of satisfaction with the party’s previous policies, however evil. And it enables the next political government, whether or not you voted for it and however badly it behaves, to claim that you gave it an endorsement of legitimacy.”
Moreover, for me it cuts no ice for anyone to say they only voted tory because the alternative would have been worse. They still voted for the tory party. And the tories won. So, every tory voter bears a share of the consequences of what Cameron and co have already done, and will do in the future.
If I had voted tory, I would have been giving my sanction to their snoopers’ charter, and to all the other evil policies they may choose to implement in the next few years. But by refraining from voting, I have withheld all approval of, and feel no moral responsibility for, any bad thing that Cameron or its minions have done or may do.
Let’s face it; today’s political system has failed. Any system that allows a political élite (or “sovereign”) moral privileges to rule over everyone else will eventually end in tears, no matter how many “bags on the side” you try to put on it. Parliament itself is no more than a bag on the side, a mediaeval attempt to limit monarchical power. Suffrage is just another bag on the side. The fact is, the system is out of date and unsustainable.
Ian is right when he says it’s twilight. But it’s twilight for our enemies, not for us! (Assuming we can avoid the fall-out, of course). Our job as libertarian “intellectuals,” as I see it, is to explore routes by which this failed system can be dismantled and replaced by something better, without destroying civilization in the process.
Some rather sadistic captor gives you the choice between blinding and amputation of your left leg. Does that mean, if you decide to lose the leg, you’ve consented to the pain? I think not.
As for the Tories, they probably won’t implement the Leveson censorship proposals. They probably won’t tax property values. Having abolished them in the first place, they probably won’t bring back identity cards. They seem to have stopped believing in anthropogenic climate change. They probably won’t grovel in earnest to Moslem and ethnic pressure groups. They probably see no value in making life any easier for the Guardian-reading classes.
Their obsession with banning porn is to be denounced, along with much else. But they won’t be as comprehensively awful as Labour would have been.
Indeed, my own MP strikes me as reasonably honest and competent. He even sends me letters with the occasional quote from von Mises. I’m too old to be taken in by this. But the did the British Council over for Mr Blake, and got the fast service extended to Deal (to the considerable benefit of property-owners), and I’m sure I can persuade him to join my campaign against pigeons. The Welshman he replaced in 2010 never answered any of my letters.
I think we could have done worse than we did last Thursday – speaking, that is, as an individual rather than the Director of the apolitical LA.
As I said, you’ll never stop supporting them Sean, because they’ll always be there offering the mere amputation to somebody else’s blinding. Or at least to convince you that the other guy will certainly poke your eyes out unless you let this guy saw off your leg.
I find this most frustrating largely because you are the man who identified these people as the Quisling Right and their role as being to stand in the way of any genuine stoppage of the Statist Left. Even Peter bloody Hitchens has recognised that the Tory Party has got to be destroyed. And destroyed first.
I don’t defend them. I just see them as a necessary evil. If things move as they seem set up to do between now and 2020, they will become an unnecessary evil.
You said that last time. You’ll say it next time as well.
I’m following this exchange by e-mail, and can’t work out what I said last time.
The same as you said this time, and will say next time. The opposite of what I said both times, and will say next time.
Well, I was probably right last time, and may be this time. I’m not exactly in the position of a woman crawling back to her abusive husband. Voting Tory last time offered limited but specific advantages. They seem broadly to have been delivered. So it may be now. Awful isn’t the same as very awful.
The Tories are pushing the same collectivist, corporatist, agenda just going it about it via a slightly different gamplan. Let’s not forget all the gun-banning was done by Tories. The claim the Tories are abandoning AGW – where does that come from other than wishful thinking?
You get evil if you choose the lesser of two evils and by voting you explicitly give your consent to what happens. Death by a thousand cuts vs body blows… which is truly worse?
The Tories are a bunch of evil, corporatist, sociopaths only in it for themselves and claiming that those other guys are somehow worse cuts no ice with me.
Tories, Labour, Lib Dem, SNP – any supposed differences are all for show, it’s as fake as WWE matches. Behind closed doors they’re all in the same club.
Significant changes all hinge upon UN, EU, and NATO treaties. For instance, the whole transport infrastructure of the UK is being developed around considerations of EU integration and not the UK, likewise the structure of the military forces.
I think the problem can be summed up in the title of this article, which propounds the myth that one party are evil, while the other is merely stupid, and therefore it is wiser to vote for a fool than a monster.
Sean,
If in that situation you said “leg, please,” I think that could reasonably be seen as consenting to the pain. If you said nothing, or uttered only an expletive, it would not. (You would also be putting on to your captor the onus of deciding which to do first…)
Leaving the morality of voting aside, I’m inclined to agree with you that this isn’t the worst of all possible results. In fact, the only less evil outcome I can think of would have been a parliament so finely hung that the only way out was Alex Rantwell’s suggestion of a tory/labour coalition – which would have discredited both parties at the same time, and quickly too.
The possibility you raise of telling the Scots MPs to go north is an interesting one, and could lead to some real change for the better in England. But will the tories really have the guts to do it? I doubt it.
Whether it’s an evil outcome remains to be seen by what happens subsequently. What might have happened is irrelevant in the real world.
Of course the Tories are the unionist party so, *apparently* paradoxically they will be “forced” to go along with the SNP to “save the Union.”
The bullshit is stinks to high heaven – why can’t people see it?
Well, I really do think it’s the Twilight now, Neil. I think you’re wrong to believe that because the State is in failure mode, it will fail. This is quite sustainable. The whole society will fall before the State does. Using my previous analogy, the Roman Imperial Court was in failure mode virtually from the moment of its creation, but existed (in the East) for over a thousand years of consistence disaster, bumbling along, until it was left with nothing to govern. They will ride this toboggan all the way down to the bottom of the mountain.
My view is partly based on my Puritan Hypothesis, and the idea that there are waves of it, as alluded to by David Davis above. Following this analysis, we should expect at some future point the wave to subside, as it has done twice in the past, and then is the moment of reaction to seize. But this time, the demographic challenge is present, and it is unlikely that the cultural substrate necessary for liberalism will still exist by then.
This is a pessimistic outlook, I admit. But I think we’ve run out of time already.
Your historical analogy is a bad one. The Byzantine Empire was a remarkably successful political structure. In a world turned upside down by global cooling and various attendant movements of germs and people, it kept most of its subject safe most of the time. You are probably unaware of its imperial expansion between the eighth and eleventh centuries.
Turning to the present, my feeling is that the current puritan wave peaked about a decade ago. Since then, its projectors have grown older and not been effectively replaced, and opposition is growing. I well remember the 1990s, when there was almost no analysis on our side of what was going on. Nowadays, our main argument is over terminology. Are these people Cultural Marxists, or Cultural Leftists, or Totalitarian Humanists, or Neo-Progressivists, or Puritans, or GramsciFabiaNazis, or whatever. Call them what you will, we are mostly agreed on what they are.
You are clearly depressed at the moment, for which you have my fullest sympathies. But try to see the world as it is. Most of the bad things we predicted around the beginning of the century still haven’t come true, and may not.
You can’t have it both ways Ian,. The Roman Empire–ie the state fell. Your analogy seems to be that is happening to us. Then you say that the state is not going to fall but we –the people?–are. It is a mixed and confusing metaphor.
You sound down in the dumps. Don’t be. If you only have the one life (as you –rightly or wrongly–believe) you need to make the most of it. Looking into average fucking chumps for something that isn’t there is not the way forward.
As Master Tohei used to say–drop by drop the cup is filled. ZaNU have had a bashing. If BlueRinse has a taser applied to his microballs and fixes the postal fraud and the boundaries that will pretty much see ZaNu off in England. The Stalinist shite-stuffed haggis gang know as the Scots National Socialist party will start making life up worse there from day one. And BlueBoy has control of their purse-strings. He is a bungler and the Tory “honeymoon” is a DM fantasy anyway.
Buck up.
My point, or one point anyway, was that in both halves of the Roman Empire, the State fell last. In the Western Empire, Romulus Augustulus was removed from power as a virtual formality as he had no significant territory left to govern. A thousand years later in the Eastern Empire, the last Byzantine Emperor, Constantine XI, was effectively the last man standing in Byzantium; indeed he is reputed to have shouted “Byzantium has fallen, yet I still live!”, cast of his purple robe of Imperial office (a symbolic flourish of acknowledgement that his office of state had nothing left to govern), then led a last hopeless charge against the Muslims- his body was never found.
In each case, the civilisation fell before its State did.
Indeed come to that, there was still the argument that the Roman State still existed in the Middle Ages, which was why Charlemagne got to be crowned Emperor Of The Romans. There were no actual Romans in existence by that point, but the supposed Roman State was still considered to be viable enough to furnish a title.
Speaking as pedant, the Roman State did not end in 476. The Emperor exercised powers delegated by the Senate. The Senate continued sitting in Rome under the Gothic Kings, and was treated with much formal consideration.
That only reinforces my point.
Speaking as a pedant, I’d say there’s a dangling participle in that first sentence. The fact you mention is interesting, though. I didn’t know the Senate continued to sit after the fall of Rome.
[…] B made a comment below yesterday’s post about the election which made me laugh: “I don’t mind people being […]
[…] The Evil Party or the Stupid Party? A Topic for Debate, not a Recommendation. […]
The general assessment of the May 2015 UK Parliamentary election was one of surprising victory for the Conservative Party lead by David Cameron. It appears the decisive cause of this unforeseen victory was the last minute changes of voters who went Conservative out of fear for the Labour Party. In general it was thought a Labour Party led ministry was of disastrous evil for the UK. On the other hand, the slim margin of victory for the Conservative Party is thought to derive from its status in the minds of such voters as the lesser of two evils. Unlike in the UK, the more openly leftist of our two major parties is hard pressed to bring about the wholesale subversive changes the UK faced under a Labour government headed by Ed Milliband. The question now is what will the Conservative Party accomplish with this slight majority? Undoubtedly they will idiotically put tremendous amounts of political capital in relatively worthless economic measures such as more austerity, even more cuts in welfare, more cuts in defense, more cuts in the foreign services, etc. But the reality is Brexit, Scotland, Immigration, the looming power of a European Super State, and an expanding fifth element of foreign especially Moslem nationalities will be the prime issues the next ministry will have to deal. Cameron has his work cut out for him.
The Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland faces dissolution, with a Scottish National Party being everything but Scottish and Nationalistic, whilst England faces imminent and long planned provincialisation into regions, and all combined with the whole Island swamped into a super Eurostate Continental system. Considering this present state of affairs is one which historically generations of British fought for centuries to stop from occurring, its apparent imminent threat out of the blue is stark reminder of the stakes facing the British people.
As a result of the election and the bare majority of the Conservative party, The SNP will continue to agitate for Scottish exit, may even demand another referendum, will institute blatantly communist measures in local government, will demand more devolutionary powers and ultimately threaten take over of various resources now under control of the central government. Whilst the rest of the country is adamant about ending immigration as we know it, the SNP is actually demanding more immigrants, especially to Scotland. Indeed, they are threatening to negotiate separately with the EU to import their new helot labour force. Indeed, while the rest of the UK wants British Exit from the EU, or Brexit, the SNP is demanding closer ties to EU. Additionally, unlike the Conservative Party, the SNP wants more cutbacks in military spending and flirts with abolishing all nuclear weapons, and the Royal Navy’s submarine fleet from off its bases in Scotland. The threat to the UK and especially England is grave, and the center of gravity of the threat seems to emanate from the SNP.
Indeed, if it wasn’t so serious, it would be laughable considering how the most ancient policies of long dead generations are being proved correct. As first Ireland going anti-British and joining a mostly Catholic European Superstate, now Scotland is threatening to reestablish a modern version of the “Auld Alliance” with the EU. To top it off, the division of England into provinces, a dream initiated by Rome 2,000 years ago and rediscovered by Napoleon is openly discussed as the future of England by all factions of the political ruling class. Thus, Scotland is merely the next strategic front of an overall ongoing anti-British and especially anti-English movement. The goal of which is subjugation of the islands under tyranny and its reduction of the sovereign to one of mere representation of a corporate welfare marketing scheme.
Thus, it is almost guaranteed the SNP will continue to agitate for Scottish exit, or Scexit from the UK and Scottish subjugation or Scubjugate to the EU, may even demand another referendum on both issues, will institute blatantly neo-communist measures in local government and threaten take over of various resources and powers now under control of the central government. Given the rather retiring pink conservativeness of David Cameron, a coalition of the DUP, UUP, UKIP, and other right wing elements within the Conservative Union Party is the only group which has the wherewithal to face the SNP. As the SNP initiates crisis after crisis, the Right-Wing will in true Belfast fashion meet their call and escalate it further. Cameron will be forced to deal with their other demands whilst balancing political expediency to keep Scotland from causing a constitutional crisis, all the while negotiating with the EU!
Meanwhile, the same coalition of right wing groups and libertarians within the marginal Parliamentary majority of the Conservatives will ensure a brake is put on the Conservatives more idiotic policies especially regarding the authoritarianism demanded by Theresa May. Given the increasing resistance of the British people to further centralized security measures, the likelihood of May successfully putting in more authoritarian measures is lessened considerably. Her most likely route in doing so will be if it is limited in scope and focused wholly on alien population groups, especially the Moslem and Eastern European foreign communities.
For instance, the DUP and UUP will not tolerate further modernized centralized and tyrannical police measures with the lackluster success of the North Irish Police Service as an example. Ironically but not surprisingly they will be joined in this by Sein Fein, even if their MPs aren’t present, given the fact they have received the brunt of much of past “security” measures. Against this domestic backdrop of argument over future national security measures, simultaneously, UKIP will join this right wing coalition in the Conservative governing majority in pressuring Cameron on a quick Brexit. Although, considering the ongoing implosion of the British diplomatic corps, it is likely Brexit has been decided at the highest levels, Cameron still must manage the exit and such management will deal with attacks on his rear from the right within his own party who will demand a speedy exit.
Once again, how this EU crisis turns out depends on Scotland. The decision of the EU crisis then rests on what happens with the SNP. Salmond is once again threatening another referendum is needed. His similarly fish like named successor, Nichola Sturgeon is threatening to remain in the EU and laughably demanding to import vast numbers of foreign coolie labor to compete against her Scottish fellow subjects despite her calls for a new faux Scottish nationalism. Thus, there looks to be a likely constitutional crisis coming from the SNP section on the issue of Brexit and immigration as much as there will be on more devolution of powers. So while Cameron deals with global actors having freak out sessions about the imploding international order, negotiating with Continental European powers to exit EU whilst they desire to see the UK destroyed, establishing security systems to deal with the vast foreign element in the islands, and all doing so while UKIP and the right wing and libertarian elements are putting demands, he must also contend with the SNP doing everything to cause a constitutional crisis.
Overall, with this surprising but marginal victory against a backdrop of the implosion of the post-Empire new British Establishment, the bland Cameron cabinet ministry will continue going forward as a caretaker for a decaying post-1964 ruling class. The old club men who ran an Empire and decided that without one wouldn’t it be grand to turn the UK into a mini-Empire, are now all practically dead. They have few successors, May perhaps being the closest in approaching their level of expertise. Rather, replacing them is a slightly less old swinging 60’s weirdo set which runs the Media and aspects of government. This pinko group of perverts don’t have the wherewithal to establish security measures to run the mini-Empire of squabbling nationalities imported onto the Island, and certainly don’t have the will to kick out the lot of colored foreign colonists should it come to it. With such a slight margin of control in Parliament by the Conservative Party, Theresa May has her work cut out for her as she attempts to set up some sort of institutionalization of an authoritarian deep state. Still, with this new government perhaps another few years have been granted to organize and get done what is required to save the Union and make up for the vast mistakes done in the last fifty years, on the top of which is exiting the EU and ending the current immigration regime. Good luck to Cameron. Poor Cameron, he thought being a power broker would be fun all those years ago whilst drinking wine in Notting Hill
Reginald DeChantillon
By the way, today from Mr David Cameron, supposedly the leader of the “Not Evil, Just Stupid Party”-
It is a small consolation, but a small consolation nonetheless, to be able to say, “well at least I didn’t vote for him”.
I voted for them because they were the lesser of evils, not because they were other than living filth. Better to live under Khrushchev than Stalin, but that’s not to deny that Khrushchev was murdering scum.
It remains to be seen just how evil they are… how evil is evil enough? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32714802
Looks like Theresa May will be full steam ahead.
In terms of advancing collectivism and state power, the Tories always get away with more because of the scrutiny of the commie tendencies of Labour. It’s the Tories that do all the gun banning.
A vote for the Tories is a vote for evil and that’s what matters not whether the other lot may turn out to be by some (what would appear to me to be entirely arbitrary) definition worse.
…and let’s not forget, Parliament will continue to pass into law the edicts of sundry international, supra-national bodies and treaties. This will happen irrespective of the composition of Parliament and the overwhelming majority of which is thoroughly evil and inimical to individual liberty.
But they won’t, interestingly enough, even listen to verdicts of the European Court of Human Rights. Did any of you read that tory document that – I think I have his name right – Roger Sutherland linked to on the earlier thread? Pure evil. What they want is for the arbiter of human rights claims against the state to be – the state itself!
Neil, as a matter of practical fact I doubt the ECHR rulings would be much different from any British court rulings regards destruction of individual liberty – they’re all singing from the same hymn sheet on the subjugation of the individual to the collective.
Sean, I’m sorry, but you can’t wriggle out. You voted for Khrushchev, when you had an option to do otherwise.
What was my option? How, supposing my vote was decisive between a greater and a lesser evil, should I have exercised it?
By saying, “A plague on both your houses. I want something better.”