Aristotle taught that man’s telos was to achieve
virtue. Just as the purpose of a musical
instrument is to be played and thereby produce music, so Man is to live
ethically. Part of that ethical living
is to make a commitment to the Polis, the city state, and to devote oneself to
public life. It is ethical to
participate in politics.
As Edmund Burke famously pointed out, for evil to triumph
good men simply need to do nothing. If
men of virtue do not participate in public life it will become dominated and
controlled by the corrupt, the careerist and even the criminal. In the West after generations of
participation, engagement in politics has been decreasing, leaving the field of
public life to the cranks and fanatics that our current university system seems
intent on churning out of its post-modern system. Indeed, it seems it is only those driven by vanity
as opposed to virtue that have the energy and zeal to enter public life.
Whether it is fanatics like Corbyn and
McDonnell who wish to change the country in a way no normal person could accept
or shallow careerists like David Cameron, there seems little room for the man
committed to public service as an Aristotlian virtue. There are two predominant forces in politics
today – the ideological leftist extremists and the careerists.
In the United States we have seen a peaceful revolution
against this corrupt (in the broadest sense of the word) system. Donald Trump was elected because there was
something rotten in the state of the Western democracy. A professional and managerial political class
committed to its own shibboleths of ideology, well out of step with the
consensus of normal people had become isolated in its apparently impregnable
position of power. Donald Trump was
elected to change all that – he said the unsayable in an environment of suffocating
political correctness. Paradoxically
this New York TV celebrity gave a voice to traditionalist conservatives and Christians
deeply troubled by the course the political class had set their nation upon.
It is no cliché to draw a parallel with Brexit. That other Anglo-Saxon nation, the old
country, the United Kingdom went through its own peaceful revolution in the
Brexit vote. Delivering the largest
democratic mandate in history the British public voted decisively to leave the international
and globalist project that was set up to destroy the nation state and
democratic accountability - the European Union.
In England and Wales the vote was emphatically for leave, the figure
only being made more marginal by a capital city out of step culturally and
politically with England and Wales as a whole.
Scotland and Northern Ireland voted remain for specific reasons and
should not be considered as having voted against the United Kingdom itself.
Whereas in recent weeks we have seen a significant triumph
for the Trump administration, in the exoneration of the President from any
suspicion of being complicit with the Russian Government to win the election;
in the United Kingdom Brexit has been dealt what is perhaps a fatal blow. Theresa May will now work across the House of
Commons, where there is a majority committed to stopping Brexit.
This tells us much of the decline of British institutions after
forty years of being governed by an unelected and foreign bureaucracy. It is no wonder that when Parliament was
merely there to provide a fig leaf for two thirds of laws not democratically
processed, the quality of politician and the institution of Parliament itself
should have suffered a serious decline.
Our political class is not up to the job of Brexit because it has been
enervated and corrupted by the European Union and its corrosive effect on
representative democracy. Participation
in politics when ruled by Brussels is a charade and it has attracted those who
are happy to play a charade. Now their bluff
is called and they are terrified by the thought of political responsibility and
accountability. What might seem like an
opportunity to the public man of integrity is terrifying to the careerist
politician.
The corrupt careerists therefore did what comes easiest to
them, they lied that they would deliver Brexit while spending three years
plotting to subvert the democratic result of the referendum. This is of course disgraceful, wrong and
corrupt. How should one respond?
Despair or extremism are two very tempting responses. Our system appears to have shown itself
irredeemable. The public gave Parliament
a chance to restore its sovereignty and it preferred vassalage. Yet neither anger nor despair are responses
that one striving for virtue should countenance.
There is the so-called Benedict option If we look at the betrayal of Brexit not in
isolation but as symptomatic of the decline of Western politics, then rather
than despair should we not be liberated from placing any hope in temporal
victories? One
could then withdraw from the world not in despair, but in a spirit of devotion
and hope for the next world. It is
interesting to note that Aristotle himself placed the life of contemplation at
an even higher level of attainment in virtue than civic participation.
If we are thinking in typological terms, then an analogy might
be drawn between a Brussels-administered United Kingdom and First-Century
Judea, with its charade of independence, while de facto power was very much in
the hands of the Roman administration.
There was a political movement in Judea, the Zealots, who
sought for a political victory over Rome.
They were disappointed in a corrupt Jewish establishment that had come
to terms with Rome. These zealots were also
to be deeply disappointed in Christ, because they had hoped for a Messiah who
would overturn the oppressors and bring about a political Utopia in the form of
a new Davidic Zion, powerful and flourishing.
Yet as Christ taught, His kingdom is not of this world.
The temptation to zealotry in today’s circumstances would be
to slip into a revolutionary mindset, perhaps even looking at a violent
solution to the political corruption and lack of national sovereignty revealed
by the Brexit betrayal. Such an
extremist Brexiteer zealotry is not the answer.
Yet again just as despair and extremism are temptations that
should be resisted, abdication of responsibility is not an answer either. We are in the world at the moment that we
should be, with all the responsibilities that entail to act or not. We cannot entirely disengage from this
disappointing and fallen world, but neither can we place the totality of our
hope in it.
Christian civilization is under attack in subtle ways, for
the serpent is the subtlest creature in the garden. Whether it is the attack on gender as a
reality or national identity or marriage, forces have combined to destroy the
foundations of our culture. Brexit is
just one example of this attack on all that gives meaning, in that national
identity has to be dissolved if the post-modern agenda is to succeed.
The point is not to give in to despair, but to continue the
good fight, with an expectation of all being put right eschatologically. With the specific example of Brexit our nation
shook and destabilised the foundations of the new establishment’s new Tower of
Babel. It is right to continue shaking
it, without believing we can replace it with a perfect state ourselves. If we were to do that we fall into the very heresy
of chiliasm that lies behind the concept of the European Union. There
will never be an ultimate political solution to this world, but it is right to
strive against corruption and duplicity and attacks on our core values.
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