The Final Stage of the Revolution - technocrats, occultists, elites and sexual rights.

 

 

Western Churches in their rather ineffectual and half-hearted attempt to resist the sexualisation of our society (sometimes turning into their full abject surrender to the agenda) are often accused of being obsessed by sex.  Of course the real problem for the churches is they are trying to survive and perhaps even rescue the sinners in an age dominated by sexualisation.  It is becoming all the more apparent that in the 1960s there was not so much a social and sexual revolution as a major project in social engineering directed by elites in power.

The CIA now acknowledges its own involvement in the cultural revolution of the 1960s with the MK Ultra project encouraging drug usage and in other manipulation with the promotion of abstract art against traditional forms, by supporting artists such as Jackson Pollock, or in promoting radical politics such as backing Frankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse.  In terms of drug usage, sexualisation of society and feminism it seems highly likely the CIA was generally involved. Ostensibly this was to present a Western society as “free” and avante garde in contrast to the Soviet Union’s oppressive restrictions and its Soviet realism in art.  While the early USSR had been extreme in its social progressivism after the Revolution, this changed during the Great Patriotic War.  Stalin, party to the original social liberalisation, recognised to win the War and defeat the Nazi threat he needed to give people access to their churches again, bring a halt to abortions and homosexuality and restore some level of traditional values again.  For pragmatic reasons, the Soviet Union had dispensed with the path to moral degeneracy; in a couple of decades time, the West fully embarked upon moral degeneracy during the 1960s.

There was perhaps more to it than merely a good propaganda opportunity to present the United States as the land of the free.  On both sides of the Atlantic, elite intellectuals shared certain progressive ideals often meant to be achieved by sinister methods.  Eliminating religious faith, sexual liberation, feminism, eugenics and an all-powerful State were the ideals of the Transatlantic elites.  Important families -  the Rockafellas, the Rothschilds, the Huxleys, the Darwins were part of an elite linked to progressivism.  The Fabian idea of a slow technocratic revolution promoted by the Webbs, H G Wells’ vision of a new world, Betrand Russell’s dry atheism, all were complementary to each other in an overarching elite and anti-Christian idea of progress.  Valiant opponents spoke out such as G K Chesterton, C S Lewis via his novels, even George Orwell from a non-traditional perspective.  What is sometimes overlooked is the fascination with the occult sitting alongside commitment to atheism and a religious scientism amongst these elites.  Secret societies were popular.  There was undoubtedly an elite agenda following in the tradition of the Eighteenth Century Enlightenment, secret societies and the French and American Revolutions.

It is important to understand that atomisation and Socialist Revolution go hand in hand.  The real technocratic Socialism of Wells, Mr and Mrs Webb or Russell, rather than the small s socialism of a Schumacher.  And we should not be too distracted by Socialism, an ideology that has probably served its purposes – one of which was to violently destroy Holy Rus and another to achieve a type of Benthamite panoptican.  An obsession with free love, population control and elite power were the Babel preoccupations of the Western elites at the beginning of the last Century.  A brave new one- world government would be achieved by the elites managing the talking monkeys (a degraded view of Man and rejection of Man as the imago dei).

Combined with this were to come structural economic changes that created an opportunity to implement the final revolution.  As capitalism moved from its Fordist stage which had been aided by social engineering to replace the extended family by the nuclear family, the capitalists in the late Twentieth Century now needed dislocated individuals, they needed women in the workplace and a certain cosmopolitan rootlessness as capitalism in the West became global, factories moved abroad, migrants were brought in as labour.   In the Post War era manufacturing’s time in the West was limited.  It was not only militant unions that destroyed industry.

Throughout the sixties Governments still obviously dominated by liberal elites passed laws that “liberated” or atomised us.  Instead of living a life in a context of traditional values and responsibilities we were encouraged by legal changes and engineered popular culture to think what was good was what was pleasurable and aided my passions and appetites.  Homosexuality and abortion were legalised.  Divorce was made easy.  In America elite liberals had pushed for the creation of an effective contraceptive to break people from the responsibilities of child bearing (an early transhumanist move). This further facilitated the shifting of women out of the family home and into the workplace, usually into lowly jobs trying to find money for childcare.  Racial hatred laws were introduced for what would be the inevitable future multiculturalism of an increasingly global capitalism based on shifting cheap labour from poorer countries into richer countries.  They would be a means to prevent discontent boiling over in the face of mass migration.  Whatever the merits of such laws, they were drafted with an eye on the plans for the future.   

Most central to everything was the sexual relationship.  If the most personal and sacred encounter between two people, the act at once most intimately physical and spiritually unifying could be extracted from the sacramental union of marriage and taken out of the family home and was no longer between two spouses, but rather made casual, then alienation and atomisation would be achieved.  The powerful elites, with their occultist interests and their Darwinian reduction of men to mere intelligent apes saw the power of sexual desire.  If taken off the yoke of social taboos unrestrained sexual desire would create a new race who could never really connect, who were driven by their passions, which they felt it was their right to sate.  Harm between persons and distrust would turn us into the isolated individuals subject to anomie and self-loathing, but preoccupied with our rights, and the technocrats knew they would be able to control people thus demoralised.  We would become exactly the sort of alienated and isolated individuals that would be passive in the face of an ever encroaching progressive system.  Furthermore if deviant relationships could be promoted, the family would be undermined, the greatest bulwark as Chesterton pointed out against the oppressive State.

Another development was in the elite’s favour – the invention of television.  The visual image is far more powerful than the spoken word of radio (already a propaganda tool).  Serials with popular characters were written pulling at the heart strings to make radical changes in what was socially acceptable achievable.  The social revolutionary themes of freemason Mozart’s operas entered popular culture with narratives of oppressive patriarchs being ridiculed.  The propaganda would develop to actively promote what was once seen as taboo in sitting rooms across the country, via that glowing, talking box.  With the removal of the Lord Chamberlain’s role television could be used to push boundaries of taboos until unwittingly a conservative society would become liberal.  In America former propagandist Edward Bernays had already utilised the social-engineering potential of advertising.

And so the elites who long planned this seem to have achieved their goal.  The bread and circuses of entertainment, sexual promiscuity, LGBT, and the impact of feminism have all helped towards Malthusian goals of population reduction.  People are unable to think as they focus on consumption.  Churches are in decline.  Marriage is in decline.  These are the very aims of those Occultist progressives at the start of the Century.    What is more they cannot tolerate the survival of any foreign government not fully on board with the revolution of “liberation”.  International tensions are therefore escalated to pressurise countries to abandon not only economic freedom from debt to globalist institutions, but also their traditional values.  Western NGOs are often focused not only on protecting human beings from oppressive regimes, but more on promoting the new subverted values of the revolutionary West.  So much so that the six-coloured banner of LGBTQ+ has come to be seen as a flag of globalist imperialism in many non-Western countries.

The “rights” of sexual freedom, from heterosexual promiscuity to LGBT are now being used to increase the reach of the Panoptican, so that speech is suppressed if it makes a case for a return to traditional values.  The surveillance system via the State and Big Tech is the other side of the revolutionary coin to the “rights” rhetoric.  And so in the name of freedom not only have we been enslaved to our passions and appetites, isolated and atomised, but we have lost the freedom to speak out and question the agenda imposed by long-established families and secret societies that are in their deepest beliefs hostile to God, the Church and Tradition.

CONSPIRACY TO SILENCE CONSPIRACY THEORISTS

Alex Jones of Infowars has been banned by the tech companies from most social media platforms.  Tommy Robinson, ( whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) the former leader of the EDL and a self-proclaimed campaigner for free speech and against Islamification of Britain (accused by many of simple agitation against Muslims), has been released from prison following his appeal heard before the Lord Chief Justice of England.

What both these political activists have in common is their repeated accusations that the establishment has a Left wing agenda.  These claims have landed them in very hot water.  Of course, it is possible to get bogged down in the legal argument about Tommy Robinson.  It is true that he is only released on bail and that he will have to face court again with regard to the contempt of court accusation.  Nonetheless it was found that his imprisonment was wrong and that the court acted in haste and disproportionately in sentencing him to a custodial sentence for contempt.

Many figures from Right and Left, including Nigel Farage, have suggested that Tommy Robinson went too far in broadcasting outside the court room where men (of Muslim background, which is significant to Tommy Robinson’s argument that the establishment turns a blind eye to Muslim crime) were being tried for the crime of grooming under-age indigenous girls for sex.  Tommy Robinson states he was careful only to read from a published BBC article still in the public domain on his live feed, but many have suggested he was jeopardising the prosecution of the accused.

Alex Jones is also a controversial figure, in particular with his comments on the Sandyhook massacre, for which the parents of the children murdered are suing him.  In his vociferous defence of the right to bear arms he suggested that the massacre might have been a hoax to support a campaign against guns.  Nonetheless, the social media platforms are relying on the vague concept of “hate speech” to remove him from their platforms. 

Of course it is important to understand the exact reasons why Alex Jones has been de-platformed and why Tommy Robinson was imprisoned, but looked at from a broader perspective it seems something very concerning is taking place.  It is something the public in general perceive, despite what they are told by the BBC or CNN – that because these men are on the Right they have been dealt with more harshly by the system.  In that sense what these two men say about the establishment, which might have looked like conspiracy theories before, is now looking more credible.

In the light of the over-reaction to Boris Johnson’s article in which he argued against banning the full-face-veil, yet is being attacked for Islamophobia for colourful comments, it seems a pattern is emerging.  The tension seems at first to be about free speech versus causing offence, but looked at more closely it is actually about protecting certain favoured groups from offence.  Whether it be transgender people, ethnic minorities, homosexuals, women or in this case Muslims, there is a special protection given to certain groups in accordance with a specific ideology that dominates the thinking of the Western universities from which our politicians and leaders emerge.  This is what many right-wing internet personalities describe as Cultural Marxism, by which the old Marxist analysis of the rich bourgeoisie having power over their victims the proletariat is replaced by a broader narrative of power and oppression.  Like the Marxists, these new ideologues do not look at people as individuals, but whether they belong to an oppressor or victim class.  For this reason there are no restrictions on causing offence to those in the oppressor class, which is why the general public is right to feel that there is one rule for them and another for us, so to speak.

This is a dangerous and destructive ideology that prevents integration and encourages feelings of resentment and entitlement.  Psychologically, as Dr. Jordan Peterson has made clear, one does far better in life if one takes responsibility for oneself, rather than sinks ever deeper into the resentment and disempowerment caused by such an ideology ( if you are a member of one of the groups classified as oppressed).  However, for the privileged elite who believe in this cultural-Marxist analysis, it has the great advantage of making them feel good and virtuous without the economic and other costs of a real Marxist revolution.

Yet, the recent events relating to Tommy Robinson and Alex Jones suggest this is slightly more sinister (and we do not have to agree with their conspiracy theories to be worried).  When you reduce your analysis of a society to a crude binary battle between oppressor and victim, in which all nuance, individual virtue and ideals are ignored, then that justifies the use of power against your political enemies, who are seen as the enemies of progress and by definition evil oppressors.

Therefore, we need to start to take seriously the possibility that due process and fairness will cease to matter to the powerful Cultural-Marxist Left because they are so sure they are on the side of right and progress.  For that reason, rules and laws may be used simply as tools to silence those perceived as reactionaries.

   

Because this ideology has solidified its view of who is in the oppressor and victim group, adherents are not able to comprehend the possibility that those who were once oppressors could be left behind.  This is why so little has been done about white working-class schoolboys falling behind in education.  It is also why the establishment cannot understand why someone like Tommy Robinson has achieved such a following.  Neither can they imagine that mass immigration could ever be negative on the poor, because any criticism of mass migration is an attack on a group classified as a victim group.

What all this means is that the apparent conspiracy theories advocated by Jones and Robinson are not necessarily crazy at all.  While their specific claims might be questionable, they have been shut down by the powerful.  It was their advocacy of such theories that led to their draconian treatment to a large extent.  They are right to suspect freedom of speech is being shut down, as evidenced by the hysterical reaction to Boris Johnson’s article on the niqab.  These are all consequences of the Manichean and simplistic yet sanctimonious belief-system dominant in our establishment.  Alex Jones and Tommy Robinson, whether you agree with them or not, are really victims of this new oxymoronic phenomenon of liberal totalitarianism. 

If Mr Cameron’s Easter message was divisive then he has struck the right tone!

There has been some criticism of David Cameron’s assertion that this nation, Christian for over a millennium, remains Christian and that this is a heritage that is to be valued.  Apparently a number of self-appointed intellectuals regard this assertion as divisive.  First and foremost it seems difficult to argue with Mr Cameron in terms of the facts.  We have an established church, our national holidays, such as the recent Easter break, celebrate Christian festivals, not Islamic or Hindu festivals, the largest religious group in the nation remains Christian.  It is true that this current generation is making a hash of handing on this Christian heritage to the next, but that does not mean this inheritance is non-existent.  Perhaps this generation will fail to honour the trust it owes its descendants, but the inheritance will no doubt be rediscovered. 

Just as the monks during the Dark Ages, safeguarded this nation’s Christian culture, for it to be rediscovered by the converted Anglo-Saxon invaders much later, so a small number may keep this inheritance safe through the current tide of secularism, for it to be rediscovered in the future.  The inheritance exists, even if Polly Toynbee and Terry Pratchett are selfishly trying to deprive future generations of their right to it.

The criticism that actually needs to be addressed is not the absurd and laughable suggestion that this is not a Christian country, but the further assertion made by the pseudo-intellectual letter-writers to the Telegraph that it is bad for this nation to be Christian because it is divisive and impedes the progress of the ideology of relativist multi-culturalism.

Well just because something is divisive does not mean it is bad.  I am sure Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a divisive figure for Germans living under the Third Reich.  He, in following his Master, did not balk from divisiveness in his pursuit of what was Right.  Whereas multiculturalism may not seem as monumentally evil as Nazism, it is a sort of insidious nihilism, which eats away at our values.

Evil under multiculturalism is not organised by a tyrannical State, but it is permitted and never condemned, for fear of judging non-indigenous cultural values.  Let us remember that Christianity is supposed to be divisive.  Christ said he did not come to bring peace, but division.  He described Himself as coming into the world as a sword, to set people against one another, even within families.  Well the reaction of the letter writers is evidence that Christianity is divisive.  It is divisive because like a sword it sunders the gold from the dross, the good from the evil.  If Christianity were not true it could be compromised within a mishmash of other cultures in a grey and relativist nihilism.  It is precisely because Christianity is so clear that it is the only way that it will always divide people.  If we as a nation wish to aspire to truth and moral values, then we will inevitably find that some will disagree with us even violently.  That is not to say we have got everything right by any means as a country, but if we hold true to our inheritance of values then we will rightly be called divisive – and that is something to take to our credit.

The Devil is in the detail

 Surely it is deeply troubling and unsettling to people of faith, whether they be zealous in conviction or just vaguely assenting to the faith of their forefathers, that at baptism the established Church will offer the option not to refer to sin.  This may well blend in with our choice-based, consumerist society, but is it not surely profoundly contradictory to ignore sin and the Devil at the very moment he and his ways are to be renounced?  Of all the services at which to ignore the Devil, surely the sacrament of Baptism is the last at which this should be done.

It may be argued that this is merely a trial, evil is still mentioned, it is only an alternative and no definite decision has been made.  It is my concern that a trial alone and its being targeted at the least religiously-aware congregations suggest the Church does not recognise the gravity of what it is doing.  It just should not have gone down this road in the first place.

In my blogs I have often praised the Church of England as an important force for good and I passionately believe in the need for an established Church, but when such a vital piece of doctrine as the existence of a personified force of evil is denied, one can only assume that the established Church has been corrupted at least by the society it is meant to evangelise and at worst corrupted by the very force it is attempting to sweep under the carpet.

C S Lewis pointed out in his Screwtape Letters that the Devil is at his most powerful when he is thought of as an unbelievable caricature.  It seems as though modern Anglican theology does not spend much time on the personification of Evil.  One does not have to be a Manichean to recognise a malevolent and fallen force that deceives and leads astray; one simply needs to read Scripture clearly rather than through the prism of over-intellectualised theology.

In England it must be the case that for the maintenance of a Christian society the established Church is a significant and indeed vital factor.  Disestablishment would seem to be a renunciation of the whole of society’s Christian heritage and the reduction of Christianity to a disconnected sect.  It is however possible to believe in establishment and yet be very troubled by the direction that the established Church is taking.

In many ways, through its rootedness in communities, through its links with Royalty, through school education, through its sanctifying of national celebration or mourning and indeed family occasions for the irregular attendee, through weddings, funerals and of course christenings, the Church of England ensures Christ remains at least a small part of all our lives and that everyone is part of a parish.  Such a role requires a different tone from the free churches or the Church of Rome, in that these other parts of the Universal Church are completely separated from the State.  However, as T S Eliot argued in his essay on the Christian Society, the purpose of an established Church must be to Christianise our society; it most certainly is not to live-and-let-live. 

It is also pointed out by Eliot that an established Church can be corrupted and is particularly at risk through its connexion with the State. For this reason its hierarchy may from time to time need to come under attack from the community of Christians.  In the case of ignoring the Devil, has not the Church been corrupted to please the existing, liberal, multiculturalist establishment, which advocates free choice and non-condemnation as its values or rather non-values?

Is the Church not also failing in its pastoral responsibilities to those who are least familiar with their forefathers’ faith?  If a personified, fallen deceiver is kept secret and hidden and moral dilemmas are simply portrayed as a matter of autonomous choosing rather than a matter of the risk of being led astray, are we not joining the predominant idolatry of choice and subjectivity that the Church should be crusading against?  How much more difficult it is to make the right choice, when your religious leaders tell you that there is no fallen angel attempting to tempt you and lead you astray!  It is all very well to say evil is within man just as good is within man, although this sounds more Quaker than Anglican, but an awareness of the Devil brings vigilance against sin.  Truly this secrecy about sin and the Devil at baptism is a dereliction of duty on the part of the established Church.

The Forces of Conservatism versus Relativism

Conservative is a misnomer for extremists

There is nothing more annoying than when commentators refer to radicals and militants as “conservative”.  By definition radicals are not conservative.  They throw away the lessons built up over centuries and go back to the root.  So the Islamic radical rejects the wisdom of ages in Muslim thinking, that has taken on board Aristotle, living amongst Christians and Jews and accommodated real human-nature.  In the same way the political radical, whether Bolshevist or Jacobin, rejects the institutions that have evolved over the centuries, in the hope of reverting to some ideal original state of nature.

Islamic extremism has been in the public eye recently with the trial of the two murderers of Drummer Rigby, in a brutal and barbarous attack.  It is the argument of this blog that what leads to extremist evil is a subjective approach to life that rejects the shared lessons of history.  In effect the radical attempts to shake off shared values accumulated over time and assert their own opinion in the place of common values.

Thus the young Islamist extremist living in Britain attempts to define himself against the more moderate and conservative Islam of his parents.  For the extremist the wisdom of the ancestors, the building up of knowledge and tradition, should be rejected in favour of the original, pure “truth”, which happens to be his own subjective view of the truth.  In Mali the Islamist extremists set about destroying traditional Islamic art and historical artefacts. 

Just because it's your opinion doesn’t mean you are right

The real danger to Western society is not dogmatism, but the rejection of shared dogma in favour of “my opinion”.  People talk about their opinions as though because they own them they somehow possess a special validity.  Actually it is only that person’s opinion and it cannot contain the experience of generations that exists in our traditions and inherited values.  It is inevitably a partial and limited view.

It also commands no intrinsic legitimacy.  For example, one of the late Drummer Rigby’s murderers claimed to be a soldier and justified his atrocious crime in this way. He did not really belong to an existing army it was just his own opinion that he was a soldier.  There is no existing army that I know of, with commissions, paid salaries and a duty to serve a head of state that gave him such an order.  I have not heard of such a State that would give this order, outside of the conventions of war, in violation of the Geneva Convention.  There was no call from the established institutions of the Islamic faith for a crusade; only some madman in a cave in Afghanistan had unilaterally created his own violent creed.  This so-called army has been set up without legitimacy and without authority.  The murderer’s view that he belonged to an army was nothing more than his subjective viewpoint – it was only his opinion, with no authority.  He is in fact a subject of Her Majesty protected by Her Majesty’s forces that he attacked and will now be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure.  Whatever he thinks, that is what the case is in the real world.

Contrast this pretend “Islamist” soldier with Drummer Lee Rigby.  He belonged to a real army that serves an actual head of state and works to defend a physical nation state, with real boundaries and a rule of law and a Parliament.  This State is a signatory to international conventions on what its army will do and not do in war.  When individuals violate these rules, they are prosecuted by the State they serve.  Drummer Rigby’s real army is a vivid contrast to the imaginary army serving an imaginary nation that his murderer claimed to belong to.

The other extremists are just as subjective

This subjectivity and idolatry of one’s own opinion manifests itself in many other ways.  We see it in the animal-rights extremists, who have set up their own warped, subjective moral code and demand that others adhere to it – a code that justifies abuse of their fellow human beings in the name of their own idea of what rights animals possess.  We see it when traitors such as Edward Snowdon, who took the view that his own nation fell short in his own opinion and therefore acted in breach of the laws of his land to reveal secrets he was under a duty to keep.  A particularly dreadful example of this subjectivity and vainglorious philosophy is of course Julian Assange, who would rather see the West’s enemies benefit and her allies suffer than put aside his own ego.

Well, the common trap that ensnares all these people together is the sanctity to which they grant their own opinions, regardless of common values and shared traditions.  Whether in the name of religion, as with Drummer Rigby’s murderers or in pursuit of some skewed political ideology as with Juian Assange, these people share the same idolatry of their own opinions.

The danger of Liberalism leading to relativism

The danger is that the West, in attempting to remain true to its values of freedom and liberty is falling into the very same trap of accepting someone’s opinion is true simply because it is held – the danger of relativism and multiculturalism.  Tolerance is the sacred value of the West, which stems from its Christian heritage.  Tolerance means not persecuting that with which you disagree, it does not mean the values of society and our culture are neutral.  Replace tolerance with relativism and the moral authority is lost.

For example, how can you argue with the Islamic extremists without any grounding in faith yourself?  It is impossible to reject beliefs as false if you yourself do not believe in truth!  The greatest disrespect to all religions is to say that they are all equally valid, which means in effect they are all nonsense and invalid; rather the truly tolerant outlook is to remain true to our Christian values and to tolerate and speak to other faiths on that basis.  Not all beliefs are equally valid, many beliefs are wrong (as manifested on the Woolwich street)– but that cannot be said without we ourselves holding to a belief in something that is true.

Conservatism is the way to counter extremism

Conservatism is about accepting that our values are handed down to us and that we are shaped by that heritage.  We are not able to reinvent a whole set of universal values ourselves as we can only have a partial view.  Reject what is handed down to us and we lose the accumulated wisdom of our ancestors.

Now that does not mean accepting longstanding injustices, but continually comparing what is with what should be according to those inherited values.  Thus William Wilberforce in light of his Christian faith opposed slavery and Emily Hobhouse fought against Lord Kitchener’s camps for the Boers.  On the other hand, the Islamist extremist, the animal-rights extremist, the followers of Assange have all lost touch with their inherited values and turned their own, partial opinions into idols.  Only conservatism, by recognising civilization is based on shared, tried and tested values, can resist this subjective relativism and act as a force for moderation and piecemeal reform.     

Nimbyists of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your reputation with politicians!

Two interesting publications have recently come about.  One is the much-publicised report by the Office for National Statistics suggesting that people are happier in rural areas and small market towns, while they are unhappiest and most anxious in urban areas.  The other is a book by developmental economist, Paul Collier on the impact of immigration, called Exodus:  Immigration and Multiculturalism in the Twenty-First Century.

While Collier has previously focused on the impact of a lack of common culture in African countries, he has now turned his attention to the impact of immigration in the developed world and the erosion of mutual regard.  Mutual regard is lost when people have very different cultures – whether that be tribal differences in the modern African state or multiculturalist divisions in Western countries.  Collier appears to realise what politicians do not: That concern about immigration has much more to do with a loss of a common understanding of norms of behaviour and values, than economics alone.  Diversity has a corrosive effect on a shared identity and therefore undermines trust in a society.  This has nothing to do with race, but everything to do with the damaging doctrine of multiculturalism and the sheer scale of immigration in recent years.

The ONS report on the other hand makes clear that we are less lonely and less anxious when we live in more local communities – the market town in particular stands out as an ideal form of community.  Of course what holds the market town or the village together is that people know each other – they are not strangers in their own community.  People have a common understanding of norms of behaviour and shared values. 

The common thread to these two publications is a fact that might be blindingly obvious to the man in the Dog and Duck, but is rarely articulated and completely misunderstood by the political class.  That fact is surely that what strengthens community is the local and the cultural things held in common.  We all need to belong to community to feel fulfilled and we need to share common values, manners and standards with our neighbours.

The way to achieve this goal of the happy society is to live in smaller and more homogeneous communities.  This is directly contrary to all recent governments’ agendas, which have pressurised local authorities to build more and create larger and less homogeneous communities.  Indeed in the blogger’s own home district, a recent report has shown that the primary cause of housing demand is immigration. 

This leads to two negative effects: It undermines the smallness of the community and makes it more diverse.  This is not at all good for general wellbeing.  It must be right to recognise that a healthy society is not only about how economically rich it is, but how happy people are.  We can be materially wealthy, but spiritually poor.  The latter poverty is far more serious.

This blog is not arguing that we should close the doors on everyone, rather the argument is that a society can deal better with immigration, maintain its own wellbeing and make the immigrant more welcome, when people are better assimilated.  That requires a strong community into which the immigrant can be absorbed.  Otherwise we all end up as lonely atoms randomly bouncing around a bleak and urban world.

The Government is looking closely at how to increase general wellbeing.  Surely, the lesson from these recent publications is that we need less development in our small towns, more controls on immigration, protection of our nearby green spaces.  It is time for the political class to acknowledge that concern about these issues is not only about house values, but is a valid concern about losing something far less tangible but far more valuable - our wellbeing.  It is time to start listening to and stop dismissing the so-called Nimbyists!   

The hijab, the niqab and the burka – statements of faith are all well and good, but what if they are in breach of good manners?

There has been much political discussion recently about when and whether it is appropriate for women of Islamic faith to hide their faces.  Birmingham Metropolitan College attempted to ban the full-face veil or niqab, but pulled back from this rule.  The Liberal Democrat MP and Coalition Minister Jeremy Browne MP criticised the wearing of full-face veils and Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Health has asked the NHS to look at its policy on dresscode, due to the feelings of disquiet some patients have when treated by a medical professional who keeps their face hidden from them.

The matter that sparked off this debate was when a defendant in a criminal trial wished to hide her face when in the box.  The judge required her to remove her veil when under examination, so that the jury could observe her facial expressions.  This seems a commonsense solution.  The defendant might have felt subject to unwanted scrutiny when her face could be seen, but when you are a defendant in a criminal trial that is an inevitable part of the process.

As a conservative who believes in freedom I would be very reluctant to follow the French example of banning the veil in public places.  France is an avowedly secularist country and can therefore consistently ban expressions of religious faith.  On these islands we are a free society with a Christian heritage.  To ban expressions of religious faith goes against the grain.  With an established church and Lords Spiritual in the upper house, religious faith is woven into the fabric of our constitution.  And so is freedom.  Not the French idea of freedom based around secularist ideology, but the freedom to be left alone – an Englishman’s home is his castle, as the expression goes.

The trouble is when a very different culture is grafted on to a longstanding society such as ours that is based on unspoken norms of behaviour, there can be cultural clashes and misunderstandings.  Yes we are a free society, but we achieve that by giving each other space and not forcing our opinions on each other.

The veil adopted by some Muslim women is a strong and uncompromising expression of religious opinion.  In a free society it should not be banned, but the blogger questions whether the veil is actually the sartorial equivalent of forcing your opinions on others.  It creates an awkward social situation just as someone talking about religion and politics down the pub makes for an unpleasant atmosphere.  It steps over a certain boundary and while strictly-speaking it is simply an individual choosing how they dress, it is really a non-verbal statement and creates a physical barrier.  To put it bluntly, in ordinary every day life, the veil can be perceived by non-Muslims as crossing the boundary into bad manners.

In our culture it is good manners to look a person in the face when you speak to them.  I do not condemn recent immigrants who have not yet adjusted to Western society.  Rather, the fault lies with those in the political class and liberal elite who close down debate about the veil in the name of that chimera the multicultural society.  This means people new to our society do not appreciate how many of us are made to feel awkward by the hiding of the face. 

I am sure there are good cultural reasons in Muslim countries for the veil – I do not presume to say otherwise. The flipside of this is that to help the new immigrant societies to integrate they should be helped to understand that the hiding of the face in our culture sends a very different message. 

Many would argue that it is up to us to be tolerant of this choice of dress.  In terms of the law I agree; it is not for the state to criminalise dress.  It is however, the role of society to nurture good manners.  To give a less controversial example - Perhaps in some cultures the physical contact of a man’s and a woman’s hand through the handshake would be unacceptable.  In our culture to decline the handshake would seem bad manners.

A blanket ban, outside of the workplace, is not right in a free society; however, the blogger cannot see anything wrong with requiring employees or students to dress in a way compatible with those institutions' dress codes.  In the health service, when people are often feeling vulnerable and are unwell or in pain it seems very sensible to ban the full-face veil.

Interaction between people is enhanced by facial expressions.  You can tell how someone is reacting to what you say.  It is about being able to engage fully.  If immigrant communities dispensed with the veil it would make it all the easier for stronger bonds to be built with individuals of the indigenous community.    

Immigration and the Chasm between Voters and Politicians

Nothing is more likely to turn the already sceptical British public towards outright hostility to the European Union than immigration from new accession states.  When it becomes clear that they no longer have any control over their borders in terms of immigrants from accession countries Rumania and Bulgaria, there will be real anger – is the political class ready?  If there is one power that indicates sovereignty it must be the right to control your borders.   Of course the power was ceded before this, but now the European Union is made up of countries with very different standards of living.  The incentive of freedom of movement to migrate in large numbers from poor to rich countries is therefore great.  Parliament cannot change the law easily as it no longer has the right to do so under European treaties.

What is even more worrying is that the political class does not really understand how deep a concern immigration is for voters.  When canvassing myself as a parliamentary candidate it was usually one of the first issues raised by residents on the doorstep.  Politicians must remember they are the public’s servants and much as they may be eager to see the nation transformed into a multicultural, confusing and sometimes threatening mixture of different nations, the British public does not want such a transformation to their home.  The polls are clear:  The politicians need to listen.

Before the blogger goes any further, let’s put to rest some insulting misconceptions.  Being concerned about mass immigration does not make someone a racist.  It is possible to have friends from different cultures and races, indeed to find that difference between you and what you have in common with your friend a matter of interest and a building block for friendship.  At the same time it is not a contradiction to have that deep instinctive need to feel at home in your own country where common norms of behaviour and values are silently understood.  This is human nature and when politics goes against the grain of human nature it will always lead to disaster.

For many of those voters I met when campaigning the problem is nothing to do with the individual immigrant; it is the sheer level of immigration and the way that it undermines common cultural understanding.  If immigrants are fewer then they can be better integrated and the differences can be a welcome matter of interest rather than feel a threat.

Often politicians talk of the economic benefits of immigration, by which they mean immigrants taking on jobs while natives remain on benefits - New Labour's false solution to welfare dependency. But Britain is not simply an economic polity of different cultures such as Singapore.  Rather, this nation owes its stability and freedom to a common understanding of its history and the legitimacy of its political institutions.  Small-scale immigration can be accommodated, but a large amount of immigration in a short space of time can threaten this united view of what the nation and its values amount to. 

The blogger himself confesses to feeling a stranger in some parts of London.  This cannot be good.  It is far easier to be a place of welcome to the immigrant, the stranger and the refugee if one’s home country is bound together by a common culture.

The most negative aspect of mass immigration has been the policy response of the political class.  That policy is summed up by the concept of “Multiculturalism” – the doctrine whereby every culture however new to these shores is equally valid with the indigenous culture.  This has made it all the more difficult for immigrant communities to integrate, to become accepted and to better themselves economically.  Multiculturalism was as much a failure to treat the immigrant with respect, as it was to uphold the traditions of the indigenous culture, because it disadvantaged the immigrant in trying to adapt to his new home.  It could only lead to a festering resentment on both sides of the multicultural divide. The problem of Political Islam growing amongst a second-generation community that has not fully integrated is a key example of the problems multiculturalism has led to.

Thankfully Anglo-Saxon tolerance and a determination on the part of many immigrants to be part of the nation has undermined the liberal elite’s aim to keep cultures separate in a new, relativist society.  Most immigrants adapted to and became very much part of the home culture.

There is a strong feeling however that with new waves of immigrants with no historical affection for this country, that the British public is being taken for a ride.  With Commonwealth immigration, different as many were in terms of appearance and tradition, they understood what Britain was and had a shared history through Empire.  The easy movement across the European Union on the other hand means those with a very different history and culture can come here for economic benefit alone.  It is not just about claiming welfare, it is about jobs too, especially in a recession.  It is argued that increased demand for public services from large numbers of immigrants means more jobs.  We all know in the real world it actually means creaking public services that cannot respond to increased demand.  Doctors’ surgeries, schools, housing, are all under far greater pressure than they were.

The political class must show that on the issue of immigration it has stopped sanctimoniously preaching and has started listening.  The question to politicians is simple:  On immigration are they listening to the British voter or the European Union? 

Tolerance not Relativism

I have touched elsewhere in this site on the corrosiveness of a relativism that chips away at our country’s foundational values.  When we were confident as a nation and had a stronger sense of personal character, we also had firmer and perhaps less questioning beliefs. 

Two devastating world wars, the atom bomb, mass immigration of people from very different cultures have all challenged our confidence in the Judaeo-Christian values that held us together.  Instead, people cling to secularism to counter new challenges such as political Islam.  We look more to the Enlightenment than patriotism and the Church.

I think there is a danger here.  You cannot vacate the realm of belief and create some sort of neutral, vacuous public square, if you want to challenge the fanaticism we fear and saw manifested on the streets of Woolwich recently.  Rather, we must be confident in our own values and beliefs.

This lack of confidence can be traced to the damaging doctrine of multiculturalism, which tried to claim all ideas and beliefs were equally valid.  It then becomes very difficult to challenge any concepts we are definitely repelled by, across the political spectrum, such as forced marriage.  Most now acknowledge that for too long this problem was overlooked, because of the fear of imposing our own values on cultures new to these islands.  If we no longer know what we believe though, how can we argue against those who are all too sure?

Secularism, Pontius-Pilate like, doubts the existence of Truth and tries to wash its hands of judging between different views.  This is no way to counter views we all know to be wrong.

Rather we need our own concept of Truth and it is there for us, a baton from our ancestors held out to us.  Our values were not secularism.  We have not had a Revolution when Monarchy and Church were overturned and the state was declared secular.  Our constitution is instilled with the values of our Christian heritage.

Many on the Left will be uncomfortable with this.  They believe that it is somehow wrong to claim one belief system holds pre-eminence.  However, it is the attempt to claim all beliefs are equal that has led to the corrosive relativism, whereby we no longer have any foundations to our moral life other than individual freedom, for which read individual satisfaction of desires.

To reassert our own values with confidence does not mean oppressing those of other faiths, rather it means rediscovering the virtue of tolerance.  Tolerance means accepting people even if you disagree with them, it does not mean accepting that their views or lifestyle are right.  It can find its basis in Christian teaching, although often the Church has fallen short.  It is the principle that runs through the story of our Parliamentary democracy, where freedom of speech is prized and the established Church learnt to come to terms with dissenting denominations as they were given a voice in Parliament.

The relativism of liberalism, on the other hand, falls into the trap of condoning behaviour that is clearly wrong, by refusing to acknowledge things can be wrong.  Tolerance starts from a position whereby there is right and wrong, but you have patience and compassion not to persecute those who are wrong and rely rather on gentle persuasion, example or even minding our own business in our personal dealings, depending on the situation.  It gives society the moral authority to argue against that which is clearly unacceptable in terms of our common values.

Many will be aware of the danger of a sort of exceptionalism, which claims my faith, my nation, my beliefs are somehow singled out as right and special.  This nervousness about conviction leads many to opt for the easy neutrality of secularist, liberal abdication.

It all depends though on what belief system is being held up as exceptional.  We disagree with militant Islam not only because it claims to be right, but because we disagree with its specific tenets.  Our own values, however, do not mean the aggressive attack on the Other.  Rather, we look to a heritage of democracy and free speech, a tolerant religion with a place in the public square, which learnt to accommodate its own dissenting wings and a concept of the rule of law that cannot be overturned by political or religious fanaticism.  If we have confidence in those values, then people of different beliefs need not fear and we can restore an underpinning of values to our society.

Reverting to the Whigs' History?

A Reversion to the Whig Historians and their View of Progress?

Michael Gove’s determination to restore history as the genuine teaching of our island story should be applauded.   In the teeth of resistance from left wing teachers who see controlling history as a means of preaching a politically correct outlook, he is fighting to ensure our next generation learns the narrative history that helps us understand who we are and invigorates patriotism.

The ideologues who resist this seem to think that the next generation will be inspired to virtue by having the guilt piled on about who they are.  Generations have been taught a distorted view of this nation as being an oppressive and imperialist force in the world.  To give the benefit of the doubt to the education establishment perhaps they believe that this will lead to future generations of virtuous citizens.  More likely it will lead to an embittered nation that sees itself as guilty without any values to live up to.

Far better to teach the truth – that Britain has been, for the most part, a force for good in the world.  When the facts, rather than politically correct interpretation, are taught then that conclusion will be difficult to resist.  Great Britain abolished slavery and the Royal Navy policed the seas to impose a ban on slave trading.  Great Britain defeated Nazism and the Kaiser, also saving Europe from Napoleon’s attempt to create one polity for the whole continent.

When we are taught what we have done in the world for good, this will act as an inspiration to true patriotism and as an inspiration to live up to those values.  It does not mean distorting the truth to give an overly rosy picture of our nation’s history, in the mould of some despotic regime.  Rather, it means teaching what actually happened rather than interpreting facts through the prism of a left-wing, semi-Marxist outlook that sees history as being the struggle for power between the oppressor and the oppressed.  Teach history as a narrative and that interpretation crumbles away.  This is why the Left wing ideologues fear Gove’s reforms for the teaching of history so much.

It is naïve though, to assume that even with the restoration of teaching history as a narrative all interpretation can be avoided.  The great temptation will be to adopt a Whiggish view of the inevitability of progress.  That would be a mistake and just as damaging as the Left Wing view of history now predominant in our nation’s schools.

If the history of our nation teaches us anything at all, it is that progress is not inevitable and history can take wrong turns and go down cul-de-sacs.  The Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell, when two great institutions, the Monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished is the most glaring example of this.  This was not progress, as demonstrated by the fact that both those institutions are still with us in the Twenty-First Century and certainly the former is held in higher respect by the public than the House of Commons of which Oliver Cromwell MP was a member.

Further the possibility of decline is demonstrated all around us:  Great Britain now is threatened with dissolution thanks to the mischief of Alex Salmond.  Its world stature has declined, its empire gone and its economy is smaller.  Mass immigration has taken its toll, diluting our common values and leading to the corrosive relativism of multiculturalism that only now the political class is waking up to.  Politicians are now more removed from the public than ever before, moving in a separate world, with different values and ideas from the people who vote them into power.  Progress is by no means inevitable and there is always a high risk of decline.

No, if history teaches us anything at all it is that when we looked back we took our greatest leaps forward.  The introduction of trial by jury under Henry II came from a looking back to Anglo-Saxon twelve thanes of the Wapentake.  The same king’s development of common law relied on case law, which looks to precedent, reinterpreting it for each new situation.  The Magna Carta was a reassertion of existing liberties and rights.  Parliament itself looked back to Anglo Saxon times.  Simon DeMontfort did not think he was innovating when he fought Parliament’s cause against Henry III, rather he thought he was fighting for ancient rights and privileges. 

It is worth mentioning though that unlike common law, dominated by precedent, only Parliament violates this principle of looking back because of its power to pass statutes, laws that can be entirely new and overrule common law.  Precedent and conventions dominate our constitution and our Parliamentarians would do well to respect precedent, rather than fall into the temptation of the novel and innovative.  With the power to pass Acts of Parliament it can be seen why the political class falls into this temptation.

Our rights and liberties rely on the past for their legitimacy.  We do not have to call on the flimsiness of abstract theory, with all the innate dangers that involves.  We have precedent and we can rely on it because as a nation we have on the whole avoided disruptive revolutions. 

With a legal system that relies on precedent and an island story that demonstrates that all our greatest moves forward were through looking back,  it seems that the Whiggish view of history, with its emphasis on the inevitability of progress will not stand up to the facts.  Rather, perhaps by restoring a narrative view of history we will see the development of a Tory view of history that emphasises change only working in the context of respect for the past.  Forgetting the past can lead the nation into error.

If history teaches us anything at all it is that we do best to learn from the past and not forget it.  That is why the teaching of history is so important.