Sunday, December 21, 2008

[reclaim democracy] before it's too late


Enough has been written about the enormous war going on behind the scenes. The latest skirmish is banning beach parties in Goa. It's quite clear that a massive and sustained assault is on, worldwide, to suppress people's freedom to speak, associate, to generally enjoy life.

Disillusioning us is a key ploy in all this and to repaint everything from festivities to history is straight out of the Goldstein handbook. Not to put too fine a point on it, we are being pushed around and dictated to. Aiding this has been, over two generations:

1. Driving wedges between people and their traditional support structures:

a. In the west, the Judaeo-Christian ethic, Calvinistic hard work, the notion of hope, faith and charity, tolerance of good and intolerance of evil, the concept of loyalty given and returned, even by an institution, leading to a sense of identity and self-worth and the concept of decency.

A generation ago, people were by no means saints but there was at least a basic notion of what was acceptable and not acceptable, morally and ethically;

b. The family, with its traditional constraints and loyalties, duty towards the extended family, the idea of remaining a virgin until marriage, the leadership and teaching role of parents towards the children, the early instilling of values so that later in life, the child is equipped to face the world;

c. The state as a support structure for the less fortunate and a facilitator and supporter of free enterprise, with a goal of near full employment and an affordable home for each family. The idea of a sane unit cost to income ratio, so that a house cost five years’ gross wage. The notion of the state as our elected representatives who do our will;

d. Private property that one could work towards all one’s life, build up, enjoy in old age and then will to one’s family. The concept of inheritance from generation to generation;

e. A willingness to at least tolerate the other sex to the point where one compromised and showed respect, mostly, where one remained with one’s partner and worked out the problems, for the sake of the investment in family and in one’s children. Absence of misogyny and misandry for the most part;

The concept of chivalry, not to the point of knights on horseback and whiter than white damsels but in little things like giving up one’s seat, opening the door for the other and above all … listening to the other and trying to find common ground;

f. A sense of pleasure and joy in everyday pursuits, rather than a fear of losing everything, mass unemployment, mindless serfdom and disillusionment.

2. Gradually placing people in key positions in education, medicine, law, politics and the arts who would promote the restructuring of society, over two generations, to one such as we have today, where people are disenfranchised, dispossessed, disillusioned and anxious, less able to adequately cope, withdrawing back into the self and becoming infantilized and accepting of the nanny state.

And the blackest joke was that these people truly believed, were led to believe that they were promoting noble values and a fairer society.

3. Rewriting history so that the traditionally revered personages are now questioned, reviled in some cases and at the least, marginalized … and all for a political agenda. Re-educating the population to accept the new status quo.

4. Slowly tightening the noose and criminalizing the common man by the introduction of a plethora of new legislation and codicils to the point where it is almost impossible not to transgress. Removing the right to think for oneself and to self-determination, on the grounds that it is illegal. Creating a “checkpoint and militarized” atmosphere, accustoming people to the sight of armed officers herding them into this place or that.

5. Provoking a Franz Ferdinand incident at intervals to increase the command and control, the reduction of people to serfdom and creating the preconditions for war, the state of affairs desired by the state.

Fighting back

Through a combination of self-interest, the survival instinct and sheer weariness, people are just not going to combine to prevent the above process. Most of us are extremely slow to get off our butts and do anything vaguely political. We're just not interested.

Most of the above has already taken place anyway and a good test of this is how far people would disagree with the ideas in Point 1 above.

Two generations ago, they would have been the norm, the way people thought and felt. It would ahve been unnecessary to even mention them.

There are ways to fight back without ending up on a table with electrodes:

1. Silent disobedience, Gandhi like and putting a spoke in the wheel of state in little ways. If enough people do this, then the state becomes unworkable;

2. Creation of groups and solidarity, e.g. Lech Wałęsa in Poland;

3. Revolution – a last resort when all else has failed [just don't be a ringleader].

A small start is:

Roots - reclaim Europe

I'll add others as they come to hand. The thing is, if we don't act now, it really will be too late to prevent this process. Already they have removed the mechanism for change, for example, in Britain, where the only legal right of the people is to throw out Brown and put in a Blair clone. Here too.

That ain't democracy in my book.


11 comments:

  1. There are ways to fight back

    As you say the vast majority of people are too lazy, blind not interested etc so it is unlikely that points 1 and 2 would have enough of an effect.

    I think that it is more likely that point 3 will come into effect, when everyone is totally fed up. But by that stage it will be too late!

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  2. James

    A generation ago

    rape by a man of his wife was legal, tolerance between the sexes?

    A generation ago in the 1970s you are right we had less unemployment than today- but that was a consequence of socialist economic policies- I didn't know you endorsed those.

    We also had the winter of discontent- was that society operating in harmony?

    In the fifties Nye Bevan called the Tories vermin- a society in harmony?

    Illiteracy has fallen since the fifties- obviously parents aren't educating their children, or not?

    In 1970 the life expectancy for men in the UK was less than 70- now for men its close to 80 and for women its over 80- the world is getting worse?

    Infant mortality has fallen from around 20 per 1000 live births, to around 5 per 1000 live births- so life is getting worse for babies too?

    A generation ago the state actually acted less like what you are describing and more as though it took care of every citizen from cradle to grave- so you endorse the modern New Labour state?

    Is it any surprise that the UK was a net exporter of population twenty years ago with around 20,000 people leaving a year compared to a net importer now with around 100,000 people a year arriving?

    I am not saying there aren't problems James- but your apocalyptic vision of the UK just doesn't fit with anything I see. I see a country that is rich and healthy, democratic and better off than it was in 1900, 1950 and 1970- we have problems of course and there may be a case for changing government- I'm not defending the Labour party but I am defending Britain as it is. You see some vision of Stalinist dictatorship- and I think you are ignoring what is good and exaggerating what is bad.

    The fact that when I was at Oxford- half my college was female for example- a. would not have happened in 1970 or 1980, b. is something I am thankful for as I now have because of that a ton of good friends who happen to be women- were the situation of twenty, thirty or forty years to have continued- I wouldn't have those friends and that's just one way society has changed for the better- there may be ways things have got worse but don't lose sight of things that are better.

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  3. Oh and incidentally on the rewriting of history- something I know a little about:

    do you disagree that colonialism wasn't a barrel of laughs for peoples like the aboriginies who got exterminated?

    do you disagree that patriarchy wasn't that fun for women who got no education and were legally their husband's property- how would you feel like being someone else's property?

    I ask those questions seriously- most of the new history that is being written and taught is about recognising stuff like that and trying to understand it. Quite a lot of the rest of the history people are writing is about trying to retreive the more minor actor's perspective- not just Napoleon but his soldier's ideas about the wars in Europe. Furthermore we have recognised the role of non-European societies in the world- I presume you acknowledge the role of Chinese, Arabic, Indian civilisation in getting the people of the world where we are today or do you think that gunpowder, philosophy and mathematics are unimportant to the world?

    To be honest, the history I have done has shown to me more of a continuum than your account here ressembles. From people like Maitland at the beggining of the century to people like John Morrill or George Garnett at the end- the real focus is on getting the documents, studying how they fit into our accounts and working out what happened and what people felt about what happened to them. The picture of the study of history you draw is one that, from my own experience of working in history for 9 years, I simply don't recognise.

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  4. As I stated and Tiberius' comments confirm it:

    "Most of the above has already taken place anyway and a good test of this is how far people would disagree with the ideas in Point 1 above.

    Two generations ago, they would have been the norm, the way people thought and felt. It would have been unnecessary to even mention them."

    Tiberius is one of the later generation which did not grow up with those values instilled. He'd have to have got them from somewhere else.

    Cherie - yes, as in Russia, it will be too late when people do wake up.

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  5. Gracchi -- Your way off the mark. Most of the things you point to as improvements are simply technological. Society has improved in ways, but generally it's getting worse and potentially a lot worse in the next few years.

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  6. yes, as in Russia, it will be too late when people do wake up.

    That has just given me a thought! It is not necessary for everyone to wake up. The problems and concerns just need to be fed to the right person/persons who are able to take the concerns forward.

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  7. Gracchi said...
    James

    A generation ago

    rape by a man of his wife was legal, tolerance between the sexes?

    Reality check – is that actually, legally true?
    Surely, there formerly existed no statute that I know of that let such a thing be prosecuted as rape [which has nothing to recommend it and I’m sure as hell not defending it] but I’m pretty sure that assault charges could be brought against such as husband in cases of aggravation. Would the authorities have been less likely a generation ago to ignore girls’ please against familial cruelty as they now seem to be, or to act when they know that it is common.

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article1918014.ece

    http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/damian_thompson/blog/2008/09/16/a_conservative_government_must_exclude_sharia_courts_from_british_justice

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/a-question-of-honour-police-say-17000-women-are-victims-every-year-780522.html

    http://www.ummah.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-96753.html

    So, not that much better than the past, I’d say.

    Reality check – and how common is marital rape, I wonder, and why bring it up as your very first point?

    This looks familiar.

    It is a frequently used part of the cultural Marxists’ arsenal to slander and libel innocuous [or at least functioning] non-Marxist institutions and to treat rare and horrible exceptions to the moral norm as typical or as in some way more authentic aspects of that institution than its routine workings. The family is the biggest target of the far Left as it’s the most enduring and anti-Marxist institution of the lot, what with it being evolved over millions of years to promote species survival, ubiquitous in some form or other worldwide, and is resistant to collectivization and state-worship. this is because it provides multiple, strong, enduring and mutually-supporting sources of loyalty and affection and focuses for economic and political activity undirected by the centralized state that the Left so covets.


    But let us concede that there was no legal way for a wife to charge her rapist husband with rape, but that now there is. What does that prove, Gracchi? That there is now one better law when before it did not exist? Well, so what? Sometime in the last generation, the huge, costly machine of government has done at least one good thing. [And it is a good thing.]

    Reality check – I want a little more out of the £519,229,000,000 UK resources budget for 2007-8 than one possibly-needed (in some cases) law to regard the overturning of millennia of custom and collective wisdom as something other than vainglorious folly.

    A generation ago in the 1970s you are right we had less unemployment than today- but that was a consequence of socialist economic policies- I didn't know you endorsed those.

    Reality check – a generation ago in the 1970s our unemployment was hidden behind over manning on a massive scale in, for example, the nationalised car industry after decades of lethargic and incompetent [ private sector] management which failed to match, let alone compete with, superior design, technical skills, higher levels of quality control, and reality-facing trade unions. There’s socialist economic policies for you. When the country ran out of money after trying to disguise this featherbedding, we got the Winter of Discontent, which you refer to, and a party to replace the spendthrifts in Labour. In this latter respect, I’m sad to say that today is surely worse than the better past.

    We also had the winter of discontent- was that society operating in harmony?

    See above.

    In the fifties Nye Bevan called the Tories vermin- a society in harmony?

    Reality check – so what?
    Rude socialists. Rude individuals. Democracy and freedom of speech allow dissent and differences of opinion to be expressed strongly and with passion. And perhaps he was right?.. Three cheers for freedom democracy in any case. Three cheers for human nature, too. Human nature only changes over scores of millennia, if the anthropologists are to be believed.

    Illiteracy has fallen since the fifties- obviously parents aren't educating their children, or not?
    Reality check – that would be according to the progressives and other Gramscian entryists who’ve owned state education body and soul for forty years and driven the world’s best and widest-spread education system [ perhaps barring Germany’s but look what happened when Germany went wrong: all those Herr Professors and Herr Doktors turned out to be Herren too]. I encounter levels of illiteracy and inarticulacy in youth which belies any thought that our education system is any better than it was when I was a pupil thirty years ago.
    Year on year they reduce the standards, blur the tests – or abolish them and then replace academic subjects with ‘themes’ – education is the most corrupted part of the system by far. When one in three British schoolchildren think that there’s little or nothing to be proud of in their country in December 2002

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/uk/newsid_2558000/2558875.stm is that because the teachers assure them that this is a good place to be, fie years into Labour’s awesomely large parliamentary majority?
    When the teachers miss out on increasing literacy they’re right on the ball warning about the dangerso f loving the place where we live, and t’s history and instituions..
    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article3285615.ece]#
    Make children fear the country they live in, why don’t you, and see what kind of a population you get.
    You get people who think they’ve been brought up in Hell, and who act accordingly.

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article2831648.ece
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-472791/One-11-British-Muslims-backs-suicide-bombers-says-Brown-aide.html

    No doubt the cradle-to-grave Welfare State is better than the wicked old patriarchal family, right?
    Look at Baby P , and Karen Matthews, and Victoria Climbie and all those other ‘exceptions’ which prove the rule that love on the dole is so much better, liberating, and spontaneous than dreary old ‘love, honour, and obey.’ [And I write as a divorced person and aware that some marriages don’t work and can’t be made to work- as well as the collateral damage to others when it doesn’t.]



    That’s half of it.
    I’ll maybe get around to the other half when Christmas duties allow.

    But we have by God got not let the wreckers get away with their propaganda unanswered – especially on conservative blogs.

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  8. North Northwester - Wow! some great research there!

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  9. Why thank you, Cherry Pie.

    For behold! Did not the Prophet of the Town of the Scrus say:
    ‘Lo! Thou shalt confound thy enemies with point-by-point refutations and hastily-googled references so that the House of the Naughty Port, and also the House of the Naughty Starboard, shall both be humbled, brought to ruin, and then be lifted up by your great wisdom and kindness throughout all our the land to become one with the People of the Church of the Hill.*



    *And did not his Disciple, Saint Patrick of the Rourke also say; ‘And if that fails, thou shalt also call thy enemy a stinky poo-poo head.’

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  10. This is wonderful stuff and thanks for the response, particularly Gracchi and Nornorwester.

    Who said there's no debate here?

    "The problems and concerns just need to be fed to the right person/persons who are able to take the concerns forward.' [Cherie]

    Yes but they're like hen's teeth, Cherie. Society is waiting for such people to appear.

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  11. "The problems and concerns just need to be fed to the right person/persons who are able to take the concerns forward.' [Cherie]

    I know how frustrating that is, but I and some of my colleagues have a motto - 'It is not over till the fat lady sings'.

    We always keep on looking and in recent years, we have eventually found!

    I know it is on a smaller scale than you are talking about here, but the principle is the same.

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