How to tackle the politically correct

Political correctness meets the criteria for a  totalitarian ideology.  Its tenets of “discrimination” and “equality” mean that it can invade every aspect of life  and its adherents claim that the only permissible opinion is the politically correct one.   This creates great advantages for those opposed to political correctness  who are not themselves the prisoners of an ideology because it leaves  the politically correct   The  attraction of political correctness is that it purports to  provide a universal guide to living and offers the assurance of moral superiority.  Those two qualities – alleged universality of explanation and moral superiority –  provide an excuse for both abdicating intellectual autonomy and for enforcing the  tenets of the ideology on
others.

The abdication of intellectual autonomy means that the adherent no longer addresses reality. Their  intellect is turned not to living  life pragmatically,  but to fitting reality into the ideology. As all ideologies are inadequate guides to reality,  this means the adherent is  driven to irrationality if they wish to maintain their belief.

A successful ideology such as political correctness will attract many people who  lack either the intelligence or the intellectual initiative to master the ideology. They  will be content to have a series of ready-made mantras to chant when they have to make a show of promoting their faith.  That means they are incapable of any meaningful debate in defence of their beliefs.  When placed in a position where they are expected to debate the best they can do is chant their mantras .

The more intelligent or intellectually inclined believers will Glad the story amused people. It has its funny side,  but the fact that it did not result in the usual pc-driven hue and cry carries a serious general message, namely, that the politically correct only succeed because people play the game by their rules,  which means making Maoist-style apologies and accepting the veracity of the ideology.

I discovered long ago that latterday liberals will wilt if faced with people who refuse to play their game. Just stand up and say equality is meaningless except in limited contexts such as the law and  discrimination is the natural order of things because no organism let alone a man can survive without discriminating dozens of times a day (normal people call it making choices) and you will find the politically correct cannot handle the resistance.

Here is a  link to an  article I wrote for Right Now! some years ago on the character of modern liberals, who are not liberal but the most fearful bigots. Hence, the title.

http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/the-liberal-bigot/

 

Meditation without metaphysics

There are various forms of meditation, but they share one thing: an  admixture of pseudo-science and religion with practical exercises. This puts off  many people.  Indeed, I have myself been greatly irritated by such metaphysical claims. Consequently, the reader may rest confident that what follows is purely a set of exercises without any pretence at an explanation of how they achieve a change in mental state. (I do, however, offer a few possible physical reasons at the end of the article).  The are a mixture of several forms of meditation which I have used over the years.

The silent mantra

Choose a two syllable sound, for example DAREEM. It should be meaningless because the spoken mantra should ideally not be heard by the meditator after the introductory exercise. The selection of a meaningful word, however obscure, carries with it the possibility of vocalisation within the meditator’s hearing. A meaningless sound does not.

The reason why the mantra must not be heard externally by the meditator is unknown. You may test the claim by saying the mantra out loud after two weeks of meditation. Afterwards you will discover that your meditational state will roughly resemble that at the start of your meditational practice. Even after years of meditating the reversing effect of a mantra spoken out loud is not wholly lost.

However, hearing a mantra spoken out loud does not mean that you are back to square one. A few days meditating will restore you to the meditational state you had achieved before hearing the spoken mantra.

The introductory exercise

The exercise should last fifteen minutes.

Adopt a relaxed sitting position. Close your eyes. Sit quietly for two minutes. Begin by chanting your chosen mantra out loud in a normal tone of voice.

Over a period of five minutes, gradually reduce the volume until you are mouthing the mantra almost inaudibly. At that point stop mouthing the mantra and begin to repeat it in your head. Continue this for ten minutes.#

At the end of ten minutes sit quietly for two minutes with your eyes still closed. After two minutes open your eyes very slowly.

The introductory exercise is best undertaken with the aid of a friend who should quietly tell the meditator when to (1) begin the vocalised mantra, (2) begin the mental mantra, (3) cease the mental mantra (4) end the exercise. The friend should also try to ensure that the reduction in volume of the vocalised mantra is reasonably steady by gently prompting the meditator to alter the volume if he or she seems to be going too quickly or too slowly towards silence.

If a friend cannot be found to perform the task, make a tape recording of the instructions (1-4). Monitoring of the volume of the vocalised mantra in such circumstances is obviously impossible. Therefore, insert into the tape an instruction which tells you that only a minute of the vocalisation is left, that is, after four minutes of the vocalisation.

Normal meditation

To be effective the meditation must be frequent and regular but the extent of each meditation and its position in the day may vary. I normally meditate for twenty minutes twice a day, in the early morning and early evening. Daily meditation may not be absolutely necessary for the very experienced meditator with years of experience – although I recommend it – but it is a must for beginners.

Meditation should always be conducted with the eyes closed and, if possible, in a sitting position. If for any reason this is impossible, perform the meditation lying on your back.

Judge time by mentally estimating it. (This is easier than you might think. After a little while you will be able to judge time surprisingly exactly. Simply tell yourself that you wish to meditate for a certain time rather in the fashion of giving yourself an instruction before sleeping to wake at a particular time).

If in the beginning you find that you misjudge the time, do not worry. Just open your eyes when it feels that you have meditated long enough. If you have grossly overestimated the time spent on meditation – suppose you open your eyes after only ten minutes of a twenty minute meditation – close the eyes again and resume the meditation. Do not worry if you exceed the proposed meditation time.

2. The meditation

Begin each meditation by sitting with closed eyes for two minutes. During this time do not use the mantra and try to physically relax and clear the mind of thought.

After two minutes begin to repeat the mantra silently. Do not try to concentrate intently on the mantra. Rather, the intention should be to attain a state whereby the mantra is produced almost unthinkingly in the same way that manual tasks such as knitting become virtually automatic. At first you will be somewhat self-conscious, but as you develop your experience the mantra will seem to become, in a curious way, both more silent yet more dominant. After a few months of daily meditation the mantra will seem like a wave lapping gently but firmly in your head.

As you use the mantra your meditational state will alter. You may develop a chain of thoughts, often in the form of free association. Do not attempt to restart the mantra while the thoughts continue. Alternatively the mantra may lead you to a state in which you are not conscious of yourself. You will know that this has happened when you suddenly become self-aware again and realise that time has passed for which you cannot account. This unaware, unselfconscious state will be achieved more and more often the further down the meditational road you travel. After five years of meditation I feel as though I am permanently in a low grade meditational state. Do not worry for this does not mean that you will spend your days as a zombie if you attain such a state, merely that the external world will seem less immediate and intense and, consequently, more manageable.

Sometimes, particularly when you are just beginning your meditational career, the use of the mantra will result in neither a chain of thoughts nor the loss of self-awareness and may produce tension, even distinct pains about the head and face. If this happens cease the mantra and sit quietly until the discomfort is removed. Do not open your eyes . When the discomfort ends, restart the mantra. If you strike a meditation where this happens repeatedly, cease the meditation after two or thee attempts to use the mantra.

3. Ending the meditation

Sit quietly for two minutes will your eyes still closed. Then open the eyes extremely slowly taking approximately thirty seconds.

4. Interruptions

Obviously try to ensure that you are not interrupted but if you are, take thirty seconds preparation with you eyes closed – as with the normal meditational ending – before you attempt to open your eyes.

Problems for beginners

The temptation for beginners is always to strive too hard. The success of this meditational technique depends on doing the exact opposite. Always remember that you are not in a competitive situation and that you do not need to work hard in the normal sense to get the best out of your mediation.

The other difficulty you may encounter are pains – outside the meditation time – about the body, particularly the face, head and neck. I experienced quite dramatic facial pains when I began meditating. However, these will diminish rapidly and should have vanished completely after three or four weeks. So perseverance is the name of the game.

Possible physical reasons for meditational effects

I can suggest three possibilities, all completely unverified, which may either cause the loss of the normally dominant cognitive function (commonly thought of as consciousness) or enhance normally subordinate cognitive functions to the detriment of the normally dominant cognitive function:

1. The meditation affects the blood flow to the brain

2. The meditation alters the hormonal balance

3. The meditation produces a direct effect on the brain by flooding it with a single piece of information, the mantra.

Personally, I favour number 3.

Libertarianism, immigration, race, cultural roots and collective identity

There are many rooms in the libertarian  ideological house.  That fact often derails rational discussion of libertarian issues, but it need not be a problem in this instance because the question being asked is most  efficiently  examined   by testing  it against  the flintiest wing of libertarian thought. If  that pristine, uncompromising  form of libertarianism is incompatible with  the maintenance of cultural roots and collective identity, then  all other shades of libertarianism will be incompatible  to some degree.

The pristine libertarian has no truck with  any form of government, believing that  personal relations  between individuals  will adequately order society no matter how  large or complex the society,  and that  such ordering will arise naturally if  only the artificially constraints on human behaviour such as governments  and laws are removed.   Such a society  would supposedly  work along these lines.    If  the society is threatened by an invader,  individuals will join together to defend it  out of a sense of self-preservation.  To   those who cannot work for reasons of sickness,  injury, age or innate infirmity,  compassion and a sense of duty will ensure  that private charity is  extended  to relieve the need. If  public works such as roads and railways are required,  self-interest and reason will drive individuals to join to together to build  them.   Matters such as education may be  safely  left to parents and such  charitable provision as arises.   Above all the individual is king and personal choice is only circumscribed if a choice involves the imposition of one  individual’s will on another.   You get  the idea. The consequence is a vision of  a society not  a million miles away from  Rightist  forms of anarchism.

This concentration on the individual makes for a fissile  society. If each person  is to follow his  or her  own way  without any requirement to believe anything  other than to respect the conditions necessary to realise libertarian ends , that  in itself  would definitely weaken  collective identity and probably affect  cultural unity.  Nonetheless in a truly  homogeneous society, especially if it was small, the probability is that  cultural weakening would not be great and the absence of a conscious collective  identity would not present a difficulty provided the society was not subject to  a serious threat from outside.

Serious problems  for  the pristine libertarian  arise where the  society is heterogeneous,  because  then there is a loss of collective unity. If  the heterogeneity comes from class,  the  cultural roots may  be largely untouched  or at least develop in a way  which  ensures that there is still much cultural  uniformity  and that uniformity is  clearly an extension of  past cultural  traits. It is also true that in a racially and ethnically homogeneous society,  a sense of collective unity will be easily rekindled if the society comes under  external threat.

The most difficult society for libertarians to deal with is  one which is ethnically divided, especially if the ethnic divide includes  racial difference. There a society becomes not so much a society but a series  of competing racial and ethnic enclaves.  In such a situation,  it is inevitable that both  cultural unity and collective identity is  undermined because there is no  shared general cultural experience and this plus racial difference makes a collective  identity not merely impossible but absurd even in concept.

The brings us to the most obvious threat presented by pristine  libertarians to the maintenance  of cultural roots and collective identity. That  is the idea that national boundaries  should be irrelevant with people travelling  and settling wherever they choose.  This  presumes human beings are essentially interchangeable and in this respect it  echoes  multiculturalism.  The consequence of such a belief is to  greatly increase the heterogeneity of a society through the mass immigration of  those who are radically different from the native population.  We do not need to guess what the result of  such immigration is because it  has  happened throughout the western world in our own time. More specifically, it  has happened in those  countries whose populations which are most naturally sympathetic  to libertarian ideas: those which may broadly  be described as Anglo-Saxon; countries such as Britain, the USA and what used  to be known as  the old white  dominions.

The influx of millions of people who  see themselves as separate from the native  populations of the countries to which they had migrated has resulted in the  Anglo-Saxon states gradually destroying their tradition of freedom. Driven by a  mixture of liberal internationalist ideology and fear, their  elites have severely restricted by laws and  their control of the media  and public  institutions  what may be said publicly  about immigration and its consequences.  In Britain it is now possible to be brought to court simply for saying  to someone from an ethnic minority “go home”, while any allegation of racist behaviour  – which may be no more than failing to invite  someone from an ethnic minority  to an  office party – against a public servant will result at best in a long inquiry  and at worst with dismissal.  Nor, in  practice, is application of the law or the  witch-hunts  directed equally  against everyone for it is overwhelmingly native Britons who are targeted. At the same time as native Britons are being silenced and  intimidated, an incessant tide of pro-immigrant and multiculturalist  propaganda is pumped out by government, the public  organisations they control such as the civil service and state schools and the  mass media , which is overwhelmingly signed up to the liberal internationalist
way of thinking.  The teaching of history  has been made a non-compulsory subject in British schools after the age of 14  and such history as  is taught  is next to worthless in promoting a sense of  collective unity,  both because it fails  to give any chronological context to what is put before the pupils  because it concentrates on “themes”  rather than periods and because the amount of  British history that is contained within  the syllabus is tiny, often consisting of the Tudors and little  else.  The consequence is that the young  of the native British population are left with both a sense that their own  culture is in some strange way to be valued less than that of the various  immigrant groups and the lack of any knowledge about their country’s past.

The most  and sinister consequence of  post-war immigration and the British elite’s  response to it  is the development within  Britain of  a substantial number of Muslims  who not only do not have any sense of belonging to the broader society in which  they live, but who are actively hostile to  Britain and its values.  But if  this is the most dramatic example of the fracturing  of British society, it is merely symptomatic  of the separatist attitude of  ethnic  minorities in Britain generally, especially those from radically alien cultures  allied to racial difference.

All of these developments are antithetical to pristine  libertarian ideals,  both because they  undermine  shared values and because they  result in actions to control friction between competing racial and ethnic groups which in themselves undermine the conditions  in which libertarian ideals  flourish.  That libertarians so often subscribe to the  ideal of open borders despite the overwhelming evidence of  its counter-productive effects for  libertarian ends is indicative of the blinkered nature of much libertarian  thinking.

The fundamental weakness of pristine  libertarianism is its complete  failure to take  account of  human psychology  and the way  humans behave as groups.  This is  unsurprising  because of the central  position given to the individual.  But by  doing this pristine  libertarians  ignore the central fact of being human: we are  a social animal. Being  a social animal  entails two defining behaviours: all social animals  produce hierarchies  and   all  social animals place limits to the group.  Homo sapiens is no exception.

Because hierarchies in the human context arise not only from  the personal efforts, qualities and talents of each individual, as is the case  with animals,  but from the  position  each individual occupies through the accident of birth, this raises two  difficulties for libertarians.  The first  is there is not a level playing field and without that the pristine  libertarian ideal of society organising  itself through freely  entered into  relationships is severely distorted because it is clearly absurd to say that a man born poor is freely entering into a master-servant relationship with a man  born rich when the poor man needs money simply to feed himself.  The second difficulty is that the very  existence of an hierarchy,  whether or  not it is based on merit, undermines the notion of free choice because once it  is established different power relationships exist.

The question of hierarchy becomes more complex as the  heterogeneity of a society grows whether that be ever deeper division into  classes or increasing ethnic and racial diversity . All social animals have to  have boundaries  to  know where the group begins and ends.  This is  because a social animal must operate  within a hierarchy and a hierarchy can only exist where  there are  boundaries.   No boundaries,  no hierarchy, because  no  individual could  ever  know what the dominance/submission  situation  was  within their species or at least within those
members of the species with whom they interact.

The need to define the group is particularly important for  libertarians.   Above all libertarianism requires  trust. In the pristine libertarian society  this means each individual believing that other people will keep their word and  generally behave honestly. But as we all know only too well  people cannot  be trusted to observe societal norms and a society which is fractured by class, race or  ethnicity  is the least likely of all to have a shared  sense of what is right.  Therefore,  libertarians need to recognise that however  much they would like to believe that each human being is an individual who may  go where he or she pleases and do what he or she pleases, the sociological  reality precludes  this and that the only  sane ideological course for a libertarian is to advocate closed borders and the  preservation of the homogeneity of  those  societies which are most favourable to libertarian ideals not because the  society  consciously espouses them,  but because the  society has evolved in a way which includes  libertarian traits.

There will be libertarians who find it immensely difficult going on impossible to accept that the individual must in some respects be  subordinated to the group.  They will  imagine, as liberal internationalists do, that human nature can be changed,  although in the case of libertarians the change will come not from re-education  but the creation of circumstances propitious for libertarian behaviour to  emerge.  Let me explain why this is  impossible because of the innate differences between  human beings and the effects of cultural  imprinting.

Because Man is differentiated profoundly by culture, the widely accepted definition  of a species – a population of freely  interbreeding organisms sharing a common gene pool -   is unsatisfactory,  for  clearly Man is  more than  a brute   animal  responding   to   simple  biological   triggers.  When  behavioural differences  are  perceived as belonging to a particular group by  that group  as differentiating  members of the group from other  men,  they perform the same role as  organic differences for  they  divide Man  into cultural species.

A strong  analogy with computers can be made. As hardware,  a particular model of  computer is  practically identical to every other computer which  is classified as  the same model.  But the  software available to every computer of the same model is not  identical.   They may run  different operating systems, either completely different or different versions of the same program. The  software  which runs under the operating system is different  with different versions of the same program being used.  The data which is input to the computer varies and this in turn affects the capabilities of the computer.

It  clearly makes no  sense to say every computer of the same  model  is the same even if the  computer is loaded with the same software.  But of  course  not  all  computers  are  of  the  same  model.  They  vary tremendously  in  their  power.  The same software  will  run  at  very different  rates  because of this. Storage and  memory size  also  vary tremendously. Some computers cannot run  programmes because the programmes  are  too large.  We  may call all computers computers,  but that is to say little more  than that  all  animals are animals,  for
computers  range  from  the immensely  powerful super  computers – the homo sapiens  of  the computer  world  as it were – to the amoeba  of the  simple  chip  which controls  lights  being put on or off in a room  depending  on whether someone is in it.

Are the circumstances of computers  not akin to those of  Man?  Do  not the racially based  differences in IQ correspond to the  differences  in power  of  older  and  newer computers?  Do not different  languages  represent different operating systems? For example, think how different  must be the mentality of  a native  Chinese speaker (using  a language  which  is entirely  monosyllabic)  to that of a native English speaker  (using  a polysyllabic language)  simply because of the profound difference in the structure  of the language. A language will not merely
impose limits on what  may  be  expressed it will affect the  entire  mentality  of  the  individual,  from aesthetic appreciation  to  social expression. Is not the experiential input analogous to the holding of different data?

But the most potent of human behavioural triggers are racial  differences,  for they exercise the  strongest control over the group in a territory where different racial groups  exist. Race trumps ethnicity where the ethnic clash is one of people of the  same race but different ethnicities.  Place a significant population of a different race into a territory  where ethnicity rather than race is the cause of unrest and the ethnic factions  of the same race will tend to unite against those of a different race.

To argue that racial difference is  not important to the choice of a mate is as  absurd as arguing  that the  attractiveness of a person is irrelevant to the choice of a  mate.

In  Freakonomics  Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner  cite a study made of a  US dating site (the full story is on pp 80-84).  The site is one  of the  largest  in  the US and the data examined  covered 30,000  people equally  divided  between San Diego and Boston.  Most were  white  but there was a substantial minority of  non-white subjects.

The  questionnaire the  would-be  daters had to fill  in  included a question  choice on race as “same as mine”  and “doesn’t matter”.   The study  compared  the responses by white would-be  daters  (those from non-white were not analysed) to these  questions with the race of  the emails actually  sent soliciting a date.   The result  in Levitt  and Dubner’s words  was: “Roughly  half of the white women on the site  and  80  percent  of  the white men declared that  race  didn’t  matter to them. But the  response data tell a different story  The  white men who said that race didn’t  matter sent  90  percent of  their e-mail  queries  to  white women. The  white women who  said race  didn’t  matter sent about 97 percent of their e-mail  queries to white men.

“Is  it  possible that race really didn’t  matter  for  these  white women and men and that they simply  never  happened  to browse a non-white  date  that  interested them?” Or,  more likely, did  they say that race didn’t matter  because  they wanted to come across  especially  to potential mates of  their own race as open-minded?”

In short, around 99% of all the women and 94%  of all men in the sample were  not  willing  to  seek a  date of a  different  race. How  much stronger  will  be  the tendency to refuse to breed with a  mate  of  a  different race?

If sexual desire will not commonly override the natural  disinclination to remain racially separate nothing will.

Because the tendency to mate with those of a similar race is  so strong  and universal,  both in place and time, it is reasonable to  conclude  that the  behaviour  is innate and that cultures necessarily include  the  requirement for a member of the society to be of a certain racial type.  The  consequence of this is that someone  of a different racial type  is  effectively precluded from full integration because one of the criteria for  belonging has not been met.  That is not to say,  of course,  that many  of the habits of mind  of an alien culture may not be  adopted  by someone  of  a  different race.  What is withheld  is the  instinctive acceptance  of the alien and his or her descendants  as members of  the society. Just as no human being can decide for themselves that they are a member of this or that group, no individual can decide that they belong  to this or that nation because it is a two-way process: the other members of  the group they wish to join have to accept them as a true member of the group. (Stephen Frears the English  film  director once wryly remarked that he had known the actor Daniel Day-Lewis “before he was Irish”).

Where does this leave us? In its present form libertarianism is a most efficient  dissolver of cultural  roots and collective identity. It is this because it ignores the realities  of  Man’s social nature.  This results in the  creation of the very circumstances which are  least conducive to the realisation of libertarian ends.  If libertarians are to realise those ends, they  must recognise that the society  most  favourable to their beliefs  is one which  is homogeneous in which the shared values create the platform of trust which  must underlie libertarian behaviour.   Of course, that does not guarantee a society favourable to libertarians because  the  shared values may be antithetical to them, but it is a necessary if not  sufficient condition for libertarian ideals to flourish. To that libertarians  must add a recognition that there are profound differences between ethnic and  racial groups and identify those societies which are most worth protecting because they have the largest element of libertarian traits within them.

Means subverting ends – The fatal flaw at the heart of libertarianism

Ends not means

A political philosophy should be about ends not means because there is never a single certain way by which a political end can be achieved and the interpretation of what constitutes the attainment of an end is subjective. Moreover, the prescription of means may subvert the desired ends, the most common example being the corrupting nature of violence used to gain that which is morally desirable.

Where a political philosophy hardens into an ideology (a menu of ideas which supposedly acts as a sociological algorithm to answer all political questions), the individual who accepts it unconditionally has given up his or her personal autonomy and has moved from rationality into the realm of religious belief. This is pernicious because all ideologies are inadequate descriptions of reality at best and contain internal contradictions at worst. These deficiencies mean that any attempt to rigorously apply the tenets of an ideology leads to outcomes which are damaging because they conflict with reality. Sadly, many libertarians have crossed the line between philosophy and ideology.

An example of rigidly inappropriate adherence to ideology is the distinction being made between depositors and shareholders in the present banking crisis. The argument that shareholders by definition take a risk while depositors do not looks attractive at first glance but has no logical substance. Any arrangement an individual or corporate body makes with a private company other than a bank has exactly the same status as the relationship between a bank and a depositor. For example, if I put down a deposit on a fitted bathroom and the company liquidates before I receive the goods I have almost certainly lost my deposit. That is exactly the same situation as a depositor who has placed their money in a bank which then finds itself insolvent. The depositor has provided the bank with his or her money to purchase banking facilities and possibly interest on the money deposited.

A rigid follower of laissez faire would say let the depositors lose their deposits, arguing caveat emptor and suggesting that depositors had only themselves to blame if they failed to take out insurance to guarantee their deposits. This is correct in logic if you accept the premise that what primarily matters is maintaining the principle of personal responsibility, a “let justice be done although the Heavens fall” approach. If it was their own savings at risk, the odds are that no libertarian would be arguing that the depositors should be left to stew in their own responsibility. Moral: don’t subscribe to a philosophy which is too demanding.

The sane and practical way for libertarians to proceed is to identify their general ends and then look at what type of society will bring them closest to those ends. This assessment should into account human psychology and sociology, for any system of thought which is incompatible with human nature or its sociological expression is at best futile and at worst destructive. Because of the emphasis on personal freedom and responsibility, the danger for any libertarian is that they concentrate so much on the individual that they recklessly neglect the fact that Man is a social animal. Where that happens, their vision of what a libertarian society should be becomes utopian and consequently unobtainable.

There is plentiful evidence that the extent to which human beings will behave badly or well is to a large extent determined by their circumstances. As a general rule those with power, wealth and influence will behave with less restraint than those who lack such advantages. The reason for this is easy to see: power, wealth and influence remove the social restraints which keep most people within the bounds of reasonable behaviour. The powerful tend to believe they are beyond criticism or punishment; and think they do not need the voluntary help of others because they can purchase what assistance they require, while those without power fear retribution,, for bad behaviour and recognise that they need the voluntary assistance of others. The lesson for libertarians is that their philosophy must be designed to create a society which produces not complete equality of circumstances for all its members but enough similarity between each to prevent significant abuses of power.

What are the general ends of libertarianism?

All libertarians support the idea of laissez faire (generally, not only in economics), although they vary considerably in the role they allow the state, They are united in their desire to see as much as possible of social interaction left to voluntary agreement between individuals,. They wish, if they wish for a state at all, for it to be the absolute minimum required to provide the necessary framework around which society can coherently form and survive. They are strongly opposed to the state intervening in the decisions the individual makes which are private to
themselves.. They wish to see human beings living lives in which the individual takes, as far as is possible, responsibility for his or her life and for any dependants. They expect to provide voluntary aid to those in need.

Perhaps most importantly libertarians give a central place to the notion of property, a word which in libertarian thought has a connotation which extends far beyond its commonplace meaning of the ownership of physical objects to such things as a man’s labour and his very body.

Varieties of libertarianism

The most unblemished libertarians favour a world in which each individual provides for and protects his own family and property, a world in which voluntary aid from relations and friends are the bulwarks against misfortune or incapacity, a world in which everything, including the right to property, is governed by personal relationships and behaviour is moderated not by laws or official force but the moral context in which people live, with good and bad behaviour being rewarded and punished by the informal responses of others.

Most of those who call themselves libertarian would subscribe to something a little less demanding of the individual. They want a world in which the state interferes with their lives as little as they deem practicable while providing a secure social structure comprised of defence, diplomacy, justice and policing to protect both their persons and their property. Some libertarians such as Hayek would go beyond the routine minimalist state and allow a basic welfare state.

The problem for libertarians, whether they be those who want no state or those such as Hayek who would allow quite a large role for the state, is that there is no instance in human history of a single community which has corresponded to any of the envisioned societies or even come close to it.

Where there is no formal authority the societies which result invariably lack the qualities which allow libertarian ends to be attained: property is not respected, there is no system of law to which individuals can appeal, the strong dominate the weak simply by their power. No state has ever concentrated solely on those items which are considered to constitute the minimalist state. Even the enhanced minimalist state of Hayek has never been realised, although it is comes closer to reality than the others. Societies which has never existed may reasonably be
assumed to be incompatible with being human. Libertarians need to accept that fact and ask what else is needed to produce the ends they seek.

What is missing from most libertarian thought is an understanding of the need for positive as well as negative freedom. Most human beings are not and never will be thorough going libertarians even in theory. That being so, libertarians need to re-configure their philosophy to aim for a society in which those libertarian ends which are most widely shared throughout society are best achieved. The ends which are most widely consciously shared, are those which relate to the state not intervening in private lives in matters such as raising children. .
In addition, libertarians need to understand that the intervention by the state to create material conditions which produces a rough equality of power and opportunity between individuals promotes the ability of all to take responsibility for their own lives.

The money problem

Money is the elephant in the minimalist state room. This is unsurprising because it presents a tremendous problem for all libertarians except those who would be satisfied with a society based on barter for if the state controls the money supply it has immense power., Hence, libertarians prefer not to mention it if they can possibly help it. But it cannot be ignored because it is the oil which drives the entire economy. If a currency fails general economic disaster ensues in an advanced economy. It is not just another commodity.

The record of state control of money (state being defined as a central controlling power) is not encouraging, history telling us that it has commonly resulted in the debauching of currencies through the diluting of precious metal content or by recklessly printing money and expanding credit in the case of a fiduciary currency.

That might seem an excellent reason for not trusting the state with administration of the currency and leaving the matter to private initiatives. The problem is that experience says that private initiatives to produce and maintain fiduciary currencies are vastly riskier, the record of private banks failing being legion. The current credit crisis is a prime example of the dangers. Governments in Britain and elsewhere have allowed banks to expand the money supply vastly through promiscuously granting with the consequence that is now upon us, a freezing of credit to the point where most, probably all, British banks are in reality insolvent, their insolvency only being hidden by the lines of credit and guarantees offered by the British government.

By allowing private institutions to inflate the money supply governments to their hearts’ content , governments have effectively privatised monetary policy. When currencies were based on precious metals monarchs and states debased the currency: now it is the financial institutions which achieve the same effect. An analogy would be with a government with a currency based on gold minting coins of a standard gold content whilst allowing private mints to produce coins with whatever gold content they chose.

Some libertarians hanker after a return to a currency based on a precious metal such as gold. This would be completely impractical in the modern world, not least because the amount of gold available is merely a tiny fraction of that which would be needed to be held to make the currency fully convertible as it was before the Great War.

The dominance of economics

Much of the difficulty with libertarian thought lies in the central position given to laissez faire economics., a system of thought which is intellectually incoherent and impossible to defend at any level other than that of emotional exhortation and has consequences which lead to non-libertarian ends.

A truly free market by definition must be one in which no artificial restrictions exist. Yet the so-called free markets we have rely on the most fundamental restriction of all, state-regulation to prevent the natural workings of a market.

How unnatural the idea of a “free” market as (defined by laissez faire economics) is can be seen by the complete absence of such markets throughout history. Economic history is a record of men attempting to reduce competition.

But the intellectual incoherence is not the main problem with laissez faire. The major  problems lie in its practical effects. These are to create greater wealth divides and produce regular bouts of serious economic instability. This has been true since its first real trial in Britain from the 1840s onwards (Trollope’s great political novel The Way We Live Now was an early critique of its effects), the bank crises of the 1890s, the banking crisis of 1907, the Wall Street Crash and Great Depression and currently the credit crisis the world is presently undergoing. These crises have all occurred during periods when laissez faire has been the dominant economic credo of the most powerful economies in the world.

Contrariwise, the period from 1931(when Britain came off the Gold Standard) and 1979 saw state intervention in the economy and protectionism re-established. During that time no major banking crises occurred. There were of course other financial problems, most notably the defence of the pound and a period of high inflation in the 1970s, , but the period overall was remarkably stable and there was nothing as dangerous as the present situation. Draw your own conclusions.

Plutocracy and the quasi-state

The central position given to property by libertarians , including the unfettered right to inherit, subverts the ends of libertarianism. Even in a society which starts out with a large degree of democratic control, the inevitable outcome of unhindered passing down of wealth through the generations is the rapid formation of a plutocracy. Such a society is a form of  authoritarianism, and arguably the most potent form of authoritarianism because it is not the direct and overt consequence of an elite which has seized power at a given point and
wielded it unashamedly for its own advantage. Rather, it is a social state which develops organically and is all the stronger for that.

There is no obvious villain for the have-nots to attack for there is no monarch, no party, no dictator to direct anger at, merely a group of the privileged who colonise and control the political system, reducing the democratic process to an pantomime of elective oligarchy in which parts of the elite compete for formal power.

A plutocracy also passes its power and privilege down the generations through inheritance, the importance being in the inheriting as a class rather than as an individual.  This avoids the habitual cause of failure amongst authoritarian regimes, the problem of succession.

Once a plutocracy is established , the state becomes less important because the elite have power which is not solely dependent on the formal positions of power as it is in states such as the Soviet Union. The elite’s power ultimately flows from the wealth they command, which allows them to effectively buy the command of society, both formally and in their relations with other individuals.

Wealth, as my old history master never tired of saying, is power. The consequence is that substantial differences in wealth mean that those without wealth are left in a grossly subordinate situation which undermines their ability to attain libertarian ends. Inherited wealth reinforces and amplifies these power relationships and very rapidly produces a plutocracy. a social state utterly at odds with the ends of libertarianism.

How to judge an ideology

A good way of testing the moral nature of an ideology is to ask what would be an honest election manifesto for a party adopting it. In the case of most libertarians it would be this: We shall pursue a policy which will make around a third of the population richer, leave a third of the population as they are and make a third poorer. There will be great differences in wealth which will increase with every generation. Wealth being power, this will mean those born to wealth and high social position will be able to exercise authority over those who are significantly poorer than themselves. Those who through incapacity or misfortune cannot support themselves will have to rely on the charity of others to survive at worst or on a meagre subsistence at best.  Society will not be a race in which everyone starts at the same point but a handicap gallop with the handicaps being decided not by Nature but by man made laws and customs. Would any libertarian be comfortable standing on such a political platform?

Libertarians also need to ask themselves whether they want the world reduced to the banality of a system of economic relationships, ironically exactly what Marxists do, That is the danger with making a god out of property and laissez faire economics.

It is a singular fact that I have never come across anyone who was poor, either through knowing them personally or through their writings , who was a libertarian or even just a supporter of laissez faire economics. That tells its own story. Only those who feel themselves beyond the reach of poverty or unemployment are comfortable with the idea that everything will work out in the end for the best aggregate result.

Voluntary action is simply too unreliable an engine to drive and maintain a society. For example, to argue that private charity will make good that which is provided by the welfare state is simply to go against all historical experience. There has never been a society in which private charity ever came close to meeting the needs of the incapable or the misfortunate. America in the Great Depression is a classic example of what happens. Until then the USA had been a society in which welfare even art the local or state level was very limited.

If libertarianism is to be more than simply an ideology for the haves, whether through their own efforts, luck or the accident of birth, then it must take into account the way societies actually work and cater for the wide range of ability, personality and personal circumstances which always occur. That can only be done if the positive freedom side of the liberty equation is given equal weight to that of the negative freedom side.

An ideology which unwittingly subverts its ends is worse than useless; it is absurd. That is what the libertarian thought does all too often through its emphasis on the individual to the exclusion of the social nature of human beings.

Free expression or permitted opinion: that is the choice

Robert Henderson

‘And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose upon the earth, so truth be in the field [and] we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter…’ [Milton - Areogapitica].

Milton’s words perhaps contain more significance than he realised, for a society only becomes  wholeheartedly tyrannical when censorship allows no effective opposition. To take a most dramatic instance, if the Nazis had been forced by frequently expressed contrary public opinion to explain their policy of genocide to the German people, it is highly improbable that the whole grisly business would have been mooted, for we know that even without any serious public opposition the Nazis went to considerable lengths, in the midst of a most tremendous war, to persuade the mass of Germans that Jews were simply being resettled or, at worst, used as forced labour.

Without free expression, democracy cannot function because the whole purpose of democracy is to allow any view to be put forward for public acceptance or rejection.

But although free expression is a golden prize, it is also one of the hardest things for men (of all political stamps) to practise, there being the most magnetic temptation for anyone to engage in the self-serving delusion that the suppression of contrary opinion is not an abrogation of free expression but the legitimate exclusion of dangerous ideas. Milton himself fell prey to this temptation once his political “side” gained the ascendancy during the Commonwealth and Protectorate.

The idea that free expression can exist whilst restrictions on what may be said are in force is a literal nonsense because free expression is indivisible. Its essence is that it is not a negotiable quality; you either have it or a range of permitted opinion which may be altered at any point by the ruling elite, the mass media, unelected pressure groups, terrorists and the Mob.

Britain a free country?

It is often claimed – perhaps never more frequently than at present by our political elite – that Britain is a free country where a man may say what he wants. This has always been less than the truth and the limits of free expression are growing ever narrower both through pernicious effect of political correctness which insists, like all totalitarian creeds, that the only permissible view is that of political correctness, and the ever expanding legal limitations through legislation and the judgements of judges especially in privacy cases.

A surprising number of laws restricting free speech now exist in Britain. It is presently circumscribed by the laws relating to libel, slander, confidence, blasphemy, obscenity, official secrets, equal opportunities and race/ethnic relations. Government departments and agencies, local municipalities, private corporate bodies and private citizens may also obtain injunctions to prevent both the expression of views and physical demonstrations. In addition, the police have practically unlimited powers to prevent a man speaking if it is judged that the words uttered are ‘likely to cause a breach of the peace’ and may limit public demonstrations almost at will.

There are laws which are not immediately obvious to the public as being restricted of free expression. The Race Relations Amendment Act (2000)  forces all taxpayer funded bodies to prove they are not engaged in discrimination even unwittingly. The Prevention of Harassment Act (1997) makes contact with someone potentially illegal if they do it more than once after someone has said they do not want contact with you (this covers disputes with companies and officialdom as well as individuals). The Public Order Act (1986) reiterates and strengthens the provisions against inciting racial hatred in the Race Relations Act (1976, but also has a broad definition of harassment in a public place:

“5 Harassment, alarm or distress.

(1)A person is guilty of an offence if he—.

(a)uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour,
or.

(b)displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting…” (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/section/5)

The there is the Malicious Communications Act (1988. This deals with any communication by post, phone or other electronic media:

“1 Offence of sending letters etc. with intent to cause distress or anxiety..

(1)Any person who sends to another person—.

(a)a [F1letter, electronic communication or article of any description] which conveys—.

(i)a message which is indecent or grossly offensive;.

(ii)a threat; or.

(iii)information which is false and known or believed to be false by the sender; or.

(b)any [F2article or electronic communication] which is, in whole or part, of an indecent or grossly offensive nature,is guilty of an offence if his purpose, or one of his purposes, in sending it is that it should, so far as falling within paragraph (a) or (b) above, cause distress or anxiety to the recipient or to any other person to whom he intends that it or its contents or nature should be communicated.” (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/27/section/1)

The other Acts which indirectly restrict free expression because they provide for  increased police powers of arrest and powers of search. These are:

Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984

Criminal Justice Act 1987

Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000

Terrorism Act 2000

The Police Reform Act 2002

Serious and Organised Crime Act 2005

The full text of these Acts can be found at  http://www.legislation.gov.uk/. Just put the title of the Act you want into the search facility.

To these legal barriers must be added the voluntary code of practice which is policed by the Press Complaints Commission. This contains such widely drawn and imprecise restrictions as:

“The Press should avoid prejudicial or pejorative references to a person’s race, colour, religion, sex or sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or handicap.”

and

“It should avoid publishing details of a person’s race, colour, religion, sex or sexual orientation, unless these are directly relevant to the story.”

Nor is free expression guaranteed more securely by international treaty. The 1951 European Convention on Human Rights states in Article 10 (now incorporated directly into English law in the Human Rights Act) that:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall  include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers….

All fine and dandy. But this is followed by:

The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals [my emphasis], for the protection of the reputation of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.”

Which caveats allow the  state to do virtually anything by way of censorship.

The Human Rights Act (HRA) has also had a directly pernicious effect on free expression because clause 8 which runs:

“Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

“There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”

This has been used by British judges to create extremely powerful restraints dubbed “super injunctions” which outdo Kafka by making it a contempt of court to reveal the existence of
the injunction. Amidst a raft of footballers, TV presenters and actors, there are those who have or have had a serious public role, for example, Sir Fred Goodwin who was chief executive while the good ship Royal Bank of Scotland crashed into the financial rocks (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/8523323/Sir-Fred-Goodwin-obtained-injunction-to-hide-alleged-affair-with-senior-colleague.html) and the BBC’s political editor Andrew Marr (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/celebritynews/8473041/Ian-Hislop-attacks-Andrew-Marr-over-super-injunction.html.)

Goodwin had an affair with a subordinate at RBS who was twice promoted after the affair began; Marr laid himself open to a charge of gross hypocrisy on two counts: he spends his working life quizzing politicians and other public figures about their private lives and misdemeanours and the fact that he is a journalist means he who should defend free expression not engage in censorship.

Such injunctions are obnoxious both because of the censorship and because they are only available, as with libel and slander actions, to the rich. Happily their potential for mischief has been much reduced by the impossibility of preventing the information protected by the injunctions being put on the web in one way or another – Twitter was the main agency used in recent months. However, there will be injunctions whose details are known only to a few which will never appear in public because those who know either have vested interest in keeping
quiet or do so out of fear.

The Coalition Government has been making noises about passing a privacy law (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/8504051/Super-injunctions-David-Cameron-blames-Parliament.html). That could be worse than the present situation. The ideal answer is to have a written constitution with a guarantee of free expression, but the repeal of the HRA for this and other reasons would be a powerful blow against the judges’ power to create and expand a privacy law, which is what they have been doing over the past decade.

Below the super-injunctions come ordinary injunctions and under them the use of confidentiality clauses in contracts and agreements to settle disputes between two or more parties. Confidentiality clauses keep a great deal of important information of genuine public interest from the public. Take the case of Andrea Hill, the chief executive of Suffolk County Council. She has sanctioned “payouts for 13 employees which cost the authority £405,665.90” with confidentiality clauses allegedly to keep silent employees with complaints about the council. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8525969/Council-chief-spent-405000-on-gagging-orders.html). Such clauses may hide more matters of public interest than super-injunctions.

The restraints of custom and ideology

But perhaps more potent than formal laws and treaties – for they are unlimited and cannot be challenged in the courts – are the restraints imposed by custom and ideology.

Although we have never had freedom of expression, for most of the past century and a half the range of permitted opinion has been broad and the restrictions on what might be said  have had more of a social content than a political one. Fifty years ago bad language and mention of matters such as illegitimacy and homosexuality were considered to be impolite, but the idea that whole areas of political discourse should be ruled out of public discussion was alien to the British.

In the past half century the range of what is not acceptable in “polite” company has shifted very much to the political. Gradually what has become known as political correctness has restricted public discourse on a large swathe of centrally important political questions to very narrow limits. Most particularly, anyone in public life or in the public eye, knows that it is death to their careers if not worse, to fail to pay at least lip service to the credo of the unholy trinity of political correctness: race, gay rights and sexual equality. To this “Trinity” may be
added the more minor non-PC sins such as not being “green”, opposing any attempt to make society “safer” by passing laws which are sinister in their effects and generally unenforceable, or the advocacy of any idea which is not ostensibly directed towards the end of an undefined general equality.

But it is not only those that have a degree of celebrity or enhanced status within the public realm who need fear. Political correctness is by its nature totalitarian – the only acceptable view on any pc subject being the pc one – and all must heed its demands. Hence, all public employees, no matter how humble, must not only endure the humiliation of race awareness courses and sexual equality seminars, but live in fear of demotion at best and dismissal at worst if they are deemed to have shown non-pc behaviour or displayed non-pc thoughts. What applies to public service is mimicked increasingly by private businesses, especially the larger ones.

It is not that a person need be racist, homophobic or misogynist in any meaningful sense known to past generations to incur the wrath of the pc police. The politically correct have reduced the definition of what it is to be racist, homophobic and misogynist to such a narrow condition that any human being is in danger of falling foul of those who would cry bigot in the enthusiastic manner of the competing sides in the Reformation who cried heretic. Express a preference for one culture or nation over another and the speaker is racist. Let a pub landlord dare to mention that he prefers to employ good-looking girls as barmaids, and he is sexist. Mention that the legal approval of sexual acts by Gays in public lavatories might not be in the public interest and wait to be called homophobic.

Ironically, many members of the “protected” groups see that such behaviour is not to their advantage because it is both unreasonable in itself and likely to inflame prejudice against them. However, they have great difficulty in speaking out because not only do they face the usual abuse directed at anyone who stands against political correctness, but also attack from the most fanatical of activists from within their own minority group for being in effect Uncle Toms.

Revolutions notoriously devour their own. Just as the religious in the time of the Reformation had to go to ever greater extremes to prove their orthodoxy, so do the practitioners of political correctness become ever more extreme, some from a desire to be the most advanced and others from a fear of having their “soundness” questioned if they remain behind the ideological leaders.

The “right” sort of discrimination

The obnoxious contraction of what is permitted has a further danger for the unwary. Although the dictates of political correctness are in theory universal in practice they are applied  with vastly greater enthusiasm against certain groups than others. In 2001 the television presenter Anne Robinson made what was obviously a joke about the Welsh on a programme entitled Room 101. The idea of the programme was for those appearing to consign something or someone to Room 101, the place in George Orwell’s 1984 where “the most terrible thing in the world happens”. Anne Robinson consigned the Welsh with the comment “What are they for?”

A day or so after the programme she became the subject of a police investigation for inciting racial hatred and a file was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service. Some weeks after it was quietly announced that she would not be prosecuted. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/1205551.stm).

Compare that eager police response with that which occurred after the current director-general of the BBC, Greg Dyke who in 2001 described a meeting of BBC managers as “hideously white”. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/1104305.stm)

As the law stands, the statement is unambiguously racist because Mr Dyke is making a claim about a recognised racial group and the use of the word “hideously” is highly inflammatory. The extremely unpleasant nature of it can be seen by substituting black or Asian for white: “hideously black”, “hideously Asian”. Its effect can only be to incite racial hatred against whites. The severity of the offence is greatly magnified by Mr Dyke’s then position as the head of our state funded broadcaster.

To test the pc water I made a complaint to the Metropolitan police. They refused to act, despite the fact that Dyke’s comment was not a joke and his public position is a very important one. I tested the Metropolitan police a second time shortly afterwards with a complaint against a Welsh Nationalist politician called John Elfed Jones who had charmingly described the English who moved into Wales as a “disease” and likened them to foot and mouth  http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/aug/08/race.wales). Mr Jones is a man of some public standing in Wales. He is a former chief of HTV and Welsh Water, has held office in the Welsh Language Society and was involved in the creation of the Welsh Assembly. He is a member of Plaid Cwmru.  Thus, his remarks have more than ordinary public significance.

Again the police refused to act, despite the fact that Jones’ political position gave his words considerable significance in a part of the UK where firebomb attacks on the homes of English
settlers are part of the political landscape. From the refusal to act in these two strong cases of clear racial incitement, it is reasonable to conclude that only the “right” type of racial incitement complaint is acceptable to the police. Complaints to the Commission for Racial Equality on the Dyke and Jones cases met with a similar refusal to act.

This form of oppressive and partial behaviour by the police has steadily grown. Two years after the Dyke case, on 9 November 2003, Cheshire Police acted with the greatest haste on a complaint from “a member of the public” after the Bishop of Chester, Dr Peter Forster, suggested that homosexuals seek psychiatric help to reorientate their sexuality.(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-201684/Police-quiz-bishop-gay-comments.html)

A day or so later (11 October 2003) they were forced to announce that Dr Forster had committed no offence – as any sane person knew – because the 1986 Public Order Act does not  cover “hate crimes” based on sexuality. However, the Chief Constable of the force, Peter Fahy, expressed regret at Dr Forster’s comments and said that it was the duty of everyone in an influential position to celebrate diversity, viz: “We need to be very aware of the position of minorities in the county and make sure diversity is celebrated. Vulnerable minorities should feel they are protected.”

The obvious response to that statement is since when have the police had political comment as part of their brief? The answer appears to be from now on virtually anything goes. Nor does it need a particular crime to provoke such comment. Here is Chief superintendent Paul Pearce of the Sussex force speaking in 2003:

“Recent events in the police service have highlighted the continual need for a positive anti-racist and anti-discrimination stance.

“Sussex Police is overtly hostile to those who discriminate on the grounds of race, religion, skin colour, sexual orientation, disability, gender, social class or any other inappropriate factor”. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/southern_counties/3228833.stm

Equally worrying is the attempt by certain police forces to give quasi-official approval of a law which does not exist. The Public Order Act 1986 covers so-called hate crimes, which the Metropolitan Police define as “abusing people because of their race, faith, religion or disability – or because they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transsexual” (Daily Telegraph 10 11 03). In fact, the Act does not include any crime which is committed for reasons other than racial hatred.

In 2005 prosecutions were brought against the BNP leader Nick Griffin and BNP member Mark Collett for inciting racial hatred with evidence provided by the BBC (this  from an  organisation which initially refused to hand over film of IRA killings of two British servicemen in Northern Ireland). The BBC  secretly filmed a closed BNP meeting in which Islam was
represented as a menace to British society. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/police-investigate-bnp-documentary-over-violence-claim-553351.html).  The attempts at prosecution (there were two trials after the first one resulted in a hung jury on three charges and acquittals on others), failed to convict, but sent out a clear message of the extent to which those with power in Britain are willing to suppress free expression. It is not necessary to have any sympathy with the BNP to see the dangers in allowing politicians (and it required a politician, the attorney-general, to sanction the prosecution) to initiate criminal prosecutions against members of other political parties.

Sometimes the police enthusiasm to be pc makes them the object of ridicule. In 2007 a Lancashire shopkeeper found himself threatened with a public order offence for displaying golliwogs in his shop window. The police seized the golliwogs (doubtless for interrogation)and the shop keeper had to endure the suspense of what would happen next. This turned out to be nothing because the police admitted no crime had been  committed. (http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23389075-police-seize-golliwogs-in-racism-probe.do).

Farcical as the circumstances of this episode were,  it is typical of  many of these police “investigations” into what they classify as hate crimes: the police investigated but no prosecution or caution resulted. The effect of this behaviour, whether intended or not, is to intimidate the native British who now commonly think they dare not say anything critical about any ethnic minority, nation other than England, women or gays for fear of feeling the heavy hand of the constabulary.

Two final recent examples of this type of thing, both involving Islam. In April 2011, Andrew Ryan was convicted of a public order offence for burning a Koran in public. For this he was sentenced to 70 days imprisonment at Carlisle Magistrates’ Court. The sentencing judge, District Judge Gerald Chalk seems to have invented a new legal concept for he described Ryan’s behaviour as “a case of theatrical bigotry.” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8459965/Man-who-burned-Koran-jailed-for-theatrical-bigotry.html). Whether one is in favour of burning books or not, it is difficult to see what meaningful crime Ryan had committed. He burnt a book considered holy by Muslims, but so what? The Christian religion is routinely publicly insulted without a flicker of interest from the police. Effectively, a new legal status has been given to Islam, a status not sanctioned by Parliament. It is worth adding that Carlisle, in the far North-West of England, has very few Muslims and few ethnic minorities of any sort. It is doubtful whether many, if any, of the local population took offence.

The second case is even more interesting. To begin with it involves a Muslim, Mohammed Hasnath. Until the bombings of 7/7 Muslims were allowed to say and write virtually without police intervention. Since 7/7 there have been occasional prosecutions of Muslims for violent words, prosecutions one suspects which are conducted to give a specious appearance of even-handedness in the administration of the law.

Hasnath was fined £100 for putting up posters which read GAY FREE ZONE and had a Koranic reference condemning homosexuality (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8550178/Muslim-fanatic-fined-100-for-gay-free-zone-stickers.html). Note first the light penalty imposed on him compared with Ryan, despite the fact that the posters must have caused much more offence and been seen by many more people than Ryan’s Koran burning. But so would the putting up of posters containing
the anti-Gay passages in the Koran. If Hasnath had done that would the police have intervened? I suspect nothing would have been done because to have prosecuted him for that would be a tacit admission that the British authorities think parts of the Koran breach the law.

The opportunities for prosecutions based on racial hatred have been greatly widened to include not merely incitement to racial hatred but to punish more heavily any crime deemed to have a racial motive. As racism is defined ever more widely to include virtually any distinction between peoples, the courts and the police have a very great opportunity to include a racial motive in a prosecution. In addition, there are growing calls for laws to extend to the areas which the police , and especially the Metropolitan police,  fondly fantasise are already covered.

Secrecy

Secrecy is the obverse of the censorship coin. To be actively prevented from knowing something is a form of censorship. Most particularly it eats away at democratic control. Unless an electorate has the right to know what the state is doing in any aspect of its work, unlimited mischief can be perpetrated. Justice can be perverted, crimes commissioned, treason committed, political policies subverted, elections manipulated and the lives of individuals maliciously ruined, all with little chance of discovery and next to no chance of prosecution even where the public does find out about the wrongdoing. The most enraging document I have ever read is the Hansard report of the Commons debate the day before war was declared in 1914 and Britain entered the most disastrous conflict in its and Europe’s history. It is clear from Hansard that the grave and novel dangers of entering into a war with modern technology were understood by many MPs. Worse, from the pathetic evasions of the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, it is clear that Parliament and consequently the British people had been kept in the dark over secret agreements between the British and French Governments, which obligated Britain to go to war if France was attacked. So off Britain went to war, ostensibly because of an 1839 treaty Britain had signed guaranteeing Belgium’s sovereignty, but in reality because the British elite of the time had committed itself to the French elite without any Parliamentary oversight or agreement.

It is absolutely important to understand that free expression and a free media are an integral part of democracy, but they can formally exist and yet be restricted greatly if secrecy is practised by government. Democracy and openness of government go hand in hand. Take away openness and democracy is breached.

Democracy and freedom of expression

Opposition in the modern world means reasonable access to the various mass media. Without that free expression is an empty shell for, as wise dictators have always known, two shepherds on a hillside defaming the government is nothing, while a hundred thousand people demonstrating in the capital city or a television station broadcasting criticism of government is much. But our public life, including politics, is currently rigidly controlled, on all matters except perhaps the economy, by those who broadly subscribe to a left/liberal programme – what might be termed The Liberal Ascendency. Think, for example, of what educationalists did to sabotage Tory attempts to right the decline in educational standards between 1979 and 1997.

The only true democracy lies in freedom of expression, which requires both the absence of restrictive laws and the statutory guarantee of its exercise to be meaningful. Unless the
current embargo on views contrary to those of the Liberal Ascendency is broken, Britain’s claim to political liberty is a sham. It is, indeed, a strange kind of freedom which is so hemmed by law and circumstance.

The idea which is the bedrock of western morality, the primacy of the individual, is a fragile psychological edifice which can only be guaranteed by free expression. Moreover, it is an idea which is constantly under threat because the primacy of the individual is little valued by most societies and its social corollary – a practical concern for individual liberty – is an even rarer cultural artefact. Indeed, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that only in English society, and those societies deriving from it, is the notion of individual liberty built into the social fabric. The English have been free not primarily because of legal rights, but because it is their evolved social nature. They accept liberty because it seems natural to them. But that freedom has always rested on the willingness of the Public Class to both behave in a reasonable fashion and to allow criticism. Hayek, coming to England as a foreigner between the Wars noted
both the special quality of English life and the threat to its continuance:

“…it is one of the most disheartening spectacles of our time to see to what extent some of the most precious things which England has given to the world are now held in contempt in England herself. The English hardly know to what degree they differ from most other people in that they all, irrespective of party, hold, to a greater or less extent, the ideas which in their most pronounced form are known as liberalism…[Road To Serfdom 1944 chapter X1V. Hayek, of course, used liberalism in its uncorrupted individualistic sense.]

Freedom of expression is every man’s best guarantee of freedom.

How to safeguard freedom of expression

We should begin with a bonfire of most of the legal restraints. Libel and slander may be replaced by a statutory right of reply; the equal opportunities and race-related statutes should be repealed completely for they not only restrict free expression but practically abrogate the principle of equality before the law; blasphemy and obscenity should depart on the grounds that no group has the right to constrain another simply on the grounds that views are offensive to one side. Legal restrictions relating to confidence and the Official Secrets Act could be replaced by a law of contractual confidence which clearly states any obligations placed on the person accepting an overt (not implied) contract of employment. No other law of confidence should exist.

A really potent freedom of information act is needed (the present one is an insult to the intelligence with its manifold exemptions and the inability of the Information Commissioner to act within a reasonable time against recalcitrant public bodies who refuse to provide information – at present it takes around two years to get the Commissioner to issue a judgement). allows access to all government and municipal papers of general interest – that is everything which is not related to a particular individual – except papers concerned with limited and clearly
defined military matters such as battle plans, equipment specifications and computer codes relating to such things as the launch of nuclear missiles. The stipulation of papers relating only to matters of a general interest would prevent public prying into such records as individual tax returns. The passing of such an act would also place severe limits to the contractual limitations on free expression placed on public servants.

The mention of freedom of information acts always brings knowing scoffing from the self-identified political sophisticates of politics and the mass media. Faced with such a proposal they nudge one another and sigh with a resigned, patronising smile before saying that all that would happen is that politicians would decide things privately whilst dissembling in public. I should be most interested to know exactly how such duplicitous behaviour could be translated into practical measures. If, for example, the present Cabinet secretly wished to re-nationalise the railways whilst publicly supporting privatisation, it could not carry the denationalisation through and expect no one to notice.

It is true, of course, that legislation may be presented as something it is not, but that is a present evil without the existence of a freedom of meaningful freedom of information act. With such an act misrepresentation would be, in principle, subject to greater and more informed scrutiny and consequently open to fiercer pressure for amendment. Nor do I believe that politicians would be able to dissemble successfully in public all of the time.

Injunctions to prevent the expression of views and physical demonstrations are a problem for they are a potent weapon of suppression in the hands of the influential and powerful, especially if those hands form the government of the day – In addition, the police have practically unlimited powers to prevent a man speaking if it is judged that the words uttered are ‘likely to cause a breach of the peace’ and may limit public demonstrations virtually at will.

As for the customary restraints, a statutory right of reply would go a long way to ensuring fair play for the individual in their relations with the press. There would remain a problem in the case of books and pamphlets, but rarely is someone attacked in a book or pamphlet with a wide circulation who does not have access to the media.

Broadcasts present a different problem from printed matter because their numbers are practically limited with current technology, in the case of terrestrial national channels severely limited. There is also a considerable difference between writing a letter or article for publication, which most people should either be able to do or to find someone who is willing to write on their behalf, and broadcasting a coherent reply, which would be beyond many people. However, many would be able to cope with the demands of a pre-recorded broadcast and those
who could not cope could have a written statement read on their behalf.

The great problem is that of a general bias within the elite, especially the mainstream media. In the case of broadcasters there are already formal restraints on bias, but these are honoured almost entirely in the breach. To a degree bias is mitigated by the internet, but we are still a very long way from an equality of readership or prestige between the mass media and the Internet. A right to reply would further shift the balance towards fairness, but there would still be a massive advantage for those who share the liberal internationalist ideology currently
favoured by our elite.

There is an obvious danger in governments becoming directly or even indirectly involved in controlling what the media should publish. Nonetheless, the danger of government censorship and propaganda can be largely obviated if a law places the regulation of the media in the hands of the ordinary citizen through a mechanism which contains two facets. The first is that the obligations it places on the media must be properly defined. For example, the law must not merely state that balance must be achieved, which it does in connection with broadcasting already, it must clearly define what balance means in practice. This could mean that in any television or radio debate on a contentious subject the participants in the debate must be balanced in numbers as well as views – goodbye to the beloved BBC “balanced” interview of three liberal internationalists “debating” a subject.

The second facet is that the enforcement of the law must be free of government influence such as one will invariably get in the appointment of a regulatory authority. Such a mechanism could be the right of any individual to challenge imbalance in the courts not as a matter of judicial review which is expensive and contentious in its application, but through a relatively cheap and simple procedure, such as exists in the application for an injunction.

To prevent political restrictions on free expression, we need a written constitution which explicitly guards the right to free expression. To do that it must forbid any government from introducing either laws which restricts it or practices such as codes of conduct for public servants which gag them from exposing bad behaviour in public bodies or force them to promote political views, such as happens now with the practitioners of political correctness.

The constitution should also contain provisions to ensure that the police (1) do not abuse their powers to harass and intimidate those whose views do not meet with the approval of those with power and influence and (2) apply the law equally to all, something they manifestly do not do at present in politically inconvenient cases.

Conclusion

At present we have a very restricted range of permitted opinion, which is becoming ever narrower through new laws and the tightening grip of political correctness. The fact that public figures bleat ever more frenetically of our “right to free expression” reminds me irresistibly of the lines:

‘The more he spoke of his honour,

The faster we counted our spoons’

The dangerous truth is that we are moving towards a situation where we shall not only have no free speech spoons to count, we shall not even be allowed to mention their loss. If we wish to preserve our freedom, we must realise that such liberty as we enjoy is an ineffably hard won and fragile right which has been won over four centuries or more and that what was gained so slowly may be lost in a day if a government has the tyrannical urge.

Freedom of expression is an absolutely necessary condition for a free society. It is the fulcrum of freedom because he intellectual point at which a society may place a moral lever to lift it above tyranny.

The ever increasing madness of political correctness

In the past two days there have been a series of stories which demonstrate both the grip on British society established by the  ideology which is political correctness and the  power of such totalitarian creeds  to drive its disciples to ever more absurd behaviour – totalitarian because the politically correct hold that theirs is the only permissible view to hold and because the creed intrudes into every aspect of life because of the central role played  in it by discrimination, there being nothing which cannot be potentially described in terms of unequal treatment .

The stories range from the sinister to the risible.  The most sinister was the case of a part-time musician Simon Ledger who was arrested by the police after he played   Carl Douglas’s 1974 number one hit Kung Fu Fighter as a Chinese man happened to walk by his performance on the seafront at Sandown in the Isle of White.  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8475965/Pub-singers-racism-arrest-over-Kung-Fu-Fighting-performance.html). The Chinese man made a complaint to the police of racial harassment  (the simple playing of the song was the basis  of the alleged racial harassment as it “stereotyped “ the Chinese man)  and they immediately treated this as a matter of great urgency. Ledger was arrested, had his photo, DNA and fingerprints taken  before being bailed.  The next day he was questioned by and  gave a statement to the police, a process   which took 90 minutes . The police decided no  offence had been committed,  but  Ledger had suffered the upset of being accused of a crime treated as the most  toxic by the British elite and his photo, DNA and fingerprints remain on the police national database in perpetuity.  The logic of the arrest on such absurd grounds is that no musician performing in public can be certain they will not be arrested through unwittingly playing a tune  or song which someone will consider racially demeaning.

The second story involved a black headmistress Shirley Patterson.  Patterson headed a school in Southwark, South London. Hers is a truly bizarre complaint.  A school-governor  David Moyle put a poster advertising a parent-teacher evening which used a photograph of plastic human figures  consisting of Charles Darwin in the centre surrounded other white figures waving objects such as staves and pitchforks at Darwin. Patterson “called the  police to allege harassment, saying she believed the figure was meant to depict her surrounded by a mob of white parents. Governor David Moyle said his poster advertising a parents’ meeting was a joke about pushy parents demanding higher standards – and police decided no crime had been committed.”   (http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23944678-we-were-right-to-suspend-school-governor-in-race-row-over-poster.do ) . This was not the end of the matter because Southwark council set up their own investigation and suspended Moyle.

Down in Pitcombe in Somerset the police were on the trail of another dangerous criminal. His crime?  Someone had put up  picture which made Conservative councillor Mike Beech look like Hitler.  In pursuit of this dangerous felon the police conducted door-to-door searches on the twenty odd houses in the hamlet. ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8475561/Police-hunt-joker-who-drew-Hitler-moustache.html).

Down in the House of Commons alleged male chauvinism stirred. During Prime Minister’s Questions PM David Cameron advised  Angela Eagle, a shadow Treasury minister, to “Calm down dear”  as Ms Eagle, who is a feminist made in the Andrea Dworkin mould,  rowdily barracked Cameron from the opposition front bench.  Cue for the Labour Party to engage in an orgy of PC posturing and the media to make it the lead story in news bulletins for a day. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/8476624/Calm-down-dear-David-Camerons-sexist-taunt-to-Labour-MP.html ).

The final story carried absurdity the furthest.  The Journal of Animal Ethics railed against such enormities as the use of pet to describe , well, pets and wildlife to describe er wildlife.  The editor of  the journal Revd Professor Andrew Linzey, a theologian and director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, wants everyone to refer to pets as companion animals,  owners as carers  and wildlife as ‘free-living’, ‘free-ranging’ or ‘free-roaming’. Not content with this, the Journal urges the ending of phrases such as  ‘“sly as a fox, “eat like a pig” or “drunk as a skunk”’ because they are ‘ all unfair to animals’. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8479391/Calling-animals-pets-is-insulting-academics-claim).

That is just a couple of days’ of this particular form of ideological madness.  A situation has been created in Britain today akin to that of Stalin’s Russia. It is no longer possible  to remain safe by subscribing to the tenets of the ruling ideology  because the ideology keeps changing its shape and increasing its range. Even the most dedicated and enthusiastic follower of political correctness can find themselves in the coils of heresy simply because they have either not known that a new ideological  rule has been introduced or because they have not anticipated a circumstance in which a hitherto unknown identified breach of the creed is unearthed.

The effect political correctness on individual lives can be profound.  Jobs can be lost on a whim and criminal investigations started at the drop of a hat,. The police have been turned into political commissars in the service of political correctness. The idea that a man can be arrested simply for performing a song  and  have his photo, fingerprints and DNA put permanently on a police database is positively sinister.

There is also another sinister aspect to this type of crime.  The police do not routinely investigate crimes – try getting them to investigate a burglary. In the case of incitement to racial hatred cases they operate a double standard: if the complainant is from an ethnic minority they investigate; if the complainant is white they refuse not only to investigate but to record the complaint.  I have direct experience of this involving the Metropolitan police. Let me illustrate their unwillingness to act with correspondence  between Sir John Stevens (then Metropolitan Police Commissioner), Gerald Howarth MP and myself after I made a complaint of racial incitement by the then BBC Director-General Greg Dyke after he referred to the BBC as “hideously white.”  It shows clearly how determined the police are not to investigate complaints of racial incitement when it involves someone considered to be part of the politically correct elite and the complaint is made by someone white concerning abuse of that racial group.  Here is the complete correspondence in date order:

                                                18 January 2001

Asst Dept. Comm. John Grieve

Racial and Violent Crimes Squad

 Metropolitan Police

 New Scotland Yard

 10 The Broadway

  London SWlH 6BG

                                            cc All national newspapers

                                               Gerald Howorth MP

 Dear Mr Grieve,

I  ask  you to take investigate  the statement  by  the   BBC   Director  General,  Greg Dyke,  that the  BBC  is  “hideously   white” for inciting racial hatred.

The  statement  is unambiguously racist because  Mr  Dyke  is  making  a statement about a  recognised racial group and   the    use  of  the word “hideously”  is highly  inflammatory.   The         extremely unpleasant nature of it can be seen by substituting    black  or  Asian  for white:  “hideously  black”,  “hideously    Asian”.  Its  effect  can only be  to  incite  racial  hatred   against whites.

 The  severity  of  the offence is greatly  magnified  by   Mr    Dyke’s position as the head of our  state funded broadcaster.   I enclose a cutting from the Sunday Telegraph dated 7/1/2001,  to formally substantiate the statement Mr Dyke made.

I  am  sure that the severity of the offence  and  Mr  Dyke’s  position will lead a fervent anti-racist such as yourself  to  take immediate and exemplary action.

Yours sincerely,

 Robert Henderson

——————————————————————

John G D Grieve CBE QPM BA (Hons) M.Phil

Deputy Assistant Commissioner

Director, Racial & Violent Crime Task Force

Room 936 New Scotland Yard

Broadway LONDON

 SWIH 0BG

          Telephone: 0171-230-4186

          Facsimile: 0171-230-2152

          E-Mail: athena.met police@gtnet.gov, uk

Date: 31 January 2001

 Dear Mr Henderson

 I acknowledge receipt of your letter dated 18th January, 2001  concerning remarks made by Mr Greg Dyke, the Director General   of the  BBC.

 When the Racial and Violent Crime Task Force was  established   in 1998 it was given clear terms of reference, which included  that  it   would only be tasked at the direct request  of  an   Assistant   Commissioner   from  within  this   Service.   In   acknowledgement  of the concerns  expressed about race  crime   and to endorse divisions as the focal point of  police-public   interference we established Community Safety  Units in  every  London Borough.

I have not seen or heard the comments you refer to but if you  feel  that  they may constitute a criminal  offence  you  can  report  the   matter  to  your  local  police  for   possible   investigation.

Yours sincerely

Detective Inspector Howard Gosling

Staff   Officer   to  John  G  D  Grieve   Deputy   Assistant    Commissioner  

——————————————————————

                                                  12 February 2001

Mr John Stevens

Metropolitan Police Commissioner

New Scotland Yard

10 The Broadway

London SWlH 6BG

                                            cc All national newspapers

                                               Gerald Howorth MP

 Dear Mr Stevens,

I  enclose a copy of a letter I sent to John Grieve making  a   formal complaint against the BBC Director-General, Greg Dyke,   for his remarks about the BBC being “hideously white”.  

A  DI Gosling has replied on behalf of Mr Grieve.  A copy  of   his letter is enclosed. It is the type of letter which brings   the  public service into contempt. 

 DI Gosling makes himself ridiculous when he says “I have  not   seen or heard the comments you refer to…” Not only would he  have  had to be living in a cave for the past few months  not   to have met them through the general media coverage,  I  sent    a newspaper cutting giving the story and offending words with   my original letter of complaint to John Grieve.

 DI Gosling is begging the question when he says that an  Asst   Commissioner must “task”  Grieve’s group before action can be   taken.  The proper procedure when a complaint is made to John   Grieve is for it to be submitted to an Asst Commissioner.  If   it was rejected as inappropriate for action by the RVCTF,  it   should  have been submitted to my nearest police  station  in  accordance with standard police practice.  However,  this  is  manifestly  a  complaint which is suitable for  John  Grieve,   because  it  involves a public figure  with  great  practical influence and the words used were highly inflammatory.

 I  ask you to take up the complaint and instruct John  Grieve    to investigate it forthwith. 

 Yours sincerely,

 Robert Henderson

——————————————————————

                                                   6 March 2001

Mr John Stevens

Metropolitan Police Commissioner

New Scotland Yard

10 The Broadway

London SWlH 6BG

                                            cc All national newspapers

                                               Gerald Howorth MP

Dear Mr Stevens,

I  wrote to you on 12 February concerning an absurd  reply  I  had  received  from  the  Racial  and  Violent  Crimes  Squad    following  a  complaint  I  had made  about  Greg  Dyke,  the   Director  General of the BBC (copy enclosed).  I have had  no   answer from you.  My original letter was sent, as is this, by  recorded delivery,  so please do not waste your time and mine  claiming it was not received.  

 If you refuse to address this complaint honestly,  it will be   unambiguous   proof that your police force is not  interested  in   applying   the  law  equally.   Dyke’s   comments   were  unambiguously  racist and his position in charge of the  only state broadcaster amplified them greatly. 

I suggest you reply by return of post.

 Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

——————————————————————

                                                     10-March 2001

 Mr John Stevens

Metropolitan Police Commissioner

 New Scotland Yard

 10 The Broadway

  London SWlH 6BG

                                           cc All national newspapers

                                               Gerald Howorth MP

Dear Mr Stevens,

I have Mr Grieve’s letter of 2 March in response to my letter   to you of 12 February. A bald refusal to act will not do.    

Anne   Robinson,   a   presenter,    makes   some   obviously    tongue-in-cheek   remarks  about  the  Welsh  on   a   comedy    programme:  result – the matter is referred to the police who  take  it seriously and begin preparing a file for  the  Crown  Prosecution Service.

Greg  Dyke,  the Director-General of the  state  broadcasting   service,  the BBC,  states that his senior management team is   “hideously  white”.  Mr Dyke is (1) the most powerful man  in  British broadcasting  and (2) the  remark  is  unambiguously    racist  in the crudest fashion and feeds the  resentments  of    the minorities in Britain. Yet you  refuse to act. Why?

 I repeat what I said in my letter of 6 March,  every time  you    refuse  to apply the law even-handedly,  a nail is knocked  in  the coffin of your credibility and that of your force.

 Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

——————————————————————

GERALD HOWARTH MP

HOUSE OF COMMONS

LONDON SW1A 0AA Direct line: 020 7219 5650

                        Fax: 020 7219 1198

19th March 2001

Dear Mr Grieve,

Mr Robert Henderson of 156 Levita House,  Chalton Street,  London NWl 1HR,  wrote to the commissioner about Mr Greg Dyke’s remarks  about  theBBC  being  ‘hideously  white’.  I do think the police owe  us  all  an explanation as to why those remarks -quite clearly racial  – warrant no reaction  from yourselves whilst the remarks of Ann Robinson about  the Welsh do.

What is the difference?

Yours sincerely,

Gerald Howorth

John G. D. Grieve Esq CBE, QPM,

Deputy Asst Commissioner

Director, Racial and Violent Crime Task Force

Room 936, New Scotland Yard

Broadway, SWIH OBG

——————————————————————

                                                                  2 April  2001

Sir John Stevens

Metropolitan Police Commissioner

New Scotland Yard

10 The Broadway

London SWlH 6BG

                                           cc All national newspapers

                                               Gerald Howorth MP

 Dear Sir John,

 My apologies for missing your ‘K’ in previous letters. I have   had  no reply to my letter (sent by recorded delivery) of  10   March.  A  copy is attached.  Are you refusing to  give  your   reasons  for  failing  to  act  against  Greg  Dyke  for  his   “hideously white” comment?

I would also like answers to these questions:

 -  How many of the 100 odd people arrested for “hate  crimes”    by  the Metropolitan Police on 20th  March were a) black  and   b) Asian?

-  How much of the Met’s total budget for the financial  year  ending 5/4/2001 (or any other accounting period you use)  has  been spent on “anti-racist” measures including training?

-  How much of the Met’s total budget for the financial  year  ending 5/4/2001 (or any other accounting period you use)  has  been spent investigating crimes formally classified as racist  by the Met?

 Yours sincerely,

 Robert Henderson

——————————————————————

GERALD HOWARTH MP

HOUSE OF COMMONS LONDON SW1A 0AA

Direct line: 020 7219 5650

        Fax:    020 7219 1198

8th May 2001

Dear Mr Grieve,

Thank  you  for your letter of 26th April about the case raised  by  Mr Robert Henderson of 156 Levita House, Chalton Street, London  NWl 1 HR, about the remarks attributed to the Director General of the BBC.

You  will not be surprised to know that I am well aware of the  demands on  police  time and resources and support the  priority  of   tackling serious  crime.  However,  I  simply put it to  you:  what  would  have happened  had I referred to the music profession as  being   “hideously black”.  Can you not imagine that you would have been faced with  calls for me to be prosecuted and Mr Hague called upon to  expel me from  the Conservative Party?

It is that inequality of treatment which I find so offensive.

Yours sincerely

Gerald Howorth MP

John G. D. Grieve Esq CBE, QPM,

Deputy Asst Commissioner

Director, Racial and Violent Crime Task Force

Room 936, New Scotland Yard

Broadway, SW1H OBG

The value of anecdotal evidence

Robert Henderson

There is a general sneering at statements based on anecdotal evidence. This is wrong because although there are not sociological laws in the sense of  those in physics or chemistry, there are indubitably sociological phenomena which show that the behaviour  of humans is governed by more than their individual biology and experience. Opinion polls work on this assumption. Where the question asked is unambiguous and at least reasonably  uncontentious, the poll  of a thousand or so people is, when placed in the context of the superficially  atomistic nature  of human behaviour,  remarkably close to what the nation thinks. Polls of voting intention in general elections are generally accurate in terms of  the overall percentage vote  for each party if not in the constituency results.

Perhaps the neatest example of such a law in action is the voting at general elections. The voting patterns in a general election are generally uniform. If the swing from one party to another is 5% in the vast majority of constituencies it will be  close to that. Exceptionally some constituencies will return a different figure but invariably this
can be traced to factors such as a good or bad constituency MP, whether the MP is a minister and so on.

Of course, polls and market research are based on supposedly scientifically selected samples which remove bias and produce an answer which either applies to the population in general or whatever group is being polled.

When we collect anecdotal evidence we  automatically select from those within our social group which generally means people like us in terms of class  and education with age and sex also strong influences . That is no different in principle to  the pollster or market researcher polling , say, the members of a political party or middleclass women on childcare.  All we need to know about any anecdotal evidence is the likely group it has been culled from and then put it into context.

Some evidence arguably  does not even have to be put into social context. That is evidence which  consists of factual reports of actual behaviour. Take the case of  a riot. Those who witness it will by and large tell the same general story regardless of social status.

In one respect anecdotal evidence may be much closer to the truth than that gleaned by pollster. The more contentious a subject the less likely a person is to tell the truth to pollsters. They are much more likely to tell it in private conversation with friends, although there is peer pressure to conform to a particular view mitigate this advantage.

As to the objection that  anecdotal evidence will be  biased, of course it will be. The real question is  why should we believe it is generally more biased than that collected by pollsters?  Pollsters manipulate results by their questions and contentious questions often render poll results highly dubious for the reason given above. Moreover, we know that although a sample of  1,000  is generally reckoned to be the  size of sample beyond which little greater accuracy will be achieved, it is also true that much smaller samples  provide answers which are still pretty accurate. The average person assessing his or her view of an important matter will probably have taken in several dozens of  individual views through face to face social contact, the internet and the media before arriving at a judgement.  It is also true that the individual will bring all the normal human abilities to assess the views of others before  judgement is made, something polling does not do. That may actually be a more accurate way of assessing the general sociological mood of a population than scientific polling.  Finally, the sociological phenomenon of general change in population such as voting
behaviour will of itself  ensure a high degree of truth in the reporting of opinions because opinions will widely change through whatever sociological law governs such things.

To those still prone to sneer let them reflect on this: human beings actually run  their day to day  lives simply by basing their behaviour on the empirical evidence of what  others do and say, that is, anecdotal evidence.

Can  anecdotal evidence be quantified or evaluated objectively? Problematic to say the least, but perhaps the Rev Thomas Bayes (1703-61) can come to our rescue. A dictionary of philosophy (Pan)  states that Bayes developed a theorem “giving an expression for the probability of an hypothesis, h, if some evidence, e, is added to antecedent knowledge, a. The theorem states that the probability of  h relative to e and a is equal to the probability of  h relative to a multiplied  by the probability of e relative to h and a, and divided by the probability of e relative to a. This means that evidence improbable antecedently, but likely to obtain if the hypothesis is true, raises the probability of a hypothesis most. “  The problem of assigning probabilities to antecedent evidence  exists, but in principle the theorem appears to be able to
deal with the type of information described as anecdotal.  It is worth adding that Bayes theorem  is widely used in science, engineering, computer modelling and robotics, so it has undeniable practical value.

The immorality of Utilitarianism

“The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure”. J.S.Mill

Utilitarianism is a transparently bogus philosophical theory because it poses as a moral philosophy when it is disqualified from being so because it deals not with the individual but the group. This means any moral enormity, for example the murder of one person to save the life of two people,  can be sanctioned against individuals or minorities on the grounds that the overall effect of a policy will be beneficial to the group.  Nevertheless, it has greatly influenced British politics over the past two centuries is worthy of study, as is Marxism, for that reason alone.

How did Utilitarianism arise? It was a theory born of the self-conscious rationalism which gripped the world after the definitive  mental  shift caused by Newton, a change of intellectual outlook which drove some to mistakenly believe that the behaviour of men could be reduced to laws as certain as those of motion.

As an individual  doctrine it originated with  the eighteenth century philosopher,  Jeremy Bentham. He first outlined the basics of Utilitarianism in his Fragment of Government published in 1776.  This  was an attack on Blackstone’s Commentaries (on English law), which Bentham viewed essentially as an apologia for English law written as   ruling  class propaganda.  Bentham’s interest in  the reformation of the law remained one of the strongest themes of his life and it was the field in which he had most practical  effect.  Most of the British  judicial  and penitential reforms of the nineteenth century originate from his ideas.

Treated purely as a philosophical construct, Utilitarianism is a literal nonsense, because the premise on which it is predicated – the greatest sum of happiness as determined by the pain pleasure calculus – is in principle impossible of any practical application, for  manifestly no objective quantification of the determination of the qualities such as   happiness, pain and pleasure can be made. However, even if that were not so, there are other grave objections.

As described by Bentham, Utilitarianism was essentially nothing more than a matter of social function.  Indeed, because the theory is concerned with the sum total of happiness rather than the happiness of the individual,  its claim to be an ethical system is objectively invalid.  From this arises one of the main objections to  Benthamite Utilitarianism,  namely how may the tyranny of the majority be prevented? If the greatest happiness of the group is all that is required, any amount of individual unhappiness less than the sum of the group happiness could be inflicted in search of the greater happiness of the group.

The other primary objection  was  that motivation  became  irrelevant. Thus, under the Benthamite regime, if I kill you by accident in the course of attempting to do you a favour, that is irrelevant in assessing the amount of pain I have  inflicted on your relatives and friends. I might as well have  murdered you. The only criteria by which Bentham attempted to  calculate pleasure or pain were its four “dimensions”:   intensity,  duration, the certainty of an event  happening  as a consequence of a particular action and the length of  time before it occurred. These again are obviously not capable of quantification.

J.S Mill, the son of a prime disciple of Bentham’s, James Mill, recognised those weaknesses in Benthamite thought and attempted to  introduce a genuinely moral aspect  into Utilitarianism by making the effect of actions upon others a cornerstone of the theory. However, in doing this, he made a nonsense of the idea of a neutral and objective test of  actions which was at the heart of Bethamism. That test although impractical was in principle objective.  Having introduced the idea of consequences for others.  Mill  then compounded his destruction of Benthamism  by assigning  values (to be treated as benchmarks by Utilitarians)  to  actions and things. Whereas Bentham had famously said that   ”pushpin is as good as poetry” (one rather feels he might have felt at home in New Labour),  Mill held that “it is better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”

In the course of his philosophical contortions,  Mill developed the mentality which is essentially that of the modern liberal bigot. Mill produced a philosophy which purported to still provide an objective means of testing the moral content of an action, but which in reality was merely a disguised wish list of Mill’s own desired moral  outcomes.    That is the position liberal bigots adopt today: they attempt to enforce their own ideology on everyone,  while claiming that they are merely following universal objective moral principles which they call Human Rights.

After  Mill,  Utilitarianism was  further  significantly developed by Henry Sidgwick  who enlarged on Mill  by  asserting  that the obligation to follow the  Greatest Happiness Principle only made sense if it was regarded as a fundamental moral intuition and from that general  premise    specific moral rules could be justified.

These days Utilitarianism is divided by academic philosophers into Act and Rule Utilitarianism.  Act utilitarianism is concerned  with the outcome of individual  acts.  Rule utilitarianism does not evaluate individual acts, but rather attempts to produce rules which can be generally used to guide behaviour, for example “Everyone should pay their  debts” or “Everyone should refrain from initiating violent   assault on another”.

Human beings are often placed in situations where they do have to make utilitarian choices. A recent example was a mother who was driving her two young children when she crashed and ended up in deep water. She had to choose which child to attempt to rescue first, knowing that the unlucky child might well die. Sure enough, the choice meant that the first child was saved and the other drowned. Anyone would feel great sympathy for a mother placed in such a situation. Nonetheless, the choice she made was not essentially a moral one. She had to decide who decided saving first. That choice may well have been made on practical grounds such as who was closest to her in the car or who was youngest, but who would doubt the possibility that the favourite child was chosen?  If so, that would not be a moral choice but one of personal predilection.   Moreover, even if the choice was made on practical criteria, who is to say that a younger child is more deserving than one who is older. It could be argued that the moral choice in this instance would have been extricating one child from the car then remaining underwater while trying to help the other child as well. That might well have resulted in the death of all three,  but it would have been a moral decision pure and simple.

New Labour, new fascism? – Tony Blair and the Führer principle

 From the beginning of his leadership of the Labour Party Tony Blair’s rhetoric was heavily if unconsciously littered with fascist buzz words: NATION, NEW, RENEWAL and so on. But there is a greater similarity than single words:  Blair frequently expressed ideas which have a remarkable similarity to those of Oswald Mosley. To demonstrate this, I have compiled a series of quotes from Blair and Mosley. 

All the Mosley quotes come from speeches and writings made after the foundation of the British Union of Fascists. Therefore, the comparison is between Blair and Mosley as a committed Fascist, not between Blair and the moderate Mosley of the late twenties or, indeed, even the Mosley of the 1930 Manifesto or the New party. The majority of the Blair quotes date from after 1990; approximately half since he became Labour leader.

I have left each quote unidentified except by a number to allow the reader to speculate on who said or wrote what before checking who said what. (Readers seeking clues  should bear in mind that Mosley’s comments were made in the context of the Depression and the existence of continental Fascist powers).  The quotes  can  be  identified by using the notes supplied at the bottom of page.

The importance of Blair’s language is twofold: it gives an insight into his personality and explains in large part how he managed to take command of a party based on trade union power and funding and changed it into an organisation which at least at its leadership level embraced the Thatcherite undermining of the power of the working class and worshipped laissez faire economics. He did it by making the leader more important than the party, a classic fascist tactic.  Now for the quotes:

It combines the dynamic urge to change and progress, with the authority, the discipline and the order without which nothing great can be achieved.” (1)

It is largely from family discipline that  social discipline and a sense of responsibility is learnt. (2)

Our challenge to be a young country is not just economic, it is a social and moral challenge. (3)

I believe we have broken through the traditional barriers of right and left; that we are developing a new and radical economic approach for the left and centre. (4)

Above all it is a realistic creed. It has no use for immortal  principles in relation to the  facts  of bread-and-butter; and it despises the windy rhetoric which ascribes importance to mere formula. (5)

One Britain. That is the patriotism for the future. (6)

The steel creed of an iron age, it cuts through the verbiage of illusion to the achievement of a  new reality… (7)

It is no good waving the fabric of our flag when you have spent the last sixteen years tearing apart the fabric of our nation. (8)

A young country that wants to be a strong country cannot be morally neutral about the family. (9)

We have in unison in our cause the economic facts and the spiritual tendencies of our age… (10)

We need a new social morality. (11)

We seek to establish a new ideal of public service, and a new authority based on merit. (12)

It must be absolutely clear to the British people that we are a political arm of no one other than the British people themselves. (13)

The mild tinkering with the economy proposed by the Social Democrats nowhere near measures up to the problem.  A massive reconstruction of industry is needed…the resources required to reconstruct manufacturing industry call for enormous state guidance and intervention… (14)

We will protect British industry against unfair foreign competition. (15)

There is nothing odd about subsidizing an industry. (16)

It is true that within the old parties and even within the old parliament are many young men whose real place is  with us  and who sympathise with our ideas. The real political division of the past decade has not been a  division of parties, but a division of generations… (17)

The market collapsed: its guardians, the City whizz-kids with salaries fractionally less than their greed, now seem not just morally dubious, but incompetent. They failed miserably, proving themselves utterly unfit to have such power. (18)

Politically, the fall-out from the events of the past two weeks will be immense. There will be few politicians standing for election next time on a platform advocating ‘free markets’. (19)

The new establishment is not a meritocracy, but a power elite of money-shifters,  middle men and speculators…people whose self-interest will always come before the national or the public interest. (20)

The case advanced in these pages covers, not only a new political policy, but also a new conception of life. In our view, these purposes can only be achieved by the creation of a modern movement invading every sphere of  national life. (21)

We will speak up for a country that knows the good sense of a public industry in public hands. (22)

A nation at work, not on benefit. That is our pledge. (23)

Social aims without economic means are empty wishes. By uniting the two we can build a better future for all of our people. (24)

In our project of national renewal, education renewal must be at the forefront.  Our watchwords will be aspiration, opportunity and achievement. (25)

I want a negotiated settlement and I believe that given the starkness of the military options we need  to compromise on certain things. (26)

It is the primary responsibility of any government to defend the country. That much is obvious.  But my contention here is that a strong defence capability is an essential part of Britain’s foreign policy. (27)

To change our country, we must show that we have the courage to change ourselves. (28)

I think that you should always put the national interest before any section of interest in your own party. (29)

Our task now is nothing less than the rebirth of our nation. A new Britain. National renewal…The task of building new Britain now to come. (30)

We ask them [our supporters] to rewrite the greatest pages of British History by finding for the spirit of their age its highest mission in these islands. (31)

Without  an  active  interventionist industrial policy…Britain faces the future of having to compete on dangerously unequal terms. (32)

We aim to] “convert the existing chaotic survival of laissez-faire liberalism into a planned economy serving the needs of the State as a whole.” (33)

Blair’s quotes are all taken from Iain Dale’s ‘The Blair  Necessities’ (BN): those of Oswald Mosley from Eugene Weber’s   ‘Varieties of Fascism’ (VoF). Ergo, a quote number with BN against it is Blair’s: a quote number with VoF, Mosley’s.

  (1) VoF p170

  (2) BN p18 1993

  (3) BN p19 1995

  (4) BN p14 1996

  (5) VoF p170

  (6) BN p13 1996

  (7) VoF p171

  (8) BN p13 1996

  (9) BN p12 1995

  (10) VoF p172

  (11) BN p19 1996

  (12) VoF p111

  (13) BN p28 1996

  (14) BN p39 1982

  (15) BN p39 1983

  (16) BN 40  1983

  (17) VoF p172

  (18) BN p41 1987

  (19) BN p41 1987

  (20) BN p42 1994

  (21) VoF p171

  (22) BN p52 1988

  (23) BN p65 1995

  (24) BN p65 1995

  (25) BN p69 1994

  (26) BN p89 1982

  (27) BN p90 1997

  (28) BN p94 1993

  (29) BN p98 1996

  (30) BN p106 1995

  (31) VoF p175

  (32) BN p57 1988

  (33) VoFp116

How do we explain liberal internationalism as a biological phenomenon?

Robert Henderson

What the liberals have done

The general facts of liberal internationalist elite behaviour are these. They have socially fractured societies which previously enjoyed a high degree of racial and cultural homogeneity by permitting the mass immigration of the racially and culturally different. They have undermined national security and reduced domestic employment opportunities by removing protection for their own agriculture, commerce and industry. They have wilfully suppressed their own cultures through manipulation of the education system in particular and public policy generally. They have engaged in a ceaseless propaganda conducted through the mass media which diminishes the native culture and promotes the interests of minority groups. They have dissolved national democratic control by entrapping their countries in treaties such as those which empower the EU, NAFTA, the WTO and the UN, the consequence of which is to greatly restrict the scope for national action.

Beyond the boundaries of their own countries, these elites have inflated through Aid the populations of Third World countries beyond that which their societies can naturally support. In addition, the traditional social and economic arrangements of these countries are eroded by direct Western political interference and trade rules which encourage cash crops over farming to feed their own people. The consequence of all this is an ever growing number of people in the developing world who have a desperate urge to move to the rich West, something made ever easier by the liberals’ support, tacit or open, for continuing mass immigration into the West.

At the same time, the populations of the liberals elites’ own countries are falling and are ever more vulnerable to the effects of the mass immigration being promoted by the elite. The necessary eventual consequence is the effective colonisation of Western states by immigrants.

The declining birthrates of the West are themselves the fruit of liberal elite decisions to permit abortion on demand, to actively promote the feminist agenda and to create economic circumstances which discourage breeding, for example, it is increasingly difficult for a family in Britain to be raised on a single average male wage. The relaxation of trade barriers weakens their own countries and leave them ever more vulnerable as they become progressively less self-sufficient, while promoting the wealth and self-sufficiency not merely of other states comparable in size, but states – particularly India and China – whose individual populations exceed the combined populations of Europe and North America.

Natural selection and group fitness

Western elites are doing just about everything an organism should not do to protect itself: allowing large numbers of those outside the social group to invade the group’s territory, removing resources from their territory and giving those resources to those outside the group and, most bewilderingly, assisting competitor groups to expand their population whilst restricting their own.

Why are liberal elites exhibiting such ostensibly self-destructive behaviour?? The answer may lie in the fact that elites think of themselves as a separate group, a group which extends beyond national and cultural boundaries. There is nothing new in this. The medieval aristocracies of Western Europe thought themselves part of a chivalric whole.

The putative advantage to the elites of international elite solidarity is that it allows them to weaken their dependence upon their immediate (native) populations.

How elites evolve

England provides a model of how elites can survive through evolution for a very long time. From the 14th Century onwards the general trend was to broaden the elite with, in the long term, the inexorable movement was towards Parliamentary government and from monarchical power. During this development the wishes of the masses were largely but not entirely ignored – the masses made their presence felt through rioting (the historian Lewis Namier memorably described the government of 18th Century England as “aristocracy tempered by riot”)

As the franchise broadened the masses were able to exercise an ever larger degree of democratic control because politics was still national and a political party had to respond to the electors’ wishes. The elite resented this control over their behaviour and looked around for a way to diminish democratic influence. They found the means to do it in internationalism.

In a sovereign country politicians cannot say this or that cannot be done if it is practical to do it. That is a considerable block on elite misbehaviour. So the elites decided that the way round this unfortunate restraint on their misbehaviour was to commit their countries to treaties which would remove the opportunity for the electorate to exercise control over policy. In the British case, the most notable example is the Treaty of Rome and the subsequent treaties which have tied Britain into the EU. Vast swathes of policy are no longer within the control of the British Parliament because of these treaties. Add in the treaties tying Britain to the UN and the WTO and the commitment of every mainstream British party to them, and democratic control has essentially gone. What has happened in Britain is mirrored to a lesser or greater degree throughout the West.

Does liberal internationalism make evolutionary sense?

Assuming the ultimate biological imperative for any organism is to pass on as many of its copies of its genes as possible to future generations, the liberal elites might seem to have a considerable advantage because the richer and more powerful the person the greater the potential for more and better quality mates and consequent offspring. The problem with this argument is that elites in the West do not breed prolifically and, indeed, have on average fewer children than those of the native masses whom they despise. Cultural norms have seemingly subverted biology.

But cultural norms are ultimately an expression of biology, so how has this occurred? I will offer this hypothesis: there is a strong natural selfishness in the individual. This is held in check to a greater or lesser degree by the social arrangements of a society. A society which emphasises tradition will rein in selfishness. Such societies will have a strong sense of “tribe” and frequently a religion which emphasises the need to breed, demands charitable behaviour and threatens punishment in an afterlife. There will also be an absence of any easy means of contraception – and quite probably a religious ban on it – strictly enforced marriage and the lack of a welfare state. All of these things will reinforce social cohesion and the immediate interdependence of individuals on one another.

Such societies are anathema to the modern liberal mind, whose perfect society is one from which national feeling has been leeched and whose members are held together by only a shared sense of “rational” desires such as a fair justice system and a good material standard of living. Having no sense of tribe they will not see it as a duty to breed. Having easy access to contraception they can copulate at will yet have few children. They even have an ideology which tells them that having children is simply a “life choice”. Selfishness is made respectable. A society has been created in which the restraints on selfishness have been loosened too far. The consequence is that the liberal elite behave in a way to satisfy themselves at the expense of their descendants.

What counts as biological fitness in human beings?

All organisms other than Man pass on their genes in the most obvious and straightforward way. The organism breeds and its descendants breed or do not breed. In animals which engage in extensive parental care what might be called cultural inheritance plays a part in the transmission process with members of the species varying in their ability to nurture their offspring. The young of such animals undoubtedly rely on the example of their parents and, in the case of social animals, other adults to acquire many of the behaviours needed to survive.

But even the biologically fittest of the most socially advanced non-human animal cannot pass on an advantage to their offspring which in any way approaches that which a human can pass to their children. Indeed, Man’s behaviour in passing non-genetic advantage from one generation to the next is so radically different from that of any other organism that it may be the biological imperatives which drive the rest of the natural world have been subordinated to this immense ability to pass on non-genetic advantage, an ability driven by the unique nature of Man who consciously identifies how advantage may be gained and passed on. Biological fitness in humans may be predominantly the ability to pass on non-genetic advantage rather than genetic advantage.

It might be argued that inherited non-genetic advantage will dissipate over the generations and that few families will maintain their privilege over more than a few generations. But the genetic inheritance of a family line is soon dissipated reducing by 50% per generation. In other words, non-genetic inheritance is at worst no poorer a bet in maintaining fitness than genetic inheritance and in some cases a considerably better one because the inherited advantage can be passed through a larger number of generations than any meaningful genetic legacy. There are aristocratic families in England today who descend from nobles who came over with William the Conqueror in 1066. But you do not need to be an aristocrat because the advantage goes down the social scale. In 2010 Prof Gregory Davis of the University of California published a very interesting piece of research which demonstrated that those with Norman descended surnames in England were on average richer than those with artisan origin names (Regression to Mediocrity? Surnames and Social Mobility in England, 1200-2009 http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/Ruling%20Class%20-%20EJS%20version.pdf).

If this a correct interpretation of biological fitness in Man, it makes sense for elites to grab as much power, wealth and privilege for themselves. But the haves must create social circumstances which allow them to pass their non-genetic advantages to descendants. It is no good enraging the have-nots to such a degree that they simply kill the haves or take their privileges away or changing the conditions of a society so radically that the elite loses control. The latter is precisely what modern liberal elites appear to be doing.

Can the liberal elite change?

It is undoubtedly true that elites as a group only ever have one settled principle, namely, to do whatever is necessary to secure their power, wealth and privilege. It is also true that liberals have at the personal level long feared the consequences of non-white immigration – vide the way they choose to live in very white worlds themselves – and since 911 have begun to openly acknowledge that heterogeneous societies are a problem. Many probably want change. The difficulty is that by internationalising their ideology through treaties and membership of supranational bodies such as the UN and the EU and a commitment to laissez faire economics, the liberal elites have surrendered control of their own individual national destinies and hence their power to readily change matters.

To this must be added the sheer inertia which is built into an international system which has grown since 1945 into an immense heap of political and bureaucratic power and privilege. An international army of politicians and bureaucrats have the most vested of interests in maintaining the status quo.

Most important is the existence of large populations of unassimilated and probably unassimilatable recent immigrants and their descendants. These populations manipulate the political process through their increasing electoral power and the tacit threat of serious violence to ensure further immigration from their respective groups, to influence foreign policy (including foreign Aid) and to maintain the practice of allowing unimpeded remittances from the host country to the ancestral country.

The liberal elites have seemingly adopted a suicidal strategy which because Man is a creature of culture and the culture of the Western elites has trumped not only the normal biological imperatives, but has led the liberal elites to create circumstances in which the human biological imperative of non-genetic inherited advantage cannot be exercised. By forgetting the importance of the tribe or, rather, mistaking what the tribe is, that is,  their own national group, they have set themselves on the road to oblivion. It might be likened to the evolutionary overshoot of certain of the nautiloids which evolved ever more convolutedly spiralled shells until they became biologically unfit and finally extinct. Evolution is not just about winners.