I was going to write about something else this week.
I had something almost ready about Jacob Rees-Mogg’s views on theology. But
then I saw that he had ruled himself out from being leader, no doubt because of
his views on theology. Maybe at a later date I will discuss those views. I
think there is an interesting rational argument to be had about the subject.
But why stick your neck out. It’s not bad enough yet.
Every other day now North Korea either has a new
test for a new sort of nuclear weapon or else it sends a rocket over Japan. Kim
Jong-un is the Little Engine that Could. He’s little and a little round and he
can. Everybody gets very angry about this and makes all sorts of threats. But
nothing is going to happen until and unless he does. If any sort of nuclear
weapon actually lands on American territory or the territory of an ally then
there will be a nuclear response. But until and unless that happens Mr Kim
knows that he can pretty much do as he pleases. The Chinese don’t want to see a
unified Korea, so they will do nothing. The Russian’s chief foreign policy goal
is to do the opposite of what the Americans want and so they will do nothing.
Mr Kim wants attention and perhaps needs it and so he will throw his rockets
out of his pram, but the game requires that he doesn’t go too far. The only
problem is if he miscalculates. What if one of his rockets accidentally lands
in Japan? Is there a response then? But fundamentally until the situation gets
bad enough the Americans will do nothing. It’s not bad enough yet. I think it
has to get very bad indeed before any sort of military action is taken against
North Korea. So Mr Trump’s threats are probably empty, just as Mr Kim’s rockets
are empty. The game is very dangerous indeed, but for the moment that’s all it
is.
The same logic applies to our domestic security
situation and the situation of every other Western European Country and indeed
the United States. Here we face a situation that is much more dangerous than
North Korea, but here too it isn’t bad enough yet.
Every now and again for the last while we turn on
the news to find there has been another terrorist incident somewhere in Europe
or the United States. We’ve had big ones (9/11) and small ones (Parson’s Green)
and medium ones (e.g. Nice). But none of
these are bad enough. What we always get afterwards is the same meaningless
words from politicians and the same meaningless gestures. The Eiffel Tower is
lit up with the colours of another country’s flag. Scared people tell other
scared people that they are not scared. We promise that we won’t give in to
terrorism while trying to modify what we say and do in order not to provoke it.
None of these things do any good whatsoever. We’ve even ceased to listen to
what the politicians say as we already know what they said last time and what
they will say next time.
The problem is this. Just as Jacob Rees-Mogg has to
rule himself out of being Tory leader for telling the truth about his views, so
all of us have to rule ourselves out of membership of polite society if we tell
the truth about the nature of the problem and provide solutions that might actually
solve it. It’s not bad enough for us to do this and so we say nothing.
There is an unforgivable sin in the modern western
world. Because of this unforgivable sin most people go to great lengths to prove
that they are not sinners. The unforgivable sin is so awful that I dare not
even name it. I can blaspheme against the Holy Spirit with impunity, but we all
know that certain words and certain truths may not be said in modern Britain. The
reason they may not be said is that it isn’t bad enough yet.
Since Scottish politics became a dead issue not
worth writing about I have spent the whole summer trying to explore the
fundamentals of politics. Our problem is that we have turned equality into a
God that must be worshipped at all costs. It means that whenever we face a
situation that requires discrimination we fail to discriminate. We may start
off with the best of intentions, after all we all want to be treated fairly,
but we end up ignoring real difference. There is a real difference, for
instance, between men and women. We are all of us who are not blind and unable
to touch fully aware of it. But the logic of the equality lobby leads to
children of six being told that this difference is not real and that girls and
boys are interchangeable at will. The truth remains the truth and reality
remains reality. The foundation of human society is the real difference between
men and women. Throw away that foundation at your peril. Men and women want
different things and to an extent we think differently and are often good at
different things. Treat us fairly by all means but don’t ignore the reality of
our difference.
There is likewise a difference between the duty I
owe to my family, my fellow citizens and the duty I owe to people in general. These
are real differences. I do not have a duty to ruin my own country in order to
save the people of another. We are not equal.
When we turn equality into the thing to be worshipped
at all costs, the cost in the end is Parsons’s Green. Discriminate has become a
bad word. Not the worst of words of course, but bad enough. But really it means
to recognise a distinction. People are different. Of course there are fundamental
characteristics that we share with people the world over. But anyone who has
travelled realises that there is a distinction between my society and your
society, my culture and your culture. This is a real distinction. The attempt
to erase this distinction because of equality is leading the West to disaster. Many
people on the Left because of their belief in equality are trying in effect to
create a world without borders. The result will be very bad indeed. It already
is pretty bad as you may have noticed in the last five years or so. It may get
much worse.
Can anything be done? Possibly. The most important step
is to leave the EU. This makes Parliament sovereign and gives us the power to
elect politicians who will do what it takes to make our country safe. It also
gives us the power, if we choose to exercise it, to act in the interests of our
own citizens rather than the citizens of the whole world. We must have no
foreign court telling us what to do. The problem is that whenever a country
attempts to do what is necessary to make itself safe (e.g. Poland, Hungary etc.)
other countries condemn them for failing to share in our common danger. Each of
our European countries ought, after all, to be equally dangerous otherwise we
sin against the God of Equality.
Will anything be done? Probably not, at least not
yet. I think it probably needs a plane to fly into the Houses of Parliament and
for that plane to be packed with radioactive material or else some form of
chemical or biological weaponry. Such a plane could easily have been flown on
September 11th 2001 in which case it might have killed 100,000 people rather
than 2996. That would probably have been bad enough. In that case our
politicians would not have gone on about what this had nothing to do with.
Rather they would have solved the problem. We wouldn’t have had any choice. But
this won’t happen, not yet anyway, because it’s not bad enough.
