As the Queen’s reign reaches 70 years many people will
be reflecting on where we were in 1952 and where we may be going.
The most important event was the end of the Cold War
in 1991. This remains the case even as 2022 has seen a renewed threat from
Russia and what might be called Cold War II.
1991 was decisive because it demonstrated that if you
give people a choice between socialism and free markets, they will choose the
latter. It was no longer possible to seriously claim that Left wing thought
would make people richer.
The usual counter arguments may be inserted here. The
Soviet Union despite being called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was
not really socialist. Communism has not really been tried and nor has
socialism. One more try and we will show how socialism makes everyone both
richer and equal.
But this is the equivalent of trying to believe that
there are Gods on top of Mount Olympus. It simply is not possible to seriously
believe in Zeus and for the same reason it is not possible to seriously believe
in socialist economics. It was tested to destruction in the twentieth century.
Socialism will bring you tyranny, poverty and mass murder because it can only
succeed by changing human nature and that can only be done by force.
People are naturally capitalistic. We are motivated by
profit. We care more for our own family than someone else’s and care more for
our own country than someone else’s too. This is why we have countries where
people are similar linguistically and culturally rather than a world without
borders.
But though socialism was decisively defeated in 1991,
the Left did not give up the fight, but instead decided to fight in a different
way.
The foundation of the free market is that I work for myself
and my family. If my country protects both, I will also protect my country. This
is the bargain. Socialism can only succeed if it attacks all three, which is
what it has been doing since 1991.
The Left has ceased attempting to introduce a truly planned
socialist economy in the West, instead favouring socialism lite or social democracy.
On the surface this retains the distinctive forms of capitalism, but gradually
undermines free market thinking. At the same time the nation state is continually
undermined from within and without and the rights of both the family and
individual are diminished.
The reason we have countries is due to human beings
naturally wishing to form groups with people who are similar. If that were not
the case then the world would have developed differently. Building the Tower of
Babel would have succeeded and we would all have ended up speaking the same
language thousands of years ago. We would long ago have abolished all distinctions
of tribe and appearance centuries ago. Everyone would live in one world with no
countries and no distinctions. We’d all be a mucky shade of grey. This is the Left’s aim. But it requires
changing human nature.
The reason that we don’t live in one world without
countries or distinctions is that we don’t want to. For this reason, the Left
has to force us. But instead of using more tyrannical forms of force the Left
instead has relied on giving us no choice.
If you allow unlimited migration then the logical
endpoint is to abolish countries. If my country has people from all over the world
and your country equally has people from all over the world, then the reason
for distinguishing between these countries ceases to be.
If French and German people could freely migrate to
each other’s country then in time they would intermarry and develop a common
language. If that could be done all over Europe then you would no longer have Italians
and Poles, you would have Europeans with a common identity and a common
language. But if you can do this with Europe you can just as well do it with
Europe and Africa.
This is why Remainers reacted with such fury to
Brexit. It was the first setback for the Left since 1991 and it had to be
punished.
At the same time as the Left has been abolishing the
nation state it has also been re-educating the family and the individual.
We only care about our own family, because these few people
are closest to us and we love them and can rely on them. But if it takes a village
as Hilary Clinton said, there is no need for a family. What’s more if someone
has three children with three different fathers and has divorced twice then the
sense of family will be such that it might as well be a village.
The collapse of sexual morality in the West means that
anyone can have sex with anyone they please with no moral consequences so long
as there is consent. It is now normal to meet someone on your telephone, see
them that same day and have sex with them immediately. It means that men no
longer have to marry in order to have sex so frequently don’t bother. It means
that women frequently have children without fathers, because the state will pay
for them.
Divorce is now easy. You just have to wait a year.
While marriage previously had the purpose of protecting children by making a
man remain with the person he has sex and children with, now marriage has been
divorced from procreation by opening it up to same sex couples who by
definition will never have children naturally.
The final attack is on the individual. What am I? The
first thing we learn as children is that I am a boy or I am a girl. This
concept is so vital to our identity as individuals that many languages make
being a boy or a girl central to their grammar. But even though this is the fundament
of humanity it is attacked so that it is no longer possible to clearly
distinguish between a boy and a girl. But if a boy can become a girl, then an
elephant can become a mouse and 2 + 2 may equal 5. At this point we can build socialism
because we have succeeded in destroying the individual, the family and the nation
state.
People will naturally choose, free markets, families
and individualism. Russia does not have a problem with mass migration, not
merely because migrants are housed in the tundra. But socialism is winning in
the West despite our theoretically having a democratic choice.
No one voted for mass immigration to Britain. No one
voted for Net Zero making it too expensive to turn on the heating. No one voted
for any of the other things that have been undermining our country our families
and ourselves.
Free markets depend on sound money and living within
our means. It depends on a distinction between those who work and earn and
those who don’t. But each of these have been undermined by successive
governments excessive borrowing and unlimited public spending which has merely caused
inflation. If governments can simply create money and spend it without limit,
then why work? Why not simply be paid to stay at home? Call it lockdown and you
have your socialist utopia.
The present Conservative Government has introduced a
sort of socialism by stealth. If there is a cost of living crisis, the state
will solve the problem rather than individuals and families doing so by means
of thrift and hard work. It has failed to protect our nation state from mass
migration which gradually turns us into a world without borders and it is undermining
our democracy by failing to give us a real choice between socialism and free
markets. If we vote Labour we will get more of the same and there is no mainstream
British party that offers us low public spending, low taxes free trade and
sound money.
The Left was decisively defeated in 1991, but although
almost no serious thinker believes in socialist economics this is what we have ended
up with slowly so we have barely noticed. The hope lies with Conservatism. The
bankruptcy of Left-wing thinking is such that it depends on believing that a
contradiction is not merely true, but that it is not even a contradiction.
The folly of the right is that Tories will get no credit
for being socialists. We vote tribally just as we do everything else. Same old wicked
Tories will say Labour and the SNP as they watch the May Day procession pass
Boris’s tomb with its body made partly of wax and wholly of what might have
been.
