Tuesday, May 04, 2010

The death throes of progressive liberalism

Actually, the title of this post isn't what I was intending. Although we're coming towards the denouement of progressive liberalism we''re not quite into the death throes just yet. The post was going to be entitled "the twilight of progressive liberalism", but as progressive liberalism has been just one long period of perpetual murky twilight this didn't seem quite right.

Progressive liberalism has dominated British political life and society for fifty years now and in that time it has taken all that was good about Britain and thrown it away. By just about every measure of societal progress, Britain has gone backwards over the last 50 years.

The progressives claim that life is better because of the material goods we can own or the improvements in health care - but these things would have happened regardless of progressive liberalism and given that some are suggesting that the current generation of children will be the first to have shorter life expectancy than their parents, they are dubious claims anyway.

I've had arguments with progressives where they sneer that the days of social conservatism were days of rationing, rubbish cars and rickets - but they refuse to acknowledge that these things were not caused by social conservatism. Rationing was caused by a war against fascism, the "rubbish cars" were improvements over what had gone before and were always getting better and as for rickets - well, it was eradicated under social conservatism, but since progressive liberalism took over we've replaced rickets with AIDS, chlamydia and syphilis - wow, such progress!

As I said, social conservatives fought a war against fascism. It stood up for freedom of speech against a bully regime which tried to enforce a particular doctrine of thought and persecuted those who would not follow it. Today, progressive liberalism is trying to enforce a particular doctrine of thought and persecutes those who will not follow it. Fascism is alive and well and living in Britain thanks to progressive liberalism.

Social conservatives fought a long war against slavery and, although slavery continued at a low level in certain parts of the world, it was eradicated from Britain. Today, thanks to progressive liberalism, slavery exists within our borders once more.

But why do I believe that progressive liberalism has had its time? Whoever wins the election on Thursday we are going to have a progressive liberal government so surely they still dominate?

Well - yes, they do, but they do not have any answers to the problems we face, They do not have any answers because they created the problems. More than that, progressive liberalism IS the problem. More and more people are starting to see this and, once the real economic turmoil hits home as it will in the not too distant future the number of people who understand that the progressive liberals not only can not fix the fundamental problems of this nation, but are the very cause of them will escalate.

Our economy is on the brink of total collapse. This is a very important point to understand. Our situation is even more dire than that of Greece. The only reason we are not where Greece is now is because we still retain some basic control over our economy which enables us to stave off the inevitable collapse for a little longer - but it is not something that can be sustained for much longer.

When our economy finally teeters over the edge then progressive liberalism will be held accountable not just for that, but for all the other harm it has done - the rise in crime, the corruption of our political, governmental and democratic systems, the collapse of our education system, the destruction of our industrial and manufacturing base and the sell off of our sovereignty.

There is a noticeable trend towards social conservatism amongst the young. Don't be fooled by the younger generation wheeled out on to our television screens - carefully selected from the ruling progressive liberal elite - because they are not representative of the generation that will follow us.

That generation are the ones who have most been affected by the damage wrought by progressive liberalism. They are the ones whose parents divorced or never married. They are the ones who are most often the victims of the appalling level of crime in this country. They are the ones who went through a decrepit education system that left many barely able to read and write and others with worthless degrees, no job prospects and massive debts. They are the ones who are going to have to pick up the tab for the profligacy of my generation and rebuild the shattered remnants of this once proud and precious jewel of a nation.

More and more of them are starting to see it and more and more are looking to what their grandparents - the generation before this current ruling one - had with envy. They want that world themselves - ordered, benign, peaceful, law-abiding, content and socially conservative.

That is what they want and I believe they will get it. I'm just so sorry that they will have to spend their lives putting right what my generation have wrecked.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's quite an admission Stan and since we are roughly the same generation (FS1E) I too should raise a guilty arm in the classroom of life.

I am a precision engineering craftsman - a droid, in the factory system. A 'blue-collar' Labour voting automaton I put my cross against the same party as my father, as he did his father and his father before him. Never again, it ends with me.

And you are right Stan, the youngsters I meet are rejecting the LibLabCon and for the very reasons you state in your piece. But sadly it will take at least two generations to rebuild our nation and I'm not at all sure it will be bloodless.

Steve

Unknown said...

I'm just reading Phillip Blond's "Red Tory" and he's saying the exact same things, (as am I for what it's worth). I recommend it, and also earlier (and similar) works like Hilaire Belloc's "The Servile State".

Lightf00t said...

I wish I shared your optimism, Stan. I fear that we're all doomed.

Stan said...

Everyone from my generation is guilty, Steve. We didn't understand at the time, but that isn't really a defence as the signs were always there - we just lacked the ability (or willingness) to read them.

I don't agree that it will take as long as you think to rebuild our nation, though. Hmmm, I need to qualify that a bit - I'll do that in a new post.

wildgoose - thanks for the tips, I'll check out "Red Tory" for sure.

Lightf00t - I'm not generally given to optimism for optimism's sake. My optimism in this case is based on circumstances - how those circumstances will play out in future events is uncertain, but there is certainly a distinct possibilty that they will pan out as I hope. Time will tell.