What Goes Around Comes Around
by Ashley Mote
So, we fancifully thought life might be different under a new prime minister and a new government.
In terms of style � very different. We instantly leapt from gloss to matt. We jumped from a man with nothing but charisma to one who obviously had a charisma by-pass early on in life.
But look elsewhere and we quickly see that centralised state control and most of the more noxious threats to our liberty remain.
What was a legal system designed to protect the common man from the power of the state has been seized by the ruling elite and is now used as a weapon of the state.
Despite spectacular fiascos about the management of data by government departments, ID cards are still on the agenda. More draconian and intrusive legislation is planned on the feeble excuse that the terrorist threat will remain for years. Big Brother still masquerades as the nanny state and still claims to know best.
John Stuart Mill�s masterpiece of understatement and clarity On Liberty is still ignored. “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.”
All of which makes me rather angry.
I am angry because the government of my country continues to be in the hands of untrustworthy micromanagers who � like the last lot � deny even the most obvious of facts when it suits them. Witness the denial of a referendum on the revamped EU constitution � a clearly stated manifesto pledge by the Labour Party, now discarded like old garbage.
I am angry that the will of the British people is ignored on the most important decision for at least a generation and possibly for 800 years. I am angry that my government persists in talking of the UK as part of Europe.
I am angry that the government perceives my intelligence as that of a cretin, incapable of understanding the consequences of a treaty between nations.
I am angry that the very existence of the British Constitution is routinely denied, or else declared irrelevant when it suits those running this neo-fascist police state and the new world order in which we all now find ourselves.
I am angry that people born in Britain who dare to think for themselves and who question authority find themselves oppressed and threatened by those same authorities.
I am angry that legislation is planned, and will be enforced by a super-computer based on fundamentally flawed biometric technology, that will require me to carry a card to ?prove� who I am.
I am especially angry that a British government should invent for itself 266 different reasons to shove its clucking nose into my home, my car, my larder, my doctor’s surgery, my medicine cupboard, my office, and anywhere else it thinks I need controlling or keeping safe from myself.
I am angry that the symbols, customs, and roots of my Judeo-Christian country are being systematically undermined because my culture offends newcomers.
I am angry that I am constantly admonished by so-called environmentalists for being a greedy consumer and having too large a carbon footprint because I live where I choose, drive the vehicle of my choice, eat meat, and use tin foil to cover my leftovers.
I am angry that the UK has become a nation of busybodies. We are constantly bombarded with messages to be on the lookout for terrorists around every corner, report ?suspicious� activity, and rat on our neighbour whenever the opportunity presents itself. Is this not how the Nazis gained control of Germany and then most of Europe?
I am angry that my government meddles in the lives of people born here, while simultaneously ignoring the catastrophic impact of hundreds of thousands of foreigners coming here, many of them illegally. I simple don�t believe immigration is about the cost of lettuce. It is about changing the face of the UK.
I am angry that English and Welsh are not the official languages of this country. Why should British taxpayers fund scores of different language versions of virtually every official document simply because immigrants have not learnt the language or chosen not to integrate?
I am angry that the rights and freedoms with which I was born don’t belong to me anymore, at least not in reality. I abhor being encouraged to feel guilty for being British.
When the UK is no longer a wealthy country of essentially Anglo-Saxon descent, it will be a place worse than anything Orwell could have imagined.
* * *
We are on a well-trodden downward spiral. It is a path down which other cultures and civilisations have slithered in the past. Over 200 years ago, Andrew Tyler, then Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh, pointed out that � historically speaking � democracies are always temporary.
Each time it evolves anew, democracy will survive only until the voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public purse. At each succeeding election, Professor Tyler said, the majority will always vote for candidates offering the most.
That phenomenon developed here with the Beveridge Report, published during the second world war and implemented immediately afterwards.
During the two centuries or so that most past democracies managed to survive, Professor Tyler argued that each went through a clear and consistent pattern of evolution and decline.
First the people emerged from bondage to spiritual faith. That faith gradually generated confidence and courage, and from courage came liberty. Liberty led to abundance and abundance eventually led to complacency. From complacency came apathy, and from apathy dependence emerged.
And that dependence led the people back into bondage under some new form of dictatorship, thus completing the circle.
Sound familiar? See where we are?
And how long has our democratic cycle been in progress? Certainly more than the 200 year average Professor Tyler discovered when trawling through the fate of successive attempts at democracy over time.
Gerald Ford, the 38th president of the United States of America and the only one never to be elected to office, was more of a democrat than his electoral circumstances might suggest.
He shrewdly observed that “any government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have?.
Wherever we are on Professor Tyler�s cycle, it is towards the end. In the West at least, we now have elected and unelected elites combining across national borders to preserve power for themselves, and for its own sake.
Nowadays few, if any, national leaders attempt to meet the first essential of genuine democracy, which must be the firm maintenance of a transparent system of enforceable accountability to the people of each sovereign nation.
Equally, where in each nation is the popular will to demand and sustain such a commitment? Where, either amongst the governed or the governing, is the collective will to do the right thing by and for their own country?
* * *
While researching this article, I stumbled on a bizarre and worrisome coincidence. The Beveridge Report mentioned earlier was published in 1942. That same year, on the other side of the Atlantic, an article appeared in a specialist American magazine with limited circulation. The unnamed author was obviously troubled about what might follow the end of the war.
He described what he called a new programme for a just and durable peace. It included a proposal for “a world government of delegated powers?. By way of amplification, the author went on to suggest “strong and immediate limitations on national sovereignty, a universal system of money, worldwide freedom of immigration, free trade across the globe, and the international control of all armies and navies?.
Ironically, in Berlin at almost precisely the same time, Hitler was staging a conference to plan the future of what he was already calling the European Economic Community on the assumption, even then, that Germany would win the war.
Only 15 years later, much of Europaische Wiertschafts Gemeinschaft found its way into the Treaty of Rome.
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