Quote of the day: Two brains but no no-brainer

There is no law which says that families must weaken, crime must increase, and societies must decay.

David Willetts, timely as ever, having his four-penneth in the Sunday Times about the future of Conservatism.

But is he right? Of course not. The “law”, in this case, is advanced liberalism. And that absolutely decrees that families must weaken, crime must increase and societies must indeed decay.

Willetts cranks out a quote about old Dizzy and lovingly romanticises Compassionate Conservatism. But he doesn’t use either of his fabled brains to really look through the surface ripples and down into the silent depths of our political history. I suppose he has no need of such rigour. His purpose does not justify the effort, and we do not get it:-

A country with too many broken lives and fragmented families is going to depend on public services more. As well as a strong economy, we need a strong society. How do we disentangle the catastrophic mixture of poor social housing, rigid school catchment areas and long term welfare dependency which disfigure Britain?

The compassionate part of our Conservatism goes back deep into our history and must be renewed. We sometimes talk as if all that matters is the individual and his or her freedoms but Conservatives have always valued the ties that bind us. That’s why we’ve never settled for the conventional bureaucratic welfare state. It’s why we understand the ties of family, neighbourhood and nation. I don’t want to live in a country where there is individuals and government but nothing in between. We can renew Conservatism by showing that we understand this hunger, not just for a stronger economy but for a better society as well. There must be nothing mean spirited about us.

So, David, how do you obtain a strong society? How, for example, do you halt the disastrous effects of four decades of rampant social liberalism? How do you make human beings whole and inwardly serious enough to love a member of the opposite sex unreservedly and, with a bit of luck and lot of hard work, for life ... to procreate and sacrifice self to family ... to possess and pass on the right instincts, the right understanding, respect and love of nation?

Actually, the brilliant Willetts doesn’t want to know about any of that. He doesn’t want to know about the ineluctable, long-term effect of egalitarian democracy. He doesn’t want to address the deep, destructive nature of advanced liberalism. He wants to give the impression that he can do something ... a policy here, an announcement there, anything really. He wants to win an election.

But let’s forget about elections for a while, David, and get all that grey matter focussed on real life. A question, then. What is the magical, missing ingredient that makes for a cohesive, law-abiding and, in the broadest sense, successful society? And how do you get that ingredient back?

Answers on a postcard to Conservative central office.

Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, May 8, 2005 at 05:13 PM in British Politics
Comments (4) | Tell a friend

Comments:

Posted by John S Bolton on May 08, 2005, 08:55 PM | #

Power seekers, even the more intelligent they are, cannot psychologically process the information that what is needed is less aggression for the poor, less aggression for the helpless, less aggression for whatever cause. It is so nearly impossible for them to focus on and identify the salient nature of the component which is current aggression, that they can only think of the maudlin pitiful failures, rather than the means whereby such are requested to be uplifted. They will not see that some are foreign, and that there is treason in using aggression to aggrandize them.

Posted by Mark Richardson on May 09, 2005, 06:06 AM | #

Nice post Guessedworker. I think the key sentence in Willetts’ piece is “We sometimes talk as if all that matters is the individual and his or her freedoms but Conservatives have always valued the ties that bind us.”

A real conservative, I believe, is someone who is willing to preserve the “ties that bind us” even if it means accepting some limits to the sphere of individual choice.

What if there are ties that bind us which we don’t get to choose? Do we cut the ties in the name of individual choice?

We don’t, after all, get to choose the ties of ethnicity. We’re born into them. So do we conclude that such ties are illegitimate because they contravene the first principle of individual choice?

Guessedworker is right that Willetts isn’t being serious enough in thinking things through.

It won’t be possible to defend “the ties that bind” until the destructive side of the liberal principle is clearly recognised.

Posted by Guessedworker on May 09, 2005, 06:57 AM | #

Mark,

Willetts is one of at least three “modernisers” who have broken cover since last Thursday’s election. We had Damien Green in the Guardian on Saturday, Willetts yesterday and this morning Tim Yeo announced his resignation from the Shadow Front Bench so he could concentrate on a new vision for Conservatism. This, apparently, will incorporate issues of social justice.

The disease of relevancy has been eroding Conservatism since the industrial revolution. There is no end to the slide towards a liberal “centre” and so no resolution for Conservatives but to disappear into liberalism itself - which, in all but name and a few nods of the head towards “the ties that bind”, is what has happened to Willetts.

If Conservatives really need a new vision they must return to an old one and begin speaking hard truths to a socially liberalised and, now, deracinating electorate. What, after all, is nastier - promoting dystopia or the means to heal it?

Posted by Guessedworker on May 10, 2005, 02:35 AM | #

Two more modernisers have broken cover. In today’s Independent Alan Duncan gets his oar in the water for the leadership race:-
http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/story.jsp?story=636831

Meanwhile, on this morning’s news John Bercow is reported as commending the Party to accept more women and ethnic minorities in its ranks.

The country is now entering a phase when both of the main parties are struggling only with themselves. Good news for LibDems who, apparently, haven’t noticed that the country thinks they are the Party of the Left. Or if they have, they don’t seem to be moved to enter a period of introspection because of it.

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