Really, Really Doomed

Laban points out the obvious: most of the people the government is relying on to defeat yob culture are conscientious objectors in the war on crime. All too true, but possibly a little optimistic. Large parts of the Liberal Establishment aren’t just apathetic about yobbish behaviour – they are the yobs.

An education minister has been booed and hissed by head teachers as he tried to defend school league tables.
Delegates at the National Association of Head Teachers conference also talked across Derek Twigg as he said tables gave parents like himself information.

You will note that what provoked these people into a Linda Blair impersonation was… league tables ? Things didn’t get any better either:

A head teachers' leader has warned of the danger of giving "irresponsible parents" power in schools.
David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, was referring to the government's strategy of reinforcing parents' roles.
That could send the wrong message to irresponsible parents, he said.

And, lest you’re not already fancying a bit of yobbery yourself, they’d also like to impose compulsory indoctrination sessions on us:

Head teachers are calling for new mothers to attend weekly sessions to learn how to bring up their children.
Mr Gray, a member of the association's national council, told the conference parents got ante-natal training on the immediate practicalities of caring for their new babies, but were then "left very much to their own devices". ..
"How much better then it would be if the local education authority provided weekly sessions which mothers and babies from all social levels would be expected to attend."

So, in summary then, if the public agrees to fork over huge wodges of cash with no objective means of measuring the results or exercising real influence over how it’s spent, and turn up for compulsory reeducation, then these people will consider acting like civilised human beings.

Gosh, I don’t know where the kids get it from.

There’s a wider point here, a clue as to how we got where we are. But first, in order to comply with fire safety regulations, I will now dispose of a straw man: at this point the L3 usually blame it all on Lady T. Britain apparently was a Shangri-La prior to 1979 (and never mind events as diverse as the Grosvenor Square riot of 68 and the rise of the footy hooligan). As ever, the Left is a little shaky about the details, but apparently Lady T was too obsessed about economics thereby creating social havoc. Those of an awkward turn of mind may ask why, if Lady T’s policies were so disastrous socially, it wasn’t best to have her safely occupied dealing with economic issues ? More substantially, there is the question of which precise policies caused these problems. But no, this is where the signal starts to fade into static about selfishness and the like. These are the people who think Wall Street is a devastating critique of 1980s Conservatism, perhaps unaware that stupid Ollie’s whining about the evils of money had been perfectly debunked three decades previously.

Now, there are two caveats here. Yes, the economic earthquakes of the Thatcher years did contribute to our social problems, but that reflects the nature of the reforms rather than who forced them through. All Liberals are really saying when they mention these upheavals is that they desire the benefits of the Thatcherite reforms without paying the price. Plus ca change.

Similarly, it should be noted that many Conservatives would have liked Lady T to engage more with social issues, albeit almost all recognise that criticising her for being preoccupied with economic reform is like complaining that Churchill spent his first term obsessing about foreign policy: it was what the situation required. Anyway, Conservatives hardly wanted Lady T to engage because the culture was too right-wing – on the contrary, for all that Thaterism dominated the national scene in the 1980s, large parts of the culture remained resolutely Liberal. This was the era of loony left councils, anti-racist maths and Liberation Theology, to name but three cultural atrocities.

Liberal attempts to blame Her Greatness for the collapse of society always end up quoting a single fragment of a speech she made. Yep – “There's no such thing as society” I mean, I don’t expect coherence from the L3, but you expect them to be able to manage at least a whole sentence. But no.

For the benefit of those who can read actual English, here is the quote in its proper context:

We've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant'. 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problems on society. And you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours. People have got their entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations.

Now is that not the perfect description of the mentality on show at the head teachers conference ? The belief that they have the right to a continuous supply of public money without the dreadful strain of dealing with the actual public ? All this, combined with the belief that should things not turn as they desire, well, they’re quite justified behaving like brainless yobbos. Here is one of the key planks of yob culture: the belief in an ever-expanding series of entitlements in parallel with the right to go on the rampage should your perceived need not be met.

This is the double whammy of our therapeutic culture – the belief that some abstract concept called society is not only responsible for picking up the litter chavs drop on the streets, but that it’s actually the fault of society that they dropped it in the first place.

There are other toxic elements to this mix. Infantilisation is the end-result of a belief in the power of society to control our every move. Since we’re all just hopeless corks bobbing around in the social sea, what’s the point of resisting the urge to indulge our every whim ? Society made us do it, and besides, we’ve got a right to be happy, 'stead of letting an unacted upon desire burn its way through us and give some kind of brain ulcer.

Then there’s the zero sum nature of it all. Lady T might have beaten the Left hollow over its asinine economic views, but the pizza is alive and well and living in our culture. This is the belief that life is a big pizza and if I have too many slices, you’re left with an empty box. Add in the Left’s constant attempts to stoke paranoia that someone, somewhere (White males ? Jews ? Big Business ?.....) is plotting to deprive you of your rights – hey, if only there was some kind of all-powerful body that could protect you from these people – and you end up with the balkanisation of society and the breakdown of communities. Not only do I have the right to play my stereo at 3 AM, but you’re a Nazi for trying to stop me.

Liberals have created a culture where entitlements exist without corresponding responsibilities. There are plenty of things wrong with such a culture, but it has one great advantage for a Liberal: it mandates a truly elephantine government to try and manage the inevitable contradictions and mitigate the consequences. Social worker, politicians, educrats….the salaried unemployed have never had it so good. Meanwhile, under cover of bogus new entitlements, government has managed to chip away at our real freedoms, like free speech, self-defence and the like.

But that’s not thee worst of it. It’s not that Liberals are merely amoral scum pursuing their own self-interest. The truth is far worse – some of them actually think they’re doing the right thing. Liberalism is their religion, with themselves as priests, self-indulgence as worship and society as their God. Just like their new friends with the semtex underwear, what Liberalism is really about is submission. It offers unconsciousness, the chance put aside all personal responsibility and subsume yourself into society.

That’s what’s really wrong with Liberals – they’re such a bunch of losers.