Essentially I use these essays not for the pleasure of confirming prior perspectives, but as a primer on a politically conservative philosophy that somehow remained in the shadows for my adult life. On that basis I think they would work as a book. Meanwhile, the oddest perspective shift this (unfortunately rare) brand of modern conservative explication has been to begin seeing a contrast I was never aware of before. This is between the fake caring and kindness of machine leftishism and the dignity of humanity.
Too many people like me (likewise guilty) account for our rightward shifts in terms of cultural irritation. But how you help is by outlining the philosophical underpinnings of your school of thinking. Keep doing this, please.
I think any analysis is complicated by the fact that perhaps a large amount of the council outlay on adult social care (maybe not so much in Gateshead yet, but certainly elsewhere) will be for recent arrivals. So this isn't a static but a fast-changing scenario already. The established practices of infantilisation and enervation bump up against newer models, thus shifting the relationship with the State. As you predict, things that can't go on forever will stop, and in this case will stop nastily. The State wants total control of the public and the private in order to embed unchallengeable power. That could be via a secular totalitarian model, or a theistic totalitarian model. I think we're all still trying to wrap our heads around what's going on, and possible future scenarios.
It's worth bearing in mind that the entire strength of the British military is now, I believe, somewhere around 70,000, of whom some are in Estonia and elsewhere. That number is probably now exceeeded by the numbers of physically fit fighting-age men from what seem exclusively Muslim countries (where typically Christians are subjugated and Jews are non-existent) arriving in groups and being housed together in exclusive and secretive groups managed by tight-lipped security firms in strategic areas around the country, now including in accommodation on the M1.
Am I factually incorrect?
They gave us a novel gene therapy but because it was packaged as a 'vaccine' everyone said "Oh, it's just a vaccine. This is fine." They give us a military invasion force but because it is packaged as 'asylum-seekers and refugees' everyone says "Oh, they're just refugees. This is fine." It's astonishing how effectively rhetoric shapes our perception of reality. I hope to God this analysis is incorrect but, if so, it needs a robust counter-explanation.
“This puts the modern regime exactly in the middle of a gulf between a rock and a hard place; it is driven by its internal logic to render the population totally reliant on its existence, but in doing so it can only destroy the means by which a productive economy is brought into being.” The CCP’s dilemma in a nutshell.
Of course, those activities which you say the state needs to provide (justice, border security, law & order etc) are exactly what the state currently fails to provide in a decent fashion! Consequently, when the doodah hits the fan and the welfare state collapses, the chances of the rest of the state rising up to meet the challenges look pretty slim. Personally, I am all in favour of a tiny state leaving the people to live as they choose - a neutral police force, an unbiased judiciary, a small military with a strong border force - the requirement to check there's no chalk in the flour or sawdust in the tea bags should be left to small local govts (county or borough councils manned by local residents elected locally). Mind you, I'm not looking forward to the eternally unemployed and state dependent masses suddenly being deprived of their benefits!
This is an important point - the state has become so big that it does everything poorly. It would be better if it just concentrated on what it is actually needed for.
Another helpful illustration of the onward trudge towards chaos!!
A nation increasingly and forever tied to its mother’s apron strings, worried that if it doesn’t do mother’s bidding it will be sent to bed with no supper!!
A mother with a desire to shape every aspect of its children’s future, scared that, if the child gains the ability to shape its own future, it will no longer be beholden to mother!!
A mother whose ‘beneficence’ is only possible by a combination of forcing her children to give back some of their pocket money and persuading the bank to provide an ever increasing overdraft facility, whilst telling the children a constant stream of lies about the affordability of her household budget.
As the article alludes, governments of welfare states have, in the course of less than a century, succeeded in creating the conditions in which the household/national budget is serviced by means of an utterly unaffordable overdraft whilst, at the same time, having taken steps to ensure that ‘its children’ have little alternative other than maintaining that ludicrous ‘state of affairs’
It's surprising (although I suppose not all that surprising) that this is not widely discussed in society. Bismarck made no bones about it when designing what came to be the German welfare state - it was a means of keeping the new working classes loyal. Yet somehow most people have been hoodwinked into thinking it's about benevolence.
I’m inclined to the view that society in general prefers to continue ‘labouring’ under the illusion that all will come good in the fullness of time. In the meantime, who doesn’t love the comfort of mother’s warm embrace. Mother knows best and can always be blamed when it’s obvious that she doesn’t. The problem is that the nation’s mother is only too aware that without the all encompassing ‘warm embrace’ the children would start to rebel and please themselves, rather than keeping her in permanent comfort and control?!!
Let's assume for a moment that the UK Government is part of a "phrase cloud" including such gems as 'safety net', 'no-one shall suffer', 'one size fits all', all leading to 'learned helplessness'.
Now think about how to reverse the flow of responsibility - perhaps voluntary health insurance to replace the NHS, voluntary employment insurance to replace unemployment benefits, voluntary schooling charges, and so on. Now while this might go some way to reversing the 'government knows best' mindset there will always be some people and families who choose not to, or cannot, have 'voluntary insurance'. This tail end will always be with us and always undermines either the 'total benefit society' or the 'pay your own way society. And there are some unpleasant way of dealing with the undeserving poor.
My suggestion is to roll out changes to the benefit society in small stages, and then guide further changes accordingly. So perhaps defund the BBC over a number of years. Move health care to an insurance basis. Perhaps build work camps or workhouses to shelter the ne'er-do-wells. All of which would require endless effort and will to achieve - and I'm not sure that we could get there from here.
This is why I think it will have to come to a crisis - the pain will have to get bad before people accept being dragged kicking and screaming to a different model.
Great stuff - you echo my thoughts on the state of our affairs perfectly!
We are of course already seeing the signs of government recognising the unaffordability of the leviathan it has created: not in any paring back of the desire to be our parent from cradle to grave but by interfering in our lifestyles so as to manage our demand on the parental wallet. There is a logical and inexorable path from attempting to stamp out smoking, which will be followed by drinking, to reduce our demands on the NHS (it won’t of course, on a lifetime basis, as Chris Snowden constantly points out) to the new wheeze currently before Parliament of “assisted dying”, aka bumping off the citizenry when their demands for end of life care become too much even for the benevolent state to tolerate. Expect much more of this before we get root and branch reform.
As I've said in the comments on this substack before, they'll prise my bottle of Tokaji cask finished 18 year old Bunnahabhain from my cold dead hands... But yes, it's not difficult to hear the mood music.
One of your best David, I enjoyed reading it immensely. When I lived in Texas (early '00s) it fitted the society you reference, ie low government intervention, strong familial, cultural, societal and charitable framework, with a resilient population who loathed what they viewed as the European welfarism model. I struggle to see a pathway to that from our current situation.
Secondly, and I’ve asked you this before so slightly rhetorically, how far along the curve to a 'big bang' event do you think we are?
Very hard to say. Things can happen very quickly. If Labour push the Net Zero thing it will happen extremely quickly - within a couple of years. Otherwise, perhaps longer, but I get the sense things are coming to a head within this Parliament. The country as it is currently constituted cannot survive this government - the combination of ineptitude and ideology is too toxic.
I wonder whether two other factors are relevant. The first is that the NHS is creating conditions in the elderly that cannot be cared for at home and secondly families are moving away due to the incentives to seek employment. In my youth my mother looked after her parents with help from the family of 8 other siblings who lived reasonably close. My grandmother had arthritis/rheumatism (both terms were used). She could not walk and was carried upstairs in a chair until eventually a bed was brought downstairs (mainly I suspect to give me a bedroom as I got older). There was no help and I don't think any was expected.
The result is that that the state took over the care of the elderly and nobody of my generation having seen care homes wants to end up in one. I remember going to see an aunt with another cousin and she held both our hands and all she said repeatedly is "When will the good Lord take me". He took a long time over it.
The next step was to take over childcare from families. I feel this has happened because more women were required to work during the war and then the expansion of education means that a good job has become more important. In my childhood there was a woman at home in most houses and that created a strong support for everybody. That has now vanished.
The observation you make has an antecedent way back in the book of Genesis. When Joseph advised Pharaoh to amass grain during the seven years of plenty, the effect was to centralise power to the Pharaoh and make him enormously wealthy during the seven years of famine that followed. This led directly to the enslavement of Israel in Egypt for 400 years.
The counterfactual may have been to share the prophecy of plenty followed by famine with the people and then allow a self-organising response. But the Principalities and Powers aligned to the state provide a superhuman drive to enslave and the people have a been conditioned with a form of Stockholm Syndrome to welcome the enslavement.
Well done a 5-star job. There isn't a spew emoji yet but it would help me with email management. I really enjoyed your comments and depending on the cost may subscribe but I am old stale pale and income-poor and my super is tight. Go well
In fact there is a further issue that you did not touch upon: "the infantilisation of the population, the elimination of their autonomy and self-governing capacity" also affects the country's ability to produce effective governors. After all, the politicians who govern us do not appear out of a vacuum. They come from the same body of people that have been infantilised and had their autonomy and self governing capacity eliminated.
This perhaps sheds some light on why it is that the quality of our senior politicians has declined so markedly over the last half a century. They are indeed infantilised and incapable of governing effectively.
How correct do you think Catherine Austin-Fitts is in her opinion that the only way in their minds to 'wipe the slate' clean and rein in the debt is a definite war in the next few years?
It might explain the unending shovelling of money and fear that's gone on since they dropped Covid in 2022. How else will the remain in power?
I don't think that the people in charge are that clever. They are muddling along. It's just that the incentives cause that muddling to head in a particular direction. If there is a big conflict on the horizon, it will be caused by our politicians being hubristic, incompetent and foolish.
Essentially I use these essays not for the pleasure of confirming prior perspectives, but as a primer on a politically conservative philosophy that somehow remained in the shadows for my adult life. On that basis I think they would work as a book. Meanwhile, the oddest perspective shift this (unfortunately rare) brand of modern conservative explication has been to begin seeing a contrast I was never aware of before. This is between the fake caring and kindness of machine leftishism and the dignity of humanity.
Too many people like me (likewise guilty) account for our rightward shifts in terms of cultural irritation. But how you help is by outlining the philosophical underpinnings of your school of thinking. Keep doing this, please.
What a nice comment - thanks Mike!
I think any analysis is complicated by the fact that perhaps a large amount of the council outlay on adult social care (maybe not so much in Gateshead yet, but certainly elsewhere) will be for recent arrivals. So this isn't a static but a fast-changing scenario already. The established practices of infantilisation and enervation bump up against newer models, thus shifting the relationship with the State. As you predict, things that can't go on forever will stop, and in this case will stop nastily. The State wants total control of the public and the private in order to embed unchallengeable power. That could be via a secular totalitarian model, or a theistic totalitarian model. I think we're all still trying to wrap our heads around what's going on, and possible future scenarios.
Great point - I hadn't thought about that as a possibility for the sums spent on adult social care.
It's worth bearing in mind that the entire strength of the British military is now, I believe, somewhere around 70,000, of whom some are in Estonia and elsewhere. That number is probably now exceeeded by the numbers of physically fit fighting-age men from what seem exclusively Muslim countries (where typically Christians are subjugated and Jews are non-existent) arriving in groups and being housed together in exclusive and secretive groups managed by tight-lipped security firms in strategic areas around the country, now including in accommodation on the M1.
Am I factually incorrect?
They gave us a novel gene therapy but because it was packaged as a 'vaccine' everyone said "Oh, it's just a vaccine. This is fine." They give us a military invasion force but because it is packaged as 'asylum-seekers and refugees' everyone says "Oh, they're just refugees. This is fine." It's astonishing how effectively rhetoric shapes our perception of reality. I hope to God this analysis is incorrect but, if so, it needs a robust counter-explanation.
“This puts the modern regime exactly in the middle of a gulf between a rock and a hard place; it is driven by its internal logic to render the population totally reliant on its existence, but in doing so it can only destroy the means by which a productive economy is brought into being.” The CCP’s dilemma in a nutshell.
Well put.
Of course, those activities which you say the state needs to provide (justice, border security, law & order etc) are exactly what the state currently fails to provide in a decent fashion! Consequently, when the doodah hits the fan and the welfare state collapses, the chances of the rest of the state rising up to meet the challenges look pretty slim. Personally, I am all in favour of a tiny state leaving the people to live as they choose - a neutral police force, an unbiased judiciary, a small military with a strong border force - the requirement to check there's no chalk in the flour or sawdust in the tea bags should be left to small local govts (county or borough councils manned by local residents elected locally). Mind you, I'm not looking forward to the eternally unemployed and state dependent masses suddenly being deprived of their benefits!
This is an important point - the state has become so big that it does everything poorly. It would be better if it just concentrated on what it is actually needed for.
Another helpful illustration of the onward trudge towards chaos!!
A nation increasingly and forever tied to its mother’s apron strings, worried that if it doesn’t do mother’s bidding it will be sent to bed with no supper!!
A mother with a desire to shape every aspect of its children’s future, scared that, if the child gains the ability to shape its own future, it will no longer be beholden to mother!!
A mother whose ‘beneficence’ is only possible by a combination of forcing her children to give back some of their pocket money and persuading the bank to provide an ever increasing overdraft facility, whilst telling the children a constant stream of lies about the affordability of her household budget.
As the article alludes, governments of welfare states have, in the course of less than a century, succeeded in creating the conditions in which the household/national budget is serviced by means of an utterly unaffordable overdraft whilst, at the same time, having taken steps to ensure that ‘its children’ have little alternative other than maintaining that ludicrous ‘state of affairs’
It's surprising (although I suppose not all that surprising) that this is not widely discussed in society. Bismarck made no bones about it when designing what came to be the German welfare state - it was a means of keeping the new working classes loyal. Yet somehow most people have been hoodwinked into thinking it's about benevolence.
I’m inclined to the view that society in general prefers to continue ‘labouring’ under the illusion that all will come good in the fullness of time. In the meantime, who doesn’t love the comfort of mother’s warm embrace. Mother knows best and can always be blamed when it’s obvious that she doesn’t. The problem is that the nation’s mother is only too aware that without the all encompassing ‘warm embrace’ the children would start to rebel and please themselves, rather than keeping her in permanent comfort and control?!!
Let's assume for a moment that the UK Government is part of a "phrase cloud" including such gems as 'safety net', 'no-one shall suffer', 'one size fits all', all leading to 'learned helplessness'.
Now think about how to reverse the flow of responsibility - perhaps voluntary health insurance to replace the NHS, voluntary employment insurance to replace unemployment benefits, voluntary schooling charges, and so on. Now while this might go some way to reversing the 'government knows best' mindset there will always be some people and families who choose not to, or cannot, have 'voluntary insurance'. This tail end will always be with us and always undermines either the 'total benefit society' or the 'pay your own way society. And there are some unpleasant way of dealing with the undeserving poor.
My suggestion is to roll out changes to the benefit society in small stages, and then guide further changes accordingly. So perhaps defund the BBC over a number of years. Move health care to an insurance basis. Perhaps build work camps or workhouses to shelter the ne'er-do-wells. All of which would require endless effort and will to achieve - and I'm not sure that we could get there from here.
This is why I think it will have to come to a crisis - the pain will have to get bad before people accept being dragged kicking and screaming to a different model.
Great stuff - you echo my thoughts on the state of our affairs perfectly!
We are of course already seeing the signs of government recognising the unaffordability of the leviathan it has created: not in any paring back of the desire to be our parent from cradle to grave but by interfering in our lifestyles so as to manage our demand on the parental wallet. There is a logical and inexorable path from attempting to stamp out smoking, which will be followed by drinking, to reduce our demands on the NHS (it won’t of course, on a lifetime basis, as Chris Snowden constantly points out) to the new wheeze currently before Parliament of “assisted dying”, aka bumping off the citizenry when their demands for end of life care become too much even for the benevolent state to tolerate. Expect much more of this before we get root and branch reform.
As I've said in the comments on this substack before, they'll prise my bottle of Tokaji cask finished 18 year old Bunnahabhain from my cold dead hands... But yes, it's not difficult to hear the mood music.
One of your best David, I enjoyed reading it immensely. When I lived in Texas (early '00s) it fitted the society you reference, ie low government intervention, strong familial, cultural, societal and charitable framework, with a resilient population who loathed what they viewed as the European welfarism model. I struggle to see a pathway to that from our current situation.
Secondly, and I’ve asked you this before so slightly rhetorically, how far along the curve to a 'big bang' event do you think we are?
Very hard to say. Things can happen very quickly. If Labour push the Net Zero thing it will happen extremely quickly - within a couple of years. Otherwise, perhaps longer, but I get the sense things are coming to a head within this Parliament. The country as it is currently constituted cannot survive this government - the combination of ineptitude and ideology is too toxic.
Excellent stuff David. Thanks.
Thanks!
I wonder whether two other factors are relevant. The first is that the NHS is creating conditions in the elderly that cannot be cared for at home and secondly families are moving away due to the incentives to seek employment. In my youth my mother looked after her parents with help from the family of 8 other siblings who lived reasonably close. My grandmother had arthritis/rheumatism (both terms were used). She could not walk and was carried upstairs in a chair until eventually a bed was brought downstairs (mainly I suspect to give me a bedroom as I got older). There was no help and I don't think any was expected.
The result is that that the state took over the care of the elderly and nobody of my generation having seen care homes wants to end up in one. I remember going to see an aunt with another cousin and she held both our hands and all she said repeatedly is "When will the good Lord take me". He took a long time over it.
The next step was to take over childcare from families. I feel this has happened because more women were required to work during the war and then the expansion of education means that a good job has become more important. In my childhood there was a woman at home in most houses and that created a strong support for everybody. That has now vanished.
Yes, both important factors for sure. We don't talk about this - how the unloving care of the state has largely taken away loving care at home.
The observation you make has an antecedent way back in the book of Genesis. When Joseph advised Pharaoh to amass grain during the seven years of plenty, the effect was to centralise power to the Pharaoh and make him enormously wealthy during the seven years of famine that followed. This led directly to the enslavement of Israel in Egypt for 400 years.
The counterfactual may have been to share the prophecy of plenty followed by famine with the people and then allow a self-organising response. But the Principalities and Powers aligned to the state provide a superhuman drive to enslave and the people have a been conditioned with a form of Stockholm Syndrome to welcome the enslavement.
I love this kind of thing, Tim - the political philosophy of the Bible is fascinating to me.
Again an excellent and enjoyable post. You really help me to gain new perspectives on our governments and political institutions. Thank you.
Thanks for the kind words, John.
Well done a 5-star job. There isn't a spew emoji yet but it would help me with email management. I really enjoyed your comments and depending on the cost may subscribe but I am old stale pale and income-poor and my super is tight. Go well
Christopher John
Thanks Chris!
You are, sadly, absolutely right, David.
In fact there is a further issue that you did not touch upon: "the infantilisation of the population, the elimination of their autonomy and self-governing capacity" also affects the country's ability to produce effective governors. After all, the politicians who govern us do not appear out of a vacuum. They come from the same body of people that have been infantilised and had their autonomy and self governing capacity eliminated.
This perhaps sheds some light on why it is that the quality of our senior politicians has declined so markedly over the last half a century. They are indeed infantilised and incapable of governing effectively.
How correct do you think Catherine Austin-Fitts is in her opinion that the only way in their minds to 'wipe the slate' clean and rein in the debt is a definite war in the next few years?
It might explain the unending shovelling of money and fear that's gone on since they dropped Covid in 2022. How else will the remain in power?
I don't think that the people in charge are that clever. They are muddling along. It's just that the incentives cause that muddling to head in a particular direction. If there is a big conflict on the horizon, it will be caused by our politicians being hubristic, incompetent and foolish.