'Solidarity' is one of the words that sets my teeth on edge.
Solidarity is implicitly derived from the collective view of the world (you do want to be aligned with the consensus, don't you?). But the collective view is not necessarily the best view for the circumstances and allows the 'leader of the collective' to set out their own views as requiring solidarity. It's a big hammer in the 'nudge' toolkit and there is no implicit mechanism to stop the nudge becoming tyranny.
I value free speech and personal freedom - 'solidarity' is a nudge towards surrender of those values.
Yes. The word was used to force compliance during 2020-1. It was hugely manipulative, but for those who had been made to feel so afraid it just felt comforting and noble.
Excellent once again, David. Particularly resonant with regard to our current PM, who (connect to your recent piece on him) doesn't seem to see an issue he can't solve with a law. I genuinely wonder if at some stage it will be made a legal requirement to be nice.
There is perhaps a reductio ad absurdum for this cult belief: suppose I live alone and at subsistence level and a starving stranger arrives at my door.
Should I share my food with him so that we both die? Should I give him all my food so that just one of us dies?
In order to be 'in solidarity' with the stranger I must ensure that he doesn't die so I must give him all my food and sacrifice my life for his.
Another great piece, joining dots and eliciting more sighs of 'when will Boomer Truth end'.
I think of the law and magicians in the same way - they both use language to shape perception and create illusion.
The law uses carefully crafted words to define reality, control outcomes, and make power appear fair or invisible.
These papers are exercises in crafting words with the hope that reality can bend to whatever is written on paper, however anti-human and plainly evil it is.
All the while, what nags at me is - why - and who!
why are people writing this? why are they spending vast amounts of time, energy and magic coming up with ways to disguise evil deeds in 'kind', 'friendly' words?
"Though international treaties have obligated states to offer protection to many migrants over time,’ it continues, ‘the law is increasingly ineffectual..."
Woah!! International treaties are NOT "law". If you concede to the Left that they are the same thing, and therefore accept that ridiculous concept "international law", then you automatically accept the destruction of the nation state and its replacement by globalism.
Why? Because you cannot have law without a sovereign authority to make and enforce the law.
Nation states may enter into treaties. But they may also abrogate those treaties: treaties do not magically turn into "law" because some spurious authority like the United Nations has adopted them and claimed it has sovereign authority to enforce them.
This is why, for example, the United States is able to withdraw from the World Health Organisation. It is also why the UK has the right to withdraw from the EU, regardless of the withdrawal process in the Treaty of Lisbon.
We must defend the right of sovereign nation states to make the laws that govern their own territory, without reference to any higher authority such as "international law" (sic).
Accepting international law as a concept means accepting international Marxism. That isn't something the Right should be doing.
It's important to separate out the question of whether international law is really law (something that people have been disputing since Grotius) from the question of whether treaty law becomes the law of a state if that state has incorporated it into its domestic arrangements - which it inarguably does. If a state has made the Refugee Convention part of its law, then it simply is, leaving aside the question of whether the Refugee Convention itself can properly be called law. Another example: one can dispute whether the ECHR is 'really law' all one likes, but the UK has in any case made it into law within our jurisdiction through the Human Rights Act 1998. That makes the question of whether the ECHR itself is 'really law' purely academic. You are making an important point about international law generally and the way it has evolved, but one can't realistically argue that international law incorporated into domestic law through the proper process does not thereby become law in that jurisdiction.
(Interestingly, the UK is a weird anomaly in that the Refugee Convention has never been fully incorporated into domestic law - a subject which I have been drafting a post about, actually.)
You are of course right about treaties that have been made part of national law.
But you did say for example: "law no doubt imposes duties on States to protect refugees and asylum-seekers". Actually it does not. Nothing can impose duties on a State (except morally) other than its own laws.
Laws that incorporate treaties can be unmade. The Human Rights Act could be repealed.
I think we are arguing here about what a State is. I think we should distinguish between a State (upon which nothing can impose a legal duty) and a government (upon which legal duties can be imposed by that State's own laws).
Yes, I take the point, but not even a State's own laws can impose duties on it, since in the end all laws can be unmade (or ignored).
I stand by the statement in the sense that there are things which are treated as legal instruments (and customary rules) which do purport to place duties on States to protect refugees - while being perfectly happy to acknowledge that whether they are 'really law' is by no means settled philosophically! :)
Thanks for this article, David. This lends support to the idea that Marxism is a theology, with open borders and the abolition of property representing a heaven on earth. Man's law cannot be above the heavenly law.
Where is the solidarity for the people being trafficked into western Europe? Are their lives being put at risk to make some kind of point about migration law being not so important as the heavenly principle? What about solidarity for the working class who have to share crowded cities with illegal migrants who undercut their wages and bring third-world attitudes to violence, sexism and homophobia with them?
The UK Labour front bench crowing yesterday that they had halved immigration since the Tory peak was pure hypocrisy. Firstly, the Corbyn-led opposition was fully in favour of open borders. Secondly, Labour has done nothing significant to reduce migration while in power, except making Britain's economy less attractive to migrants.
I wonder if Labour council seats being lost to pro-Gaza independents is the only thing causing Labour to pause its rhetoric on migration, other than losing so many Northern seats to the Reform Party. It surely isn't the cost of migration to the working class.
It's also important to remember that the figure of 400,000+ might have 'halved' from the Boriswave, but it would still have been pretty much the highest figure in history prior to 2022. We didn't see numbers like that under even Blair, Brown or Cameron.
On the 'solidarity' with the working class - the solidarians are aware of that and have a readymade excuse. It's that *that* form of solidarity is nativist, racist, and populist. It's a bad type of solidarity. They even write about solidarity's 'dark side', referring to precisely this.
With around 220,000 net new dwellings currently built per year in England, housing is barely standing still even with the reduced figure of 400,000 new arrivals per year.
If you're identified as Palestinian or South African, native American, Aboriginal or Māori, 'solidarity' isn't supposed to be nativist or racist or populist. Resisting immigration is praised. Wikipedia argues that the Māori are indigenous and settlers at the same time, since they are relatively recent arrivals in New Zealand.
David, I read this yesterday and have felt compelled to read it again today !! I’ve concluded that it is one of the best, if not the best, of your articles on the subject of the use of legislation as the means of governmental control ie to shape society in a form which accords to the ideology of the day.
That it results from the ‘long march’ through academia is surely no longer in question - although such a suggestion was greeted with great surprise by one of my longstanding liberal/centrist friends, who has taken to labelling me as narrow minded, whilst patronisingly accepting me as his ‘intellectual equal’ !!
Academic influence, bolstered in no small measure by the mainstream media, has produced an increasingly chaotic political miasma in which legislation - the fashioning of which is the main duty of societal governance - is being made subject to the diktats of an approaching form of world government. A government which, as you have highlighted, must disavow the concept of national borders and its accompanying sovereignty.
Thanks very much Stephen and sorry I seem to have missed this comment when you made it…. The ‘long march’ issue is complicated. A lot of what has happened has been entirely unintentional. I agree the problems are greatly fostered by what is happening at universitiesthough - my next but one post will be about this.
I look forward to reading your thoughts on the issue of ‘the long march’. As you are someone with personal experience of university lecturing, I’ll take careful note of your views of how and what has changed since the Blair years begat the notion that a university education should become the entry level for any job except sweeping the streets. Slight exaggeration, but not by much!!
'Solidarity' is one of the words that sets my teeth on edge.
Solidarity is implicitly derived from the collective view of the world (you do want to be aligned with the consensus, don't you?). But the collective view is not necessarily the best view for the circumstances and allows the 'leader of the collective' to set out their own views as requiring solidarity. It's a big hammer in the 'nudge' toolkit and there is no implicit mechanism to stop the nudge becoming tyranny.
I value free speech and personal freedom - 'solidarity' is a nudge towards surrender of those values.
Yes. The word was used to force compliance during 2020-1. It was hugely manipulative, but for those who had been made to feel so afraid it just felt comforting and noble.
Excellent once again, David. Particularly resonant with regard to our current PM, who (connect to your recent piece on him) doesn't seem to see an issue he can't solve with a law. I genuinely wonder if at some stage it will be made a legal requirement to be nice.
It practically is already - depending on who one is required to be 'nice' to...
You beat me to it with your punchline.
There is perhaps a reductio ad absurdum for this cult belief: suppose I live alone and at subsistence level and a starving stranger arrives at my door.
Should I share my food with him so that we both die? Should I give him all my food so that just one of us dies?
In order to be 'in solidarity' with the stranger I must ensure that he doesn't die so I must give him all my food and sacrifice my life for his.
Solidarity is the new Black Lives Matter. Disagreement is definitionally bigoted. You've got to hand it to them on their marketing skills.
Another great piece, joining dots and eliciting more sighs of 'when will Boomer Truth end'.
I think of the law and magicians in the same way - they both use language to shape perception and create illusion.
The law uses carefully crafted words to define reality, control outcomes, and make power appear fair or invisible.
These papers are exercises in crafting words with the hope that reality can bend to whatever is written on paper, however anti-human and plainly evil it is.
All the while, what nags at me is - why - and who!
why are people writing this? why are they spending vast amounts of time, energy and magic coming up with ways to disguise evil deeds in 'kind', 'friendly' words?
"Though international treaties have obligated states to offer protection to many migrants over time,’ it continues, ‘the law is increasingly ineffectual..."
Woah!! International treaties are NOT "law". If you concede to the Left that they are the same thing, and therefore accept that ridiculous concept "international law", then you automatically accept the destruction of the nation state and its replacement by globalism.
Why? Because you cannot have law without a sovereign authority to make and enforce the law.
Nation states may enter into treaties. But they may also abrogate those treaties: treaties do not magically turn into "law" because some spurious authority like the United Nations has adopted them and claimed it has sovereign authority to enforce them.
This is why, for example, the United States is able to withdraw from the World Health Organisation. It is also why the UK has the right to withdraw from the EU, regardless of the withdrawal process in the Treaty of Lisbon.
We must defend the right of sovereign nation states to make the laws that govern their own territory, without reference to any higher authority such as "international law" (sic).
Accepting international law as a concept means accepting international Marxism. That isn't something the Right should be doing.
It's important to separate out the question of whether international law is really law (something that people have been disputing since Grotius) from the question of whether treaty law becomes the law of a state if that state has incorporated it into its domestic arrangements - which it inarguably does. If a state has made the Refugee Convention part of its law, then it simply is, leaving aside the question of whether the Refugee Convention itself can properly be called law. Another example: one can dispute whether the ECHR is 'really law' all one likes, but the UK has in any case made it into law within our jurisdiction through the Human Rights Act 1998. That makes the question of whether the ECHR itself is 'really law' purely academic. You are making an important point about international law generally and the way it has evolved, but one can't realistically argue that international law incorporated into domestic law through the proper process does not thereby become law in that jurisdiction.
(Interestingly, the UK is a weird anomaly in that the Refugee Convention has never been fully incorporated into domestic law - a subject which I have been drafting a post about, actually.)
You are of course right about treaties that have been made part of national law.
But you did say for example: "law no doubt imposes duties on States to protect refugees and asylum-seekers". Actually it does not. Nothing can impose duties on a State (except morally) other than its own laws.
Laws that incorporate treaties can be unmade. The Human Rights Act could be repealed.
I think we are arguing here about what a State is. I think we should distinguish between a State (upon which nothing can impose a legal duty) and a government (upon which legal duties can be imposed by that State's own laws).
Yes, I take the point, but not even a State's own laws can impose duties on it, since in the end all laws can be unmade (or ignored).
I stand by the statement in the sense that there are things which are treated as legal instruments (and customary rules) which do purport to place duties on States to protect refugees - while being perfectly happy to acknowledge that whether they are 'really law' is by no means settled philosophically! :)
Thanks for this article, David. This lends support to the idea that Marxism is a theology, with open borders and the abolition of property representing a heaven on earth. Man's law cannot be above the heavenly law.
Where is the solidarity for the people being trafficked into western Europe? Are their lives being put at risk to make some kind of point about migration law being not so important as the heavenly principle? What about solidarity for the working class who have to share crowded cities with illegal migrants who undercut their wages and bring third-world attitudes to violence, sexism and homophobia with them?
The UK Labour front bench crowing yesterday that they had halved immigration since the Tory peak was pure hypocrisy. Firstly, the Corbyn-led opposition was fully in favour of open borders. Secondly, Labour has done nothing significant to reduce migration while in power, except making Britain's economy less attractive to migrants.
I wonder if Labour council seats being lost to pro-Gaza independents is the only thing causing Labour to pause its rhetoric on migration, other than losing so many Northern seats to the Reform Party. It surely isn't the cost of migration to the working class.
It's also important to remember that the figure of 400,000+ might have 'halved' from the Boriswave, but it would still have been pretty much the highest figure in history prior to 2022. We didn't see numbers like that under even Blair, Brown or Cameron.
On the 'solidarity' with the working class - the solidarians are aware of that and have a readymade excuse. It's that *that* form of solidarity is nativist, racist, and populist. It's a bad type of solidarity. They even write about solidarity's 'dark side', referring to precisely this.
With around 220,000 net new dwellings currently built per year in England, housing is barely standing still even with the reduced figure of 400,000 new arrivals per year.
If you're identified as Palestinian or South African, native American, Aboriginal or Māori, 'solidarity' isn't supposed to be nativist or racist or populist. Resisting immigration is praised. Wikipedia argues that the Māori are indigenous and settlers at the same time, since they are relatively recent arrivals in New Zealand.
David, I read this yesterday and have felt compelled to read it again today !! I’ve concluded that it is one of the best, if not the best, of your articles on the subject of the use of legislation as the means of governmental control ie to shape society in a form which accords to the ideology of the day.
That it results from the ‘long march’ through academia is surely no longer in question - although such a suggestion was greeted with great surprise by one of my longstanding liberal/centrist friends, who has taken to labelling me as narrow minded, whilst patronisingly accepting me as his ‘intellectual equal’ !!
Academic influence, bolstered in no small measure by the mainstream media, has produced an increasingly chaotic political miasma in which legislation - the fashioning of which is the main duty of societal governance - is being made subject to the diktats of an approaching form of world government. A government which, as you have highlighted, must disavow the concept of national borders and its accompanying sovereignty.
Thanks very much Stephen and sorry I seem to have missed this comment when you made it…. The ‘long march’ issue is complicated. A lot of what has happened has been entirely unintentional. I agree the problems are greatly fostered by what is happening at universitiesthough - my next but one post will be about this.
I look forward to reading your thoughts on the issue of ‘the long march’. As you are someone with personal experience of university lecturing, I’ll take careful note of your views of how and what has changed since the Blair years begat the notion that a university education should become the entry level for any job except sweeping the streets. Slight exaggeration, but not by much!!