The Shape of Things to Come (?) . . .

Imagine a building going up on a green-field site. And nobody knows what it is or what it’s for—but in its parts it seems certainly admirable. A magnificent pillar here, something else there—piece by piece it reaches towards completion. And then one day they put the roof on and people suddenly realize that it is a prison.

This could serve as a metaphor for the modern world we live in, with its proliferation of laws, together with a seemingly limitless demand for ever new legislation. Such is the amount of regulation being poured out through local government and state legislatures and bodies such as the EU, not to mention the whole dubious structure of international law, that it is doubtful if any average person can pass a day without being unknowingly in breach of some or other aspect of it.

[Without it technically being law, it is perhaps worthwhile considering in passing the whole concept of employment and safety rules, such as exist in most workplaces. Anyone with experience of such things knows that they are measures designed to come into force only when things go wrong. Such rules in general have only two functions: the first one is to cover the employer against any liability in the event of something happening; and, two, to make it easy to get rid of recalcitrant employees. Outside of such situations, rulebooks are seldom ever mentioned.]

A case can be made for most pieces of legislation—certainly there must be somebody making a case for it, else there would be no reason for it. The problem is not so much with individual measures as with the end-result—sometimes frightening; sometimes ridiculous—when all the independently-generated pieces of legislation come finally to be bolted together.

In recent decades, there has arguably been a certain direction to social change and the legislative measures often underpinning it. The general thrust is that we are moving towards a more inclusive society, a fairer society etc. etc. Viewed from another direction and it might be seen as the creep towards authoritarianism.

Make no mistake a revolution is underway—a generally peaceful revolution, with no guns or barricades—but a revolution nonetheless. A revolution proceeding cautiously and sneakily in Gramsci-ian (see my previous mailing of November 5th, 2009: Kidding Oneself . . .) terms of not frightening the horses.

Now I am not saying that there is an organized conspiracy underpinning the course of social and legislative developments; but neither am I saying that there isn’t. Certainly at ground level there is an informal conspiracy of what Lenin described as ‘the useful idiots’—you can see them in the ‘alternative’ watering-holes of a weekend, blathering their crap, and emoting—endlessly, emoting , emoting, emoting . . . What the Marquis of Queensbury, had he been around to address the issue, might well with a deep instinctive truth have described as ‘Conformists posing as radicals’.

In Britain we can see how equality legislation—on the face of it, a seemingly innocuous term for a seemingly worthwhile project—is being used as a wrecking ball to destroy those aspects of society that left-liberals most hate. For example, Catholic adoption agencies are having a gun put to their heads over the matter of adoptions by homosexuals—either abide by New Labour equality legislation or else be forced out of existence. No conscience clause here, despite one having been promised by Blair.

Of course, conscience clauses aren’t worth the paper they’re [sic!] printed on. The fact that you need the escape hatch of a conscience clause is a recognition that you have already been beaten. Equally, the fact that it is sometimes promised is usually a matter of playing for time on the part of the dominant party.

Now Ireland is different from Britain, in that it lags somewhat behind in the matter of ‘progressive’ legislation. But anyone with eyes can see that the pressure’s on. As far back as twenty years ago and further, the probable course of developments, in the event that Ireland was to succumb to secularist pressures, was clearly visible. An attempt would be made to negotiate a conscience clause to cover those, especially in education and health, who would have religious objections to resulting changes. And probably it would be granted—but only up to the time that the liberal establishment felt itself fully secure in the saddle. Then the cry would be: ‘What are we paying these people for if they are not prepared to carry out the full range of duties? Either they agree to work the same way as everyone else—or let them get out!’

As I say, there is a revolution in progress, to a certain extent a subterranean revolution, yet one that, if it is not derailed, will have the effect of turning upside down aspects of the innermost structure of society, every bit as much as occurred in the Belorussian forests (see my last mailing) during the Second World War. Should the liberals and the leftists succeed in applying their agenda, then those very things that only a few decades ago were—although they shouldn’t have been—synonymous with respectability and status and success will, gradually or suddenly, turn opposite in their effect.

The liberal agenda and its related legislation involves much more than simply the matters of homosexuality and abortion. There is no limit to the extent of its potential to penetrate into all aspects of human life (something that I may deal with in the next mailing), forcing people to bend their knee to it or else go with their consciences and suffer the consequences.

And what are those consequences likely to be for those who resist? Look at the Coptic Christians of Cairo, once—pre-Islam—the majority population, and beneficiaries of all the advantages that thus accrued. Abandoned, in the wake of the Islamic conquest, as is always the case, by those more interested in jobs and wealth and status, they have over the centuries become reduced to a rump, scratching in the garbage dumps for a living, condemned to poverty and oppression by their refusal to abandon their ancient beliefs.

Could such a thing happen here? Of course it could—the Copts are a case in point of the way such things must always happen. The only difference is that the liberals are likely to prove much tougher masters than the Islamists.

Need it happen? Who knows? Certainly the liberal coalition has a head of steam up at the moment, and, as I said earlier, unless something happens to derail it, who knows what may be the outcome. The positive side of the world financial crisis is that it may indeed supply the necessary nudge. The fact is that the liberals in general are neither working class nor poor nor oppressed—they are instead mainly middle class, comparatively well-off, and with any amount of leisure time to conjure up nonsense and mischief. To the extent that the financial crisis impacts on them . . . Well, we’ll see!