Despite their good chances to win the general election, there is a great deal of discontentment with the Conservatives in Britain. The old and mostly false image of uncaring snobs was recently revived by Gordon Brown after he stated that Tory tax plans were ‘dreamed up on the playing fields of Eton’. But while this author certainly has no problems with old Etonians, he finds that a somewhat snobbish stupidity exists in the Conservative Party, and it certainly does not appeal to all.

I am a student, I am a libertarian, and I define myself as right wing insofar as the political spectrum actually makes sense. The spectrum exists – it is congested, confusing and mixed up, but it is there – and I have found a spot to stand on and to defend.

It is then remarkable how disappointing, how saddening and so how very depressing it is that when I meet a Tory, he can be so very different to everything that I believe in.

I have said ‘he’ because the example I am about to use includes a bunch of male thirty-somethings, who all reminded me how unfortunate it appears the British people might be after the next election.

It was a dinner in the fortified city of York, in a cosy, warm, ale-saturated inn. Conservative party members from all over the country – party activists, parliamentary candidates and councillors – flocked to this inn to engage in drunken nostalgia of their University of York Conservative Society days. I was there discretely, a guest and no more.

Now the old stereotype that is pertained to the Tories is that of an eccentric, snobbish, uncaring, vain twit. I have never liked or much believed this stereotype, and to look at the achievements and personalities of great Conservative politicians one can rarely find any truth in this image.

This particular notion of mine was not holding up particularly well at the inn, where the eccentric, snobbish, uncaring, vain twits were screaming, shouting, drinking, reminiscing of the food fight at the previous year’s event and gleefully hoarding Brussels sprouts in case of another such incident.

They were crass, vulgar individuals who enjoyed the vanity of riches and demonstrated the decadence of those who could not truthfully attain something without the help of others.

One of my few talents is my ability to get myself into trouble. Before I was asked to leave for telling these persons what I thought of them, I did – perhaps in hindsight unwisely – tell them that they were “not the thinkers of the party.” There is a great deal of truth to this. Of the many I spoke to, most appeared to have never had a real job, but had immediately stood for some form of office and had lived off parents’ money. Are these to be our politicians – persons with no experience, no achievements, and not one example of worthiness?

Such persons present who indulged in such vulgar activity included Frank Young, the Conservative Campaign Director for London; Iain Lindley, the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Worsley and Eccles South; Gareth Knight, Director of Conservatives for International Travel; Duncan Flynn; Richard Price; and Nick Reeves.

There has come into existence a path for such like-minded people: Firstly, one joins the Conservative Party at University and gets involved locally. Secondly, one starts to perfect the image by learning of which port to drink at parties, which pinstripe suit to always wear – no matter how informal the occasion – and which public persons might be cheered and which persons might be booed. Very occasionally they might discuss politics – recycled titbits from the Times’ comment page. Finally, the slightly more intelligent ones will join the civil service while the more boorish, obtuse ones attempt to become Conservative Politicians.

The people present had followed that path’s instructions to the letter. It was noticeable that other expected guests – Chloe Smith MP and Jonathan Isaby to name but two – were not present, perhaps because they had achieved something: it would be best to call it, well, actual success.

Now I believe that the left wing is wrong; usually well-intentioned, but wrong. I take issue with the premises of their ethics and the consequences of their politics. However, I can accept and even encourage their existence because they are politically engaged, and they contribute to the academic and ethical wrangling that makes the United Kingdom a democracy. Among the people I met in that inn, there was no such engagement; instead there was a determination to become part of an ideal and all its frivolities rather than an attempt to actually discuss and achieve the ideal itself.

I must stress that these appalling persons did not represent the entire room; there were other people there that I count as my friends and I believe to be far more interesting and involved than I might ever be. And just as the vainglorious persons did not represent all those in the room, it must be said that they did also not represent the entire Conservative Party.

While the Conservatives appear to have embraced Brussels just as much as in the Conservatives in that inn, Cameron, as well as Blair, has at least helped to achieve something, that is, the end of tribal politics. Both have attempted to embrace the middle ground – they have attempted to make sure that their parties no longer exist to appeal to a particular type of person but have room for voters from a variety of backgrounds. This is laudable, but it does not endear me to Cameron.

I will not vote for Cameron because I do not trust him. Whether or not his promises speak from the heart or are a political ploy I do not care, because both lead me to disagree with him. The former I find mostly unappealing and the latter I find phoney and thus dangerous.

It was in that inn, among the Conservative Party’s foot-soldiers and political socialites, that I encountered the attitude that sickens me. The general topic of speeches during the evening ran on the line, ‘When we get into power…” This is what I find frightening: the yearning to be ‘in power’. To be a politician should be a duty and not a job; it is to be a servant and not a ruler; and it is to be an honour and not a prerogative.

So I despise the snobbish Tory and I do not trust the new Tory, and this leaves me with few places to go.

It is hopeful to note that it is unlikely we shall see the persons of that inn in the future, because having failed so hopelessly now, it is unlikely they shall succeed in years to come. But it is with caution that we should look upon the Conservative party, which appears to be either false or divided – and so neither appeal to me.

In Commentary magazine, the admirable commentator and analyst Jennifer Rubin examines at length the possible reasons for Sarah Palin’s unpopularity with Jewish voters. If she is right – and by saying that, we are not intending to cast doubt on her conclusions – Sarah Palin is scorned by American Jews as being intellectually inferior.

‘Jews,’ Rubin writes at the end of her article (we suggest interested readers read it all) ‘are not about to cast aside their preference for those leaders whom they perceive as intellectually worthy – and socially compatible.’

In other words – ours not Jennifer Rubin’s – she is the victim of intellectual snobbery. (Maybe social snobbery too, but ‘social incompatibility’ may not be because one social group thinks itself superior to another, but simply because it feels that it has little in common with the other. So we’ll overlook that. It’s the ‘intellectually worthy’ judgment that concerns us.)

We believe Rubin is right to take into account that Jews in general place a high value on intellectual ability and achievement. It’s well known that they do. A circle of Jewish voters of our acquaintance holds that Bill Clinton deserved to be president because he was a Rhodes scholar. That’s more than enough all by itself to secure their admiration and their political loyalty. Academic brilliance, in their judgment, is a ‘pro’ that cancels any ‘con’, such as character flaws, sexual exploitation, even perjury. And that is not wise. It is also not intellectually respectable!

Most Jews in America are liberal and vote Democratic, even though Jewish interests, especially where relations between the US and Israel are concerned, are in far safer hands when the Republicans are in power. The Left is now predominantly and universally anti-Israel, and in Europe positively anti-Semitic. The illogic of Jewish loyalty to the Left in the light of these facts is glaring enough to need explanation, and Norman Podhoretz has taken a whole book (Why Are Jews Liberals?) to explain it.

So Jewish voters’ opinions of Sarah Palin can be understood in part as the opinions of the Left in general. And of course the Left is against Sarah Palin: she is a conservative and a Republican. But the degree of animosity towards her aired obsessively by leftist intellectuals goes beyond mere difference of principle and opinion. It is so contemptuous, so personal, so cruel as to outrage civilized standards. They even attack her children! Women writers ridicule her appearance (out of envy, we suspect, of her quite exceptional beauty), as if that were relevant to her politics and aspirations to leadership.

In our view Sarah Palin is highly intelligent, and – yes – not an intellectual. Thomas Sowell has convincingly defined an intellectual as someone whose product is ideas, and Sarah Palin does not fit that definition. But that is in no way a deficiency in her. America does not need an intellectual as a leader. We’d even go so far as to say that an intellectual is the last person America needs to lead it. It needs someone who is principled, who holds liberty to be the highest value, who respects the Constitution and the traditions of America, is competent, commonsensical, has proved herself electable, has been tried and tested in office, is fiscally responsible, knows the importance of keeping America militarily strong, and is exemplary in her self-reliance. If ever there was a model of an American able and willing to stand on her own two feet, it is Sarah Palin. (She and her husband fill their deep freeze with meat and fish that they themselves hunt and catch; and they built their own house. Not the sort of activities, we acknowledge, that intellectuals are likely to admire.)

We are not saying that Sarah Palin would be the indubitably best choice for the 2012 presidential election. We are saying that she would be a good candidate. And we think that Jewish voters should know that in her office when she was Governor of Alaska, she displayed an Israeli flag on her wall. Or so we have been told. If we’ve been misinformed about that, we’d still like to point out to them that she is much more likely than Obama to stop Iran getting nuclear weapons.

And speaking of Obama – who, it is worth noting, will not let his academic records be made public – we wonder: how do the Jews who voted for him reconcile their preference for an ‘intellectually worthy’ leader with his manifest ignorance and career-long dependence on affirmative action?

Why do some people want power over the lives of others?

Theodore Dalrymple writes in a discussion of privileged eduction in France and whether the state should provide ‘equality of opportunity’ – which is to say, a discussion of socialist thinking – that he is mystified by this question.

The heart of the problem lies in the unassailability of the term ‘equality of opportunity,’ and the unthinking assent it commands. I was once asked on Dutch TV whether I was in favour of it, the interviewer assuming that I must be so in spite of all my other appalling opinions; and when I said that I was not, and indeed that I thought it was a truly hideous notion, his eyes opened with surprise. I thought he was going to slip off his chair.

Only under conditions reminiscent of those of Brave New World could there be equality of opportunity. But, of course, the very unattainability of equality of opportunity (in any sense other than that of an absence of formal, legal impediments to social advance) is precisely what recommends it as an ideal to politicians such as President Sarkozy, and indeed to most other western politicians, virtually irrespective of their putative political stripe. The fact that, reform notwithstanding, there are always differences in outcomes for different groups or classes of human beings in any society means that there is always scope, in the name of equality of opportunity, for further interference and control by politicians and bureaucrats. Not permanent revolution (to change the communist metaphor from Stalinism to Trotskyism), but permanent reform is the modern western politico-bureaucratic class’s route to lasting power and control.

Why anyone should want lasting power and control is to me a mystery: I suppose it must be the answer to a deep and insatiable inner emptiness.

And Bill Whittle at PJTV (here) seeks an answer to the question: ‘What type of person wants to run for office?’ He cites two men in history who attained supreme power and did not cling to it. Each of them saw his position as a temporary job, the exercise of power as a duty he owed to the people, and when he had done what was needed, stepped down from high office and returned to private life. One was the (5th.century B.C.E.) Roman leader Cincinnatus, and the other was George Washington.

If there are any politicians now who consider taking on elected office only as a service, they would be found (and it’s really not very likely that they exist) on the conservative right. Leftist politicians want above all to command, manipulate, control people, even force them to change their nature. There’s an old and ongoing debate among political philosophers of the left as to whether The Revolution will bring about a transformation of human nature, or whether it is necessary for human nature to be reconstructed first in order for The Revolution to be accomplished. (An infamous example of a Commie who fretted over this artifiical problem is Herbert Marcuse, guru of the 1968 New Left in Europe.)

Right now, ‘progressive’ bureaucrats in New York see it as their  business – and of course their pleasure – to interfere not just in New Yorkers’ but the whole nation’s private lives by dictating what people may eat or not eat.

Daniel Compton writes in OpenMarket.org:

On Monday, city officials rolled out an initiative to curb the salt content in manufactured and packaged foods. But the idea behind it — that salt intake has reached extreme levels in America — is a myth, and this “solution” wouldn’t work, anyway.

City Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley aims to lead a national campaign to reduce the amount of salt in manufactured foods by 25 percent over the next five years. Cutting salt intake is supposed to reduce hypertension-related health problems. But while doctors may advise particular patients to cut down on salt, the science tells us that this is not a public-health problem. …

In other words, Farley’s trying to fight a problem that doesn’t exist. Worse, his new guidelines say that daily sodium intake for most people shouldn’t exceed 1,500 mg — which is a ridiculous 45 percent below the bottom of the normal consumption range [a] UC Davis study identified, and a full 60 percent lower than the worldwide average. …

The UC Davis study also cites surveys showing that sodium intake in the United Kingdom has “varied minimally” over the last 25 years, despite a major government campaign to reduce it.

Overall, the researchers found, salt intake “is unlikely to be malleable by public policy initiatives,” and attempts to change it would “expend valuable national and personal resources against unachievable goals.”

The New York guidelines are voluntary — for now. But the city’s ban on trans fats started that way, too. And the federal Food and Drug Administration has also been looking to get in on the action — it may classify it as a “food additive,” subject to regulation, sometime this year.

Then he comes to what all this regulation-for-our-own-good is really all about:

But this campaign isn’t about public health — it’s about grandstanding on a pseudo-issue ginned up by activists, when science clearly shows that there’s neither a crisis nor a way for the government to actually alter our salt intake.

All these initiatives do is win headlines for ambitious policymakers (New York’s last health commissioner parlayed his trans-fat activism into a promotion to FDA chief), while making food slightly more costly and leaving a bad taste in the mouths of consumers — literally.

Of course, if (or is it when?) the state is the sole provider of health care, it will claim justification for dictating to us what we may eat and how we must live, on the grounds that as it pays for our cures it has the right or the duty to instruct us to stay healthy. That’s why Obama and the Democrats so desperately want their health care legislation to be passed: not really to help keep us alive, but to have the means and the pretext for controlling us. As always with the left, they will boss us about in the name of a benign intention and an essential need.

The despotic personality is hard if not impossible for libertarians to understand. Individualists are appalled by the totalitarian vision of collectivists. Speaking for ourselves, in no conceivable circumstances would we want to organize a community. We find in the weakness of our unreconstructed human nature that it’s hard enough to run even one life – each our own.

Because who comes to power in the US and with what policies inevitably affects the rest of the world, we’re posting this article on the Republican Party – whose prospects at present look good for the 2010 elections – without apology to our much valued readers in other countries.

Some ruminations in the dark of the year.

The Democrats are doing badly. It must be good for the GOP. What should the GOP do to take maximum advantage of Obama’s steep fall in popularity and public revulsion against the (misnamed) stimulus and the deplorable health-care legislation?

One opinion is that Republicans will rise without having to do anything: ‘They have Obama’, as Charles Krauthammer said on Bret Baier’s ‘Special Report’ on Fox News, disagreeing with Mort Kondracke’s view that they need to offer positive ideas.

Newt Gingrich opined to Sean Hannity that the GOP needs to be ‘the alternative party, not the opposition party’, and announced that he’ll soon present another ‘contract with America’, the first one having worked well for him and the Party.

So who’s right? Just let the Democrats fail and the GOP will have an easy ride back into power? Or make promises, set out a program, announce policies?

Some say a change of leadership is needed; that Michael Steele is lackluster and bereft of ideas.

That may be the case, but ideas are not what Republicans need. They’ve always had the right ideas and only lack the resolution to stand by them and implement them. A reminder of what they are: small government, individual freedom, strong defense, a free market economy, low taxation, strict constitutionalism, rule of law.

Perhaps the less innovative and exciting the Republican Party looks and sounds, the better.

Am I murmuring into the ear of the GOP, ‘Be passive, be negative’? Yes, I am.

Conservatism is, at its best, the politics of inertia. Change is not good, rarely a necessity. Stability is liberating. People should not have to think much or often about the res publica, but be enabled by the state to go about their business freely, without fear of having to adjust to new circumstances; confident that they, their families and possessions are protected by laws reliably enforced, and distant inconspicuous military might. Conservative rule should ensure such ease for them, keeping itself unobtrusive, so the citizens may expect peace-and-order to be as natural a condition of their lives as the air they breathe.

The only active step that the GOP should energetically take as soon as it’s back in power is to undo the wrong that the Democratic regime has done. Shrink government. Repeal socialist legislation, such as the health-care act if it is passed.

It’s a very hard task. Once an entitlement has been granted it’s almost impossible to take away. Governments of West European welfare states have known for at least three decades that maintaining state pensions is actuarially impossible now that people live longer and have fewer children, but what are they doing about it? Nothing. Helplessly they go on borrowing or printing money, and getting poorer.

It’s too late for Europe to save itself. But here in America, imagine if brilliant new leaders were to arise who had the nerve to say to the people: ‘Stand on your own two feet. Don’t look to government to provide you with anything, not health care, not food stamps, not “affordable housing”, not even education.’ We’d be on the road back to full employment and prosperity. But – nah! These are just figments of fireside dreams.

Jillian Becker   January 8, 2010

To be a political conservative and also an atheist in America may be uncommon but it isn’t difficult.

Our conservative principles are: individual freedom, small government, strong defense, free market economics, rule of law. Belief in them doesn’t need belief in God as well.

We find it perfectly easy to agree with the political opinions of religious conservatives. We just don’t share their faith in the existence of the supernatural.

We don’t take offense when one of our fellow conservatives talks about his or her religion, though we may be embarrassed for them if they become mawkish. We are thinking of courageous, principled, competent Sarah Palin, witty Ann Coulter, vigorous defender of freedom Glenn Beck, and above all Brit Hume, whom we have long listened to on Fox News with respect and gratitude for his political knowledge, insight, and judicious wisdom.

Actually, so unmawkish is Brit Hume, so seldom does he say anything about himself, that we didn’t even know he was a devout Christian. Then, on Fox News Sunday, speaking about the disgrace of poly-adulterous Tiger Woods with kindness and sympathy, and intending only to suggest a source of comfort for the great golfer, he said:

The extent to which he can recover, it seems to me, depends on his faith. He is said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So, my message to Tiger would be: Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.

To this, we hear, the ‘secular left’ took exception. Some of them absurdly spoke of a Constitutional requirement that ‘church and state’ be kept separate as a reason why it was wrong for someone to recommend his religion when appearing on television.

Conservatives leapt to Hume’s defense, and the defense of Christianity. –

Here’s Cal Thomas:

That is a message shared for 2,000 years by those who follow Jesus of Nazareth. It apparently continues to escape the secular left that Christians feel compelled to share their faith out of gratitude for what Jesus has done for them (dying in their place on a cross and offering a new life to those who repent and receive Him as savior). In a day when some extremists employ violence to advance their religion, it is curious that many would save their criticism for a truly peace-bringing message such as the one broadcast by Brit Hume.

And here’s Ann Coulter:

Hume’s words, being 100 percent factually correct, sent liberals into a tizzy of sputtering rage, once again illustrating liberals’ copious ignorance of Christianity.

On MSNBC, David Shuster invoked the “separation of church and television” (a phrase that also doesn’t appear in the Constitution), bitterly complaining that Hume had brought up Christianity “out-of-the-blue” on “a political talk show.”

Why on earth would Hume mention religion while discussing a public figure who had fallen from grace and was in need of redemption and forgiveness? Boy, talk about coming out of left field!

What religion — what topic — induces this sort of babbling idiocy? (If liberals really want to keep people from hearing about God, they should give Him his own show on MSNBC.)

Most perplexing was columnist Dan Savage’s indignant accusation that Hume was claiming that Christianity “offers the best deal — it gives you the get-out-of-adultery-free card that other religions just can’t.”

In fact, that’s exactly what Christianity does. It’s the best deal in the universe. (I know it seems strange that a self-described atheist and “radical sex advice columnist f*****” like Savage would miss the central point of Christianity, but there it is.)

God sent his only son to get the crap beaten out of him, die for our sins and rise from the dead. If you believe that, you’re in. Your sins are washed away from you — sins even worse than adultery! — because of the cross. …

With Christianity, your sins are forgiven, the slate is wiped clean and your eternal life is guaranteed through nothing you did yourself, even though you don’t deserve it. It’s the best deal in the universe.

We cannot understand how any intelligent person can believe in God. We are baffled that even unintelligent people can believe in the immaculate birth of Jesus, or that he came alive again after dying (what does ‘death’ mean if not the end of life, what does ‘life’ mean if not that which can die?), or that a certain Jew born in the time of Augustus Caesar was divine. We wonder at (inter alia) the way Christians can overlook inconvenient passages in their scripture, such as (Matt 10.34) ‘I come not to bring peace but to bring a sword’; ignore the fact that Christianity invented Hell (for whose eternal torment if Christ is forgiving and if his crucifixion saved mankind?); bluff themselves that you have only to believe that Christ died for you and your sins are ‘washed away’.

Whatever wrong you’ve done you’ve done, people: live with it, try to learn from it and try not to do it again. It can never be ‘washed away’ from you. Tough for Tiger, tough for all of us. But when you die you won’t go to hell, you’ll be dead.

As Omar Khayyam, an atheist apostate from Islam (or his translator Edward Fitzgerald) wrote, being, to use Ann Coulter’s words, 100 per cent correct:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

For once we dislike something Brit Hume has said, but we defend – if not quite to the death – his right to say it.

Thanks to one of our (highly critical) readers who sent it to us, here is a cheerful message for the new year, written by Howard Golganov:

THINK VERY SERIOUSLY ABOUT THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT:

No politician has ever done America and the Free World a greater SERVICE, than has Barack Hussein Obama and the FOOLS who elected him.

HERE’S WHY I BELIEVE IN WHAT I HAVE JUST WRITTEN:

For more than a couple of generations, North America has been sliding slowly but surely towards creeping socialism, where even our ‘pretend’ Conservatives have been playing the game.

Two perfect examples include President George W Bush and Canada’s Prime Minister Prime Minister Stephen Harper, both of whom increased spending, their respective debts, and the size of their respective governments.

Even ‘pretend’ Conservative leaders have been chipping away at INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS, while imposing more and more regulations and bureaucracy.

Had Barack Hussein Obama not come along when he did, this trend to the LEFT, especially to the FAR LEFT would have continued without any REAL abatement, option, or alternative in sight.

But, because of Obama and the extraordinarily horrible people he is aligned with inside and outside of government, the shift to the LEFT that would have taken much longer has in fact EXPLODED overnight.

Had the move to the LEFT continued unabated, I sincerely believe that not only would our economies have crashed, but also, we would have lost our individual RIGHTS, which would have been irretrievable without some form of serious conflict.

Perhaps even a civil war between the RIGHT and the LEFT.

But, this SHOCK THERAPY courtesy of Obama has been a clarion wake-up call. And because of it, strong Conservative leaders have emerged before it became too late.

Even MODERATE LIBERALS are having serious sober second thoughts about the direction in which the LEFT are dragging the USA. So much so, that even they can see the edge of the precipice Obama and his coterie of co-conspirators are running hell bent to jump off of.

Here is a prediction that takes very little prognosticative skills:

Not ONLY will Obama go down in history as the WORST President ever. Even making Carter look less horrible than he actually was. Obama will go down as the MOST HATED PRESIDENT EVER.

Because of Obama, who has managed to screw everything up in less than one full year, making his LEFT base upset, losing all of his moderate and independent supporters, taking a Nobel Peace Prize while making war, and bringing America and the entire world to the brink of bankruptcy, THE AMERICAN LEFT WILL BE CRUSHED for a long time to come.

Sometimes we just don’t know how good we have it until something REALLY BAD happens to take it all away. Obama is that something REALLY BAD that has happened.

So, to all of you folk who write to me in tones of DESPAIR – Despair not.

HAPPY DAYS WILL SOON ENOUGH BE HERE AGAIN.

Nice. We follow his argument and we hope he’s right. Only we’re not so sure about the strong Conservative leaders he says have emerged. Who are they?

If he means, for instance, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, they’re doing a splendid job as providers of information that the mainstream media would rather keep hidden; and they are certainly leaders of public opinion which can influence policy decisions; but they are not likely to become policy makers themselves. If he means Sarah Palin he may be right. Anyone else?

One of our readers, bill, points out in a comment on A congress of whores below, that ‘the very act of government involvement in the health care industry is unconstitutional’.

Larry Elder agrees, in an article titled ObamaCare: Freedom on Life Support at Townhall:

What words in the U.S. Constitution allow the federal government to compel every American to purchase health insurance? Where does the Constitution allow the federal government to take money from some Americans and give it to others so that they may purchase health insurance?…

The same people who railed against the Patriot Act, the terror surveillance program and “illegal” torture happily unleash the power of the federal government to redistribute wealth for ObamaCare … Never mind the absence of authority in the Constitution.

The left tells us that “health care is a right, not a privilege.” Surely the Constitution says so. No, it does not. Article I, Section 8 details the limited power, duties and responsibilities of the federal government. Extracting money from your paycheck and giving it back to you when you retire — Social Security? Not there. Taxing workers to pay for the health care of seniors — Medicare? Not there. Mandating that employers pay workers a minimum wage? Not there.

This is not hypothetical. During the Great Depression, the Supreme Court struck down much of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal on constitutional grounds. No, said the Court, the federal government cannot use the Constitution’s commerce clause to regulate virtually all economic activity. No, said the Court, the federal government cannot use the welfare clause to redistribute wealth, whether or not it accomplishes a socially or economically desirable objective.

The Court asserted that the Constitution meant what it said and said what it meant. …

Might Heaven be best described as simply the opposite of Hell: an eternal experience of pleasure, happiness, success, desirable company, instant gratification, hope fulfilled?  Most people would probably agree on that being ‘heavenly’ in a general way. But just what brings pleasure and happiness, who in particular provides the right company, exactly what wishes need to be gratified and what hope fulfilled, are questions to which there will be as many answers as there are people.

No one has been able to describe ideal conditions for life on this earth that would be attractive to all or most people – or even ‘equally as much to my friend as to myself’. One man’s ideal state is another man’s purgatory. How many would choose to live, for instance, in Thomas More’s Utopia?

It is a communist, slave-owning society. The slaves are foreigners or criminals. (Their chains are made of gold, but that’s unlikely to be much of a consolation to them.)

All the citizens, both men and women, live by compulsory labor on the land and in handcrafts, except a minority who are scholars and may choose to become ruling officials or priests. The ruling officials, the ‘administrators’, watch over and control the rest. They monitor and correct activity in every household, and uniformly govern the affairs of the towns. They constitute the state.

All religions are tolerated. Atheism is too, but it is despised and feared, and atheists are subjected to constant counseling by the priests to cure them of their perversity.

Meals are eaten communally, households taking it in turns to prepare them. The administrators get the best food.

There is no private property. Everyone is dressed in the same simple garment. People ask for what they need and officials dispense it to them.

Everyone gets free health care. Euthanasia is administered by the state. Citizens feel protected from the struggle for survival and the need to make hard decisions, but at the cost of self-determination.

No one may choose to leave the country, which is an island, or travel about in it without a permit. To do so is a crime punishable by enslavement.

Women toil in the fields and workshops equally with the men for the same six hours a day.  But they are subject to the will of their husbands. They may not wear make-up. They have to confess their sins to their husbands once a month. They alone carry out the domestic chores (in addition to their other work). A few may become priests in their old age, but not administrators.

Both men and women are given military training, but women are never put in command over men.

Gambling and hunting are forbidden to all.

It is a vision that partly matches and partly differs from that of the Left in our time. One notable difference is that in Utopia there is no sexual freedom. Pre-marital sex is punished by forced celibacy for life, and adultery by enslavement.

In Karl Marx’s ideal egalitarian society the state will eventually ‘wither away’, there’ll be no private property, and the only authority will be one that administers and distributes things (as in More’s Utopia), ‘to each according to his need’  – the need being judged by the distributors. But where his theories were put into practice, in Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba, North Korea, the state remained robust, the people lost their liberty and suffered poverty, misery, arbitrary incarceration, summary execution, forced starvation, massacre, torture, enslavement, labor under the lash.

It seems that the plans of a few for how everyone should live will always turn out to be hellish. No one can plan a public heaven, because heavens are made of infinitely variable individual choices.

Hells are communal projects, but every real Heaven is a private enterprise.

Jillian Becker  December 18, 2009

Roger Scruton sets out the opposing ethical-political views of conservatives and liberals in his article Totalitarian Sentimentality in The American Spectator. It is well worth reading in full.

In part he writes:

The USA has descended from its special position as the principled guardian of Western civilization and joined the club of sentimentalists who have until now depended on American power. In the administration of President Obama we see the very same totalitarian sentimentality that has been at work in Europe, and which has replaced civil society with the state, the family with the adoption agency, work with welfare, and patriotic duty with universal “rights”. The lesson of postwar Europe is that it is easy to flaunt compassion, but harder to bear the cost of it. Far preferable to the hard life in which disciplined teaching, costly charity, and responsible attachment are the ruling principles is the life of sentimental display, in which others are encouraged to admire you for virtues you do not possess. This life of phony compassion is a life of transferred costs. Liberals who wax lyrical on the sufferings of the poor do not, on the whole, give their time and money to helping those less fortunate than themselves. On the contrary, they campaign for the state to assume the burden. The inevitable result of their sentimental approach to suffering is the expansion of the state and the increase in its power both to tax us and to control our lives.

As the state takes charge of our needs, and relieves people of the burdens that should rightly be theirs — the burdens that come from charity and neighborliness — serious feeling retreats. In place of it comes an aggressive sentimentality that seeks to dominate the public square. I call this sentimentality “totalitarian” since — like totalitarian government — it seeks out opposition and carefully extinguishes it, in all the places where opposition might form. Its goal is to “solve” our social problems, by imposing burdens on responsible citizens, and lifting burdens from the “victims,” who have a “right” to state support. The result is to replace old social problems, which might have been relieved by private charity, with the new and intransigent problems fostered by the state: for example, mass illegitimacy, the decline of the indigenous birthrate, and the emergence of the gang culture among the fatherless youth. We have seen this everywhere in Europe, whose situation is made worse by the pressure of mass immigration, subsidized by the state. The citizens whose taxes pay for the flood of incoming “victims” cannot protest, since the sentimentalists have succeeded in passing “hate speech” laws and in inventing crimes like “Islamophobia” which place their actions beyond discussion. This is just one example of a legislative tendency that can be observed in every area of social life: family, school, sexual relations, social initiatives, even the military — all are being deprived of their authority and brought under the control of the “soft power” that rules from above.

This is how we should understand the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama. … The prize is an endorsement from the European elite, a sigh of collective relief that America has at last taken the decisive step toward the modern consensus, by exchanging real for fake emotion, hard power for soft power, and truth for lies. What matters in Europe is the great fiction that things will stay in place forever, that peace will be permanent and society stable, just so long as everybody is “nice.” Under President Bush … America maintained its old image, of national self-confidence and belligerent assertion of the right to be successful. Bush was the voice of a property-owning democracy, in which hard work and family values still achieved a public endorsement. As a result he was hated by the European elites, and hated all the more because Europe needs America and knows that, without America, it will die. Obama is welcomed as a savior: the American president for whom the Europeans have been hoping — the one who will rescue them from the truth.