Image credit: Mohamed_hassan
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I have spent the last year and more writing two strands of
essays. Essays that, to some, may seem rather long, complex and academic. Yet throughout,
I have tried my utmost to compress and, if you will, “mince” them into digestible
chunks.
One of my strands has been about political theory. I have
outlined the ideas of some thinkers of the past; and three in particular. John
Locke, one of the good guys. Jean Bodin, who made himself into a really bad guy.
And Franz Oppenheimer, another good guy. Further, I have set out, as briefly
and clearly as I can, my views on history, ethics, political philosophy and the
psychology of those that seek power. And I have given you a broad outline for a
new and better system, to replace today’s failed systems of “politics” and “government.”
The other strand has been about what has been happening in
politics in recent decades. Particularly in the UK; but I have also cited examples
from elsewhere. I gave you, around three months ago, a 4,500-word summary of
what is being done to us: [[1]].
And two weeks ago, I reviewed a book by Bernie Spofforth, which tells a lot
about the back-story: [[2]].
Today, I begin a new phase of my endeavours. This is the
moment, at which I start to use ideas and evidence from the two strands
together, in order to start on the path to understanding the roots of what is
going on.
What is going on?
The political system we live under has been deteriorating
for decades. At least since the 1980s, for those of us who can remember that
far back.
Today, we are bombarded by many different kinds of
political artillery. We suffer the crazy, fraudulent nett zero and anti-car
agendas. Every few weeks or even days, we see yet more proposed violations of
our rights and freedoms, such as restrictions on our Internet and social media
access, supposedly to “protect children.” We have local government “devolution”
that actually centralizes power. We see immigration being allowed, obviously
deliberately, to grow out of control. And we have “two-tier policing,” where
individuals acting similarly are treated differently.
At one level, what is happening is pretty obvious. Those
in government power today are destroying our economy, taxing us out of
existence, and impoverishing us all. They are seeking to destroy the rule of
law, our individuality and independence, and our rights and freedoms. They are
seeking to overwhelm people’s minds with their false narratives. And those who
speak out, or even try to speak out, against their predations and injustices
are always in danger of being smeared, silenced or suppressed.
They aim to treat us, not as the human beings we are, but
as objects to be exploited, or mere numbers in a database. They are seeking to
mix into the population large numbers of immigrants, many of whom are not compatible
with the indigenous culture. Thus, they are seeking to dilute, and eventually
to destroy, the British culture – the very culture that gave humanity the
Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.
Meanwhile, their cronies and fellow-travellers – a global
clique of self-satisfied élites
– greedily rake in our money, while helping along the trashing of our rights
and freedoms. These cronies include politicians (global, national and local, and
of all mainstream parties), government officials, bureaucrats, quangocrats,
jobsworths, advisors, influencers, technocrats, academics and “experts,” mainstream
media, bankers, financiers, plutocrats, corporate and big-business leaders, and
activists for political agendas. It is unsurprising that Reform leader Nigel
Farage presents the situation as “the establishment versus the people.”
How are they doing it?
How our enemies are doing all this, too, is not
hard to understand. They are implementing policies that they have agreed,
without reference to the people they are supposed to serve, with unelected,
unaccountable, external parties. In particular, policies rooted in or derived
from the “Sustainable Development Goals” of the United Nations. Many of these
have been brought in without any public debate, and with minimal or no
parliamentary scrutiny.
Even when an MP or two has woken up and started making
waves (think Andrew Bridgen on vaccine harms, or Andrea Jenkyns on nett zero),
the imposition of the policies blasts ahead without any consideration for the
people who will be affected by them. And even when a “consultation” does get offered,
the whole exercise is a sham. All responses that go against the establishment
agenda are completely ignored.
So, they tax us and use our money to violate our
rights, and make us poorer and less free. Nett zero, “biodiversity nett gain,” compulsory
COVID vaccinations (while hiding the resulting deaths and injuries), anti-car
policies, “devolution” in local government that in reality centralizes power,
facial recognition cameras, digital ID, and more. And they love to set
arbitrary, collective “targets” and “limits” on what we may do, and to move the
goalposts again and again, always in the direction of tightening the noose on
us.
By the way, if anyone thinks compulsory digital ID is off
the table, look at culture secretary Lisa Nandy’s plans to ban social media
for children under 16: [[3]].
By next March! In her own words: “This is a staging post to what must be a very
active interventionist state, policing and regulating the online space so that
people are safe.” Leaving aside the nastiness of her plans, how can anything that requires on-line age checks be done
without a compulsory digital ID?
Our enemies also seek to change the way government
operates, always in directions that entrench establishment power. Like taking
away juries, and changing voting protocols (such as age limits) to the
advantage of the legacy, establishment parties.
They are doing all this at a rate of many new bad laws and
negative changes each year. And if these projects, bad for us, bring rich
pickings for them and their cronies, they are more than happy with that.
Why are they doing it? And why now?
Just why they are doing these things to us, though
– and why at this particular period of history – is far less obvious. That is
the question, which I will start to explore today.
The Westphalian state
In the second essay of my theory strand, “The Westphalian
state” [[4]],
I gave a summary of the political system devised in the 1570s by French
monarchist Jean Bodin. It may seem hard to believe, but that set of ideas is
still, even today, the design underlying the political system under which we
are forced to live.
Sovereignty and subjection
The political set-up, which has become known as the
“Westphalian” state, consists of a “sovereign” and “subjects.” They are not
equal. The sovereign has “sovereignty” over the subjects, which is reflected in
many different ways.
The sovereign has moral privileges. It can make laws to bind
the subjects, and give privileges to those it chooses to. It can make war and
peace. It appoints the top officials of the state. It is the final court of
appeal. It can pardon guilty individuals if it so wishes. It can issue a
currency. And it can levy taxes and impositions, and exempt at will certain
individuals or groups from payment.
Furthermore, the sovereign isn’t bound by the laws it makes.
And it isn’t responsible for the consequences to anyone of what it does – also
known as “sovereign immunity,” or “the king can do no wrong.” This immunity is
an egregious privilege, because it allows the sovereign, and those acting on
its behalf, to operate without any accountability at all.
At the end of that essay, I looked at the meme: “the state
is out of date.” And I was in no doubt that this meme is a truth. Moreover,
looking at government debt, I concluded that: “As well as being morally
bankrupt, the state is all but financially bankrupt.”
Monarchy and élitism
In Bodin’s set-up, the sovereign was an individual, a
monarch. But monarchs liked to attach to themselves a cadre of favourites: advisors,
supporters, henchmen or a mix of all three. The monarch could dismiss his
favourites if he pleased. But if the favourites remained loyal to the monarch,
they could usually expect continued favours in return.
Thus, the privileges of sovereignty were in effect extended
from the monarch to an élite
group around him. The monarch could shower his favourites with privileges, at
the expense of everyone else. This led to a governmental system with a small
group of courtiers as an élite
or ruling class, in between the monarch and the ordinary people.
Divine law and absolutism
Bodin, in common with most Christians of his era, believed that
the authority of a monarch came from the Christian deity. And thus, monarchs
had a “divine right” to rule. As a quid pro quo, the monarch was
expected to obey a “divine law,” set by this deity. This included keeping to
any agreement he chose to make with his subjects.
But this same divine law required a subject to obey
unquestioningly the ruler that had been set over him. Therefore, it could not
protect the subjects against bad treatment by the monarch. Indeed, Bodin said:
“The subject is never justified in any circumstances in attempting anything
against his sovereign prince, however evil and tyrannical he may be.” In
practice, therefore, a monarch could feel that anything he did to his subjects
was OK, no matter how much hurt it caused them.
This led to what is called “absolutism.” The first English monarch
to take the throne after Bodin’s ideas took root was James I. James certainly
believed that he had an absolute, divine right to rule over his subjects. But
he was also a half decent man. He did not exploit the people with heavy
taxation, and he always sought peace rather than making wars.
His son, Charles I, shared James’s absolutism. But he was
far more Machiavellian in character. He sought to impose taxes on the people,
without the consent even of the élite
group that now formed the parliament. He tried to impose his own religious
views, and had dissenters’ ears cut off. He made promises, that he then reneged on. He
accepted the parliament’s “Petition of Right,” but then carried on violating it
regardless, even to the point of imposing martial law on the people. And he arbitrarily
expanded the area of the royal forests, then threw out the people who lived in them.
Charlie got the chopper he so richly deserved. But once the
dust had settled, not much had changed, except that the parliament had far more
power, and the monarch less. The members of parliament were merely the new
group of élite
courtiers.
Enrichment, control and persecution
For millennia, states have done three main things to the
people they rule over. One, enrich themselves and their cronies at the expense
of ordinary people. Two, seek to control people, and make them do other than what
they want to. And three, persecute those they don’t like.
Enriching vested interests
We see many instances in history, where vested interests have
sought to use the state to enrich themselves or entrench their own privileges.
In 1815, for example, a group of “mercantilists” sought economic
policies that would build up the power of the state, and strengthen the recently
created “United Kingdom” relative to foreign powers. Their interests overlapped
with a class of large landowners (including many members of parliament), who
wanted to maximize the income they received from their estates. Together, they
made the tariffs and trade restrictions called the “Corn Laws,” which for more
than three decades made food in the UK far more expensive than it need have
been. Causing food shortages and riots, and contributing in 1845 to triggering
the Irish famine.
Controlling the people
Often, vested interests have used state power to maximize
their control over the people. For example, by restricting personal mobility
(think ULEZ), or by denying basic rights like the presumption of innocence or freedom
of speech (think the “climate change” scam and the BBC’s treatment of skeptics).
Or by forcing people to do things they do not want to (think compulsory COVID
jabs). Or by harassing or ordering around people who have done no real harm to
anyone (think two-tier policing).
Persecutions
But the damage inflicted by states and their favourites extends
to persecutions too.
Religious persecutions have been perhaps the
longest-standing of all. In England, Catholic monarchs persecuted Protestants,
and Protestant monarchs and parliaments did tit for tat. Meanwhile, on the
continent, church and state combined to persecute religious “crimethink.” The
Inquisitions found innocent people guilty, then delegated their murder to the
local magnate. Let’s not even think about the Thirty Years’ War, which killed
between a fifth and a third of all the people in Germany.
Moreover, persecutions have often been carried out by those
who want to scapegoat the kinds of people they hate. Such as the long history
of persecuting Jews. Or discrimination on grounds of race, or against people
who want to be independent (think one-man businesses and car drivers). Or the
labelling as “misinformation” of truths inconvenient to the élites, and
criminalization of the truth-tellers.
But the worst persecutions occur when those unhappy at how the
state is treating them seek to create change in the system. Think, for example,
of the persecutions of the early working people’s movement, which culminated in
the Peterloo Massacre.
The Rhythms of History
To the fourth essay in my theory strand, “The Rhythms of
History.” [[5]]. There,
I set out my view of history in the large.
I see human history as a series of forward moving
revolutions, punctuated by times of stagnation or back-sliding. These
regressive periods result from counter-revolutions, that are launched by those
that want to hold us back. Since the Neanderthal extinction of 40,000 years ago,
I see five of these pairs of revolutions and counter-revolutions.
Humanity versus the state
Our first, the Neolithic revolution, was a practical one. We
settled down in communities, and started to cultivate crops and domesticate
animals. We discovered what it is to be human.
This was later countered by the rise of the political state,
enabling a powerful élite
to take control over everyone else. The paradigm of the first revolution was
Humanity, and the counter-paradigm was the state.
As soon as states were in place, the population became divided
into two classes. The politically rich – the establishment or élites – that control and
seek to control others. And the politically poor, the rest of us. The
politically rich desired, and still desire, to control and (in John Locke’s
words) “impoverish, harass or subdue” the politically poor. And whenever they felt
the need, they sought to tighten the level of control.
Reason versus the church
Our second revolution was a mental one, enabling us to start
to think rationally and abstractly. It began in ancient Greece, and held sway
into Roman times. Its paradigm was Reason. It brought new and better ways of organizing
civilizations, like Athenian democracy.
But it was countered by the rise of institutional religion,
and the church its counter-paradigm. This supported the rise of a priestly élite, that wanted mental
control over the ordinary people. State and church worked together to control
the people. And the priestly class joined the politically rich, eventually
producing the infamous “alliance of squire and parson.”
The Renaissance versus Bodin’s state
Our third revolution was the Renaissance. It was a spiritual
revolution, and its paradigm was Discovery. It gave us new moral perspectives,
and a feeling of cultural renewal.
Against this, thinkers like Machiavelli and Bodin laid a new
groundwork for the state, so it not only demanded obedience from the people,
but was also cruel, oppressive, heartless, sly, deceitful and unscrupulous. Orthodoxy,
Tyranny, and Dishonesty were its counter-paradigms.
The Enlightenment versus political ideology
Our fourth revolution was another mental revolution: the
Enlightenment. Its paradigm was Freedom. And the values that it brought, like
individual liberty, and government with the consent of and for the benefit of
the people, are supposedly among the foundations of the “democracy” that the
current political system claims to respect.
But this was increasingly opposed by a slew of political
ideologies, ranging from socialism to nationalism to communism to fascism to
social or religious conservatism, whose common counter-paradigm was
Collectivism.
The Industrial Revolution versus what we face today
Our fifth revolution was the Industrial Revolution, another
practical one. Its paradigm was, and still is, the Creativity that is natural
to human beings. It allowed us to flourish in an environment of the free market
and honest business, wherever and whenever we had them.
As to the fifth counter-revolution, I will quote my
earlier essay directly. “It began during the second world war, with the events
that led to the formation of the current international order. Its
counter-paradigm is Suppression. Suppression of truth, suppression of rights
and freedoms, suppression of prosperity, suppression of our humanity and our
creativity. Suppression of us human beings.” Its main thrust today is “a
push to suppress our industrial civilization, to shut down the economic free
market, and to use taxation, regulation and extortion to squeeze us ordinary
human beings out of existence.”
What the last 80 years have brought us
Our enemies’ fifth counter-revolution has brought the UN, its
agencies and satellites, grasping big business, the World Economic Forum (WEF),
and much else. It has brought out-of-control migration, the perversion of
precaution into a tool for tyranny, corruption in science, and governments that
don’t care a damn about the interests of the people they are supposed to serve.
It has brought contempt for democracy, ever increasing taxation and state
control, green and anti-car policies, increasing violations of human rights and
freedoms, and lack of respect for us human beings.
Moreover, it has brought us a whole fleet of metaphorical mega-dinghies
full of cronies and fellow-travellers, hanging on with all their might to the
coat-tails of the political élites.
I’ll repeat the list from earlier: politicians (global, national and local, and
of all mainstream parties), government officials, bureaucrats, quangocrats,
jobsworths, advisors, influencers, technocrats, academics and “experts,” mainstream
media, bankers, financiers, plutocrats, corporate and big-business leaders, and
activists for political agendas.
Like the priestly class in earlier history, these assorted
cronies have allied with the political élites,
and by doing so have made themselves politically rich. And today, they are
engaging in a rumbunctious feeding frenzy on us, the politically poor.
Oppenheimer’s Razor
I will move, briefly, to the third essay in my theory
strand: “Oppenheimer’s Razor.” [[6]].
There, I quoted Franz Oppenheimer’s famous distinction
between the “economic means” and the “political means” for the satisfaction of
human needs. The economic means is “the equivalent exchange of one's own labor
for the labor of others.” While the political means is “the unrequited
appropriation of the labor of others.”
I also introduced what I call Oppenheimer’s Razor. This
separates users of the political means from users of the economic
means. It divides honest working and business people from those that like to
use political power, directly or indirectly, to line their own nests and those
of their favourites. In the terms I have been using here, it divides the
politically poor from the politically rich.
In conclusion
I will return to Bernie Spofforth’s book, “A War to Win Back
Your World,” which I referenced above. Her title clearly describes its subject
matter as “a war.” She is absolutely right: we are at war. Yet she hardly ever
uses the word “war” in the text of the book itself.
So, helpful as is my wont, I will give you, explicitly, a
feel for what this war is all about. Beginning about 80 years ago, and
intensifying more and more over the last 40 years or so, they, the
politically rich, have been waging war against us, the politically poor.
They have been using the state to wage war on the people. If you aren’t already
87 years old or more, you’ve been at war all your life. Even if you didn’t know
it.
The scope of the war has widened, so that now most people
are involved on one side or the other. I myself joined the ranks of the
politically poor back in 2000, when Labour brought in a bad tax law called IR35.
As a campaign manager for Reform UK, I guess I have now risen in those ranks to
about the level of a colonel.
Our enemies include, but are not necessarily limited to, the
list of cronies and fellow travellers I identified above. The war we’re in
today is, in Franz Oppenheimer’s terms, between the users of the political
means and the users of the economic means. The dividing line between us is what
I call Oppenheimer’s Razor.
This is the biggest war in human history. Bigger than either
“world war.” It affects, in one way or another, every human being on the
planet. At present, we the politically poor appear to be losing this war. The
reason is obvious: most of us haven’t even got our boots on yet!
But I’ve got my (metaphorical) boots on. So has
Bernie Spofforth. So have quite a few other people, including the nearly 3
million of us who signed the petition against digital ID. And the truth is on
our side.
It's time for you, like the truth, to get your boots on.
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