In the previous two articles of this trilogy we looked at the background to leftist thought and some of the wider practicalities.
The 'left' are not after peace or security or flourishing - their unrighteous indignation is well described by Jordan Peterson - they are only interested in power and if you have any, they are after you. They think this is all new, the natural result of historical progress and its culmination, but of course it isn't, it's the old deciever yet again in his unrelenting rebellion. But being a deciever he covers up his crimes and misdeeds, even gives them a whiff of respectability stolen from the Creator. Here are some of them (Screwtape having a field day):
Some leftist policies and their rationale
- DEI - all are equal - the leftist highest good but that is a fantasy and to pretend otherwise is to court disaster wherever applied - we always want the best for the job.
- Excess taxation - again equality - but reducing the incentive for those that create wealth reduces what's available for everyone. Excessive taxation is theft by the state! The effective removal of the right to private property is codified-envy. It is not a calculation of community benefit, as it leads to overall poverty when the incentives to invest and work hard are removed (as endlessly proved). There is also anti-bourgeois sentiment - if you have money you are a 'class enemy' and oppressor. You are also assumed to have power (hegemony) so you're a threat to the Party, your agency must be reduced. Ultimately You will own nothing and you will be happy (WEF).
- Inheritance tax (which targets family businesses including farms) - anti-bourgeois - families are seen as oppressive hierarchies.
- Men in woman's spaces & sports - equality of the right to decide who I am, but more so it's anti-hegenomy as the hierarchy of fairness and competence, a bourgeois idea, is destroyed. At school we can't have competitions as we're encouraging winners and thus a sense of superiority. We all know that in flourishing environments there are winners and losers - get over it! - do better!
- Penalising the nation by giving away sovereign land - this is seen as being anti-colonial (so anti-patriarchy) – irrespective of the real benefits to the inhabitants and the poor record of the new landlords.
- Removing British heroes & heroines from banknotes - reducing agency and morale of the bourgeois by erasing history that gives them something to aspire to.
- Illegal mass immigration - import more proletarians at the expense of resident bourgeois.
- Endorse Islamism - empower proletarians in the struggle against class enemies (citizens who don't agree)
- Allow criminal acts by certain groups - law is oppressive, encourage disorder, revolution.
- Reduction of judicial independence (jury trials) - if the authorities (Party operatives) have charged you with an offence then you are guilty - it's only a matter of how long the punishment!
- Assisted-suicide, abortion, castration of children - materialist view of life, people have no intrinsic value, families are scorned, the less bourgeois the better.
- Reduction in free speech - stop bourgeois gaining influence and power, enforce the Party line. This includes persecuting enemies with false accusations and destroying their ability to speak, cancelling their agency.
- Digital ID (still happening) - not to stop illegals, obviously, rather another tool of control
- etc – you get the idea!
A note on taxation
As with DEI, this is meant to create material equality, but ‘equality’ is a humanist not Christian idea. Christians accept taxation to support the state carrying out its limited role of ‘Punishing evil and rewarding good’ (
What the right are for
The rebellious Left are building on sand: And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.
Just before this Jesus is describing how we should live:
- personal responsibility
- moral self-awareness
- humility
- cooperation between people
- conflict resolution
- rejection of foolish ways and false people
- attendance to the Father's will, His ways
And 'he taught as one who had authority'. Jesus's authority is personal and present not mechanical and distant.
Conservatism, the 'right', is not about inflexibility, it's about the recognition that ways and relationships that have been thrashed out over time should have due respect. This is not for their own sake, but from a recognition that human personalities are the centre of all this, with many different abilities, energies, ambitions. Fruitful relations between people take a long time to work out as we are fallen and prone to conflict so need wholesome common laws to regulate us.
The US Constitution is profoundly human, recognising the need for the containment and channelling of ambition. This was based (as President Trump acknowledged) on the Magna Carta and Parliamentary protocols. The legal system is independent and none are above it. Parliament (literally 'speaking assembly') by definition promotes openness and a forum for conflict resolution (two sword-lengths apart).
But it's below this, starting at the smallest household, that it all begins. Each person has to find a way to be self-sufficient, to marry, have children, to bring-up and educate them and to work with neighbours in this enterprise. These are Edmund Burke's "little platoons": families, neighbourhoods, churches, clubs, workplaces and other local groups, which are the foundations of flourishing communities. Here you market your own skills and trade with the commodities of others. So these, with all their strengths and weaknesses provide a context for each individual and scope for creativity, energy, initiative and hard work. Everyone is as equal as they are to the challenge. Laws are important and practical. Authority is functional in providing structure and organisation.
Danny Kruger and others are trying to recover this: ...the Left can hardly bring themselves to utter the words 'family, neighbourhood, nation' - the forms of community that really matter.
In Christendom its been fine to talk about 'common-sense' but today the West has lost its sense. There is only 'Christian sense' or 'non-sense' The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom
Onwards
We've focussed on the roots of leftist politics and touched on some aspects of the 'conservative' approach that led to the flourishing in the West in the 19th century.
What do we make of the recent years of Western politics? The new elites in the UN/WEF global joint-venture find leftist doctrine very convenient as it reduces opposition and enhances their power. This is why you find billionaires funding leftist activism in the US and Keir Starmer preferring Davos to Westminster.
And genuine 'conservatism', of course, has nothing to do with the motives of the UN/WEF, who use capitalism as they use anti-capitalism – for the concentration of wealth and civic obedience. Sadly our leaders are in thrall to them and no-doubt afraid of them. It's hard to make sense of the 'Conservative' misgovernment of recent years without this perspective. Suella Braverman expressed this betrayal in her resignation speech.
What makes us dejected is that all this is self-inflicted. Cicero said: A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.
This observation shows that internal decay is nothing new. We've had it in the past and with God's grace we've recovered. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with revolution, our personal Christian conversion was a revolution! We've had the English Civil War, The Glorious Revolution, both against a malevolent autocracy with counter-spiritual underpinning. We have the same now.
You may not have experienced the economic suicide of the strikes, power cuts, three-day-weeks of the 70s but Margaret Thatcher echoed Churchill with: The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money. Her convictions about healthy economy and community lead to a remarkably quick period of growth. She enacted policies that prospered.
(Lord) Christopher Monkton, an advisor, comments that a senior Civil Servant regarded her Government as being 'good' - in two ways - being competent and actually wanting good for people.
Amazing how that works!
We have the opportunity to rebuild healthy structures in the Creator's image that respect people and the planet we've been given. We have neighbourly #buildacountryyouwanttolivein, but we also need to be involved in the rebuilding of our local and parliamentary structures. It's a long battle but the Lord is surely preparing us as he did His people before the fight for the land He'd promised. He has His Joshuas - seek them out!
Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.
