Boris. Better than the alternative. Credit: Steve Parsons-WPA Pool/Getty
I don’t remember exactly when I realised we were Conservatives. Politics tends to be transmitted from parent to child, just as religion once was, and my family were Tories, although of a strange variety.
The stereotypical middle-class Conservative voter is conventional and stable, conscientious but unadventurous; blessed with common sense and terrible taste in music. My parents were bohemians, to put it mildly, living in a rackety, messy flat surrounded by a mountain of books, with a circle of friends who were mostly quite unconventional in their habits (ie they were alcoholics). Yet they believed in a philosophy that supported convention, order and tradition because, as much as political leanings can fit personality types, it often just comes down to who annoys you the most.
My first political memory is of my dad chuckling one morning while reading the paper, and when asked, telling me that the GLC had been abolished. London was no longer in the hands of Ken Livingstone, the man seen as leading the “loony left” who ran local politics: the Trotskyites, CND-supporting peaceniks, radical feminists, various insane Marxist race campaigners who compared Britain to apartheid South Africa or even Nazi Germany; and the crazed teachers union, forever closing our progressive primary school down in opposition to FATCHA. Rick from The Young Ones was a brilliant fictional character, but people like him did exist in the Eighties.
I was eight, and my main interest was The A-Team, so I had no idea what any of it meant, but as time went by, I became aware of the sort of people who my parents were against – the Sandalistas, as dad called them, a pun on the Nicaraguan guerrillas who were the current flavour of the month among Guardian readers. Dad read the Guardian every day, and had worked there a long time before, yet he had an intense love-hate-but-mainly-hate relationship with the paper and what it stood for; in his politics he was motivated by an intense dislike of sanctimonious and hypocritical Lefties.
He didn’t particularly like the Conservative Party either; he seemed to loathe most of their MPs, thought they were only interested in enriching themselves and wasn’t convinced by the Thatcher revolution. I was never entirely sure what he stood for, except for a world stuck at a certain point of time.
For progressives, history is a succession of steps forward whereby the lives of the poor and vulnerable are liberated and the forces of darkness pushed back; it’s a view of the world they inherit from Judaism and Christianity, and which they share with Marxists. Faced with this glorious vision of unending change, conservatives can only offer a point at which the process should have stopped.
For dad, as he got older and more reactionary, that date went further back in time, until in his mid-70s he was arguing that western civilisation had reached its peak in the 14th century. After that, everything had gone into decline.
Back when I was still young and innocent, the number of people who might now be termed “progressive” was relatively small; “political correctness” was yet to be popularised as a term, although academics such as William Hamilton had already begun to privately complain about a new atmosphere of intolerance on campus.
The chief political argument was about economics, characterised in a recent BBC documentary on Thatcher as being a great battle between economically liberal pointy-heads in SW1 and working-class men with sideburns and donkey jackets out on strike. Thatcher won that argument, but it sped up the social transformation that made Britain far less Tory; indeed it’s an interesting question who would now be regarded as more “Right-wing”, the strikers or the pointyheads, now that politics has become all about identity and values.
Thatcherism helped turbocharge the sexual revolution as more people acquired disposable income; the raunch culture of the late Nineties owed a lot to the economic liberalisation of the previous decade. Maggie’s government also vastly increased the number attending universities, which would become the main means by which progressive ideas were spread.
I knew I was a Tory from quite a young age, but only joined (and left) the party in my thirties. I always assumed that any Young Conservative event would be largely filled with freaks and mutants. I don’t have to necessarily like or empathise with the people I broadly agree with, after all.
We’re less social than the Left; we’re also not credal about core beliefs which everyone must sign up to, which is why the Right is far more politically diverse, being more an alliance of groups that fall foul of the orthodox Left – from libertarians to Christian socialists. Conservatism also provides far less of a moral lodestar, which is why the decline of Christianity has drastically shifted people’s politics to the Left – because when religion is no longer a moral anchor, politics fills its place.
Our philosophy is more of an anti-religion, if anything. The origins of English conservatism lie in the conflict of the 17th century and in opposition to “enthusiasm”, or the politics of Puritanism. The Godly, as the Puritans called themselves, wished to overturn the social order by basing status not on land or ancestry, but on religious fervour, and their moralising made them hugely unpopular.
Later, most famously with Edmund Burke, the Tory worldview was articulated into a coherent philosophy about the wisdom of preserving institutions, even those – especially those – which in theory didn’t make sense.
The Conservative Party then evolved into opposition against the Whig and Liberal Party merchant interests, and in defence of crown and altar, before becoming a coalition of liberals and conservatives opposed to socialism. Thatcherism was part of that struggle, but with the Great Realignment, we’re now back to where we started, with the Tories there to oppose moralising fanatics who are creating an atmosphere where dissenting opinions feel threatened.
Family history has a nice cyclical air, and a generation on, I vote for a Conservative government I dislike mainly because the Opposition are sanctimonious fanatics. Except the difference is that there are far more progressives today, and Rick from The Young Ones is no longer an aberration but the norm. And in the medium term, let alone the distant future, they are going to win.
One of the curiosities of the modern world is that everyone thinks they’re losing, and the Tory Party is certainly good at elections – in my lifetime they’ve come top in 8 out of 11. It’s better than the alternative, as Woody Allen said of old age, but they’ve hardly spent the past decade in power reshaping the country in their image.
Under their rule we’ve had anti-natalist child tax credit cuts, the introduction of no-fault divorce, restrictions on stop and search, Theresa May’s equality report Burning Injustices and the publishing of gender pay ratios. Very little has been done to make family formation more affordable, which more than anything would make the country more Tory-leaning.
Cuts to police spending have seen crime levels rise once again under the Conservatives; this year my 12-year-old daughter has seen one knife fight and the aftermath of a second, and in-between those exciting days out a teenager was murdered about 100 yards from my son’s primary school. The Tory Government was way ahead of Black Lives Matter when it came to defunding the police.
David Cameron made promises about immigration, but the economy had already become too reliant on it; high immigration satisfied the financial needs of Telegraph readers and the moral needs of Guardian readers, and the Government didn’t want to upset either. So we got Brexit, which helped speed up the realignment, giving the Conservatives a solid majority. And for as long as Labour is captured by a relatively extreme minority and spends its time debating the dictionary definition of woman, the Tories are able to cruise along with their winning mixture of centrist policies and reactionary vibes.
But time is not on their side, for the least Tory social categories are now the most demographically ascendant – the young, the single, ethnic minorities and renters. The youth problem might be alleviated by housing reform, but it also reflects a significant generational shift in values.
The cohorts born after about 1975 and especially after 1990 tend to hold a range of views that will make it hard for the Tory Party to win their support, without abandoning their values to the point of meaninglessness. On most of the key identity issues, such as racial diversity, immigration, sexuality and gender, and (increasingly) our treatment of animals, there is a generational shift that dwarfs anything seen before.
The causes are varied; the globalised digital economy and the rise of English has weakened nation-states; the decline of religion has made utilitarian arguments about bodily autonomy impossible to resist; increased urbanisation makes people more liberal; progressivism financially suits the ruling class in a way it never did previously, and because politics is much to do with status, others imitate them.
Such a generational shift has only happened twice before in European history; during the Reformation, and in the period when Christianity itself replaced polytheism. Just as with progressives in our own time, in the fourth century Christians had started off as a small, cranky minority, but had come to dominate the education system; they won because they were popular among the young, and especially young women, and were concentrated in cities where they could control institutions.
Their numbers grew until, at some point, in the words of one Christian apologist, the pagans would have to “wake up” to the fact that they were now a minority. Soon the temples were left to rot not, most likely, because of Christian persecution, but because no one believed anymore. It would seem absurd, and embarrassing, to profess a belief in Jupiter. Julian the Apostate had tried to turn back the clock, but it was impossible to fight Roman institutions which were now controlled by Christians.
Just as in Rome, conservatives today face professions that are dominated by their opponents, the most profound example again being the education system. Like Julian, Boris Johnson has recently made attempts to ensure that cultural institutions are not entirely controlled by the new religion, but he is fighting a losing battle.
The problem is not just with institutional control; the most important comparison with the last days of Rome is in the control of taboos. Whoever owns society’s taboos comes to win, and Christians just believed with greater force that to blaspheme their God was an offence against public morals, while the polytheists had stopped caring to defend theirs. And the ancient world impiety was often viewed as a worse crime than murder.
Today it is progressives who own taboos, and those who offend the sacred ideas of race and sexual identity face the terror of being charged with impiety (or “cancelled”, to use the secular term). And if you don’t control society’s taboos, it doesn’t really matter how many elections you win — you won’t shape the future.
And so, there you have it, it all went wrong in the fourth century. Even my dad would be impressed by such a reactionary view.
Small Men on the Wrong Side of History is published by Constable
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SubscribeThere’s always been a tendency in man to think we live at the very peak of history, the sharp point of a vast pyramid. From that superior height we can look down on all previous generations.
The truth though is that our brief time in the sun is just the pinch point of an hourglass – and men and women yet to live will laugh at all our panics and fevers and causes, as both silly and unbearably primitive.
At such times, in the small hours, I take great comfort in gin.
I like that perspective, a lot
Likewise, unless it signals a retreat into fatalism.
Quite so. People who look at the world through political glasses think that life in general is political, and cannot see the rest. Same with religious glasses, atheist glasses, class glasses, technological glasses, trade glasses, and so on. They all only see what is immediately around them and shape their views of historical movements accordingly.
In reality there are many causes and many effects in a complex relationship. We must do as best we can, knowing our knowledge is incomplete and our significance ephemeral.
Slimline tonic with mine, please.
Don’t forget “musical glasses” …
I have never recovered the disappointment of seeing the teenage obsession of “this years music” in utter ignorance of humanity’s back catalogue….…
…. and even when they are older these teenagers seem to have learnt nothing ….
Indeed. It’s said that the music of your ‘youth’, around 16 to 23 or so, is the music that you find the most significant.
Mind you when your slice includes late Elvis, The Beatles, the Who, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Queen then later musical generations have a struggle on their hands to compete.
At such times I take great comfort in re-reading Last and First Men, Olaf Stapledon 1930.
Very much the point made in the Andromeda strain when the book pithily mentions the granite and points out, that to ancient granite, our lifespans must seem like a quick lighting flash.
And granite is one of the younger rocks!
And single malt Scotch. Slainte.
As a wise man once said ‘if you are not self medicating with alcohol by the time you are 60 then you obviously dont know what’s going on ‘ !
‘How long can I vote for a government I dislike?’
Like everyone else, you weigh up the pros and cons, assess and analyse potential of long term damage that can be wrought, put your emotions aside, put on your big girl panties, hold your nose and vote for the least worst party.
Least worst…that is about it…
Twas always thus in my lifetime.
I’m not wholly persuaded by the predictions about the success of Liberal-Orthodox politics in terms of the demographics in question. From what I can see, huge numbers of young people are profoundly sceptical of this emerging new morality.
But anyway, I identify with the headline: I do not like the present Tory Party any more, and the reason is simply that it is no longer an ally against the worst kinds of politics, as the article ably argues used to be the case. I came to this conclusion when I contemplated the impossible prospect of the Labour Party actually turning into what Tony Blair offered in 1997 as per Keir Starmer’s attempt to hail back to the glory days of New Labour, and the realisation that if by some chance it was available now, I’d vote for it in a heartbeat, so badly wrong has gone our politics since then under the present system.
Keir Starmer of course has even less chance of offering this than Boris has of governing without his wife telling him what he’s allowed to do, so sadly for Keir there won’t be any rush for the exits around Boris just yet. But I have to say, this gives me no pleasure any more. I cheered to the rafters when Corbyn was so deservedly thrashed in 2019, and ever since I’ve had every last mote of joy removed without anaesthetic by this rotten useless government which is seemingly intent on wrecking everything I consider important.
Misery loves company. What I find perplexing is the apparent lack of a decisive and robust response, from a conservative perspective, to the ‘new morality’ engulfing institutions. I think that morality is neo marxist in origin with what is called applied postmodernism as its machinery of operation, and has the intended consequence of severing Western values and the achievements they have produced from our cultural institutions of family, media, law, education and history. Hence the mantra of deconstruct and destabilise.
There is no public articulation from this government of the axiomatic values that undergird our culture and no articulation of the what we currently understand to be the nature of reality. I cannot understand why there is this seeming lack of awareness of the danger of this false and puerile morality and its claims about reality.
Excellent analysis and brilliantly expressed.
I think there is a lot of truth in what you say, but asking this most short-term and populist of all the short term and populist governments we have had, obsessing as they do (actually understandably) about the next days’ headlines as well as getting various elite groups’ approval (eg. climate change) to lead on some Counter-Reformation, is perhaps asking a bit much!
Sure. It’s hard to know if you don’t have offspring or nephews or nieces about the age of 18-22. In my case I have both and they are all broadly left, anti homophobic, and yet profoundly sceptical of identity politics and the wilder claims the trans movement.
However this group is apolitical in university, head down, keep working types. The student union types are onboard.
Or the young ones I know have lost faith in ALL human institutions , are choosing not to have kids, and are living a simple life ‘off the treadmill’ – often dedicating their time to protesting on behalf of the real innocents in all this – the 80 billion birds and animals that are ‘sacrificed’ each year with little regard to any inherent rights they may have. And no they wont be paying the taxes required to keep us in hospitals and our bums wiped until they feel there is any true respect for ANYTHING in our contemporory world – witness the youth rage against the last thirty years of ‘blah blah’ over doing something about climate change etc. we have stolen their future with our corrupt greed and they will not be contributing to ours !! better let all the immigrants in, they will still work for little and still believe in the great capitalist dream….
’80 billion animals sacrificed’? What on Earth are you talking about? Animals don’t have ‘rights’, that being a purely human concept.
If you believe humans are having too great an ecological impact on the world, you are at least 10,000 years too late. The only way of ‘rectifying’ this situation, would to retreat to our natural state, that is to live in small hunter gather bands, at something like a thousandth of the current population levels. Even then, only partially, as the evidence shows such socially ‘primitive’ groups did often kill off large prey species, especially when first arriving in new lands.
And it doesn’t reflect well on the wisdom of those young people who ‘argue’ (actually ‘argue’ is entirely the wrong word), who believe that we can simply switch off carbon emissions. Of course they won’t be giving up their smart phones, modern comforts, or even cheap flights. They also have a suspiciously partial view on who the ‘bad guys’ are (zero protests outside the Chinese embassy to date).
He must be Titania McGrath’s older brother.
The genders are converging, along with all the economies.
Yes, there is a certain Cromwellian Puritanism coming from the universities and institutions these days. I’m hoping, just like Cromwell’s New Jerusalem, that their reign doesn’t last that long. The people got tired of it in the end and wanted their king back. Cromwell was so unpopular that his body was exhumed and his head used as a football. After him came Charles II, the party king.
And the end of absolute monarchy so c45ts like Tampon Charlie will never have real power and
Major Hewitt’s lad, sorry, Charlie’s youngest, can stay on the pi55 in the US and be ignored by the Great British Public.Absolute Monarchy ended in1649 so no worries about any Royalty having real power. History not your subject I guess: search Constitutional Monarchies’ and read about how successful they seem to be.
Err, that is the point I was making, Ollie C. ended Absolute Monarchy…a point he underlined by chopping a load o’ Royalist troops in Ireland.
Please just write properly.
So why did you make stupid remarks about Prince Charles?
Actually Cromwell’s head is now buried at his old Cambridge college, Sydney Sussex. RIP
Wouldn’t it be nice to elect a half decent, competent government than continuously voting in chancers, second raters and people who have nothing but contempt for the electorate.
Where on earth did you pick up a taste for such exotic ideas as competent government…we live in the UK, not foreign-land.
But you see, though I agree, we are being naive. Johnson is a damn sight more popular than you or I would be if our programmes were put to the electorate, who after all don’t have one brain and one view, and want utterly contradictory things in any case. Low taxes, fantastic free public services, stopping global warming, cheap energy. Etc etc. And who contrary to most UnHerd commentators, have little knowledge or understanding of ‘woke’, though it may be that the ‘White privilege’ and ‘trans’ issues may he gaining some cut-through.
Interesting article.
when religion is no longer a moral anchor, politics fills its place.
I am of the view put forward by Jordan Peterson that the profane has collapsed into the religious. Politics hasn’t filled the place of religion, it has become religious. David Starkey on GB news recently made the same observation as have various academic commentators in the US such as James Lindsay and Glenn Loury for example.
I also think the progressive obsession is a middle class preoccupation and the distortion of moral reasoning of the young into an increasing rush to a puerile and puritan judgement is a consequence of academia domination by a particular political leaning faculty.
Matt Taibbi had a good (free to read) piece on how politics is now religion, and in the worst way, on his substack. Worth a look if you’re interested.
Great article. Perhaps we are about to enter an age of nouveau puritanism and authoritarianism. Or maybe swathes of young people will rebel and swing the pendulum back.
That’s one way of looking at it. Here’s another. Christianity — be it actual or just cultural — won out because it’s true. If that’s the case, then you can control every institution that ever existed, but it won’t give you victory, no matter how many battles you win. Once the truth is known, what had previously been just mistakes now become outright lies, and you cannot build a civilization on lies. It simply won’t stand, and the chronology, the “current year”, is irrelevant. You cannot build a house on sand, as Someone once said…
I think this is an overly optimistic perspective. I think Christianity is true as well, I don’t think that means it’s guaranteed to be popular. People absolutely can build civilisations on lies and they will last for a long time. The house built on sand can look stable for a long time until the tide inevitably comes in. We all have an enormous capacity for self-deception and cognitive dissonance.
Actually, I didn’t mean it to be optimistic. I’m simply saying you cannot ignore reality any more than you can ignore a fire in your house. I’m not claiming the fire is a good thing only that it is burning the house down. If you don’t deal with the fire, you’re not going to have a house. Ed West reads to me like he’s saying the fire is building a new house, just a house that’s not as good. I’m saying the situation is much worse than that.
How about the view that woke thinking is like Puritan Christianity without God . The Archbishop of Canterbury feels very at home handing the Cof E to the CRT people , despite blacks in the UK who see themselves as Christian having their own churches
This may be the final triumph of Christianity we are seeing . Bring back Julian the Apostate .
Gosh, what weasel words from a believer (I presume). ‘Actual or cultural’?! So all that hokum about the Trinity, virgin birth, resurrection etc doesn’t matter? Shame the Inquisition and other Christian murderers didn’t get that message.
No, the claims of Christian belief are not true, and, moreover, I would say that any one in the modern West who claims so is being fundamentally dishonest. Why has the concept of Hell, which Christian thinkers used never to shut up about, been entirely relinquished, for example? Because possibly it isn’t a nice idea in tune with our modern post Christian sensibility?
Did they always talk of hell? How much Christian history do you know?
Yes, and it was culturally extremely important, such as the depictions on cathedrals (to show the largely illiterate populace), obviously Dante’s Inferno.
Yes. I was raised and educated a strict Roman Catholic. At Uni I developed an atheistic sensibility until I read Jordan Peterson’s synthesis Maps of Meaning. I am now inclined to take a more moderate tone of the development of ideas throughout the Christian corpus (and still retain my atheist sensibilities) interpreted using an analysis such as that put forward by Peterson following Jung, Neumann and Campbell.
From the point of view of the non-believer, no, all that stuff about the resurrection etc; doesn’t matter. You’re still better off in the world we built for you than anywhere else. You appear to know nothing about the Inquisition, but the fact that accused criminals in ordinary civil courts routinely blasphemed in order to be turned over to the inquisitors rather than face ordinary justice should tell you everything you need to know about “Christian murderers”. And whether you knew it or not, Hell is still a thing.
It is sometimes claimed that Christians believe out of some need to perceive ourselves as “special” creatures. In fact, the truth is exactly the polar opposite. Christianity helps us come to terms with the fact that actual special people are rarer than lottery winners. The number of truly great people on the planet at any given time can be counted on the fingers of one hand; the number who THINK they’re special is almost uncountable. This is the reason why Christian civilization was so successful for so long — the acceptance by most people that they were part of something greater, and that being only a small thing wasn’t actually bad. The west started turning into a midden when that perception began to be reversed.
I don’t think you actually believe in the tenets of Christian belief. You do seem though to be denying the huge level of atrocities carried out by self professed, self-righteous, and of course self serving Christians, way beyond the example of the Inquisition. (Your defence, the secular courts were even crueller!). This can be seen most obviously in the Americas, the destruction of whole other civilisations. But even in India, where the ‘wrong sort’ of Christians had been established for hundreds of years.
I like your ‘the world WE built for you’. Well neither of us has any control over the past. If you are arguing that the present world evolved from the past, that is obviously true. The rise of the Enlightenment perhaps arise from (did it have to be based on? – possibly) Western Christian, but not only Christian, roots. But that was after hundreds of years of Western Christian domination, so can hardly be used as a justification of the appalling deeds committed by Christians. And again, Christianity, like other religions, may be on some level, good for the believers, but again that can’t be used as a justification for the baleful effects on others, far worse than any repression ever committed by, say, the Romans or Greeks.
Christian atrocities finally do also make it rather difficult for them to argue morally about similar, though of course much more recent, Islamist ones. (But on which, however, have you noticed?, modern Christians seem to have little to say, recognising perhaps their commonality with a fellow expansionist Abrahamic religion).
I don’t know what you mean with regards to ‘special’ people, though perhaps something to do with the doctrine of the elect. Another occasional Christian belief which makes no sense to me,
but, hey, what do I know?!
The tragic existence of Hell is still an integral part of the Christian faith.
Hell is downplayed now, because most people in the modern West are pitifully weak – dysfunctional victims of drugs, depression, constant severe anxiety and so on – and it is mere cruelty to burden such wrecks with the severe side of Christian belief.
And with the End drawing nigh (and yes, it really is) more and more need, and will need, to be rescued from Despair by Christians preaching God’s infinite mercy.
Yes dear.
You are showing one characteristic many religious people demonstrate, despite their supposed concern for others, which is a lofty disdain for other people!
But your ‘argument’ doesn’t even begin to answer my question about Hell. If you truly believe that millions of benighted souls are going to burn, suffer, be tortured, for eternity, you’d do everything you could to prevent it. The medieval Church could perhaps argue it was doing that, modern churches certainly not.
After 1700, The West lost its Christian faith as the West became more prosperous and powerful.
But that’s all in reverse now; so Christianity’s Western decline will reverse too. “There are no Atheists in a shipwreck” and Britain in particular is heading rapidly for the rocks.
Especially as Christianity’s enemies are so very ignorant and stupid. Hypocritical too, since they’re much more polite about Islam !
The ‘atheists in a shipwreck’ is a weak argument, like so many ‘arguments’ for religion. (It is fundamentally irrational, so obviously they never stack up, and in many cases are completely childish).
Presumably an all knowing and all powerful God would realise an appeal to him by such an atheist as a bad faith act of a desperate man.
In any case, I would certainly remain an atheist in a ship wreck or air accident! I’m not quite sure why existing for an eternity is supposed to be a desirable condition anyway! Because Christians, unlike (male) Muslims, have never had a very convincing image of Heaven (floating on a cloud listening to harp music?!), hence no doubt the need for the emphasis on Hell. The latter however, seems to have largely disappeared in modern Western ‘Christian’ societies largely are not, even by those who claim to be believers. There is no consistency, investment or commitment to their supposed belief.
What happens in the next life is a mere detail . If you’re willing to destroy society because of a fanatical quasi -religious obsession with social justice you’re with the millenarian religious fanatics anyway even if you think you’re not a believer
So what happens in the infinite period of time after this world ‘is a mere detail’!? Hmm! I take it then that like me you are not a Christian!
I agree with you about religious fanatics, I only point out that Christians have also destroyed worlds, on many occasions, especially in the Americas, before them, and the mindset of fanatics is rather similar.
Of course the defence of Christian civilisation on here comes about because the fanatics won, and were successful in changing the whole of (Western Christian) society and its fundamental terms of reference, so that we are often not even aware of their Christian roots. Ed West and others argue that we may be in a similar period now, even though many of may not like it, any more than 4th century pagans liked being usurped.
Don’t know what you mean. Some of those pre-columbian cultures with their human sacrifices and torturing children to make tears to appease the rain god lasted hundreds of years and the Aztecs were destroyed by the wicked Spanish colonialists
(Writing pre-columbian felt deliciously right . Can one still use that term)
‘Some of those….’ But not, for example, the Incas. Yes, the Aztecs had cruel beliefs. I only argue that, without any historical doubt, so did the Christians who supplanted them.
Pretty sure the Incas too went in for child sacrifice , not on the monstrous scale of Aztec human sacrifice (or indeed Mayan ) but some child sacrificial victims have even been found on or near the top of mountains , perfectly preserved
Some of the Spanish priests who were in South America early on were surprisingly idealistic and humane
How long can I vote for a government I dislike?
It all depends on how you feel about the alternative(s).
Fairly extraordinary view of the rise of Christianity, Ed. Young women , being more or less powerless in the Roman state, had little influence in this ( unless this a cryptic reference to the V…n Mary.)
Christianity ‘ succeeded’ because it offered a personal salvation which, unlike Mithras and other Gnostic cults, was open to all : rich and poor, slave and free, male and female. It also offered a structure to everyday life which the chaos of the multiple religions practiced in the Empire notably lacked, and matched this with charitable and educational institutions, even in the times of persecution.
if the Emperor Constantine had not decided that Christianity would provided a useful glue for his disparate and war stricken territories, as well as personal salvation, who knows how long it would have taken ?
a poor summary of Brown, Holland and the rest, I’m afraid, but the best I could manage this morning
Hands up who really thinks Mary was a virgn?
God (therefore me as well 🙂
Hmm…
Nope! Funny how we have no eye witness accounts of the Resurrection as well. Gospels written decades after the events they purport to describe.
‘Offered a personal salvation’ – yes very probably one of its main attractions, maybe a USP, but ultimately unfortunately very much at the non believers expense! Adherents to ISIS could claim similar. We don’t see the links, because we live in a (post) Christian world.
Too many of the left hate too many voters.
The same would have been true in the early days of Paganism’s transition into Christianity and Latin Christianity’s transition into schism at the Reformation.
All transitions have a starting point and a tipping point.
Woke is at or near its transition point.
It’s too late to fight Woke because too much has been conceded already and the victims don’t care enough any more than did the Pagans.
I wouldn’t give up just yet. The fact remains that woke is a lie. If YOU can see that, don’t assume others can’t. If you do, you’re buying in to woke because the woke always assume they’re smarter than others. Remember, it’s actually the woke who are the pagans, not the rest of us.
‘Woke’ is no more a ‘lie’ than Christianity. It is a belief system, albeit one without a supernatural component, in that respect no different from Confucianism, or, originally, Buddhism.
You really struggle with showing that Christianity is true, a claim also made by many religions and belief systems (you can include Marxism-Leninism) , except by assertion.
I agree, so many on here do not actually believe in Christian tenets but strongly sympathise with it. The Christian martyrs and proselytisers won, and largely created the modern West. Had Julian the Apostate won, or the advance of Christianity been halted earlier, we would probably now be demonising those fanatical if often very brave believers!
Enjoyed this article. We do have universal suffrage and democracy, no matter what institutional capture the progressives gain, they will have to go full Reichtag burning to gain executive power. The resistance to this top down quasi religious zealotry is profound and silently implacable.
…and increasingly elderly. I’m afraid the young have swallowed the woke stuff completely.
Apres moi le deluge.
Do you know many youngsters? I do and I don’t know any that I’d describe as woke to be honest, we get distracted by a noisy minority on Twitter and the like in my opinion. They’re definitely more left leaning, though when so many have been priced out of owning a family home and see half the wages going to unscrupulous landlords you can’t really blame them for that, but I don’t know any personally that believe in all the nonsense like CRT and the trans debate
agreed – see my comment above
not all true-see my comment
Universal suffrage is being undermined.
Increasing incidence of postal voting vs secret ballot.
How long before that morphs into online voting? Supported by some bulldust “equality” argument of course but the end result will be polls that more closely resemble Twitter and Facebook likes.
And:
Governing by opinion polls, despite their persistent wrongology.
Increasing complexity of regulation which effectively transfers power from individuals and small institutions to large institutions, and wealth from small businesses to large corporations.
What’s wrong with online voting if it can be proved to be safe? Some countries already use it, and if it improves voter turnout I think it would be a good thing
It would be better than postal voting.
Time postal voting was ended…totally ended and NOTA put on the ballot paper.
Universal suffrage… people taking more out of the pot than they put in, getting the chance to vote themselves more loot.
Should Uni. Suff. now be ended given fewer and fewer tax payers are net tax payers?
The fact that there are increasing numbers of people taking more out of the pot than they put in is not a reason to end universal suffrage – it is a reason to overhaul the tax and benefits systems. We all (employers and employees) pay National Insurance as well as tax, but what kind of ‘insurance’ scheme is it that gives you a payout when you have never paid in? Other countries, for example Spain, only pay out unemployment benefits if you have previously been paying into the system, and this has been the case under governments of the left and the right. They also limit the benefits (duration) on the basis of how long you have been paying into the system. Here in the UK, governments of both left and right have allowed the benefits to system to expand without control. Labour does it because it wants to – it furthers their interests – and the Tories do it because they do not want to be seen as the Nasty Party.
That’s brilliant; the most concise explanation I’ve seen for what happened.
Of course, most people read neither Telegraph nor Guardian, but then they had no way to express their needs at the ballot.
An excellent article, written in Ed’s great slightly world weary, witty style. It does contain a worrying theme whereby many of us who have a different world view to the so called progressives, are doomed to keeping our heads down huddling together with like minded people, just trying to navigate through life.
People become more conservative with age. The woke kids will change their minds as they grow up.
But that change to conservatism requires that young people feel they have ‘skin in the game’ e.g a realistic chance of being able to buy their own house / progress up the career chain / be paid a reasonable wage and so forth.
A sobering article, assuming the author is entirely serious.
And perhaps the author answers my perennial question of how to fight the woke. Maybe, as the author suggests, we’re at a once per millenium transition. Woke ideology may now be firmly rooted and there’s nothing we can do about it. The only remaining question is what happens next to Western society?
It collapses.
If true, then it will fall; probably to China, or Islam.
“The only remaining question is what happens next to Western society?”
I have a theory for which I have no direct evidence, that the rise of Wokery is actually part of a cultural attack upon the West, funded mainly by China, but very obviously supported by places like Russia too. The reason I suspect this is simply that Wokery has emerged from our higher educational institutions, and huge numbers of Western academics are taking money from the Chinese government. It must be obvious that these academics are delivering some quid-pro-quo for the money, and it must therefore obviously be true that their sponsorship of Wokery is not in conflict with the wishes of the Chinese government.
The speculative part here is merely whether or not Wokery is what China is actually paying for. What is not in doubt is that Chinese money is involved in Western higher education or that Wokery is academically sponsored in Western higher education, and it cannot be doubted that Wokery is not incompatible with whatever China is getting back for its generosity towards Western academics and institutions. There are some more dots to be joined here of course, but really not that many.
The truth is more painful; it is the UK taxpayers and public who are funding it.
The Reformation and subsequent wars is surely a far better comparison point. I’ve been reading Mark Greengrass “Christendom Destroyed 1517-1648” about how the Reformation and subsequent wars led to the destruction of the idea of a universal Christian community and the birth of a European identity in its place.
We may be in the early stages of an idea of global community. Of course this does not imply fewer wars any more than the idea of Europe did.
The Reformation…or how Henry the Shagger built himself a new church with himself as boss so he could keep bangin’ after the Pope f67ked off Henry when the Shagger asked for a divorce from his then wife.
By happy coincidence for Henry 8, by dissolving and then startin’ the Reformation, he was able to get his paws on the Church’s loot.
That’s trivial. The reformation Peter Mott is talking about is Martin Luther and Jean Calvin.
Ahh, Luther….stony path and all that.
Write properly please.
I am.
No such thing as a global community: what does an educated young wowan in the UK have in common with an illiterate Somali goat herder, a man so drenched in Islam, he thinks a woman must be the property of a man.
As always an interesting article by Ed West. But I think the origins in the 17th century were more over concerns about legitimacy – a constant conservative theme – than over “enthusiasm”; there were Catholics as well as Anglicans among 17th century Tories. And care should be taken over Burke, who after all was a Whig, not a Tory. It’s true that conservatism has constantly been enriched by alliance with Whigs, and Burke was particularly enriching, but Whigs are a different animal. Compare for example Burke’s positive reaction to the American traitors, with the negative reaction of Tories like Samuel Johnson. One difference is the attitude to Tariffs, pretty consistently opposed by Whigs, but on which Tories took a less dogmatic view; many Tories supported Empire Free Trade in a view that it might perhaps be economically costly as Liberals thought, but that it would be good for the cohesion of the Empire.
Finally, don’t despair of this age. In the 1840s, 1910s, 1940s, and 1970s, Conservatism appeared dead, only to revive a few years later… In the 1930s, Conservatism was unpopular at universities, but popular among voters, perhaps a better comparison now. Cameron betrayed Social Conservatism, but a more positive, but not dogmatic, attitude might help with immigrants, Christian, Hindu, and Moslem, as they tend more to be believers. And we can already see a reaction against political correctness and wokeness. The current government appears to believe that adopting Left wing policies is the secret of success in this age; I doubt that is right.
Hindu’s, like the Chinese, tend to integrate…as for the other non-Christian group…
https://www.turbulenttimes.co.uk/news/front-page/the-evil-in-our-midst/
All religious groups have failed to integrate at one time or another. In Burma and India today, Buddhists and Hindus are persecuting Muslims.
A good article, but we should be wary of putting too much weight on historical parallels. Whether one believes in Christianity or not and I am agnostic, it’s values are conducive to the building of a successful society, Wokism is not. Any woke civilisation would be very short-lived
Super, super article I really enjoyed reading it and many of the witty comments (however unsettling the implications are for Western society!).
It will be difficult, the author says, for the Tory party to win the support of growing demographics without abandoning their values to the point of meaninglessness.
The Tories already have.
I have reached the conclusion that the primary purpose of the Tory power is to win office. 8 out of 11 elections in the author’s lifetime. “If you don’t like my principles”, said Groucho Marx, “I have others”. They are now the party of tax and spend, of the highest tax burden in 70 years, of huge increases in business and employment taxes, of continued mass immigration, of economic illiteracy from the party supposedly of sound money and business friendliness. The green agenda won’t deliver anything of global scale but will impoverish the country. The Tory party’s capacity for bending whichever way the wind blows to accommodate the Zeitgeist seems infinite. I wouldn’t write these political chameleons off. Thatcher was an aberration and detested by old school Tory wets.
Another excellent pessimistic article Ed, but I must add one note of cautious optimism. Science has already demolished much of the social construct / blank slate view of humanity that supports much of the work ideology. Furthermore it is deeply unpopular with most people (including the young) once they see the practical effects of it. I am guardedly optimistic that by 2030 we will finally recognise the truth of human nature as argued by the Judeo-Christian worldview. That will change the arguments with have regarding race, class and gender to the advantage of conservatives. But then again the woke might still repress it in the short term. I am hopeful that realignment will happen by 2050.
Truth of human nature…when it comes to the crunch..people are, in the main, selfish and care more for family, than some hypothetical idea of community.
I dunno Ed, but as a few others have pointed out below, consider the alternatives. Yes Johnson is a bumbler and an opportunist, but from the other side of the world his raft of policies looks about as good as it gets. Restoring British sovereignty, nationalizing Northern Rail, telling the universities they must respect freedom of speech if they want covid bailouts, clamping down on wokery in the public service … whereas in New Zealand we seem condemned to what might be described as “progressive neoliberalism”. The Ardern government (the darling of so many northern hemisphere progressives) is pushing an aggressive identity politics agenda, but doing precious little to roll back the user-pays policies that have widened inequality.
As the aftermath of the 2020 US election has shown, you can vote against unpleasant people in office and do a lot worse. Things can turn to organic fertilizer very very quickly.
The left is incompetent. Their desire to replace the rule of law with the rule of experts is guaranteed to display their incompetence in the most thorough manner possible. This incompetence will cause people to vote against them in droves.
The reason the left encourages identity voting is because your identity doesn’t vary based on good governance and policy outcomes. No matter how bad goverment gets, your identity never changes. This means that your vote will remain unchanged by bad policy. This mechanism is how Detroit went from the richest per capita city in the US to bankrupt. The residents kept voting their identity.
Once people stop voting their identity, the left loses, based on their incompetence.
Rule by expert…you mean just like how Fattaturk, handed all decision making WRT to Covid to the tools on Sage..
….Sage being a group of authoritarian a34eholes led by a man who f78ked up royally in the past….
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11642959/neil-ferguson-stay-at-home-lockdown-advice-unreliable-code/
One of the signs of incompetence is the inability to discern who really IS an expert and who merely has a fancy title and a big salary. The ‘experts’ foisted upon us during Covid were so incompetent as to be shocking. The true experts were marginalised….
The thirteenth century was surely better than the fourteenth which saw the Black Death & The Hundred Years War (and adverse climate change as well, I recall). I think Ed West misremembers his father’s choice.
In regards to The Young Ones of today, I think they’re actually a horror-show hybrid of Rick and Neil. It’s a deadly mix of (vegetable rights & peace) x (hands up who likes me?)
And worst of all, there’s not a Vyvyan in sight no set them right
“The youth problem might be alleviated by housing reform, but it also reflects a significant generational shift in values. The cohorts born after about 1975 and especially after 1990 tend to hold a range of views that will make it hard for the Tory Party to win their support, without abandoning their values to the point of meaninglessness. On most of the key identity issues, such as racial diversity, immigration, sexuality and gender, and (increasingly) our treatment of animals, there is a generational shift that dwarfs anything seen before.”
Of course, compared to the right-wing conservatives who came of age in 1968, todays cohort are seriously radical… Op-eds have been saying the same thing about youth for yonks. I doubt that as many people are obsessed with the “key identity issues” the author lists.
On the depressing political options my take is:
I am asked: would I prefer to be kicked in face, or in the backside. I would – like most people I think – choose the latter.
(I mean, I’d rather not be kicked at all, but that’s not one of the options…)
If of course you were a druid who believed in astrology, you might point to the great ‘triple conjunction’ of the three planets Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in Capricorn spanning the end of the 1980s and the start of the 1990s. That would be seen as a generational shift point, in just the same way that the pluto-uranus conjunction in Virgo was in the 1960s.
More laid-back types might suggest that it coincided with the end of Mrs Thatcher’s reign and that they were born in large measure with the instinct of ‘never again’ inside them. Or the collapse of communism. Or other events which happened to happen around then.
There is of course the possibility that vast numbers of them were spoiled as children with adults working like the clappers, somewhat neglecting them, and paying them financial and emotional bribes as a result.
Everyone comes up with their own framework to explain step changes in consciousness.
Completely in sympathy with this stance.
Great article, interesting how it echoes the theme of yesterday’s article “The importance of repression“
Whoever owns society’s taboos comes to win
“Julian the Apostate had tried to turn back the clock, but it was impossible to fight Roman institutions which were now controlled by Christians.”
His failure to reform Roman institutions is almost certainly attributable to his premature death during a military campaign against the Sassanids.
Quite so. He only ruled for a couple of years, after all. To conclude from the abrupt, accidental closure of his brief window of opportunity that his project was doomed is mere post hoc rationalistion. Similarly, England – which never wanted the Reformation – was all set to return for ever to Catholic obedience under Mary Tudor, but for the fact that she died young – in her forties – after only five years on the throne. Stolypin might well have saved Russia from Bolshevism, but he was dismissed; later he was shot by a communist double agent, in 1911. Luck and chance – or rather mischance – play an enormous part in history. However, underlying all this is an important anti-Marxist truth: that the crucial class in society is not the mass, not the peasantry, not the proles but the educated middle. Add to this the deeper anti-Marxist truth, they they are actuated not by bread but by ideas and you understand history. Gain the educated middle, then, and you have a vast advantage. Christianity got them in the fourth century; Protestantism did the same in the sixteenth and “progressivism” pulled off the same trick at the close of the nineteenth. This is why Julian, Mary and Piotr were such tragic figures – they were taking on the whole bureaucratic class. Nevertheless, there are always figures within that class who are merely cowed – take Procopius under Justinian – clearly a classical man, even if not actually “pagan”, who objected to the beginnings of “mediaevalisation” under a totalitarian thug and his loathsome slattern of a wife. There are many, many Procopius figures out there – most of us on these threads, for example. The fact that we can communicate is a great advantage over the fifth century.
Excellent essay thanks Ed – so much so that I have realised for the first (clear) time that I am a conservative – partially because, as you say, any other options have lost touch with rationality aka are just plain bonkers !!
This is so interesting; I feel utterly disenfranchised at the moment (but also feel an obligation to vote!)
I didn’t understand why a decline in religious belief led a move to the left in politics.
“For progressives, history is a succession of steps forward whereby the lives of the poor and vulnerable are liberated and the forces of darkness pushed back; it’s a view of the world they inherit from Judaism and Christianity, and which they share with Marxists.”
… But Marxists and ‘progressives’ don’t seem to have inherited from Christianity ideas like forgiveness, redemption and humility (although arguably not all Christians have either!).
As rather a fan of Julian the Apostate, I like the comparison with Johnson. The old gods represented a contained but partially free market of loyalties to the divine.
I really don’t understand why Conservatives like you imply that the ‘young’ can threaten you but you can’t threaten them back.
I have zero tolerance whatever for any trans-rights nutcase who says that men can’t be called men, women can’t be called women and that men can get pregnant.
I don’t care if they want to be trans-people, that’s their choice. They can call themselves whatever they want, but as soon as they tell me that they can call me what they demand to call me, my view is that I have the right to hold their head under water until they decide that they are wrong….
They need to learn that they are utterly expendable, utterly unimportant and utterly narcissistic. They are not MORAL. They are self-righteous, self-absorbed, self-serving monsters who absolutely do not command respect.
Until they can learn to be happy in their own skin and respect difference with others, they are neither adult nor granted adult rights of civil engagement.
It’s about time that about 50 million heterosexuals in Britain said likewise….