WELL, I did my democratic duty. I went along and voted in the local government elections last Thursday.
Most people, of course, didn’t bother, which is a shame … and quite dangerous, given how adrift and disconnected English society is right now.
Politics might not be fun, it might not be very attractive (it has been dubbed "showbiz for ugly people" after all), but it is dead important. Why?
Well, because if you don’t have politics, you have the law of the jungle instead; ultimately you get ferocious beasts running wild, acting on instincts alone.
But man is more than a beast. He is different from the rest of the animals. He has a moral conscience.
He is a political animal. He has the capability to act with others for common purpose, to bring security and dignity to life – and he has the intelligence to know that.
But man remains, by and large, a selfish animal too. He is not an angel, not always in the mood to do good to others – or for others.
The angels don’t need politics. They automatically act nobly and selflessly. They don’t need any State to tell them how to live.
The beasts don’t need politics. They do not and cannot take notice of any civil power. They are too stupid for that, frankly.
But between the purity of the angels and the savagery of the beasts there is humankind.
And we humans do need, and benefit from, regulatory force. We need politics, because without it, without sovereign power invested in the State, we would rip each other apart; we would be at war with each other – perpetually.
The trick is to get the State to act responsibly and not to trample on our freedoms; to let us, if you like, be a bit selfish.
Now, given that we Brits, for the moment, live under a reasonably benign political system known as representative liberal democracy does not mean that we should become blasé about our freedoms.
Make no mistake, our freedoms are under attack as never before – from an over-large State that includes: local councils; social landlords (housing associations that are far too fond of telling us how to live our lives); the health service and social services; and the police (who’ve discovered a disgusting totalitarian passion for spying on citizens and filming their every move using CCTV).
And that’s all before I even get to mention our horrible Labour Government, its outrageous smoking ban, and the despicable European Union.
But we need to keep voting while we still have a chance. It would be too easy to join in with the collective shrug of contempt for politicians and politics.
It would be too easy to be apathetic about what is happening to our country and other nations of the West. We used to be regarded as the best possible sort of societies – better than the tyrannies that existed elsewhere in the world.
But our values are now being eroded from within by the emergence of a proscriptive and nasty Liberal Fascism that is trying to make us conform to new internationalist orthodoxies and a militant secularism.
The Western nations are suffering from a frightening loss of confidence in themselves and their history – a trend picked up by brave writers such as Michel Houllebecq.
OK, we don’t quite know what the future holds, but frankly, I don’t have a good feeling about it.
We will always need politics, however, locally, nationally and internationally.
(Locally, the politics haven't been good for decades, especially in Liverpool. Turbulent times have bred turbulent times – from Sir Trevor Jones’s era of fake Liberal radicalism, through to the grotesque rule of Militant and Derek Hatton, right up to the puerile bitchfest that has been, and just about continues to be, the Liberal Democrat years.)
But don't let the contempory scene or the naff recent past put you off politics.
We must all get back into the habit of voting and taking an interest in what the politicians are up to.
We need to choose what kind of politics we want.
Because if we let others choose for us, the chances are we won’t enjoy the future at all.
CALLING ALL POETS AND WRITERS! The group I set up, called the Bards of New Brighton, will celebrate its first birthday on Monday 5 May, when we meet at the Little Brighton Inn, Rowson Street, New Brighton, starting at 8.30pm.
Thanks to the landlady Shirley for her continued hospitality.
The Bards are a friendly and entertaining lot. Their readings provide a refreshing antidote to the nastiness and emptiness of much of popular culture.
If you read this in time, please come along and join us.
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Malpoet wrote...
I too voted on Thursday (I have never failed to vote in my whole life and I agree with Steve about the importance of using this right to choose our governments), but the truth is that I found it alomost impossible to choose between the useless options available to me.
I actually agree with most of what Steve has to say on the subject although we would differ on detail. The creeping sovietisation of our society in which the state has grown ever larger and our freedoms are continually shrunk is resulting in the infantilisation of everybody.
The more we submit to nanny telling us exactly what is good for us, how we must behave and what all 'right thinking' people believe, the more we surrender our individuality; our very identity as individual human beings with choices and values.
In Russia and China, Stalin and Mao murdered tens of millions of people and put hundreds of millions into 're-education' to impose their ideology and to enforce compliance with the demands of the state. Disagreement with the communist party meant classification as being mentally ill. This tyranny finally fell apart in Russia and it will not survive for very much longer in China since they have recognised that a command economy results only in starvation and have embraced the free market. In this country the process has been more insidious and it will be much more difficult to reverse the enslavement by apathy that has occurred.
The state in Britain now controls about 43% of the economy. In the business world it is accepted that control of more than one third of a market is a monopoly and the company is forcefully broken up by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. So the state is the monopoly contoller of our complete economy. That was the Stalinist dream which murderous dictatorship was not enough for them to maintain. The useless and parasitic bureaucracy of Wirral Borough Council employs about one in twelve of the workforce in Wirral and that does not include other state employees!
Instead of dealing with crime, the police are dealing with the half witted social engineering projects of politicians intent on moulding us all into compliant zombies. They demand more and more police although we have more of them than we have had in our history. We don't need more police, we need fewer and simpler laws which are thoroughly enforced.
The essentials of a free society are free markets, private property and the rule of law. That has been known for 3,500 years. Every time that governments have moved away from that they have impoverished or murdered their citizens. As Steve so rightly points out, without government we have murder, mayhem and terror. With excessive government we have coercion, oppression, hardship and misery.
We must defend our right to choose in everything that doesn't damage the freedom of others. We must exercise our right to choose our governments. The choice we need to make now is for government that is reduced to a minimal size, that repeals laws rather than making new ones, that reduces spending and taxes year on year. A government that protects the rights of the private citizen rather than stealing them. A government that serves rather than masters its citizens.
Time for a Libertarian Party.
REGAN REPLIES: Very eloquently put, as usual, by the Malpoet. And you should heare his brillant poems - he's a regular at the Bards of New Brighton poetry night (tonight Mon 5 May, and every first Monday of the month, from 8.30pm at the Little Brighton inn, New Brighton) . Malpoet also runs a poetry and discussion, Birkenhead, on the fourth Tuesday of each month. Keep it real folks. For love, peace - and LIBERTY!
Posted by: Malpoet | May 5, 2008 10:03 AM