Sunday 14 November 2010

Demolition Derby


Charles Moore wrote a good piece in the Telegraph on the recent Millbank riot in London, in which a number of ‘students’ indulged in a spot of destruction for the sake of destruction, thuggishness for the sake of thuggishness (Liberty will suffer if the police can’t keep the peace). I’ll come on to this in a moment but there is something else I want to consider first, a quotation offered by one of the contributors to Moore’s blog:

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

This was written by Alexander Fraser Tyler, a Scottish-born historian and lawyer who died in 1813. Tyler apparently was a specialist in Greek and Roman history. Here he is obviously not writing about the politics of his own time, when there was no democracy in the sense we understand it today. Not being aware of the context I’m guessing this is a comment on the politics of some of the Greek city states or, more likely, the late Roman Republic, which was to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.

As a pertinent observation on our present politics it’s hardly accurate: no modern democracy, despite widespread economic problems, has shown any sign of giving way to dictatorship or even to more authoritarian forms of rule. But even so there are dangers here, dangers that Tyler has clearly recognised in the combination of populist politics and fiscal irresponsibility. The Labour government of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did dreadful damage to the public finances of this country, indulging in spending that was little better in some cases than a grand form of political gerrymandering, appeasing their own electoral constituencies, appeasing those who live by doles or state employment.

Now we are suffering the consequences, with levels of public debt containing so many zeros after the principal number that it’s almost impossible for most people to comprehend. So many hard decisions have to be taken, decisions that the constituency conjured up by Labour don’t like, don’t understand, don’t want. They just want more of the same, more bread and more circuses. If they don’t get it, as we saw at Millbank, destruction rides in on a big black letter A.

The higher education system in this country is excellent; it continues to be among the best in the world. But it has to be paid for; universities have to be allowed to charge an appropriate level for tuition fees to guarantee the best, money which is not going to come from the public purse, not now, not ever. So top-up fees is the most realistic plan on offer.

Now cue the student proletariat (should it be lumpenproletariat, I wonder?), cue the riot at Millbank Tower, where Conservative Party headquarters happen to be. Not that these people got anywhere near the offices. No, for as Moore says, they just ran around terrifying the people who work in the building, most of whom have nothing at all do with the Party.

That same evening a spokesman for the National Union of Students appeared on the news, saying that their ‘peaceful protest’ had been hijacked by a minority, the usual excuse on offer (a thick-accented, thick A activist appeared later, saying that they would not have got the headlines if they had not). The only thing the silly dweeb omitted to mention is that the NUS advertised the march in advance as ‘Demolition.’ Who does he think is going to come to Demolition other than those with a desire to demolish, the same faces, I dare say, that appear at G-however-many-it-is-now jamborees or Make Poverty History carnivals. How representative are they? I honestly do not know though I agree with Moore, who says that it is almost never the genuinely poor and downtrodden, the jobseekers or single mothers, who start pillaging, just a middle-class mixture of idiots and fanatics enjoying themselves.

It would be easy to dismiss these people as a minority but they are still a genuine danger, especially when the police lose control. There is no guarantee of liberty, no guarantee that democracy and the rule of law will stand no matter what pressures are put upon them; they are as vulnerable as every other part of our civic culture. If you don’t believe me go ask the Romans.

38 comments:

  1. There are no guarantees in life but the BNP is probably your best bet.

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  3. Anthony, I have been known to wager, but only on certainties. :-)

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  4. Democracy collapses due to loose fiscal policy. Afterwards, it is followed by dictatorship.

    I agree. Do the sums.
    :-(

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  5. Thanks, Adam. As I say, our education system at the highest level is second to none, but we have too many third rate 'universities', too many students and too many Mickey Mouse courses. Ukip can put forward all the dream budgets it likes (and we'll all go to heaven in a little rowing boat) because I know and you know that it will never get anywhere near power. Oh, I read an interview with your Fuhrer today. Very interesting, particularly his views on lap dancing and, indirectly, on women. Hmmm...I might just write about this. :-)

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  7. CI, it can happen, it did happen in the ancient world, but the collapse of democracies in the 1930s was more broadly based. Still, the link can't be wholly ignored.

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  8. Adam, don't be such a silly-billy! You really do need a humour transplant. :-))

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  11. No, sorry, I really do not want to discuss lap dancing, or socialist perceptions of lap dancing. :-)

    I'm a student; I'm not a bloody 'public servant.' :-) Besides, your economics are far too refined for me; I'm just a simple-minded conservative!

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  14. You will find the interview in this week’s Seven.

    I write because it pleases me to write. If it pleases other people to read then that’s a delightful bonus. I like to think that I offer a fresh perspective on a whole variety of issues, but if you wish to perceive some of the things I say as ‘spewing propaganda’ then that really is your prerogative. I absolutely hate the suggestion that am some kind of public servant. If others wish to perceive themselves in such terms that’s their problem.

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  15. Adam, with all due respect, you are far too left-wing for me!

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  16. I think a 'free' education is worth exactly what one pays for it. The Millbank demonstrators believe they have paid nothing for their education, and 'nothing' is exactly what they have received in return.

    Of course, education never really ends, and, eventually, we all pay dearly for what we have understood, for what we have misunderstood, for what we have learned, and for what we have not. One way or another, we pay for it all.

    Those who prosper are those who recognize early on that nothing is 'free' and that there is always a price proportional to the value of the lesson. We should be grateful when the price is only money.

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  21. Then Macmillan and Joseph are too left-wing for me also! Alas, Adam, I’m a hopeless cause; I believe in the price of everything and the value of nothing! I believe in markets; I believe in free choice; I believe in the magic of money. It’s perfectly true that we get what we are prepared to pay for, excellence or rubbish. The day of the free lunch, and the endless state doles, is over; either that democracy is finished and liberal capitalism with it, rather the aim, I think, of the Demolition brigade.

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  26. "UKIP are lucky that no one takes them seriously."

    Right? No, some people do take them seriously. Anatheimp, more due to her good manners than as a personal choice, takes them seriously.


    (see http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/cristinaodone/100034114/ukip-is-lucky-that-no-one-takes-them-seriously/ for more)

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  27. @ MGON: A university education and military and police service are not the same. Anything worthwhile is earned by effort not a right.In the US most people attend a university to better their position in life by earning higher wages. Now,if an oppertunity is given to attend a university for free,the student should be required to reimburse society by preforming a set amount of community service. Besides you cant have too many chiefs and not enough Indians. With too many eggheads, not much will get done .

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  29. Adam, actually the Magic of Money is a title of a book by Hjalmar Schacht! He's right -money is magic because it has power, the power of transformation, to turn things into abstract values and back into things again. It's financial witchcraft at its purest. :-) Anyway, I believe that life is an investment on so many levels: one gets what one is prepared to pay for, present sacrifices for future returns. Those who demand state doles no matter what are a danger to the operation of a free market and a free society.

    I did not suggest that you were a 'loony' leftist. However your left radicalism could marry quite happily with your collectivism, the fetishism of the institutions.

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  32. @ MGON: I bought and paid for my own.

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  33. There is no such thing as a functional welfare state; just a democracy slowly dying.

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  34. Calvin, our democracy is being slowly strangled by welfarism. The actions of the present government are a necessary corrective but I fear it may be too late. For you there is still time. I hope this does not sound too melodramatic.

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  35. You have hit on the crux of the democratic dilemma: what to do with free-riders. I come from a working-class background, but I was lucky enough to go to university (at a time when only 7 percent of 18-year-olds did so). I couldn't have done so without state support, but I always saw it as a privilege, not a right.

    I can't see the point of sending so many people to university. The courses are made easier (I know from editing some of the standard textbooks), and the piece of paper they give you when you leave is worthless.

    "It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin irreverence to their studies. They are there to question what is known, not to worship it." (Jacob Bronowski).

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  36. Dennis, yes, paper for the sake of paper. Academic inflation here is really quite bad.

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