As I shuffle gingerly down the primrose path of
old age, I become easily aerated by the folly of mankind. Of course, all old
codgers like me believe the world is rapidly sliding down-hill, but the truth
may simply be that our world is sliding away, as inevitably too did the
world of our forefathers. While I am a Tory, I believe myself to be an
enlightened one, liberal in my social attitudes but firmly conservative in my
economic and constitutional principles. I crave for a bright future yet hope
against hope that the clock can sometimes be put back on some issues. Like King
Canute I try to stem the tides!
King Canute tries in vain
to stem the tides
I would like to share with you a few of those matters
which sharply collide with my own world-view:
(1) Attacks on academic freedom. I
utterly deplore a university and teaching establishment which defies 3
centuries of liberal tradition and seeks to silence lectures by, say, Jordan
Peterson, condemn (i.e. “cancel”) works by J D Rowland and rewrite works by Roald
Dahl and even Dr Seuss. These attacks are usually made in the guise of
complaints of racism, homophobia or fascism – wholly bogus, twisted and absurd
accusations, driven by an extreme political agenda.
(2) Sub-standard UK politicians. We have
had a dire run of British politicians recently. I was a devotee of Boris
Johnson, who was charismatic, but he lost the plot in his later period, failed
to deliver, behaved arrogantly and is now not missed. Revelations from the
What’s App messages of Matt Hancock are truly alarming, showing how a power-mad
minister can treat the electorate (and scientific fact) with breath-taking
contempt. Sunak, Gove, Wallace and Rees-Mogg are more to my taste. Very few
Labour members give confidence, while the SNP are beyond parody. Nature abhors
a vacuum and all manner of manic oddballs now haunt Westminster, supported by a
tainted, unfit for purpose, Civil Service.
(3) The decline of civilisation in the
West. The media talk of “culture wars” and while I have long believed Western
culture to be infinitely superior to all others, I fear that our defences are
being subverted and we have a fight on our hands to repel Russian, Chinese and
Asiatic models. Just walk into any UK city centre and you will see feral
knife-wielding mobs, drunk and tattooed, revelling in their proletarian
ignorance. Their savage music blares out, their TV programmes celebrate gutter
ideas and extreme violence. Rampant anarchy can undermine civilisation.
Still, a majority of us in the West know
better. We know that truth is an absolute and that there is no such thing as
“socialist truth”, “Gary Lineker truth” or even “traditional Tory truth”. We
know we have intellectual power, that gives us our potency. We can spot many of
the media-sponsored lies. We know that democracy works better than
authoritarianism, that the Acropolis sculptures are more beautiful than the
Benin bronzes and that Mozart out-classes Ravi Shankar. We cherish our values, so
build on them, teach them to the world – may we always have the courage to
promote and defend them forever!
SMD
09.03.23
Text copyright © Sidney
Donald 2023
