The New Order in Britain (cont.)

Two stories from Britain illustrate the discipline now imposed on words or actions at odds with the emerging order of things: Top Tory backs blast at gays and lesbians and Farce as heroes nick thug.

The first involves a senior Tory baroness, Caroline Cox, who lent her support to a book written by an evangelical missionary from Nigeria [!] working in London.The book, among other things, expresses doubt about the multicultural ideal, calls homosexuality antifamily and “against nature,” and compares the number of babies aborted in Britain with the number of Jews killed by the Nazis. According to the Guardian,

Her words will embarrass Iain Duncan Smith, the Conservative leader, only 48 hours after he said the party must reach out to vulnerable people and others who had not traditionally seen the Tories as their natural home.

Labour MPs immediately called for Cox to apologise unreservedly and said her support for the book revealed there was still an extremist wing of the party that needed to be dealt with.

Full acceptance of homosexuality and the multicultural ideal are thus minimal requirements for participation in public life in Britain. Anything less is simply hatred and an attack on vulnerable people.

The second story has to do with three men who collared a teenage thug who threw a brick through a window and drove him to the police station, calling the cops on their cell phone to tell them what they were doing. They were, of course, jugged and charged with kidnapping, while the thug was set free. The crown eventually dropped the case, but the principle seems clear: citizens can in no event use force to defend public order but must leave that to their custodians.

The stories reflect different sides of the current attempt to create a perfectly rational social order based solely on markets and on state or transnational bureaucracies. One side is the reduction of man to individual man—that is, the abolition of institutions such as the family that join men together and enable them to act outside the new order. Part of abolishing the institutions, of course, is abolishing (through multiculturalism, normalization of homosexuality, and so on) the particular cultural loyalties and standards that support them. Another side of the attempt to create a perfectly rational and controlled society is direct imposition of sanctions on those who presume to take part in public life directly and outside the established instrumentalities. It’s better to have crime than to have the people think they can act directly to suppress it. Since the sole source of public order is now the government, direct action—the citizen’s arrest, for example—has become a sort of treason against the principles of ordered society.
Posted by Jim Kalb at September 16, 2002 08:36 AM | Send