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COMMENTARY
June 14, 2006
The great divide
The division between what is loosely called Left and Right, or “liberal” and “conservative”, which emerged in the 18th century, is no longer a shallow one. ("Left/Right" was the Continental divide, "liberal/conservative" the equivalent in the Anglosphere, for the two factions of the Enlightenment party.) It used to be shallow, and the trench between sides could be hopped back and forth, as recently as the Edwardian era.It began widening and deepening after the first triumphs of Bolshevism, but there were old-fashioned-liberal "liberals" (and anti-communist social democrats) well into the latter half of the 20th century. It was as Bolshevism went into eclipse that the divide became something like a rift valley. I think there is a reason for this. The liberals lost the constriction of having to distinguish themselves from communists. So that, paradoxically enough, we might attribute their declining sanity to the decline of communism. Whereas their “socialism” remains alive and well, under various deceitful covers. The idea that the state should take and redistribute nearly half of our income is now received as unchallengeable. The issues we debate today are more civilizational than economic. Throughout the West, the Left has conceded some limitations on state interference in economic life, in the interests of materialism, and in return for a larger and more consequential, legally-based attack on public decency and morals. But this is more a tactical than a strategic shift. The constant ambition is to deprive the individual of the freedom and security that only the state can assure, while making him a ward of the state in his private behaviour. To do this effectively, the entire moral order of a society must be systematically destroyed. In particular, the seemingly impregnable institution of the family must be undermined and subverted, and likewise religious and independent social institutions -- for it is from these a society acquires its moral backbone. Break them, and the citizen becomes a kind of jelly to be fit into any desired new mould. In this regard, I’m thinking less of the theatrical affronts to our inherited freedoms that are performed with increasing confidence by “human rights” tribunals, or other kangaroo courts from which due process has been extracted. These are propaganda venues; the decisions are only meant as pedagogic. They remind the citizen that his ancient freedoms no longer count. By comparison, such apparently indifferent things as the legal attacks on the right to smoke in a bar, are of larger social significance. Apart from destroying the businesses of independent publicans, the proliferation of petty and unreasonable by-laws help to reduce the citizen to a condition of puerility, constantly looking around to see what the governing puritans will and won’t permit. Smoking was, after all, a universal symbol of freedom. Moreover, the enforcement of these and so many other arbitrary restrictions distracts the police from their traditional function of preventing crime. A generation ago, or a little more by now, it was broadly assumed that the whole of society had an interest in preventing crime. This is no longer true. The Left has “evolved” to a position where it now realizes crime itself, in its most direct forms -- murder, mayhem, violent robbery, for instance -- also help to reduce the honest citizen’s sense of control. Too much of it, and even the state would lose its purchase; the problem is to arrange for “just enough”. With the right amount, it is possible -- as we have seen in Canada -- to push through things like the gun registry, thus clawing away at the citizen’s ability, as well as right, to defend himself in an emergency. Indeed, the most obvious contemporary way to distinguish between a “liberal” and a “conservative” is in their views on any passing spectacle of crime and punishment. The “liberal” instinctively identifies with the criminal, the “conservative” instinctively identifies with the victim. The liberal instinctively accuses the conservative of lacking compassion, or of wanting vengeance against the criminal, with whom the liberal has identified. The conservative instinctively remembers that the criminal showed no compassion to the victim with whom he identified. The reasons for this go deeper than public policy, to the profound narcissism that has taken over the “liberal” mind. I am not suggesting the average liberal is a criminal. He hasn’t the guts for that. But in the phantasia of his consciousness he is attracted almost sexually to the idea of “transgression”; to soiling the respectable. This is why, for the Left, “free speech” usually comes down to protecting pornographers; whereas for the Right, it is usually a matter of protecting the right to voice an opinion in good conscience. What is more important, protecting innocent people from criminals, or assuring criminals of their dignity and human rights? Both are important, but in questions of life and death, one is more important than the other. I used to think everyone understood this, but I no longer do. I was thinking about the Toronto terror busts, and the siege at Caledonia, but glancing through the Canadian papers and websites, I see dozens of examples of this “great divide” -- set out exactly as I have described it, above. I invite the reader to make his own correlations. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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