It serves a vital function when government is dictatorial and oppressive, but when government is ineffective and over-permissive it is hopelessly inappropriate.

I wish I had written this sentence. It just gets to the heart or our problems in one sentence. I didn’t even realize that something is almost a bumpersticker, even an entire bumper bumpersticker, could so get to the heart of what ails us. It’s simply brilliant.

I can now see that my old BBC media liberalism was not a basis for government. It was an ideology of opposition, valuable for restraining the excesses of institutions and campaigning against the abuses of authority but it was not a way of actually running anything. It serves a vital function when government is dictatorial and oppressive, but when government is ineffective and over-permissive it is hopelessly inappropriate.

Translated: Oops! Sorry! We advocated and agitated and finally got our liberalism codified, and there’s probably no turning back on the road to despotism. But damn, we sure meant well.

Not only in Great Britain but all over the world. The start of the fall of our Western Civilization.

I’m not convinced yet that Western Civilization is headed for a fall but I think its obvious to everyone here that things are going to get worse before they get better at the very least.

For a time it puzzled me that after 50 years of tumultuous change the media liberal attitudes could remain almost identical to those I shared in the 1950s. Then it gradually dawned on me: my BBC media liberalism was not a political philosophy, even less a political programme. It was an ideology based not on observation and deduction but on faith and doctrine. We were rather weak on facts and figures, on causes and consequences, and shied away from arguments about practicalities. If defeated on one point we just retreated to another; we did not change our beliefs. We were, of course, believers in democracy. The trouble was that our understanding of it was structurally simplistic and politically naïve. It did not go much further than one-adult-one-vote.

This is incredible. This is moonbat liberalism in a nut shell, the “Bush lied, people died” crowd. You defeat them with logic, they will just keep parroting the same lines again and again. They will never cede any point to you. They’re a broken record.

I’m just fascinated because I don’t think I’ve ever seen it summed up so well in one place before. I’m also amazed because I had never considered how long this mindset has existed, nor it’s place in other countries.

As For Allahpundit’s away mission, my guess is it includes a trip to the freezer section at Costco combined with a quick stop at a grocery store for odds and ends.

I went to buy beer.

It is a time where all these institutions are having to invent problems to justify their existence, which results in laws or policies that are often the inverse of what their mission statements once were.

Those same media liberals who today demonise Margaret Thatcher simply cannot understand why she won big majorities in three successive general elections and is judged by historians around the world as having been Britain’s most successful peacetime prime minister of the 20th century.

An excellent article well worth the reading time.

As For Allahpundit’s away mission, my guess is it includes a trip to the freezer section at Costco combined with a quick stop at a grocery store for odds and ends.

But I don’t think they accurately reflect the worst failures of American journalism, which are much more partisan in nature, repeatedly celebrating in Democrats what they condemn in Republicans.

But we were not just anti-Macmillan; we were anti-industry, anti-capitalism, anti-advertising, anti-selling, anti-profit, anti-patriotism, anti-monarchy, anti-Empire, anti-police, anti-armed forces, anti-bomb, anti-authority. Almost anything that made the world a freer, safer and more prosperous place, you name it, we were anti it.

Says it all right there.

“(No Matter What It Is, or Who Commenced It) I’m Against It!

You’re proposition may be good.
But let’s have one thing understood,
Whatever it is, I’m against it!

And Even When You’ve Changed It Or Condensed It,
I’m Against It!”.

Only they’re not funny.

(Unless you live in a moldy cave in Pakistan.)

good point. outside could be relative ;)

Yep, he only said he was going out, not outside. Going out to a uber-geek like AP could mean going out of the room his computer is in, to oh I dont know, maybe sit on the patio, which is probably fully enclosed and air conditioned.

AP actually go outside? He’s just going into another room where he can look at the outside from a safe and comfortable distance… :)

good point. outside could be relative ;)

He said he only gets out 90 minutes a week during one of his iphone posts, though. so I assume he knows what grass and trees are; even if he sits in his rocker and stares at them :)

Enjoy your 90 minutes of fresh air, AP! :)

AP actually go outside? He’s just going into another room where he can look at the outside from a safe and comfortable distance… :)

But we were not just anti-Macmillan; we were anti-industry, anti-capitalism, anti-advertising, anti-selling, anti-profit, anti-patriotism, anti-monarchy, anti-Empire, anti-police, anti-armed forces, anti-bomb, anti-authority. Almost anything that made the world a freer, safer and more prosperous place, you name it, we were anti it.

Not only in Great Britain but all over the world. The start of the fall of our Western Civilization.