And we’ve had it for so long we’re forgetting how bad it was.
It takes just a few lousy generations:
My mother, in her eighties, has told me about the depression and the pre war years. Her mother struggling to feed her family while the men in the family struggled to find work in in depression hit Newcastle – the one in New South Wales that is.
It didn’t matter how bad things were, there was always food in the house. However, even today, in the down point of the next Kondratiev cycle, my mother still hates to waste food, all those decades later.
Then came the war. The Japanese took the British territories in South East Asia, and occupied Australian ones in the South Pacific and Papua New Guinea. From struggling to find work we went to struggling to keep our civilisation.
Today though? We have been a wealthy society for 60 years now, we have forgotten, socially and institutionally, what it was like to struggle. I mean really struggle, not just having to forego cable television and making do with free to air instead.
We forget what we fought for, or, at least, what they fought for, and we treat it with distain because we have never known any different.
Just 39 per cent of Australians aged 18 to 29 say democracy is better than other forms of government. Almost a quarter, 23 per cent, believe that "for someone like me, it doesn’t matter what kind of government we have", while 37 per cent say non-democratic rule can be best.
They have never had to fight for their freedom, they have only ever enjoyed it.
Fellow student Pierre Trioli took a harder line, saying non-democratic government might work for some cultures.
"China is a society and a state that functions without democracy, so is it bad?" Mr Trioli said. "You can’t just judge it (because it’s not democratic). It’s whatever works for that culture."
Yeah, we know just how little interest Chinese have in democracy and a free society.
Just give them a choice, and see what happens.
Overall, Australians are less supportive of democracy than Indonesians, with only 60 per cent viewing it as preferable, compared with 62 per cent of Indonesians.
More Australians - 23 per cent - than Indonesians also say that "in some circumstances, a non-democratic government can be preferable". Only 16 per cent of Indonesians surveyed last year agreed.
The President of Melbourne University’s first Indonesian student association, Briano Kawenang, 21, said some Australians undervalued democracy because they didn’t understand how good they had it.
Lest we forget.
And who is at fault for that state of affairs?
Given the current political settlement (which is aground, obselete and heading towards moral and financial bankruptcy), it is not surprising people are careless about the form of government which rules.
There is an entirely correct sense that it makes little difference who is elected. The politicians (who are enormously removed from the typical voter) talk about pasty taxes and gay marriage whilst substantive issues are simply off the table. So no option on state run health or education, no choice on Europe, they all want surveillance and security theatre, foreign wars, they are all fundamentally Keynesian fiat currency believers, the increasingly threadbare AGW nonsense, disarming the honest population (but not their own guards of course), they like to ‘manage’ interest rates and are sovereign debt advocates, high-spend and high-tax, they believe in banning more or less everything they personally disapprove of and like to micro-manage everything outside (and sometimes inside) the bedroom. Crypto-health fascism is everywhere and the populace at large is treated as a brainless child to be ignored or lectured as necessary.
So where as a dictatorship is far, far worse, the “pick-your-leader-but-leave-the-policies-to-your-betters” type of democracy that we currently have, does not enthuse.
From a UK perspective, I have always argued that it is not democracy that is the problem - it is the fact that the particular form has always been “Representative Democracy”.
In the modern day Swiss style “Direct Democracy” would be more appropriate as it would restore direct control back to the people of the UK. There would have to be protections to prevent the Tyranny of the Majority but it would prevent the most egregious legislation being passed in the UK against the wishes of the majority.
There would be consequences obviously, such as the likely reintroduction of capital punishment for certain crimes (probably multiple murder, child rape, etc.), but there would also be movement on issues affecting freedom such as membership of the EU (as opposed to membership of EFTA).
Although I disagree that anything has to be better than the current system (I would fight a fascist / communist dictatorship with all the means in my possession), the current system of CON/LAB/LIB represents no choice at all. Certainly these parties are all distinctly at odds with the electorate as a whole on most of their manifestos.
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried. Sir Winston Churchill British
SAOT took the words out of my mouth!
Where I depart from his narrative is his last sentence. We do not have democracy in the UK. We have elections for sure but only as a sop to make the electorate believe they have some say in the way things are governed even though it is bloody obvious that we do not. It is an illusion I won’t entertain because I refuse to vote for the
party faithfulinterfering nanny-statistsuseful idiotscandidates forced upon constituencies byself-serving Euroslimepocket-picking multi-party corporatistsLibLabCon central. When we fail to vote for the morons of choice we get them foisted upon us through ennoblement which is how we are forced to choke down the likes of Voldemort, Ashton and Warsi.Modern “democracy” is nothing more than an insidious and malign dictatorship clothed in cynical lies and wearing treason for a hat. The entire edifice needs tearing down because this travesty of a government isn’t what our parents and grandparents fought and, in many cases died, to protect.
The enemy within is winning. We need to fight back before it’s too late. If it isn’t too late already that is…
John,
I hate to steal your thunder but I’m fairly sure Churchill was quoting Aristotle which says a whole heap about the age of this debate! As to capital punishment… The tabloids will cry havoc over the first truly evil scrote in their sights and Gary Glitter will have his head on a pike. And then there’ll be a Ruth Ellis or someone completely innocent and… I am personally conflicted as to the death penalty. But the part of me that wants it is the vengeful part of me that admires the great light-cavalry dictators of yore. It is part of my character but not a part I am comfortable with.
I pretty much agree with SAOT and Lynne but they don’t half make Cat’s point.
My dad was born in a cottage in rural Ireland before Nick’s heroes, Orville and Wilbur, did their thing, and he ended up working on Concorde’s engines. (Via a career in the British Army which included a stint in Belgium and France, (and home via Dunkirk), followed by some time in North Africa and Burma. The changes in his lifetime alone were enormous.
We truly live in the richest, most liberated, least dangerous, most healthy time and place ever. And yet we whinge like mad about those who rule us.
The answer to this riddle is that we fear that these useless, or possibly evil, idiots are quite clearly trying to take it all away from us - to send us back into serfdom. The evidence for this is clear to see around us in the Club of Rome, Agenda 21, Common Purpose, the EU and, not forgetting, the UN.
So why is this happening? My answer would be decadence. Western Civilisation has achieved all that it can achieve and is being torn down from within and without.
Insty disagrees, and perhaps the Americans, (and Antipodeans), will skip over the current crisis and forge ahead regardless, but Europe I fear is too far gone and unless we can cut ourselves free of it’s rotting corpse, (and I reckon it’s too late), we will go down with it.
Isn’t this one of the (many) adverse consequences of a welfare state?
Historically, people have seen government as a potential tyrant, which must be constantly monitored and, as much as possible, kept in check. Clearly this was the thinking of the Founding Fathers when they wrote the Constitution and created the decentralised model of American government.
Now, though, people tend to regard the government as a benefactor - which, for many it is. So who cares whether it is democratic, so long as the benefits keep coming. After all, liberty and democracy are rather abstract concepts, while a cash or in-kind benefit is something very real.
“They have never had to fight for their freedom, they have only ever enjoyed it”
And there in a nutshell is the root of the problem.
My Grandfather, Jack Nuttall came home in 1919 a ‘Temporary Gentleman’ with an MC to his credit. He served in Big Two but was too old by then for frontline action, but did his bit in the RASC until ill-health left him with a discharge on medical grounds in ‘43.
Both my Uncles were too young for Big Two, but my Uncle Terry lugged a BAR around Palestine in 1947-8 for his National Service,
Neither my Grandad nor my Uncle would talk about what they did or saw. They were gentle, hard-working men, who, having done their duty; lived quietly productive lives until their deaths in 1962 and 2005 respectively.
It was in part their example that prompted me to apply for my own commission in the mid seventies,
That’s my family’s contribution*, and I still glow with pride at the old B&W shot of Grandad with his MC and 14-18 ribbons up.
In the sixties and seventies, in fact unless my memory plays me false even until the early eighties I remember many of the senior politicians (and, it might be added most of the senior clerics) displaying medals from Big Two and subsequent conflicts.
We still had leaders who’d Been There and Done That, and they led a generation that had done likewise,
In short, top and bottom knew (I hate old saws and cliché but…) that freedom isn’t free, It’s bought with blood and treasure, and has be clung onto with ferocious tenacity.
That is why we’re in this bloody mess. Our politicians would probably struggle to spell, leave alone understand it. The Legacy Media (h/t Richard North) only ever get excercised over VAT on fucking pasties and which ’slebs are up the duff/at daggers drawn, and saddest of all, the average Brit doesn’t seem to care.
How we find our way back to Winston’s ‘Broad sunlit uplands’ I don’t know, but I refuse to despair.
This is Britain, Somehow we will overcome and rise proud again.
*NICK, DO NOT READ THIS, IT WILL UPSET YOU.
I ommitted my Uncle Cedric, a multi-talented maniac who would have slotted seamlessly into The Goon Show. He was just old enough to be called up in ‘45 for service in the RAF, He did his pilot training in South Africa before being shipped off to India, There he attempted the novel feat of landing a Spitfire with the gear up, and trashed the kite so completely he got himself grounded.
As a Chinese Aussie in the UK, Pierre Trioli can fuck off. While Gillard, Abbott, Cameron and co. are amusing and sometimes embarrassing, and I wish there was a better option in both countries, I am so glad that my grandfather was able to get out of China. Even though I visit often, I do so proudly with my blue book (M-series) which clearly marks me as a foreigner.
I seem to remember both Hailsham and Tony Benn referring to the idea of an ‘elective dictatorship’ at different times.
Mac, that is bang on. On all counts. If you never had to pay for something that’s always been there, you don’t really value it until you loose it.
Zack, you read the whole ramble. I applaud your patience…
No need to applaud my patience Mac, I mean have you SEEN some of my posts?
Perhaps Australians are less likely to confuse democracy and liberty.
What matters is personal liberty (under threat in Australia - freedom of speech is seriously under threat) and limited government - secure property rights.
If democracy leads to these things - then good for democracy.
If not - then not.
By the way…..
The K. cycle theory is wrong.
If the world economy falls off a cliff (and it will) it will be because of BAD POLICY (not the date).
And Australia is joining in this bad policy - by yet another Central Bank interest rate cut.