The
Problem of Government
As
I see it, we have had a moment of good government and it is ending.
Government
for the people has not been the historical norm! Far from it.
Rulers have generally oppressed their people. Recently we visited
China, and like good tourists went to see the Terracotta Warriors. We
there read the various blurbs about the early emperors. They were a
uniformly nasty lot. Their only interest seemed to be themselves,
they brutally used their people and had not a thought for the welfare
of those they ruled. In other times and places there were some better
rulers, but they were the exception. Sadly in Europe we heard about
barons and even bishops who built forts along the rivers that were
the only practical trade routes and exacted heavy tolls from traders.
Surprisingly it was in Turkey that we saw a caravansary built by the
Moslem ruler on a trade route where anyone could come for three
nights free lodging within its walls under the ruler's protection and
with the guarantee of leaving with whatever goods they had arrived
with.
Government
by the people has most certainly not been the historical norm!
But we have grown to like the idea.
In
the West both these ideals are developing stress fractures as I
pointed out in earlier posts. In Europe unelected EU bureaucrats are
increasingly making decisions. In America political elites in both
parties call the shots, but live in a rarefied atmosphere far from
the cares and woes of a large section of the population. Hence the
phenomenon of Donald Trump. In Australia I'm probably too close to
the situation to see clearly, but it looks as though politicians are
chasing votes rather than making the unpalatable choices that are
necessary to get the country out of debt.
But
all around the West it is not just the politicians but the people who
are acting badly.
There
is this phenomenon if identity politics. People who “identify as …”
(homosexual, Aboriginal, African American, and the list seems ever
expanding) are demanding that no one is allowed to offend them, and
tyrannising over the majority. The homosexual lobby “LGBT” or
whatever is the latest acronym is one example. Homosexual acts used
to be illegal, they were decriminalized – fair enough, but the
lobby did not stop there, anti-discrimination legislation came in to
make it unlawful to discriminate against such people, or even ask
about sexuality for employment. Then it went further, no one was
allowed to offend homosexuals, so anyone who even hinted that such
acts were anything other than the norm were pilloried as
“homophobes”. And so on.
Then
there is the lynch mob mentality of social and mainstream media. Fair
trial? Not likely! With no opportunity make their defence, with no
check on the accuracy of the allegations, indeed with none of the
essentials of determining the truth of the matter, issues are decided
by stories going viral on the internet, or being “exposed” by TV
news shows chasing ratings, and often the “crime” was merely to
offend against identity politics or political correctness. This takes
us back to the burning of witches and recurrent pogroms of a past we
would like to leave in the past.
There
is self interest overruling all else. In a sensible family, if they
have maxed out their credit cards through spending more than they
earn, they don't go on spending as usual – they work out what
economies they need to make get out of debt. That is common sense.
But many of our countries are deep in debt and getting deeper. That
can't go on forever. Yet in Greece for instance the populace threw
out a government that wanted “austerity measures” that would not
even reduce government spending on welfare and other programs –
just reduce how fast it was increasing!
As
Margaret Thatcher once said: “The trouble
with socialists is that they eventually run out of other people's
money to
spend.” No country can go on consuming more than it produces.
In
all the above I am not saying anything novel. In recent times more
and more columnists have been saying these things in greater detail
and more eloquently than I have.
My
point in joining the chorus is to highlight that in order to save the
West, attitudes of both politicians and voters need to change. Next I
want to look at what makes for good government to see what these
attitudes need to change to.
