Sunday, 31 December 2017

The Right is "Protestant", the Left is "Catholic"

First off I should point out that I am using these terms as descriptive ones, not as religious ones. Of course there are both Rightist and Leftists in both the Catholic and Protestant faiths. I hope to make a larger point here. A point about politics, not about religion.

When you look at the history of Protestantism you find that disagreements lead to new churches. Sometimes that meant a new church, at other times a new Denomination. Those on the Right, myself included, are very much like this. We talk about community but we find it hard to get along with others. We have gotten into the habit of criticizing and of being truth seekers. We may not be correct right now but we are on the road to truth and those who try to lead us onto false paths we reject, angrily. Because so much of this truth seeking is done alone, we tend to rely on ourselves more than  maybe we should.

When you look at the history of Catholicism you find that disagreements are dealt with in house. There have been very big divisions within the Catholic Church but they still try to maintain the idea that the church is Catholic, which means Universal. On the Left of politics you tend to see this, they fight and hate each other for often quite small disagreements. But they also unite in the face of opposition. I don't want to put too fine a point on it. This isn't gospel, it is instead trying to show something that is often hidden. The Left appears united but isn't. It is however convinced that it has truth on it's side right now. Mostly because it allows others to do it's thinking for it.

If the Right is to move forward we need to take a page out of the Catholic Church and keep our disagreements in house. And that our enemies are outside, not inside. To put it another way don't shoot right.

Upon Hope Blog - A Traditional Conservative Future
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Tuesday, 26 December 2017

From Tradition to Liberalism

Once the Western world was traditional, now it is Liberal, how did it change? That is obviously a big question, but I think there were two periods that created big changes. Changes that were not obvious at the time but which grew into the Liberalism that we know today. The first was the Reformation, which allowed the idea of secularism to creep in, and secondly the Industrial Revolution. It is the second change that I am going to concentrate on here.

It wasn't until the 1820's that people started talking about the changes that had been going on for a century or more in England. Before that time the changes had been small and local, by the 1820's neither of those things were true. The wars against France from 1792-1815 had hidden much of the change as people thought they were things that were more to do with the war. When the wars ended people started to notice that these things were no longer temporary, instead they were becoming a permanent fixture of life in England.

During the wars men had moved great distances to serve in the army, navy or merchant navy. Often their families moved with them. For a short time these things wouldn't have had much impact, but the wars lasted for nearly 25 years. In Britain the wars were a time of great prosperity, ironically aided by Napoleon trying to cut the European markets off to British trade. What it instead did was to create two economies, a European economy controlled by France and a world economy controlled by Britain. The Royal Navy and Britains merchant fleet controlled world trade, so anything that Europe wanted from outside of Europe had to be supplied by Britain. A Britain that Napoleon had banned from trading with Europe, so all those goods had to be smuggled into Europe. And because everything was so scarce, it was all at top prices.

In Britain it was the exact opposite, it was the only market in Europe open to trade from the rest of the world. So it meant that prices were good and goods plentiful. Trade from Europe was of course affected, so Britain tried to build as much as it could of it's own goods. Things that once came from Europe were now build in Britain, which lead to a rise in the size and numbers of factories. It also meant that when the wars ended Britain was in an excellent position to take advantage of it's newfound economic power.

It also accelerated the importance of trade over landownership. Owning land was always the traditional way to create wealth, but land has a great disadvantage, there is only so much of it. It self controls how many people can become rich. Trade however has no such limit, certainly it is not unlimited, but at least in theory it can be portrayed as such. The wars from 1792-1815 put trade front and centre in British life. It wasn't some fringe activity as it had once been, now it was of prime importance to national survival. After 1815 the lessons learnt were not forgotten. Britain was a trading nation and any limits put upon trade were bad. Trade needed to be unrestricted. Therefore Britain became the first free trade nation. It also became the first nation to support the free movement of people, within Britain at least.

The factory owners needed workers and they resented anything that restricted their access to those workers. At that time Guilds still existed and so did Feudal restrictions. People were not free as we would understand it, they often had obligations that restricted how they could use their labour. The reason for this was that if a mans labour was used in one place he could not use it in another, in other words he could not be in two place at once. So a farm labourer working in a factory was not doing farm labour. But if crops aren't sowed at the correct time or they are not harvested at the correct time then the food that people need to eat doesn't exist. This created a conflict between the often middle class factory owners and the often Aristocratic landowners.

There was also a conflict with the guilds, men were bonded to their profession. It protected all of those who worked in that profession as it restricted the amount of people in that profession. The factory owners hated the guilds for two reasons, firstly it restricted the amount of workers they could employ and secondly it created competition. Over time they sort to destroy both of these restrictions and they did destroy them.

But while these conflicts were going on there was also an increase in population. So the conflicts were rarely a case of life and death to either people or businesses, instead they became ideological conflicts. More workers meant more competition for jobs, so people moved to get those jobs and this thing that most people thought was temporary became permanent. It removed people from their traditional life and forced them to adapt to a new way of life. A life controlled not by nature but by the clock.

The factory owners wanted the power of the feudal Lords, but most did not want the responding responsibilities that came with that. Some were very good bosses, providing housing and good wages. Others were not go good and all they cared about was profit. Sadly the people who worked in their factories were only important as workers and not as people. Most of these people came from the countryside and in those places, often very poor places, they had a social structure that they existed within. In the cities or towns they now worked in those social structures and the support network that existed had to be recreated. But it was in reality not reconstructed, instead it was a new creation. Indeed in time the factory worker and the farm labourer became rivals, with seemingly little in common.

Tradition which existed in the countryside was made an enemy of the city. Land was replaced with trade. Men controlled their own labour, they had no loyalty to anyone but themselves. Money replaced loyalty. They lost contact with the land and with the cycle of nature. Guilds that once protected workers were dissolved. Liberalism wanted no restrictions put upon trade and no restrictions put upon who it could hire. Liberalism won.

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Friday, 22 December 2017

Liberalism is a Christian Heresy

All Political Philosophies are Western philosophies. Non come from any other Civilization, they are all Western.

Communism, Nazism, Socialism, Fascism and of course Liberalism.

Thats not a complete list, but you get the idea, all came from Western Civilization, all invented by White men. Even the only political philosophy to expressly focus on women, Feminism, was invented by White men. Why should this be so concentrated?

The answer is that while Christianity has been popular amongst many different peoples, it was the European peoples who took Christianity as their exclusive religion. Meaning that while Christianity existed in other parts of the world, it was never the only religion around. In Europe it was, it had no rivals. Certainly Judaism existed but it was not a rival. In the Islamic world there existed large populations that were not Muslim. In 600AD Egypt was Christian, today it is still 10% Christian, sometime between then and now it went from close to 100% to 10%. In Europe nothing like that existed at all.

So intellectual conflict was between Christians, not between thinkers of different religions. In time that helped lead to the Reformation and the creation of the Protestant faiths. Here comes something even stranger, not only are all of the Political Philosophies Christian but they are all Protestant. Non of them originate in Catholic countries, not even France, although they are influenced by Catholic thinkers.

The reason they are Protestant is because of the idea of personal salvation, that each person has a personal relationship with God. The Catholic Church said that that was too much to put on peoples shoulders, they needed help because if they didn't have that help people would fail. Priests helped by performing complex rituals, monks and nuns with constant prayers, Bishops and Popes to administrate it all and Saints to intercede on behalf of people. Protestants did not accept those claims at all. They argued that Christians should have guidelines on what to do and the best guide was the Bible, not men.

For many these ideas were liberating, for many these ideas were terrifying. Just you and God, the creator of the Universe, having a chat. But taken to it's logical conclusion, why have any Churches, or in fact any religious authority? If man is free to make his own choices in life without being told what to do by the Catholic Church, why should he be unfree? Why should he pay taxes, or be conscripted or serve his feudal Lord or King? He should only serve himself and God. After all now that he has a personal relationship with God, God should tell him directly what he should serve and if not then he shouldn't.

Some did take things to there logical conclusion and it normally ended in violence, but not always. Examples of groups who took on many of these ideas are the Quakers and the Amish. Now you will have noticed that most Protestant groups are not like them, thats because they rejected the logical conclusion and put in place exceptions. They did not want to go that far, as most who did did not survive. But those ideas have never gone away.

Within the Protestant faiths when a religious difference came about, people would start their own church. Sometimes within the same faith, but increasingly as time went on they would form their own church. Particularly within the English speaking world. This fed into that idea that in this world you were on your own, that you could not trust others to do your thinking for you. You could not rely on others to look after you either, success was about you and your abilities and talents. And success showed how favoured you were by God, because God wouldn't let just anyone succeed.

The old ways could not be trusted, new ideas and techniques were valued, the old ways were either Catholic or Feudal. Reject the old and focus on the new. Reject the traditional hierarchy and be prepared to find new ways of doing things. They came to favour money over land and freedom over obligations. They served God first, then themselves and any other authority was third.

Some of you may point out that this does not describe the Church of England for example, but actually it does. While it was hierarchical and much more traditional and conservative than other Protestant faiths. It still included many of these ideas within it, non of the Protestant faiths escaped from them.

Over time ideas that were totally Christian came to separate from Christianity and take on a life of their own in the secular world. That separation was due to Protestantism. Ideas such the idea that we are all equal before God, left religion and took on a life of their own. Now we are told that all people are equal, with God no were to be seen. We are told that trade and money are all important, that we are in effect economic men. That comes from the idea that we are all in this world alone with only God and we know that we are blessed by God if we become successful, now God has been removed. 
On and on it goes, with Christian ideas being secularized, God is removed and denied. But the strange thing is that this isn't just Liberalism, in fact all of the Political Philosophies also come from Protestantism. Every single one is a Christian heresy!

No exceptions, they all start as Christian ideas, then they separated and then they were corrupted. The origin often denied by both supporters and enemies as being far too embarrassing. But these ideas didn't come from out of the air, they came from the Bible, like all Christian heresies.

I recently read the line "Heresy was born of the itch for something new.", I wrote about this when I wrote about novelty. Once these ideas left Christianity and then denied there origin they became heresies. Because they set themselves up as rivals to Christianity. For so long they operated within Christianity that they seemed like they were not rivals, but not everyone accepted that. Now the great question is, will Christianity survive these heresies?

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Sunday, 17 December 2017

Breaking up the Corporations

Today far too much of the economy is made up of large companies, many of them household names. These large companies are known as Corporations. To create an economy that is friendly to the type of society we wish for, we need to dismantle these corporations and in their place promote local business.

Corporations are a vital part of Liberal economics, to which I would add that I am not a Liberal and I have no loyalty to their economic ideas. I would further add that Conservative have their own economic ideas. Ideas that put the emphases on local and small business., instead of large Corporations. But if we want Corporations to be dismantled then how should we do it?

We must first put in place some ground rules:
the aim is not to destroy but to create,
the aim is to dismantle Corporations in a rational manner over time,
the aim is to support local people and communities through local businesses

There are three ways of breaking up the Corporations.

Franchise
A franchise is where by a company recruits sub-contractors to work for it's core business, but on a day to day bases to operate on their own as if they were a private business. Franchises get differing levels of support depending upon the company, generally things like training, contacts and such like. This is a good way to break up the Corporations while still using market principles. It gives an opportunity to local people to get an established business from an established brand. It also means that customers aren't inconvenienced, that the new owners have a chance to learn about the business on the job and for the Corporation to ease out of it's commitment over time.

After a certain period of time, I propose roughly a decade, the franchise arrangement can end and these firms can become independent businesses.

Multiple Locations
The second way is to tax via locations, most retail Corporations, along with many other types of Corporations operate from multiple locations. So we tax the number of locations a Corporation operates from, increasing the amount each year.

Year 1, 0% tax rate
Year 2, Second and subsequent locations taxed at 10% of all earnings
Year 3, Third and subsequent locations taxed at 20% of all earnings
Year 4, Fourth and subsequent locations taxed  at 30% of all earnings
Year 5, Fifth and subsequent locations taxed at 40% of all earnings
Year 6, Sixth and subsequent locations taxed at 50% of all earnings
Year 7, Seventh and subsequent locations taxed at 60% of all earnings
Year 8, Eighth and subsequent locations taxed at 70% of all earnings
Year 9, Ninth and subsequent locations taxed at 80% of all earnings
Year 10, Tenth and subsequent locations taxed at 90% of all earnings
Year 11, Tenth and subsequent locations taxed at 100% of all earnings

As you can see it starts off quite reasonable and over the course of a decade becomes progressively more unreasonable. The aim is not to collect the taxes but to encourage the Corporation to dismantle with it's own rational plan before the Government takes everything. Franchises would not be subject to the multiple location tax.

Single Locations
Some Corporations operate from a single location, sometimes amazingly large locations. In the case of manufacturing companies it may not be good to dismantle such Corporations that operate from a single location. However nearly all Corporations in the service industry could be dismantled.

Year 1, 0% tax rate
Year 2, minimum of 10% tax from that single location
Year 3, minimum of 20% tax rate from that single location
Year 4, minimum of 30% tax rate from that single location
Year 5, minimum of 40% tax rate from that single location
Year 6, minimum of 50% tax rate from that single location
Year 7, minimum of 60% tax rate from that single location
Year 8, minimum of 70% tax rate from that single location
Year 9, minimum of 80% tax rate from that single location
Year 10, minimum of 90% tax rate from that single location
Year 11, minimum of 100% tax rate from that single location

A company that had been reduced to one location by either the Franchise or the Multiple Location schemes would not be dismantled further. The aim would be, as with the Multiple Location tax,  not to collect the taxes but to encourage the Corporation to dismantle with it's own rational plan before the Government takes everything.

Conclusion
Corporations lead and encourage people away from their true loyalty's, away from Tradition, Country and Family. They lead people away from the local economy and insist that they must live in a larger economy. Money becomes more important than anything else, because making money is the goal of all companies. But for the rootless Corporations it does not go back into supporting a peoples traditional customs and ways. Nor does it support their country and it ends by making people value money over family. Non of these things are desirable or worth keeping. By dismantling the Corporations we can increase business ownership, we can increase local economies and we can support our own objectives, all without destroying any of the principles of the free market.

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Monday, 11 December 2017

The Fifty-Seventh Month

I had good news and bad news from the blog this month. Lets start with the bad news and work upwards. In November I only had 2,652 visitors, which is low, my worst month since June. On the upside, My American visitors are back over 1000, which they briefly dipped under. My Australian numbers have been back over 400 for most of the month, which gives me hope and my British visitors are over 200. It's nice but not unusual for a country to get over 100 but it's rare to get over that 200 point.

My worst day in the past month was the 21st November when I had only 36 visitors. My best day was only four days later on the 25th November when I had 284 visitors. My average was 105 visitors a day.

November-December
EntryPageviews
United States
1482
Australia
466
United Kingdom
223
France
121
Canada
73
Brazil
71
Ukraine
61
Ireland
53
Spain
35
Russia
34


October-November
EntryPageviews
United States
950
Australia
388
Russia
371
United Kingdom
125
Spain
112
Canada
86
Finland
56
Ireland
54
Brazil
49
France
49

The United States is up by over 500, Australia is up, the United Kingdom is nearly double and France is more than double. Brazil is also up.

Ireland is basically the same.

Canada, Spain and Russia are down.

The Ukraine is back in to the top 10.

Finland is out of the top 10.

I have also received visitors from the following countries: Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Italy, Portugal, Poland, Romania, Lebanon, Oman, U.A.E., Bahrain, Kuwait, India, Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Egypt, Sudan, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, New Zealand, Chile,  Argentina.

Merry Christmas and I hope you visit again soon.
Mark Moncrieff

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Saturday, 9 December 2017

Know Your Place

When I was growing up I heard people say "know your place!", but like any number of things I heard growing up I have not heard the phrase for many years. Indeed as we are now always told about how equal we are, it really is counter to the revolution. Which is sad as the phrase had a point, more than one in fact.

This pretend equality is a burden that we all share. Everyone is our equal, the victim is no better than the criminal, for that is what equality means. But if everyone is equal then everyone is equally disposable. We are all interchangeable, we have no security in our jobs, in our relationships, we are treated as completely interchangeable. The truth is that people don't tell us to know our place because we no longer have a place. Once, not that long ago people did know their place, they really had a place they belonged to.

That is why Traditional Conservatives believe in social classes, we want people to have a place in life, to have some practical meaning in their life. But when no one has a place then what holds us together?

Liberalism says ideals keep us together, but only if we all accept the same ideals. Even then I seems that people are missing out on an important area of life. Nothing is permanent except the knowledge that nothing is secure. Because we have lost our place we are insecure and apprehensive. We become braggarts were every small success is trumpeted as the greatest that there has ever been. We seek to make a new place to belong, if we cannot belong because nothing is permanent then we need to create some security right here and now. In which we seek to gain comfort from our loss, but of course it is merely a substitute for the real thing. We want to belong, we want to know our place, we want to be important, we want to be needed.

When our ancestors lived in their small village they knew where they belonged, they knew their place within that community. They knew their importance and whether they were needed. But most of that has been lost to us. When people do not know their place they invent a place, they invent meaning and they try to make that important. But it's not, it is entirely artificial and people know that. They know that it has no real meaning, but what options do they have left to them?

So many social and mental health issues come down to people today not knowing their place. There is nothing to bind them to reality, because so often they are left to find their own way in the world. People are not equipped to do that, we need guidance, we need help and most importantly we need to know what direction we are heading in.

In the past people received these things and most people believed that your family was the direction you headed in. You married and had children, you created with your spouse, the future. But today if you tell people that you want to marry and start a family you are looked at as strange. Sure most people also want the same thing, but to actually say so out loud!

Most people know that in the current year that isn't really allowed, not forbidden but also not allowed. It's all about career and money now days, but that only provides part of the answer. You are not a complete person, but a damaged person, a person that doesn't know their place is of valuable. Such a person resents those who do have a place. Liberalism doesn't need to pass laws to destroy society they can allow that resentment to grow, on both sides, and then step in to solve the problem that they created.

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Monday, 4 December 2017

November Was a Bad Month

Here I am in early December still trying to make sense of last month, it was really bad. A month that makes you wonder how far we need to fall before things turn. A month in which I wondered what happened to my countrymen. A month in which I have lost a lot of respect.

Homosexual Marriage
I've already written about that in Australia and the end of common sense and in democracy is dying, because to be honest they are both related. I was always against a vote as I simply did not know how it would go, although being a Traditional Conservative I was pessimistic. The only hope we had was for the Parliament to remain distracted and uncertain of how the Australian people really felt. Instead it went to a vote and it was very successful, 79.5% voted, 62% said yes, that means that 48% of all Australian voters voted yes to letting homosexuals marry. It also means that only 30% voted against it. Which confirms what I have thought for a while, that there is a hardcore 20% of the electorate who are what the media call far-right. Conservative, Patriotic, who reject the media and most of the basic tenets of Liberalism.

Euthanasia
Last week the Victorian state Government passed by 1 vote a Law that made euthanasia legal. From mid 2019 people who a doctors has said has less than 6 months to live can legally commit suicide with the help of the medical profession. Now most people in Australia support this, I also once did. I might still if I didn't understand the nature of Liberalism. That this is always the first step not the last. All of the so called safeguards can and will be subverted. Death on demand is the goal and if things continue as they have been then they will achieve that. From this point on the people who are most in need of protection will be without it. Who is more vulnerable than someone who is dying? Now they will have to deal with medical personal and family encouraging them to die. Dying is hard, including for those who are not dying. Why suffer they will suggest? Why prolong your (and our) agony? Why do I have to spend money on someone when they are going to die anyway? Why do I have to wait for my inheritance?

Why should someone have to suffer these things in addition to dying?  

Prince Harry's Engagement.
Prince Harry, currently fifth in line to the Throne, with the birth of Prince Williams third child he will become sixth in line. So the chance that he will become King is practically zero, but thats not the point. He is still a British Prince and he wants to marry an actress!!!

An actress!

An actress who is older than him at 36, is divorced and is mixed race. So if they do have children, Prince Harry who is probably the most famous red head in the world, will be unable to have red headed children. Or in fact children who look like him. But as she is 36 that might already be out of the picture. In every sense it sends out a bad message.

This is not a royal wedding, this is a celebrity wedding. And I do not see a happy couple, what I see is a train wreck happening in slow motion right before our eyes. I will not be celebrating or encouraging it, I find it all very sad and disappointing.

So I have lost a lot of respect for my countrymen, for democracy and for Prince Harry.....November was a bad month!

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Wednesday, 29 November 2017

Democracy is Dying

Democracy is a political system that works when people feel they can compromise. However we are rapidly leaving that idea behind. How many times have you voted for a candidate or heard someone else say they voted for a particular candidate because they were "the lesser of two evils"? I know I have. But the thing is, that the lesser of two evils, is still evil.

When good compromises with evil, we get more evil, only slower. For the good to remain good it cannot compromise. But being unrelenting is difficult. It's true that a tree that does not bend breaks. So instead of breaking we bend, at a personal level, in fact at every level. We compromise, we give up the good to achieve some peace. We allow evil to triumph and because it was only a small triumph we can pretend to ourselves that it wasn't a big deal.

Conservatives have always said that Democracy would fail. It is our curse that we can see the endpoint, we can quite clearly see that this great scheme is doomed. But we cannot get the timing right, we always think that the doom is near, no matter how far away it really is. So we tell people that this will fail and they then watch as it does not fail, in fact it achieves great successes. We look like fools while still knowing the truth. It seems like a religious conviction, like we have put our faith before our reasoning. However it is exactly the opposite, our reasoning has informed our faith...so to speak.

Of course Conservatism is neither a religion or a faith, instead it is a political philosophy. A conceit that we know how to organise the affairs of man. Maybe it is wrong to say that Democracy is unique in it's failings. Maybe all schemes to organise the affairs of man will fail in time. Maybe man is the problem and not philosophy?

However we are then left with a paradox. Man needs order to live in any kind of security, let alone freedom. But if all schemes to organise the affairs of man are doomed to fail, how do we achieve order?

I think that the answer to this paradox is not that things fail but for how long can they maintain order.

Democracy once seemed like the great answer to human affairs. It gave everyone a say in the running of the Government. It gave everyone a stake in the political system. It put forward high sounding ideals, such as freedom, equality, progress, prosperity to name just a few. It made attempts to achieve these things and often it looked like it had achieved them. But freedoms are in competition with each other, equality may be law but nowhere is it real because it is not a real reflection of reality. In other words looks and laws can be deceiving.

And when it fails we will all hear, but it wasn't real Democracy!

What is becoming increasingly clear is that the centre is shrinking. Both the Left and the Right are growing in size. And we each are coming around to the idea that we cannot live with the other. That compromise is wrong, that there is nothing that should be compromised. We think that we are right and we know that the Left is evil, the Left thinks that we are evil and know that they are right.

I have not felt that Parliament represented me for a long time. I vote merely to vote in the lesser of two evils, who is still evil. The sense that we are a community all in this together is gone, my neighbours are not my people but random strangers from all over the world. And the people who are my blood are living in a dreamworld that I do not share. 

In such an atmosphere Democracy cannot survive.

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Saturday, 25 November 2017

Liberalism Without Democracy

The political ideology that we live under is Liberalism, but one of it's best defensive techniques is to not call it anything. To simply leave the impression that what we live under has no name, instead it is portrayed as simply the way things are. One of the few times we do hear the word "Liberal" is in the term Liberal Democracy.

A few days ago I was reading this article "Conservatism, Populism and Conviction Politics by John O'Sullivan in Quadrant. Which starts off badly but becomes really good, I encourage you to read it, even though it is over 8 pages in length. But in it he comes across a term and turns it on it's head. Which reveals something quite remarkable.

Professor Mudde has given us one such definition above: populism is an illiberal democratic response to undemocratic liberalism. Another was revealed unintentionally by Professor Pappas when he said: “Populist parties embrace democracy but not liberalism. Liberalism without democracy is not a combination found in real-life polities today.” It is his second sentence that discloses the definition we need. For “liberalism without democracy” is an apt description of the system of government towards which the West has been moving since 1989, and populism is the resistance to it."

Liberalism without democracy is very revealing, because that is the system of government that we increasingly live under. That explains a mystery that I have not written about much because I didn't have an answer to it. Why are Parliaments giving up their power?

When you look at how democracy is supposed to work and how it currently does work you notice a discrepancy. Democracy is supposed to work with each of the three branches of government, Executive, Legislature and Judiciary, in friendly hostility to each other. Friendly because they are supposed to cooperate, but hostile because they are jealous of their unique rights and abilities.

However since WWII the system has ceased to function like that, and since the end of the Cold War that has accelerated. It started with International bodies, they had existed before WWII but afterwards they were given a new and special place. Firstly they were given the responsibility for maintaining the peace of the world. Secondly it was the given the moral authority to decide if countries were right or wrong. Thirdly it was given responsibilities for everything from health (World Health Organisation) to protecting historic monuments (UNESCO).

Now politicians could use the United Nations as a way of avoiding responsibilities. They would have to appeal to a higher authority than the nationals Parliament, or Courts or the Head of State. In times past a higher authority would have meant God, or the Church but the United Nations replaced all of them. God, Churches, Parliaments, Courts, Head of States, all awaiting United Nations approval. And it worked, people accepted it, Parliaments accepted it, Courts accepted it.

So then they moved onto the Courts, if people would accept the authority of the made up United Nations. And it was make up, in San Franciso, in 1945. Then why not use the Courts to effect Liberal change. People don't expect to the have a say in the decision of the Courts. Maybe the Courts could be used to effect change. It turns out that they can!

All they need to do is to ignore an important principle of law, called precedent. Here's how it works, in a properly functioning system of law, laws are made either by the Parliament enacting them or by Precedent. Precedent is whereby a legal decision on a particular legal matter has been made in the past. That creates a precedent and thereby a new law. What the Courts are not allowed to do is simply to make up law as they see fit. What the Liberal Activists have done is they will do exactly that, they will create law as they see fit using the Courts. Judges will then enforce this new entirely made up law because they will argue that they are using precedent.

We can currently see this very clearly with President Trumps travel bans. The Courts do not have any power to change a decision of the Executive Branch. But it pretends that it does. It also does not have the power to change laws made by the United States Congress. But again it pretends that it does. Only the President has the power to make or unmake an Executive Order. The same exists with laws passed by Congress, only Congress can make or unmake it's laws. The United States Supreme Court decides upon whether a law is Constitutional, however that power is no where in the United States Constitution, instead it is a power it took for itself all the way back in 1803. If a law is decided to be unconstitutional, in the past it went back to Congress, now it dies a quick death with everyone just accepting the Courts decision.

That is not how Democracy is supposed to work, but as long as Liberalism advances then who cares how if democracy works, it's only important if Liberalism works.

Liberalism without democracy has a third leg, the Non-Government Organisation  also known as an NGO. Here you can use private citizens to advance the cause of Liberalism without Government approval. Sorry did I say without Government approval? What I meant to say was without officially declaring the Governments interest. For example, private citizens who work for an NGO lobby Government to increase subsidies for solar panels, for example. The Government accepts the opinion of the NGO because thats what the people want and they know what the people want because the NGO told them. So how do the workers in the NGO get paid? They get paid by the Taxpayer via the Government who provides them with a grant to look into how people feel about solar panels. Whats important isn't the Taxpayer, or the NGO or the Government, whats important is Liberalism and advancing it's objectives.

The fourth leg is big business, today Crony Capitalism is King. The Government provides money, regulations and contacts to keep big business big. Free Enterprise whereby companies compete against each other to generate profit is not what any CEO wants to endure. Much better to get the Government to introduce regulations that smaller competitors cannot comply with and stop any real competition before it starts. In return big business supports the social agenda of the Government. It doesn't need a memo, it does it all of it's "own free will" (Trademark). Of course a company is not a person, it has no free will, it does however have interests. Interests that can be worked on by people who don't need to engage in Free Enterprise because their friends in Government have put in place regulations that destroy any real competition.

Liberalism without democracy helps explain why democracy is dying, it has served in purpose. Certainly we will continue to have elections, but the days when they matter are receding into the past. Now the peoples will can be and is circumvented.

Upon Hope Blog - A Traditional Conservative Future
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Thursday, 16 November 2017

Australia and the End of Common Sense

Yesterday the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed that 79.5% of eligible Australian voters had voted on the question of whether they supported same sex marriage in Australia. Of that total 61.6% voted in favour and 38.4% against. Yet another defeat for common sense, yet another victory for stupidity and insanity.

Something that 30 years ago people laughed at, 40 years ago when people said that legalizing homosexuality would lead to this they were ridiculed and yet here we are. We have abandoned common sense for emotionalism, we have abandoned family for anything goes. Two people of the same sex cannot make a baby but thats forward looking and we have abandoned that as well. How much thought has been given to the future?

This is one more nail in the coffin of the family and in marriage. From this point on the pressure for more social experimentation increases. More teaching children about sex and homosexuality. More pressure to embrace the unacceptable. More pressure to redefine marriage further. More stupidity and insanity. And now all presented as the peoples will.

Everyone who voted yes has given us a giant shit sandwich!

Upon Hope Blog - A Traditional Conservative Future
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Monday, 13 November 2017

Novelty, Our Strength is Our Weakness

I have thought for some time that often someone or somethings greatest strength is also their greatest weakness. The West has that problem, the thing that has make us great, novelty, is killing us. What is novelty? Novelty is liking the new and strange, and we do. Our Civilization was built on novelty, new ideas, new discoveries, new inventions, new technologies. The Civilization of the West is based on innovation, changing things, as many things as we can.

Before the Black_Death around 1350, the outlook of the West doesn't seem much different from any other Civilization. But afterwards things began to change, first the deaths of so many people changed society. Workers were in short supply and therefore wages began to be more widely paid. Before that time wages were rare, people worked either feeding themselves or for their Feudal Lord. Secondly educated people knew that the world had once been better than it was, they knew about the Roman Empire. They could read about it and they could see the ruins, ruins they couldn't build and in many cases couldn't even repair. Thirdly after this period there are inventions that no other Civilization ever developed. In the later Middle Ages both Plate armour and handguns were developed and only replaced when something better came along. In other Civilizations once technology reached a certain level then they either didn't develop further or they actively destroyed technology.

People often call this Idea of progress or the cult of progress, but I think that is putting the cart before the horse. I think that the reality came first and then people came up for a name for it, but calling it the idea of progress makes it sounds like it was all part of a master plan, it wasn't. Unlike other peoples, Europeans came to view the new as good, even better, it came to define their Civilization. It still defines it. The history of Western Civilization became the history of novelty, whats new, discoveries, inventions, people, ideas, music, art, whats new!

I started thinking about this when I was watching a TV series on music. An episode on the 1960's for example didn't feature music that was popular in that decade, instead it featured ideas that would be popular. In other words it was really a history of novelty in music. I started to notice it everywhere in the study of history. It wasn't about how people lived it was about novelty, about what was new and exciting. About what would change the future instead of being a study of it's particular time and place. But this idea is everywhere in our Civilization, the idea that things can be new and improved. And it's allied idea that things that aren't shouldn't exist.

Sometimes I tell people I'd rather be old fashioned then new fashioned, they always laugh because being new fashioned is something they have never heard before. But how often are we told that something must be done way with because it is old fashioned? Old fashioned is outdated, it most certainly is not a novelty and we are addicted to novelty. Whats the latest scientific discovery? Whats the newest technology? Whats new at the movies? What new songs are on the music charts? Look at this new idea, technique or book. Constantly we are bombarded with the new.

But how can it be that the new is always better, however that prejudice is very much a part of our Civilization. It is even acceptable to lie about the past to guarantee that the new will be better. In the past people thought the world was flat....no they didn't that is a deliberate lie. In the past people argued about how many angels could fit on the eye of a needle...no they didn't that is a deliberate lie. In the past (meaning before the person speaking was born) women were basically slaves...no they weren't that is a deliberate lie. These lies make the present seem better while always degrading the future they claim to won't so much. The past, present nor the future is important, only novelty is. Because it makes life seem much more exciting and full then it really is.

That helps explain why people think well of immigration when it is so harmful. Why people welcome the idea of Multiculturalism because it always offers something novel. You boring White people with your boring white bread culture is no match for the excitement of a new ethnic restaurant. The excitement of new suburbs, new faces, new cultures, even new crimes. The excitement never ends and isn't that what our Civilization is about?

Isn't our Civilization more exciting now that men don't run everything? Isn't it more exciting now that people can choose their gender? Isn't everything so much better now that everything is new fashioned!

Actually this puts everyone who opposed Liberalism in a very bad spot because in many ways they are right. Novelty is exciting and the new is novel and that is one of the defining points of our Civilization. And Liberalism provides that novelty, in fact it could not exist without it. But if we continue on this path then we are doomed. There is no future in a cosmopolitan and genderless people. We need to find an answer to this before our greatest strength destroys us.

Upon Hope Blog - A Traditional Conservative Future
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Saturday, 11 November 2017

The Fifty-Sixth Month

A terrible month, I had food poisoning, all good now but it put a big dint into my posting. So this has not been a spectacular month, although I have had some good numbers from some new countries.

My best day in the last month was the 17th October when I had 204 visitors. I had two equally worst days, the 26th October and the 3rd November when I had 37 visitors each.

October-November
EntryPageviews
United States
950
Australia
388
Russia
371
United Kingdom
125
Spain
112
Canada
86
Finland
56
Ireland
54
Brazil
49
France
49

September-October
EntryPageviews
United States
1190
Australia
422
Finland
131
Japan
97
United Kingdom
89
Canada
76
Germany
63
France
61
United Arab Emirates
40
Spain
40

The United Kingdom, Spain and Canada are all up.

The United States, Australia, Finland and France are down.

Russia, Ireland and Brazil are back in the top 10.

Japan, Germany and the United Arab Emirates are out of the top 10.

I have also received visitors from the following countries: the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Poland, Croatia, Greece, Moldova, the Ukraine, Estonia, U.A.E., Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa, New Zealand, Peru

I hope you enjoyed your visit and that you visit again.
Mark Moncrieff

Upon Hope Blog - A Traditional Conservative Future
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