Blond's anti-liberalism

Rhoda Klapp

The fingers of state control are everywhere. Our schools are getting worse. Nobody can fix the sink estates or the ghettoes. And this guy wants to break up Tesco.

Hawkeye

Having read the article my main impression is that there goes five minutes of my life that I won't get back.

If I understood it correctly, and stripping out all the '-isms' and 'neo's what you are saying is "Socialists lack morality".

Athanasius

"people should be free from the habitual tyranny found in Catholic lands"

Any examples Mr Hobson? Recent ones?

Liberalists need to think long and hard about what freedom really is. How can we be free, and what is best served to achieve that freedom.

The answer is, of course, to be who we really are, i.e. to realise our existence in God's image. Freedom from the destruction of sin, from the imprisoning harshness of the world.

How do we get there? Obedience to God. Surrendering the self, with its faulty perceptions of Good, unto the one true Good.

And how do we achieve that? Through His Church. I know you won't like that, Mr Hobson, but give it some thought.

Paul B

Sorry Theo, I saw the name Rowan Williams and switched off. I think he`s twerp.

Tanuki

Athanasius - as a self-made Man, I only too well realise the presence of the Creator in myself, and obey his Word to the letter.

Right now he's telling me to pour the second double Whicky of the evening. Who am I to disobey the Word of God?

Tanuki

Athanasius - as a self-made Man, I only too well realise the presence of the Creator in myself, and obey his Word to the letter.

Right now he's telling me to pour the second double Whisky of the evening. Who am I to disobey the Word of God?

Lloyd

Bland conflates Disraeli’s problem with the rapacity of the Industrial Revolution with Thatcher’s problem with a near-Soviet state command of all important industrial and service industries.

He failed to take some sting out of the harshness. She succeeded with industry but failed totally with services – witness education, transport and utilities. This is not a question of unfettered capitalistic monopolies.

The much mis-quoted, “there is no society”, meant that community and local activism is destroyed by statism acting to override communitarianism and to encourage welfare serfdom.

The oft-heard cries against the tyrannies of local authorities, the politicisation of the police and the Orwellian surveillance of an innocent population imposed without legitimate mandate are heartfelt pleas for a degree of local democracy and self-reliance.

Tesco, Intel, Microsoft, Sony, Unilever, etc are market leaders that have made the lives of us middle-class proles more affordable and healthy.

No, against the life in 1900, I’m glad my children can eat meat or fish every day and don’t die of scurvy. Just a question – would you trust Sainsbury or the corner butcher to check your beef or chicken is fresh and healthy?

The symbiotic balance between a market state and support for communities has always been a sine qua non of conservatism (and old Liberalism) and the current mea culpa of New Labour is pathetic.

Mr Grymoire

Blond inhabits the Oliver James whacko, affluenza school of thought. He won't be happy until the poor have finally learned to be grateful for pisspoor goods and services whose local provenance is kindly overseen by benevolent philosopher kings. When oh when will the proles stop their damaging dalliance with convenience and affordability!

Kevin Barry

The extent of the problem is explicit in the words: "atomised" individuals don't make for a very "cohesive" social group. It's wrong to say this is a brilliantly original thesis, or that it's properly separated from a critique of capitalism or the capitalist conception of citizen-consumers. I don't know what you mean by "social vision", but the thing lacking is shared sense of belonging to a group larger than yourself, with principles more inspiring than the decision whether to watch sky, the i-player or a dvd. I'm not suggesting we all rush to drag our Hegel off the bookshelf, but a little less individualism would be a step in a healthy direction.

Rory Sutherland

An example of a Catholic tyrant? A recent one?

Robert Mugabe any good?

Athanasius

Re Rory Sutherland.

Try harder. Mugabe may be a tyrant who is Catholic (in name at least), but it is not a Catholic tyranny. Zimbabwe could hardly be called a Catholic country, either in terms of leadership or demographics.

Rome has spoken out strongly against Mugabe in fact (and the present Pope refused when he requested an audience). That tells its own story.

Hey

Athanasius - Liberalism and Protestantism frequently attacked Catholic tyrannies, and did so up until the end of Iberian despotism. It's still attacked by the wild-eyed left on birth control and abortion. Christopher Hitchens pays for his drinks (which says something!) attacking Popes and Mother Theresa.

There are no actual Catholic tyrannies now, but Louisian despotism only looks good compared to Jacobinism and Bonapartism, while the Habsburgs provided tyranny and misrule across vast swaths of Europe.

Do keep up and try to understand the historical allusions being made, you're embarrassing yourself.

Athanasius

Re Hey

Thank you for your comments - you are absolutely right, of course, I was being disingenuous to isolate that particular quotation for the sake of my own agenda. Although I'm impressed that you managed to draw so many conclusions about my failure to understand the historical allusions from that one question.

I only get a little fed up with the way liberal Protestants, like Mr Hobson, so readily equate Catholicism with tyranny. But as you say, this isn't really the place for such a debate, so I apologise.

Alessandra

What strikes me most is the complete ignorance of history displayed by Hobson. He says Protestant countries have provided people with freedom. What kind of freedom??? The have destroyed all intermediate bodies, so that society is only composed by individuals and the State which collects all power in its hands. Can this be called liberalism??? The value of tolerance, dignity for people care for poor and so on didn't exist before Christianity, Hobson wants to pretend that it is this kind of liberalism (the real heritage of a Christian humanism) that Blond is attacking, but this is not the liberalism Blond wants to criticize (Blond's target is more related to neo-liberals like Rawls and the myth of the naked public square and its correspondence in economy) . A neo-liberal view of tolerance generates an absolute and totalitarian State if it's separated from truth and common good

Simon Denis

First to disagree with Mr Hobson. Rightly he defends Liberalism; rightly he observes that it is necessary but not sufficient. Wrongly, he dismisses the one thing which supplied its deficiencies: nationalism. Likeness is the only bond between strangers in a free society. The closer the likeness, the keener the bond. It is no surprise, therefore, that the multicultural Britain of today is also a surveillance state. It is equally unsurprising that an expanding swathe of utterances and opinions now carries social and legal penalties. Because we are so unlike, the state has to force us together. As one miserable looking man from the midlands observed during the last general election, "there's no community here." Quite. We are not given time to absorb and influence one wave of immigrants before another washes up in our towns and cities - "In sequent toil all forwards do contend." This is not to say that minorities have no place; rather it is to insist on the old relationship between the indigenous, core population and the wide variety of others with which it shares its homeland. This carries implications not only about the speed of inflow but about the optimum proportion of society made up of immigrant groups. Until 1997, both parties accepted this compromise, but Labour, cheated of its desire to rob and level and dumb down - at least, in private schools - chose to exercise its "radicalism" by opening the floodgates.

So Blond - whoever he is - far from attacking the market should be propping up the other side of the Liberal arch - the ethno-culturally defined nation state.