The War Against Truth and Liberty -

An Analysis of Britain's Political and Cultural Crisis

Philip Vander Elst

Philip Vander Elst is a British freelance author, journalist and lecturer. For many years he was editor of Freedom Today and has worked on the staff of the Centre for Policy Studies and the Institute of Economic Affairs.

No previous generation in Britain has had to cope with the volume of information with which we are bombarded daily through newspapers, magazines, the electronic media, and the Internet, yet never has it been harder to be properly informed about the world in which we live. The principal reason for this is that few of those who control Britain's cultural institutions are genuinely interested in the pursuit of truth or excellence, and this is clearly reflected in the inadequacy and deterioration of the mainstream British media.

To put it bluntly, recent years have witnessed a noticeable "dumbing down" of political news coverage on television and in the press. Not only is less time and space devoted to proper in-depth reporting of domestic and international politics than in the past, but what coverage there is tends to be increasingly superficial and sensationalist, with journalists as keen to create "news" by blowing up rumours and focusing on personal divisions and scandals, as they are to report accurately the real substance of relevant facts and arguments. Hence, for instance, the persistent tendency to trivialise the British political debate about European unification by representing it as a personal quarrel between rival factions, instead of what it really is: a major conflict of principle about the future of Britain as a self-governing democracy. Serious political and international coverage is also diminished and distorted by the media's obsession with visual imagery and gimmicky "sound bites," and by its increasingly shallow and inward looking preoccupation with questions of personal habit, image, and lifestyle.

If trivialisation were the only sin of our mainstream media, its effects would be harmful enough, but the damaging impact on public taste and opinion is reinforced by a persistent political and cultural bias against orthodox Christianity and conservative values-especially in the world of television and radio. Not only are traditional Christian beliefs and conservative attitudes ridiculed and criticised far more often than they are articulated or defended, but opportunities for intelligent debate are constantly undermined by the loaded terminology and misleading labels employed by the "liberal" media elite. To mention only one but extremely significant example, consider the use habitually made of the term "right-wing." On nearly every occasion this label is applied to individuals, organisations or publications, no attempt is made to define its meaning. Instead, it is used indiscriminately to characterise wholly distinct views-even contradictory ones-about completely different subjects, from capital punishment to economic policy and the future of the welfare State. Hence, for instance, the absurd practice of making libertarian opponents of state-control share the same "right-wing" label with Fascists, despite the latter's hostility to personal liberty and belief in a collectivist and totalitarian social order. Furthermore, whereas the term "right-wing" is habitually attached to Conservative-minded individuals and organisations in news reports and book reviews, their political opposite numbers are rarely if ever tagged with a "left-wing" or "radical" label, thus reinforcing the impression that while there is something controversial and therefore vaguely unsavoury about "conservatives," their opponents are part of some undefined and unprejudiced mainstream representing all nice and sensible people.

Given this background and the disorientation so many people feel in the midst of rapid political and cultural change, there is a desperate need in Britain for intelligent Conservative journalism which can provide unclouded windows on the world through which readers can see, in their true colours, the important trends and issues currently neglected or misrepresented by the conventional media. This is a doubly important task because so much of what is happening today threatens the freedom and stability of our society, as well as the quality of our civilisation.

The first and most obvious problem we face is that the very possibility of clear and intelligent thinking about contemporary issues is bedevilled by the growth of "political correctness." This can be defined as an attitude of mind which restricts honest and open debate by suppressing evidence and arguments which happen to conflict with the received wisdom of the "liberal" establishment. Of the increasing number of subjects affected by this creeping disease, two in particular stand out: multiculturalism and positive discrimination. In both cases freedom of thought and speech face a mounting threat from the erroneous conviction that it is wrong to compare and judge cultures and individuals by some common standard because to do so is "discriminatory" and offends against the pseudo-liberal dogma that all cultures and persons are "equal." Yet only a moment's thought reveals the absurdity and danger inherent in this attitude.

It is impossible to value liberty or believe in human rights unless we begin by accepting that there is an objective moral code which tells us that human life is precious, individuals are ends in themselves, and power ought to be exercised in the interests of the people. But if it is therefore agreed that oppression and injustice are evils we ought to condemn, this necessarily implies that there is a common moral standard which justifies our criticism of illiberal cultures and ideologies. And if that is the case, we are not only entitled to condemn the Nazis and the Klu Klux Klan, but also Islamic oppression of religious minorities, and Third World dictatorships in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Similarly, if individuals share the same rights and are to be judged by the same objective standards, personal merit should determine their employment prospects, not politically correct criteria of race and gender. These are not only inherently unjust, but also counterproductive, since they encourage resentment against the favoured minorities and thereby breed social conflict.

The corruption of thought, of which political correctness is both a cause and a symptom, has been reinforced since the 1960s by a pervasive climate of cultural egalitarianism and moral relativism, hostile to all notions of excellence, and incompatible with the maintenance of high cultural standards. The result, not surprisingly, has been growing illiteracy in schools and colleges; a marked upsurge of obscenity, violence and pornography in films and on television; an enormous rise in the number of divorces and single-parent families; and, as a well documented consequence of all these destructive influences, a steep rise in juvenile crime, delinquency, homelessness and suicides. To this sad litany must be added a problem of drug-addiction which no Western government has yet succeeded in overcoming. These disastrous trends, moreover, have not only affected all Western countries, but are now spreading to some non-Western societies in Asia and Africa, thereby compromising the reputation of Western liberal institutions in the eyes of many people in the Third World who need the benefits of personal and political liberty.

Another significant symptom of the cultural crisis afflicting Britain and other Western countries, is the cult of youth and modernity. This, again, first surfaced in the 1960s, but has remained part of our political and emotional landscape ever since. Among its many harmful consequences, two deserve special attention. In politics, it has encouraged the thoughtless pursuit of trendiness and innovation for its own sake, and a corresponding loss of respect for stability, tradition, age and experience. This has not only distorted the criteria for selecting political leaders, but has encouraged unnecessary institutional change, with all that has meant in terms of excessive legislation, administrative disruption, and psychological disorientation. Beyond politics, within our opinion-moulding institutions, it has provoked such a fear of appearing old-fashioned, as to create a wholly irrational prejudice in favour of new ideas and practices, regardless of their inherent worth.

Our society has not only been damaged by the superficial thinking underlying the cult of modernity and political correctness; it has also suffered from a shallow conception of community and a naive view of democracy, both of which have led to a harmful and dangerous enlargement of the power and functions of government. The socialist fallacy of equating "society" with the State, for example, has been an effective instrument for extending the boundaries of government beyond its prudent limits, because it has confused altruism with collectivism. The romantic but similarly unjustified belief in the inherent wisdom and benevolence of the "people," has been an equally potent weapon, because it has disarmed resistance to the concentration of power in the hands of transient popular majorities.

The consequences in recent history of these errors have been disastrous: the total destruction of liberty in large parts of the world for most of the twentieth century; the entrenchment of despotism behind the facade of "majority rule" in most postcolonial countries; and in the West a steady weakening of personal responsibility and civil society as the growth of the Welfare State has reduced both the incentives and opportunities for self-help, mutual aid, and private philanthropy.

Whilst it is true that the collapse of Communism and the failure of central planning has set in motion a general global trend in favour of privatisation and free markets, this does not mean that the need to control the power of the State has become less pressing. Freedom can be just as easily curtailed by excessive regulation and taxation. Furthermore, if the spectre of nationalisation has receded, new threats to personal privacy and liberty now loom through the mist as a result of the growing trend towards a cashless society and new developments in information and surveillance technology. Big Brother may have relinquished some of the "commanding heights" of the economy, but he is undoubtedly watching us and seeking to create a society in which it is getting more and more difficult for the individual to escape his reach or avoid his gaze. There is certainly no room for complacency in a Britain in which, despite the years of Thatcherism, nearly half our national income is still appropriated and spent by the State, and which is now subject to the nannying instincts of Tony Blair's New Labour Government. Indeed, the fact that we are lumbered with such a meddlesome administration is especially alarming given that our society's increasing desire for a physically risk-free life offers politicians and officials endless opportunities for establishing new controls over us in the name of "crime prevention," "food safety," "protecting the environment," and other pretexts.

The importance of monitoring and restricting the role of the State is therefore not only as great as in the past, but if anything, is becoming more urgent given the current trend away from national sovereignty and towards world government. On our own continent, the process of European unification has been slowly but steadily centralising power in new European institutions since the 1950s. As a result, the European Union has virtually become a European superstate, embracing fifteen formerly independent nations whose ranks will almost certainly be swelled by the rest of their neighbours over the next two decades. Beyond Europe, the movement towards supranationalism is manifest in current attempts to strengthen the United Nations by increasing its revenues, providing it with an enhanced military capability, and giving it some tax-raising powers. The diminution of national sovereignty has also received a significant fillip from the transformation of GATT into the World Trading Organisation (WTO). As a consequence, the liberalisation of world trade is no longer being determined by the voluntary consent of member countries operating according to the old rule of unanimity. Instead, new rules and regulations can now be imposed by majority vote within the WTO, without individual countries being able to use their national veto in defence of their legitimate interests.

What all this adds up to, is that the dangers to liberty flowing from intellectual confusion and misplaced idealism at the national level, are now being reinforced by utopian illusions at the international level. Whilst there are various forces and pressures promoting the trend towards global control of national governments, its principal motor is the erroneous conviction that national sovereignty is the main obstacle to the creation of a more peaceful and prosperous world. The evidence of history, however, especially in the twentieth century, is that the principal cause of war, poverty, and oppression has been the overmighty state. As American political scientist, Professor R. J. Rummel, has demonstrated, in his recent books, Death by Government and Power Kills many more people have been murdered by their own tyrannical rulers than have died in wars between different countries. Moreover, it has been these rulers' appetite for wealth and power which has provoked most international conflicts, not the division of mankind into separate linguistic or national groups. The objective of peace campaigners and other reformers should therefore be to find ways of changing illiberal political cultures, rather than seeking to restrict the right to self-determination of free and democratic nations. To continue instead pursuing the goal of world government-or even intermediate objectives like the construction of a European State-merely creates new and greater concentrations of power whose potential abuse is increasingly difficult to prevent or evade.

In truth the war against national sovereignty currently being waged by Western "liberals" harnesses all the ideological elements-collectivism, cultural relativism, and the cult of modernity-responsible for our present political and cultural crisis. Whilst the spirit of collectivism encourages illusions about the benevolent uses of state power on a supranational scale, cultural relativism and the cult of modernity undermine patriotic loyalties, and call into question old institutions and the heritage of the past. As a result, what is most precious and distinctive about the Anglo-American political tradition-namely, its love of liberty and its experience of free institutions-is being thrown into a melting-pot with ideological ingredients contributed by less successful and less liberal political traditions. In consequence there is a growing danger that not only will our lives be increasingly affected by supranational decision-making processes beyond our control; but even worse, these processes will inevitably be influenced by the authoritarian and statist cultures which predominate in most countries outside the English-speaking world. Even within the European Union, old Anglo-American attitudes to law, liberty, and administration are being distorted and diluted by their increasing exposure to the more bureaucratic and collectivist mentality of other European countries, historically far more prone than Britain to overgovernment and the related disease of political and administrative corruption.

If our future is overshadowed by cultural decay and the threat of tyranny, the reason mainly lies in the steady erosion over a long period of certain critically important Judaeo-Christian ideas and values. Of these, the most vital and obvious is belief in God.

For most of this century, and perhaps longer, a majority of our intellectuals have ceased to believe that there is an eternal and divine Power behind the universe responsible for its creation and for the moral law perceived by our consciences. Consequently, whereas earlier generations detected the footprints of their Creator in the laws and works of Nature, and in their own moral perceptions and experience, their modern successors tend to attribute these things to subjective feeling and blind and purposeless material forces. Hence we have the extraordinary paradox that whereas computers are recognised as the carefully designed product of human intelligence, the infinitely more complex and wonderful structure of the human brain is seen as an accidental by-product of the mindless movement of atoms. Hence, too, the modern habit of regarding moral values and religious beliefs as a subjective by-product of social, economic and psychological forces, rather than a reflection of, or a response to, an eternal and unchanging Goodness governing human life and destiny.

As a result of this fundamental change in the intellectual climate, our old sense of right and wrong, good and evil, has been weakened and confused. This in turn has undermined ideals of duty, excellence and personal merit, since it is difficult to honour obligations, or judge personal achievement and character, in the absence of a common and objective standard of value. For the same reason, liberty has been increasingly abused in secularised Western countries because the ideals which originally gave it its value-like the advancement of truth, the protection of conscience, and the development of the individual's highest moral and creative faculties-are part of a moral order and mental universe which is passing away. Instead, the cause of freedom is increasingly trivialised and compromised by its identification with the pursuit of wealth and pleasure in its crudest and most selfish forms.

Another equally serious consequence of the decay of the Judaeo-Christian ethic and worldview has been the devaluation of the individual and the exaltation of the state in the twentieth century. Not only has the trivialisation of liberty reduced its former grandeur and prestige, but the importance and dignity attached to individual human beings has inevitably lessened with the emergence of a materialistic culture dominated by science and technology. Instead of being seen as a unique soul made in the image of God and endowed with an immortal destiny, the atheistic outlook of most contemporary intellectuals views the human person as an unplanned and temporary product of nature, and as such, devoid of eternal significance and implicitly subordinate to the interests of collective institutions like the state. This undoubtedly explains why so many of our cultural leaders support abortion and accept government regulation of the family. In addition, modern atheism removes a further barrier to tyranny because it encourages the illusion that the Bible's pessimistic estimate of human nature is simply a reactionary religious prejudice rather than a divine revelation, carrying with it, a political warning about the need to avoid utopian illusions and excessive concentrations of power. Because of this, our culture is vulnerable to the attractions of charismatic figures promising radical change.

The truth must be faced, however uncomfortable it makes us. By turning their backs on the Judaeo-Christian tradition, for decades now Western intellectuals have been throwing away the accumulated wisdom and achievements of previous generations. By continuing along this destructive path, they are not only endangering our freedom and the quality of our lives; they are also subjecting us to a narrow intellectual provincialism reflecting the shallow preoccupations and prejudices of the present age. Instead we need to allow "the clean breeze of the centuries" to sweep through our minds, correcting and complementing contemporary ideas. Only by respecting and studying the experience of the past can we acquire the knowledge and perspective by which to judge existing developments and the words and actions, promises and beliefs, of our current generation of political and cultural leaders. Only by learning from the past can we safeguard our future.