I’ve learned over the years to be wary of idealists. It comes with age, I suppose. Their arguments are simple and seductive; their objectives invariably right. So why am I wary?
Talk to people who describe themselves as idealists and it won’t be long before you hear fine words like fairness, tolerance and equality. You’ll also hear them say social justice a lot – a vague, meaningless, catch-all phrase beloved by earnest lefties everywhere.
You’ll hear how we should all be proud of multiculturalism, affirmative action, and the minimum wage. What of course they don’t realise, or simply refuse to believe, is the damage these good intentions have caused and continue to cause, often to the very people they are supposed to be helping.
Above all, the lefty idealist wants equality at any cost: equality of opportunity, equality of achievement, equality of income, outcome, wealth and health. An equality of equals all equally equal. Let’s start by taxing the greedy, undeserving super-rich a lot more and end child poverty by Wednesday week.
But there is little or no real thought process beyond all this. For most idealists, simply wishing is enough. It satisfies a heartfelt need to feel good about themselves. And if a warm, self-righteous glow and a Fairtrade banana do the trick, then that’s fine by this old cynic. Besides, they have no real power.
They are not dangerous to our economy, our liberties, or our general well-being. Perhaps only the credulous individual is in danger of being swept away with the simplicity of the idealist’s arguments, before feeling a complete berk later when mugged by reality.
Perhaps an old cynic like me, too, is in danger, but only of being embarrassed: I used to believe all the same things they do, and with the same ardent, passionate intensity.
But that idealist can become very dangerous if he gets power. Some of the most destructive people ever to hit the planet have been idealists who have secured power.
They all had an ideal vision: Robespierre, Lenin, Hitler, Mao, Ceausescu. Idealism and real power.
This country is, I believe, in the grip of idealistic socialists whose power is growing by the day. There are over 1400 quangos in this country. They are a powerful but unelected network of the Righteous, frantically trying to justify their existence by bombarding us daily with the results of their ‘expert’ studies into every aspect of our private lives. Now that is power.
It is a power with equality at the top of the list – everything else comes a poor second. It is a power that is dragging this once great country ineluctably towards a totalitarian state.
We do not have a totalitarian state in Britain now. But look at NuLabour and you do see that same ardent and impatient desire to do good, at any cost.
So is this is ‘soft totalitarianism’? Has NuLabour got a ‘semi’ on. (I think I should leave that analogy there, hanging, so to speak).
What is true is that every totalitarian nightmare of the last 100 years began with idealists who had a simple, seductive, clean, tidy, vision of the future. Not the distant future, the near future. These idealists were impatient.
The trouble for the empowered idealist is that the populace have this tendency to all want different things. They each have different wants, needs and desires. They have different levels of intelligence. They tend to want to do things that they want to do, to live how they like, to say what they want, to keep what’s theirs, and, as much as possible, to be left alone.
But that, to the socialist idealist, is selfish and unfair. To them, it is freedom that is dangerous. They don’t trust it, they don’t like it, and they don’t want it. It’s messy, unfair, unjust, unequal.
Countries tend to all want different things too. They tend to have their own way of doing things. That is something a powerful group of impatient idealists called the EU cannot stand, and is doing its utmost to put right. Democracy, choice and the rights of the individual, whether country or human being, just don’t get the job done for them. In fact they just get in the way, and therefore must be sacrificed on the altar of equality.
The methods necessary to make this happen must become more and more inhuman. It is inevitable; there is no other way. The individual, with all his messy, complex desires and ambitions must be controlled.
At what point idealism is completely replaced by the love of power itself is uncertain. But it falls somewhere in amongst central planning, propaganda, fear, paranoia, coercion, censorship, violence and complete State control.
It doesn’t very sound ideal to me.
