A further example of “why-oh-why-are-we-not-able-to-return-to-1890?” type commentary from paleo-conservatives (small c, as this applies to card-carrying Labour supporters as well as Tories), appears in the Thursday, January 3 edition of the Times newspaper (UK). Written by David Selborne, a leftist historian with strong authortarian leanings, in The Tories’ future can be found in their past, he chides the Tories for their concerns with freedom and urges them to come full-on and support the public sector instead.
As an example of Bourbon-style learning nothing and forgetting nothing, this takes some beating. (Consider the vast erosion of civil liberties and the Common law in the UK over the past 20 years). Selbourne has a valid point in bemoaning the neglect of civil society (Edmund Burke’s ‘little platoons’), but like most statists misses the obvious point that it has been the growth of the state, such as the monopoly education system, that has wreaked so much havoc. The poor man accuses the Tories of imposing market disciplines on schools. If only that were the case! I think we should arrive at a new name to describe the habit among such folk of accusing X of precisely the very opposite of what they are doing. Call it “false market fundamentalism syndrome,” perhaps.
