Samizdata

The article titled Liberal Authoritarianism from Uncibal should serve as a foundational understanding of where not just the British state is but to a fair extent much of the Western World.

Starmer, it is plain, is one of those socialists for whom the appeal of socialism lies not so much in its amelioration of poverty, but rather in its provision of a rationale for the imposition of a perfect order on society – the construction of a ‘great social machine’, as Sydney Webb once put it, within which every individual must be made to fit. There is the touch of the Javert about him; he is one of those men who, all things considered, prefers the stars, who ‘know [their] place in the sky’, to people, who have an irritating tendency to exhibit free will. There is also in the air around him a quality that CS Lewis called ‘Saturnocentric’, which Michael Ward summarised as a combination of the ‘astringent, stern, tough, unmerry, uncomfortable, unconciliatory, and serious’. It is no surprise at all that Starmer should once have made his living as England & Wales’ Director of Public Prosecutions: this is a man who would take to the political task of steering public policy regarding criminal prosecutions like a duck to water.

It should also be no surprise that Starmer was once a human rights lawyer. Some have found it difficult to square these two aspects of his character. Silkie Carlo, the prominent civil liberties campaigner, for instance, remarked in a recent interview concerning the use of live facial recognition how strange she found it that Sir Keir, who purportedly is a human rights advocate, would embrace a technology that seems almost designed to usher a Chinese total surveillance system into the UK.

But this confusion is based on a complete misunderstanding of what human rights are all about.

– David McGrogan.

I heartily recommend reading the entire linked article as it is penetrating indeed. But I do lament the loss of the term ‘liberal’ to now mean someone intolerant of all unlicenced opinions and behaviours, i.e. to mean someone who is profoundly illiberal.

This excellent article brings two other quotes to mind, one from a certain Italian leader and the other modestly from me.

Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state (Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato)

– Benito Mussolini (speech to Chamber of Deputies – 9 December 1928)

…and…

Socialism must be the most ironic use of language in the history of human linguistics: it is the advocacy of the complete replacement of social interaction with political interaction, the very negation of civil society itself.

– Perry de Havilland