Across all of human politics, the Western liberal tradition stands out for its ambitions to circumscribe state power. The people, in this tradition, are held to be the locus of sovereignty, and most Western governments are bound by elaborate constitutions which purport to constrain their jurisdiction over citizens, and which many regard as bearing a nearly religious authority. In Germany, an entire government agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, is granted wide powers to hunt down potential constitutional enemies. These constitutions do many things. They extend a wide of variety of rights not only to citizens, but often to all of humanity. They often divide state powers by placing the judicial, executive and legislative branches of government in quasi-independent silos, hoping that each of these branches will defend their respective prerogatives from depredations by the others and, in the process, impose self-interested checks on the reach and the arbitrary exercise of power.
This approach to politics has not aged well. Covid was a low point, simply for revealing the steely and actually quite anti-liberal authoritarianism these systems have been nurturing in their innermost chambers for many decades. Western liberal states in the modern era do not behave like limited systems which derive their sovereignty from the people. Every day, they more and more resemble the kinds of unchecked, totalitarian regimes we remember from the Soviet period. If anything, they seem poised to become a good deal worse, for they are able to achieve relatively prosperous economic conditions and to harness popular support far more efficiently, thus evading the harder constraints on the ambitions of the old Warsaw Pact governments.
State power wishes to be free, in the same way that water wishes to flow downhill. The problem with liberal checks on power, is that they forced the state to develop novel legal and cultural solutions to overcome them. State politics in liberal systems has thus come to resemble antibiotic-resistent bacteria in hospitals – it has evolved a general resistance to constitutional limitations, in the process becoming an altogether worse and more dangerous animal. The mutual checks and balances imposed on the state by its competing branches, for example, have merely incentivised the political establishment to develop and enforce among its members a uniform elite outlook, which encourages cooperation towards shared goals among erstwhile rivals. This cultural solution has proven wildly successful, not merely releasing the state from many old encumbrances, but even extending its reach across many more facets of society, as ordinary people adopt and enforce the prestige ideology of the regime.
Rights and individual sovereignty have required a rather different, perhaps even more insidious solution. Rather than undermining or qualifying these prerogatives, state ideologues have leaned into them instead. Rights in the liberal conception are fundamentally pre-political; men are endowed with them by their creator and they are inalienable. The concept thus promises many avenues for subverting the popular, democratically expressed will, and the state has worked vigorously to expand the concept of rights, investing ever more regime clients with a vast palette of novel rights. This growing field of unquestionable, sacred entitlements circumscribes popular political expression and undermines those less convenient rights that liberalism started out with. Via recognising – even implicitly – a right to health, for example, the state supersedes the older, far less convenient rights to freedom of assembly and expression. These novel second- and third-generation rights generally expand the power of the state by being positive, rather than negative, in nature; and they are typically framed to encourage the passivity of the individual who possesses them. Crucial is that the state assume all responsibility for defining and realising these rights on the individual’s behalf. More and more, one has the impression that individuals do not possess rights at all. Rather, the state has arrogated to itself the right of defining and defending the special status of specific collective minorities.
Nowhere do novel liberal rights metastasise so rabidly as in the discourse surrounding sexual and gender minorities. The ever-growing rainbow coalition, symbolised by a flag that every year gains new colours and a puzzling initialism that is forever acquiring new letters (LGBTQQIP2SA appears to be the latest version), is a cutting edge of state power. Each of the identities subsumed into this juggernaut abounds with utility for the administrative state, and opens all manner of avenues for government bureaucrats to define and regulate the most intimate aspects of human culture, behaviour and sexual expression. It is no accident that the pride flag has become the most pervasive and probably the most sacred political symbol in the Western world. It will increasingly displace national symbols in prominence and moral significance.
Modern states are powerful things, vast machines built of human components that act according to their own logic and towards their own ends. Technology and the rise of mass society following industrialisation have expanded their reach as never before. They don’t need liberalism to be terrifying or perverse, but it is increasingly hard to avoid the conclusion, that liberalism has made many modern states much more terrifying and perverse than they would otherwise be – and their depredations much more difficult to oppose, for being all the harder to recognise.
This article originally appeared on Eugyppius’s Substack newsletter. You can subscribe here.
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Misses the actual point and crucially the real objective.
The true Rainbow was a covenant between God and Mankind.
It is now a symbol of Satan. Why? Perversion, mental illness and denying real biological science. Further, using fascist means (brownshirts, propaganda, state money, the police) to enforce it. Mainstreaming perversion destroys the family.
Goal: The Gay-Trans cult is baying like a wolf with rabies for a genderless society – a CCP and Maoism in which the genders don’t exist and both real genders will have the same clothes, eye glasses, haircuts, beliefs, lives and be ruled by the same uni-party-corrupt-totalitarian-state and follow the same programs waving their rainbow coloured book as they scream hero worship at the local No Pride parade of freak shows.
Whatever the popular imagination has it to be, there’s no biblical depiction of Satan that shows him interested in human sexuality of any sort. The offers that the Tempter makes in the wilderness demonstrate that he isn’t interested in gold, guns or girls.
The Apostle Paul made it clear that it is impermissible for Christians to consider human government, in itself, to be an evil thing. At the same time, just as religious communities inevitable lose where religious communism replaces the individual conscience, so human society must also lose when such a uniform secular conscience is imposed on its members.
Zzzzzzzzz, ugh, sorry, what where you saying?
Very true. There are no shortage of commentators prepared to denounce sexual practices or predelictions as ‘Satanic,’ or indeed any other aspect of their neighbour’s lifestyle of which they personally disapprove or are envious. However, this is perhaps a classic case of looking at the spec in another’s eye whilst ignoring the plank in one’s own. What about the sheer hybris of the last three hundred odd years, and particularly the last fifty, that sincerely believes that all the World’s problems can be solved by Human reason, and has on occasion even gone as far a proclaiming a Cult of Reason, as though there couldn’t possibly be a greater intelligence than ours? What about the fanatical belief that everything, including the human soul, can be understood in terms of purely physiological and mechanical mechanisms, famously expressed in Noah Harari’s assertion that human beings are ‘hackable animals’? What about the overt deification of the state, as seen with the ritualistic applause for the NHS of thee years ago and a key part of supposedly-liberating Communist ideology? What about the idolatrous belief that money has some numinous power that calls into being the goods and services in purchases rather than simply being a useful tool to facilitate trade in them? What about the flagrant affront to religion of using lockdowns to close churches on Easter and Mosques on Ramadan? What happened to all the great religious controversies of the past, over the human / divine nature of Christ, the ‘filoque,’ the nature of the sacrament of communion, the Trinity, the appropriateness or not of using human images in religious worship? What about teaching people to listen to their Conscience rather than adhere to pre-formed checklists of things they should be pro and anit? As religion is so oft reduced to ‘caring and sharing’ and petit-bourgeois prudishness, it does indeed seem that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the World he didn’t exist.
Thomas Jefferson declared that elected representatives were a ‘natural aristocracy’. Elected but still a ruling class. That class has now developed a conscience that they consider superior and as a consequence impose it on others, even if it makes those others violate their own.
As for the people, they petition government as their recent ancestors once petitioned God.
Whatever colour stripe represents you, you cannot not be in the flag.
I must admit what you’ve just said sounds very intellectual and religious based, but, as an ordinary human, I haven’t got a clue about the point you’re trying to make! Sounds like you’re on a higher plain than me!
This ridiculously long list of letters should be severed after the LGB part because ‘Pride’ now has been hijacked, weaponized and used to push an extremely damaging agenda, with a focal point being intentional harm to our kids and vulnerable teens/adults ( e.g those with autism and mental health issues ). It has absolutely 0% to do with the gay community anymore and gays are denouncing this ideological attack on society and on all people’s rights. This nonsense is, after all, an affront to everybody and society as a whole. It is populated and driven by some very sick, psychotic and delusional people and has nothing whatsoever to do with inclusivity or equality.
https://twitter.com/againstgrmrs/status/1667947033565569024?cxt=HHwWgIC9_ay_3qUuAAAA
Pride has been hijacked as cover for grooming children. Both the UN & WHO are advocating for sexual liberation & relationships with children. I understand that as paedophilia.
Mark Steele made a point that the Pride rainbow flag is a corrupted rainbow of 6 colours, unlike the rainbow seen in nature & likens it to Satanism.
Check out this poll of the LGB community. It may be a small number of responses but the replies give an indication of why the vast majority don’t celebrate Pride. At least, not in the way it is being rubbed in our faces and practiced now, like all the fetish clubs have opened their doors and put on a ”family friendly” display of exhibitionism.
https://twitter.com/DutchLGB/status/1667622355927982085
HLGB coverrs all of normal human sexual behaviour. The rest are just deviations, perversions and mental ilnesses. Of course there is no colour in the Inclusivity flag for heterosexual. Rather it is used as a symbol of hate, (my, how did you all get here, I wonder.)
It was a rotten concept to begin with. Like all mammals, humans have sex with each other which is part of their nature and not something to be proud of. I mean, you don’t see people walking around with T-shirts stating I proudly have chronic diarrhea! which is part of a similarly basic function of the human body and people with chronic diarrhea are certainly not very visible among us despite there are plenty.
Sexual preferences are not achievements and really something that’s better kept private as they’re of absolutely no concern to most other people.
I have a friend who is gay and as he said during a conversation, ‘I am not ashamed but why should I be proud. Have I studied hard, have I made sacrifices to be gay? It’s just how I was born. That lot (gay pride marchers) are nothing to do with gay, they are just a bunch of degenerates and trannies. (in the cross dresser sense) I don’t know anyone who goes’. Then he made a pass. I love that man. In a very butch and non-whoopsy way, of course.
For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man…
Thanks preacher! Get that from a book did you!?
Yep
The same good book says that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.
Fair enough, my god is found between my temples not in one!
Every peace to you and yours
Very clever ;)…My God has heaven as his throne and earth as his footstool and I want to worship him with all my heart, all my soul and all my mind. Even King Solomon who built the first temple said ‘But who is able to build him a house, since heaven, even highest heaven, cannot contain him?’
Wish you well.
Prove it!
Sorry but blind faith never answered anything!
It may be hard to believe but I’m not against religion or the religious! I have a lot of respect, because they are genuinely respectful
Just open your eyes and look around!!
I do, it’s called nature!
Wasting your time Dinger.
The religious fruitcakes are no different from the alphabet mafia – they KNOW what is true, and no other viewpoint is valid.
I know what you mean, but generally people are good and that’s better than bad intentions.
And although we all might disagree on how it got here, the world is a stunningly beautiful place non the less!
“The religious fruitcakes…”
This comment is unwarranted.
Appreciate what you say. I’d have to agree with you about blind faith never answering anything. My faith isn’t blind – it’s based on history, science and experience.
I also have a fictional work on my bookshelf – it tells me that all we have to do to beat evil is to throw a ring into a volcano….
That sounds like a rather silly comparison.
And I think Tolkien would agree that it’s a silly comparison…
Don’t forget also: rainbows = children trapped in their homes by cruel and inhumane lockdowns, while being told they’re doing it to save Granny.
Surely it’s also time to get rid of those NHS rainbows painted on some roads in London? Not the pedestrian crossings, but where “NHS” appears over a rainbow heart.
How did it come to this? It began with tolerance and respect, which most people support.
Now they promote gender ideology to children and punish parents who do not “affirm their child’s gender identity”. With no debate as dissent is criminalised as “hate”
https://freebeacon.com/california/california-bill-would-punish-parents-who-dont-affirm-their-childs-gender-identity/
if you look at the second article in the same publication….
California lawmakers are advancing a bill that would redefine the inability of men to get pregnant as “infertility” and entitle them to insurance-covered fertility treatments.
The world (in particular the USA) have gone stark staring mad…another example of the ‘West’ having absolutely nothing to teach ‘the rest’ other than how to become a present day Sodom and Gomorrha …..
As I wrote in another comment: Privatization of the individual which has been reduced to a bundle of opportunities for selling stuff. Technically, claiming to provide sex changes is false advertising, unless offered by a god, which is very likely not the case. People cannot do that. Disrespect of people’s physical existence is an important part of that: This is not your body because we have decreed that it’s wrong and needs to be fixed by us!
4% of the human population! Who cares?
4% is probably an exaggeration, more like 2% at its highest, except for KY Jelly peak sales outlets like Brighton and Hove
The privatization of the former individual after it has been deprived of its individuality for this purpose is the logical conclusion of neoliberalism. Corona was not an example of state overreach but state underreach. Multinational pharma companies badly wanted to sell loads of vaxxings. The remnants of the states thus reduced themselves to their willing executive agents and all so-called human rights which weren’t more or less covertly about selling stuff to people who don’t want it went out of the window. This was only possible because the state, which is ultimatively a community of people seeking to regulate their own affairs, had been stripped of all purpose beyond providing the minimum level of administration we really cannot do without. A world that’s supposed to be dominated by terrible and cruel viruses[*] cannot have a fatherland anymore.
[*] Another primitive God replacement, obviously. Terrible and cruel
viruses will wipe us all out unless we painstakingly observe the rituals supposed to pacify them, as decreed by our wise elders. Want to get up from a table? Better put your face mask on!
Yesterday I watched a DvD of the German film “The Lives of Others.” It tells a tale of East Germany and the way the Stasi monitored and controlled by fear, the lives of all the unfortunate citizens of the GDR (even those who were part of the machine).
The WEF, EU and the western Governments under its control, have learned a great deal from Erich Honeker and the GDR. And they are systematically implementing it in the west.
Sadly, this time there is no physical wall to come down and destroy the tyranny. The wall is digital.
What a great film!
The humanist, homosexual Militia seek to dsstroy the Judeo Christian culture of our nation.
It’s that simple.
The family, fatherhood, mums, law and order, the Church.
Just one example of an area in which the cult of Woke has brought damage to both professional sports and women’s rights. Totally disgraceful. And I note how we never hear of trans men wanting to compete against men in sports, always the other way around. I can’t think why…
”CEO of Tennis Australia Craig Tiley has declared his organisation’s support for the inclusion of transgender athletes in women’s tennis.
Tiley called on the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) to allow transgender tennis players to compete at the elite level.
“When it comes to professional tennis, we’ve got to be responsive to the international tennis federations. They set the guidelines and the policy on it,” he told The Sydney Morning Herald.
“But you know, as a sport, we’ve made our position pretty clear…and we are supportive (of transgender inclusion.) Tennis has had to grapple with the decisions on this for quite a while,” he added.
“We’re trying to influence the decision now. We are an organisation that believes absolutely in inclusivity, in diversity, in equality-so any decision made will need to be aligned without core values.”
Rachel Wong, the CEO of Women’s Forum Australia, outlined how in her view, it is likely this issue will encounter virtually non-existent condemnation because of its controversial nature.
“No doubt it’s because they’re in fear of losing their jobs, in fear of being vilified and cancelled but the reality is we’re not going to see enough movement on this issue until sports professionals actually stand up on this,” she told Sky News Australia.
Wong said prominent female athletes needed to oppose the movement.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/australian-open-ceo-calls-for-transgender-athletes-in-womens-world-tennis_5326944.html
A real woman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Kulick) has actually won an open sports event at the highest level….
Ho Mogs, your too good at finding all these amazing stories, it’s depressing
“Australian Open CEO Calls for Transgender Athletes in Women’s World Tennis”
Imagine spending all your informative years and giving up most of your youth working, training and straining to be the best you can only to have it all your dreams and passions smashed to pieces by a bloke in a frock!
That Ba@£#rd wants dragging out and hanging from a bidwillii tree!