For over a year people in Britain have been wondering if the new leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron, is for real.
He began by demonstrating that he would be different, by bicycling to work and by installing a wind turbine on his house.
So much so that traditional Tories have been completely put off by him. But he has brought the Tories into a lead over the Labour Party in the opinion polls for the first time since the early 1990s, whatever that is worth.
His strategy has been to appeal to the secular metropolitan voters who have deserted the Conservative Party for the Lib-Dems, the center party in Britain. He wants to make the Conservative Party acceptable to voters who have bought into the idea, bruited in the left-wing media, that the Tory Party is the “nasty” party. As we know, metropolitan secular elites are the most enlightened people in the world, and it will certainly help the Tories if “enlightened” people decide that the Conservative Party is no longer beyond the Pale for “people like us.”
But now the Conservative Party is starting to put rubber on the road, and the most clear sign of this Breakdown Britain, an interim policy report lead by former party leader Iain Duncan Smith. A summary of the talking points can be found here (pdf).
Breakdown Britain is a devastating report of social disintegration in Britain. It is like Charles Murray’s Losing Ground on steroids.
It contains the following sections:
- Breakdown Britain - an interim report on the state of the nation
- Volume 1- Economic Dependence and Worklessness
- Volume 2 - Family Breakdown
- Volume 3 - Addictions
- Volume 4 - Educational Failure
- Volume 5 - Consumer Indebtedness
- Volume 6 - Third Sector
By “Third Sector” the Conservatives mean the non-profit, social enterprise sector that is neither business nor government. In his introduction of the report Conservative leader David Cameron openly attributed F.A. Hayek as the inspiration for the focus on the Third Sector. He said:
To me those 700,000 [non-profit] organisations prove that there is such a thing as society. It's just not the same thing as the state. The term "the third sector" was first coined by the liberal economist Friedrich von Hayek, the intellectual guru of Thatcherism. In Law, Legislation and Liberty Hayek wrote that "it is most important for a healthy society that we preserve between the commercial and the governmental sector a third, independent sector."
This is a vital distinction that conservatives have been trying to bring into the public square for the last half-century. When we say “society” we do not just mean “government.”
It is worth noting that Michael Novak in The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism also writes of three sectors, the political sector, the economic sector, and the moral/cultural sector. And we can assume that he is talking about the same thing.
If you take a look at the talking points link you can find some pretty horrifying statistics.
8.2 million people in the UK have an alcohol disorder and over a million children are living in
homes with alcoholics.
Some 10.7 million people in Britain suffer relationship problems as a result of debt.
Levels of giving [to charity] among the wealthier members of society are surprisi
ngly low.
Children from white working-class backgrounds are the most under-performing ethnic
group [in school]; just 17 per cent of disadvantaged white boys attain 5 or more A*-Cs at GCSE [i.e. graduate from high school]
compared to a 56 per cent national average.
This sort of comprehensive policy analysis by a political party is impressive. You can see its purpose.
Firstly, it is setting up the idea that the Conservative Party is thinking seriously about the problems of the British nation.
Secondly, it provides a narrative, a framework of thought, for Conservative Party activists and politicians, and also conservative opinion makers in the media.
The contrast with the U.S. Democratic Party, just restored to power in Congress couldn’t be more clear. Democrats have done no thinking in the past twelve years when they have been out of power in Congress. The results will start to show up rather quickly in 2007.
Is David Cameron for real? It is beginning to look as if he really is.
We are far too severe on good honest chaps like Ebenezer Scrooge who refuse to celebrate Christmas, writes Spengler.
[Dickens'] Scrooge is a vicious caricature of the Puritan position. Considering that America is the last Christian nation thanks in large measure to the accomplishments of the Puritans, we should reconsider Scrooge's point of view.
Christmas is a children’s celebration and Puritans, like
“[t]he Jews[,] are too old to play at being children, and always have been.”
But Christmas is not just a time for childish joy, it is also a time when we remember the poor. And the Puritans, with their devotion to work, have something to teach us in that department as well. It is faith and work and enterprise that ultimately helps the poor.
But maybe you are not inclined to listen to the advice of the Puritans. You can, if you prefer, learn instead, as Thomas Sowell writes, from the studied unwillingness of progressives to show an “interest in economic history or in economics in general.”
Progressives show a remarkable interest in doing something about disparities in income and in ending poverty, but they resist what we might call a rational or empirical investigation into the actual record on eliminating poverty.
For instance, in the last twenty years the people of India and China have made startling progress in eliminating poverty.
An estimated 20 million people in India rose out of destitution in just one decade and more than a million Chinese per month have risen out of poverty. But have you heard any progressive intellectuals explaining how such a dramatic change for the better came about?
On the contrary, they are mounting an attack on Wal-Mart, a corporation heroically dedicated to selling the products of Chinese workers in the US retail marketplace at Always Low Prices, Always.
Progressives are in the business of complaining and denouncing — as a prelude to seeking sweeping powers to control other people’s lives, in the name of curing the ills of society.
The last thing they want is to discover and discuss how millions of people rose out of poverty by entirely different methods, often by freeing economies from the control of people with sweeping power over other people’s lives.
Er, yes. Because progressives insist on doing for people what they ought to be doing for themselves. And progressives insist on doing it using other peoples’ money.
So how are a million Chinese a month rising out of poverty? The world wants to know.
But the great question remains, for Puritans and for progressives. What have you done to help the poor? Today.
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