Reading the Non-Fashionable

It wasn't until I watched a Jordan B. Peterson interview with British North London luvvie Helen Lewis where she introduced Friedrich Nietzsche as "the Nazi's favorite intellectual" that I knew I had to read Nietzsche from cover to cover. I had always "known" that Nietzsche was somehow not respectable, and the reason was something to do with the Nazis. But what exactly? Only the Zeitgeist knew.

The same thing with Carl Schmitt. He actually was a Nazi, or at least a camp-follower, or at least a man that knew which side his bread was buttered. Eeeuw! But if you haven't read his The Concept of the Political you don't understand politics.

I had always understood that E.O. Wilson, author of Sociobiology and Consilience, was a bit of a kook. But there's an interview with the recently departed Wilson in Quillette. I see the problem. The witch-hunters of 40 years ago -- guys like Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin -- were after him. And his theories, proposing like the psychologists that we are mostly our genes and our unconscious, go against the Blank Slate worldview that helps prop up the lefty religion of politics with everything, They went for Wilson because

it was thought at the time that raising the specter of a biological basis for human behavior was not only wrong, but a justification for war, sexism, and racism.

How about that passive voice: "it was thought at the time..."

Really, I shouldn't be so surprised and scandalized. If the COVID episode of the last two years has taught us anything it is that almost all humans almost always go with the flow of conventional wisdom. Of course we do: we are social animals.

I'm reading a piece of conventional wisdom right now, Richard J Evans' book The Coming of the Third Reich. Right now I am in the middle of the Gleichschaltung (or co-ordination) period at the beginning of Nazi rule where all the vast undergrowth of German social institutions, from gymnasiums to gun clubs, were Nazified. You had to have Nazis in charge, or else.

Of course, we are all horrified at what the Nazis did, but what is different, except in degree, with the present moment where all good corporations have signed onto the BLM critical race theory co-ordination directed by our liberal-left educated ruling class. And all public schools are teaching the evils of systemic racism -- except that they aren't, no siree, no such thing as critical race theory!

And how many conservatives still have jobs in the universities, senator?

My theory is that any ruling class worth its salt should keep the kooks and the crazies properly fed and watered, and for two reasons.

The first is that, you never know, the kooks may be right, and if they are we rulers will want to co-opt their ideas and make them our own.

The second is that we rulers want to keep an eye on the crazies. And the best way to do that is to let them operate in the open -- with maybe a few FBI informants signed on to keep tabs on them.

But the big question is: what unfashionable and de-plaformed kook should I be reading next? Holocaust deniers?  Critics of feminism? Ultra-nationalist whackos? Climate deniers? And would it be safe for me to read them without being corrupted by their lies?

Honestly, I don't know. But my antennae are always searching: for the kook that really isn't a kook.

Misinformation, Disinformation, and Wartime Censorship

In the last few days we have seen "scientists" censored by Twitter for... something. Like Robert W. Malone, MD. Or journalist John Solomon.

What is all the ruling-class frenzy about "misinformation' and "disinformation" all about? And why does the media chime in and censor Wrongthink?

I think it is because the ruling class -- and by extension Big Media and Big Social Media -- experience the current COVID crisis as a war, a war they are fighting to save civilization.

And in a war, you suspend freedom-of-speech in favor of the ruling-class narrative and propaganda.

Because when you are fighting a war it is "get with the program, Jenkins" and "everyone on the same page." The strategic plans and war narrative may, of course, be all wrong. But, as long as we are in a war then everybody has to get with the program and we fight the enemy united. There's the enemy, the hated, horrible enemy. And then there are our noble warriors, fighting to save us from a fate worse than death. And then there is the glorious victory that will transform life on Earth.

And the really special thing about a war is you get to spend money, borrow money, tax money, and print money. And order everyone around. Hoo boy, what fun!

Notice that this only applies to the wars that our greater ruling class approves of: World War I, World War II, Climate Change, COVID. The greater ruling class was not on board for most of the Cold War -- because after all, the Commies were fighting for justice and because of the horror of McCarthyism -- and it was not on board for most of the War on Terror -- because colonialism or Islamophobia or Palestinians or something.

I guess my angle on this is that I am hoping that the ruling class narrative of masks and lockdowns and vaccinations is about to drive off the road into the ditch. Because the masks didn't work; the lockdowns didn't work, and the vaccinations didn't work -- not the way they were promised.

In other words, I am hoping that the American people -- and particularly the American women that have been 100 percent behind World War COVID -- will experience the COVID war as a defeat.

Here's what Candidate Joe Biden was selling in 2020.

We are the United States of America. We can beat this virus.

There is no challenge we cannot meet, no enemy we cannot face, no threat we cannot conquer when we stand together.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 28, 2020

Obviously, the whole war effort of masks, lockdowns, and vaccinations was intended to show that indeed, "we can beat this virus." Now it looks like we can't and so the ruling class is changing its narrative and hoping you don't notice.

When you think about it, defeat in war is first of all a defeat for the ruling class narrative. And when the ruling class narrative has been defeated it creates a space for another narrative.

By the way, I was reading a 2009 Orson Scott Card novel, Hidden Empire, about a global pandemic issuing from a monkey virus in West Africa. One of the things his president promised was that he was not going to shut down the economy.

A Lefty Reviews the Last 30 Years

Like about 2-1/2 other people, I believe that all humans live in their own bubble, their own explanation of reality. And it's mostly stuff we have picked up from the Zeitgeist, the narratives being offered by the various Professor Marvels out there: political prophets, ruling class stenographers in the media, gubmint professors and teachers.

But it's helpful to get a full meal of lefty narrative in one place, such as Ryan Cooper's look at the American left over the past 20 years.

I entered high school in 2000, and watched in bafflement as the Supreme Court handed the presidency to Bush in a decision even a 14-year-old could see was cynical politics dressed up with legalese.

So, Ryan, baby, now you know how the Trump supporters feel, I'm sure.

when Bush defeated John Kerry — the only time a Republican has won the popular vote in a presidential election since I was 2 years old, by the way — running on war and homophobic panic.

"Homophobic panic?" I must have missed that.

My half-baked suspicion at 17 years old that "invading Iraq for no reason seems like a really bad idea" turned out to give me more wisdom on war than three-quarters of Congress and the entire D.C. foreign policy establishment.

Good point. But if you are World Hegemon -- from any party -- you make sure to dominate the towel-heads sitting on top of the world's oil.

[In 2008] I was bewildered to learn that Wall Street had somehow built a grenade under itself that blew up and took the global economy down with it. 

Akshully, Ryan, the crash had a lot to do with the gubmint's 50 year program to subsidize home mortgages that created a massive bubble in home prices. Kinda like right now.

Then came Obama, a "golden opportunity was almost totally squandered. "

Influenced by neoliberal economists the president hired (most of whom were deeply implicated in the crisis itself), the party passed an obviously inadequate stimulus package that stopped the recession but led to the weakest economic recovery since the 1930s. 

Well, Ryan, racist-sexist-homophobes like me think that the Obama stimulus failed because it was just a payout to Democrat supporters, not a program to restart the economy. But what do we know?

Their one major social policy achievement before that loss was a heavily compromised health care reform that, while better than nothing, failed to truly solve any of the real problems — like the endless cost bloat that continues to devour the economy from the inside. 

If you think that the problem with the health care system is not enough government, I gotta bridge to sell you.

The disappointments of Obama led directly to the first major leftist grassroots movement of the century: Occupy Wall Street. 

No, Ryan. There is no such thing as a "leftist grassroots movement." They are all AstroTurf, gussied up by the scions and the functionaries of the ruling class, chaps like you. That goes for BLM too.

Earth to Ryan: grassroots movements are the ones that make the educated ruling class -- chaps like you -- react in horror. 

The disappointments of Obama and the example of Occupy no doubt helped inspire the second leftist mass movement of the last two decades: Black Lives Matter.

OK, so you think the problem is "mass incarceration and police brutality." We racist-sexist-homophobes think the problem is gubmint education and gubmint welfare programs that create a huge underclass of boys without fathers: men that don't work much and women that don't marry much.

But now we have Bernie Sanders and

The American left has a serious national presence for the first time since the 1940s, a toehold in Congress, and a significant presence in many state governments.

 And the supporters are young!

One byproduct is a truly enormous partisan age gap — probably the largest in American history, and one that was important for Biden's victory in 2020.

Except that now

Biden's approval rating among under-30s has dropped by 50 points, likely thanks to the party's constant dithering on passing its own agenda, and disgruntled leftists have been known to turn to the right on occasion. 

And the electoral success of the left is triggering a crackdown.

what traditionally happens in American history when there is any serious leftist political movement is it is smashed through a combination of state repression and racist vigilante violence. That's what happened to the multi-racial labor coalition in the South after the Civil War. It's what happened to a budding socialist movement during the First Red Scare between 1918 and 1920. And it's what happened in the McCarthy era.

You see what I mean about people living in a bubble? But I wonder, exactly, what Ryan means by "racist vigilante violence?" Rittenhouse? Blacks murdering blacks in Chicago? MAGA types hanging a noose around innocent Jussie Smollett?

But that is nothing compared to what will happen if the Republicans get back into power.

Republicans are openly announcing that they intend to replicate the McCarthy formula by whipping up a shrieking moral panic over "woke" phrases and "critical race theory," by which they mean anything that discusses racism whatsoever. 

Yes, well. Don't look now, but what I read tells me that the Republican Party is becoming more and more the party of the working class: people that have a job but don't have a college degree. And that includes, I read today, 80 percent of Hispanics, who are turning rapidly to the Republicans.

But hey, McCarthyism! Here's how Ryan Cooper ends his salute to the left:

The future isn't set in stone, but unless the Biden administration and congressional Democrats do something to protect democracy and America's civil rights, the relative toleration the left has enjoyed since 2000 will come to an end. But there's still time to recognize that American democracy needs the left as much as the left needs democratic freedoms. 

 You know, I think there's a word for this kind of word salad: word salad.

But imagine an America that provided even "relative toleration" in the nation's universities and elite media institutions to the center right -- never mind the "far-right!" Imagine that!

The Current Racial Frenzy Will Abate, But...

 George Will has a piece out prophesying the end of the current race frenzy: "National conservatives and racial identitarians have a common enemy: Individualism." But our problems will not be solved with the race frenzy abatement, because the nationalist right is almost as bad as the racist left. Both the nationalist right and the racist left are united in a war against individualism. Individualism, is something new under the sun, he says, invoking Michael Oakeshott.

Modernity’s greatest achievement, which was the prerequisite for its subsequent achievements, was the invention of the individual. Oakeshott argued that, in the 14th and 15th centuries, conditions emerged that were “favorable to a very high degree of human individuality,” meaning “persons accustomed to making choices for themselves.”

And the conditions were particularly favorable in Italian cities.

Well, I can understand that Buckley-era conservatives like Will would look askance at Trump-era populist conservatism; it's centered on the identity and the economic interest of the very ordinary middle class American rather than the business-owning middle class of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.

Indeed, in 2021, U.S. “national conservatives,” who are collectivists on the right, recoil against modernity in the name of communitarian values, strongly tinged with a nativist nationalism and with a trace of the European blood-and-soil right.

Really? I have a better idea, a higher idea, that floats above the decaying remnant of Buckleyism and the eternal lefty search for the transformative community that will lead directly to justice do not pass go.

It is this.

All politics is built around the friend-enemy distinction. The point in any politics is to define who is one of "us" and who is one of "them," the enemy that "we" might have to fight and kill.

Once the size of human community has expanded beyond the hunter-gatherer band of the kindred the big man and the politicians and the clerics have to come up with a new narrative that explains the new community. Enter the age of "tribalism." And I maintain that all tribalisms are fake tribalisms, a likely origin myth and  "story so far" that explains and exalts "our community" and unites the community with feeling of belonging together.

In particular, I suggest, almost all political identities are forged by the veteran soldiers in the army, the brothers in arms that founded the state that we descendants come to think of as having existed for all time.

What is "nativist nationalism?" It is, presumably the tribe of people in a contiguous nation state that are native to the place. As opposed to more recent arrivals who maybe don't yet identify as natives, but as an immigrant community that still identifies in part with its identity in the old country. It is not hard to understand that the natives of a country would be suspicious of more recent arrivals, and vice versa.

And it is not surprising that politicians and priests would take advantage of this.

Obviously, this is the story of politics in the United States at least since the Irish started arriving in the 1840s in consequence of the potato famine. Immigrant groups arrived in steamships from Europe and coalesced in immigrant "ghettos" for a generation or two. And soon after they arrived the local political machine started to organize them into its own personal vote bank. 

Obviously the left has invented a new form of tribalism based not on place but on class and race. To me, this is just another opportunistic "fake tribalism" that teaches a group of people to feel an identity that just happens to benefit the educated ruling class that wants to unite various lower-class groups into a political army to fight against the middle.

And this is the game of all political ruling classes, to conjure up some kind of "fake tribalism" to unify the people you want to unify into a political identity, and then lead them to war against some enemy, foreign or domestic.

It is telling that the current leftist politics based on race or the slightly less racist notion of "oppressed peoples" has arisen in a time when an appeal to workers as a class is not as politically useful as, say, back in the 1930s.

But whatabout nativist nationalism and race identitarians?

Well, I would say they they are both led by political leaders that experience themselves as creative individualists.

In other words, I would say that all "individualists" are upper class people that see themselves as transformative and creative leaders. On the conservative side these might be people that see themselves as intellectuals imagining a political framework of limited government, or business start-up entrepreneurs imagining how they are going to transform the business world, or lefty political activists imagining how they are going to bend the arc of history towards justice.

And so all this fits into my reductive Three Peoples theory, where the nativist nationalists are people in the Responsible middle class who identify with nation and the race identitarians are lower class Subordinates who identify with their non-American national origin or class or race rather than with the larger political community. And Individualists are all members of the Creative class imagining that they are doing a great thing.

But I could be wrong.

Women Complain Because They Want to be "Soothed"

Now there's one thing in the world that I trust absolutely.

And that's My Girl Mary-Ann Evans. That's George Eliot to you. She was the daughter of a carpenter that rose to be an estate manager, managing the estates of rich rural magnates in the old rural England. Her chef d'oeuvre is probably Middlemarch.

So, we can say of George Eliot that, like Susan Sowerby, mother of ten in The Secret Garden, "she knows."

Now, in order to celebrate Christmas I have been re-reading Eliot's first full-length novel Adam Bede. Adam is a carpenter and rises to become the estate manager for Arthur Donnithorne. Adam is tall, strong, worthy, and courageous.

But Adam's mother is an eternal complainer, as in my earth-shattering notion that women have a Culture of Complaint.

But now comes Mary-Ann Evans, and "she knows." So here is a fragment about Adam's mother, Lisbeth Bede.

Like all complaining women, she complained in the expectation of being soothed, and when Adam said nothing, she was only prompted to complain more bitterly.

Did you get that, guys?

Women complain in the expectation of being soothed.

Does that align with my notion of "women expect to be protected" or not?

By the way, guess who is George Eliot's Soother-in-chief?

Right first time. It's Dinah Morris, the sainted Methodist lay-preacher and heroine in Adam Bede. and one of the people she soothes is Adam's mother Lisbeth.

(She also soothes the antagonist Hetty Sorrel before Hetty needs soothing. But she will need soothing, of course, and the sainted Dinah already knows it.)

Now, if a woman is complaining it is probably because she is anxious. And why is she anxious? Because she is concerned that she may not be protected.

And so, what is the point of soothing the anxious woman? To assure her that, don't worry darling, you are going to be protected.

By the way, this all aligns with our current safetyism, the notion of women all complaining about "stress." Not to mention workplace harassment. This all aligns with my talk about Women in the Public Square, that they are in the process, per Georg Simmel, of adapting the public square to suit "a more feminine sensibility."

Women expect to be protected; they need to be safe. When they are uncertain about that protection they complain. When they complain they don't want to be told to shut up and stop complaining -- such a guy thing! They want to be soothed, and they want to be told that everything will be all right.

Hmm. I remember, back in the olden time, how my sainted mother used to chuckle about my Dad. How he would tell her "it'll be all right."

See? Mary-Ann Evans is right. And my mother at least had the wisdom to laugh about my Dad's efforts to soothe her when she was complaining about something.

Whatabout Kids' Education?

We were dining with friends, whose daughters are both in college. And the father opined as how kids shouldn't go to college until their mid twenties. And I agreed.

But, really, when was the last time we, the American people, thought about our kids' education? Other than making sure to buy a house in a good school district and then send the kids to a good college? 

And when was the last time that our noble rulers thought seriously about kids' education?

My potted history of US education is:

Aristotle: "Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man."

Jesuits: Ditto.

Shakespeare: This son of a glovemaker in England went to the local grammar school at Stratford on Avon where he learned, among other things, Latin. In those days kids started work at age eight unless they went to grammar school.

Tocqueville: He thought American education in the 1830s was "widespread and mediocre." Your average backwoodsman had "the Bible, an axe, and a file of newspapers."

Horace Mann: Main force of the common school movement in the 1830s. The idea was for the Transcendentalists to outflank the remaining Puritans and reeducate the Catholics. His system was influenced by the Germans.

Irish Catholics: First build the school, then the church, Horace Mann.

High schools: Universal secondary education began to be widespread after the National Education Association recommended twelve years of education, with the idea that every kid should be taught the same material in the same way. And basically prepare kids for a job.

John Dewey: Believed in education as "a social institution through which social reform can and should take place."

School Choice: Advanced by economist Milton Friedman in the 1950s, it centers around "vouchers" so that parents can send kids to the school of their choice. With gubmint money.

Mega high schools: In The American High School Today in 1959 Harvard President emeritus James B. Conant recommended mega high schools so they could offer more and varied programs.

Home schooling: Began in the 1960s as a pushback against compulsory gubmint education.

School busing: A 1971 Supreme Court allowed busing of school children to "diversify the racial makeup of schools."

A Nation at Risk: This 1983 report said that American schools were failing, so reform was needed.

Charter Schools: Schools within the gubmint school system that offer alternative educational methods outside the rigid rules of the standard schools.

No Child Left Behind: This Act in 2001 proposed national standards in education.

Bill Gates: High schools are too big.

Self-education: "Given tablets but no teachers, Ethiopian children educate themselves."

Common Core: Starting in 2010 a state effort to provide nationwide common education standards.

CRT and Equity: America and schools are racist; enough of grades and math already.

COVID School Closures: Close schools during a modest epidemic. Because safety and morbidly obese women teachers.

Most people will agree that this history adds up to a total cock-up on the education front that is Making Things Worse. 

All these experts have had their turn. Now it's my turn:

I propose that nearly all education reformers are Klueless Klots that don't have a Klue.

I propose that gubmint schools should properly be called "Government Child Custodial Facilities."

I propose an end to compulsory schooling.

I propose that the standard model of childhood education should be neighborhood mothers getting together to educate their children with tablets (see above) and the mothers that don't get with the program should be named and shamed and shunned by the other mothers.

I propose that after age 11, children should be forced to crawl over broken glass if they want to go to school.

I propose that employers should offer education opportunities, as the employers of apprentices did in the olden time.

I propose that the US should pass a constitutional amendment forbidding the federal government to fund or legislate about universities.

As you can see, I am a profound moderate when it comes to education. Merry Christmas!

The Eternal Question About Government

Government knows only two modes. First there is the call to arms against an enemy. The call to arms may be against the Vikings, the Frogs, the Krauts, the Commies, the A-rabs, the Pox.

But the question is ever the same. Is a total mobilization of The People to fight the Foe the only option? Or even the best option?

We can see this with World War COVID.

Was it really a good idea for President Trump to make it a headline affair? With daily press conferences at the White House?

Was it really a good idea for Democrats in Fall 2020 to raise questions about the "Trump vaccine?"

Was it really a good idea to push universal vaccination? And vaccine mandates? And tell anti-vaxxers that they are bad people, aka the enemy?

My point is that this is the way that government approaches everything. There must be an enemy! We must all unite together! Anyone that doesn't rally to the colors is a coward! You must follow the orders of the leader! Attack! Attack! Attack!

Let's say, for the sake of argument that when the nation is threatened by a new pestilence, then the strategy of mobilizing the country as for war, and creating an army to attack and vanquish the foe is appropriate.

But, I think, it is pretty obvious that, by now, the World War COVID approach is no longer appropriate. And the question is: was it ever appropriate? How do we know? How can we tell?

Let's segue to the question of governments and the poor.

Obviously, I would say, the COVID lockdowns were a mistake because they have flung a lot of marginal people out of work. And people who have responded to the government rent and mortgage pauses by skipping on your payments you are now in a world of hurt.

So now what? Do we throw more money at the folks thrown out of work whose lives are now in a spiral dive? Maybe homeless?

Let's go back to the Crash of 2008. Whatabout the people thrown out of work back then? That lost their houses because of their underwater mortgages? How good of an idea was it to subsidize mortgages, pump housing prices into the sky, and then have to deal with the human rubble after the crash? How well did government deal with and help the human rubble of the Crash of 2008.

By the way, back in the 1980s our liberal friends were making a big issue of the homeless, that they blamed on Reaganomics. But maybe they were folks thrown out of work in the stagflation and subsequent credit crunch and recession in 1980-81. And the inflation of the 1970s? Due to the Great Society of the 1960s and coincident Vietnam War? And maybe the end of the government-subsidized union jobs that got union worker wages way above the market rate?

By the way, back in the 1930s we had another crack-up, deriving from the Crash of 1929 and the failure of the Federal Reserve Board to act as lender of last resort. And the FDR government mucking around with 1,001 gubmint programs recommended by the best and brightest that didn't help get the US out of the Great Depression. Back then they call the homeless camps "Hoovervilles." Or Skid Row bums.

Oh, back in the 19th century we had the Long Depression in the 1870s after the US did a bit of Deflation after the civil war to get back on the gold standard. About ten years of misery and ruin. Back in the day, young chaps like Andrew Mellon and his dad Thomas Mellon reckoned that the economy moved in about five good years followed by five bad years, rinse and repeat.

Back in 1820, after the end of the Napoleonic Wars things were pretty bad for workers and peasants in England, and they had the Captain Swing riots.

Back in Prussia, after the Seven Years War, King Frederick tried to get the economy going again. He "did what he could to help the peasants... a downtrodden class." But his "simple agrarian reforms... was hampered by the conservatism of the countrymen"; an echo of centuries of agricultural "improvement." And his clumsy efforts to promote industry were a mixed bag.

And prior to that, in the age of agricultural "improvement" peasants were chucked off baronial estates because they did not pay.

And the governments of the age lurched from anti-vagrant laws to indoor relief to outdoor relief to workhouses to I know not what. In other words, they didn't have a clue. Never did, never will.

See, I think that the current liberal lurch towards criminal reform and release of criminals pre-trial -- except when the criminals do a car-jacking on a Democratic congresswoman -- is really a reaction to the failure of liberal politics. See, it's one thing to use state violence on armed insurrectionists, who are, after all, the enemy. But it cannot be that state-certified victims can be hunted down like armed insurrectionists. That's only for the enemy.

Unfortunately the inner-city thugs are just behaving like pre-agricultural humans. They are patrolling the border of their urban territory, and anyone they encounter is an enemy, and subject to looting and plundering.

But how to cure them of this culture?

Well, I think that politics and government, with their friend-enemy distinction, are not the vehicle to help the poor. In fact, I suggest, the history of the last 200 years is that the introduction of the poor into the industrial economy was totally unexpected and unpredicted by the best and the brightest. And even when it was in full swing, by the middle of the 19th century, you had rich kids like Marx and Engels predicting that it would all end in tears. Only they were wrong. Dead wrong. In fact, their solution to the workers problem was Communism, the worst nightmare visited upon humans short of a plague that takes away one-third of the population.

Actually, it makes sense that politics and government would not be the solution of the poverty problem. Because politics is about the enemy -- and we don't really want to think of the poor as an enemy. And government is about force -- and we don't really want to use force on the poor, do we?

I have a modest suggestion. Government is for war. And only war. Everything else must be done either at a local, municipal level, or by voluntary associations.

Back in the day, about the first thing that Hitler and his pals did was demolish the vast growth of German associations, by forcing them to have Nazis in control. In the conventional-wisdom The Coming of the Third Reich, Richard J. Evans writes about Northeim, in Saxony right in the middle of Germany. 

Northeim had a rich associational life, much of it more or less unpolitical[.]

That included the local "consumer co-operative... clubs for the disabled... the Boy Scouts... singing clubs... shooting clubs... swimming association... football clubs... gymnastic societies." But the Nazis burned them all down and co-opted them into the national state.

Is the co-opting of everything in America into the woke any different? Except for the lack of jackboots and swastikas?

See, underneath the stunning brightness of the glorious state is a vast human network of social interactions beneath and beyond the gaze of the political class. And it may be that most of the work of the world has been and will always be conducted by the ordinary people in their ordinary clubs and association and charities. And that without them human society would grind to a halt.

But do our rulers have a clue about that?