In the Brit Spectator Christopher Caldwell is moaning that “In Europe, the center will not hold.” Yup, just like the Bidenoids, the rulers in Europe broadcast the conceit that they are the “center.” President Biden in his recent speeches is advertising that we are beset by “ultra-MAGAs” and other extremists.
Just like our educated class here, the Euro educated class thinks that it is beset by right-wing extremists like the Dutch (and now German) farmers, Giorgia Meloni, the German AfD, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, the Democrats in Sweden.
But Joel Kotkin in Spiked lets the cat our of the bag.
This shift to the right should not be taken as support for the traditional free-market agenda of conservative parties. It is better understood as a massive, but often ambiguous, pushback against the oligarchic order.
In other words, the extremists are the ones backing unlimited immigration and educated-class-centric cultural norms and NetZero climate-change policies. Average people just want to live their lives with the comfort of knowing that the welfare state will protect them in hard times.
Now I believe that ordinary people are wrong when they think that the panoply of welfare-state policies will protect them from want and that labor market legislation will protect them from corporate exploitation. I believe that the science shows that mutual-aid societies are the best protection against want, and lodge doctors the best way to get cheap health care and that unions and labor regulation creates an illusion of protection for workers.
I believe that the government that governs least is the government that governs best. That’s because government is force, and politics is war against the enemy, and 97.2 perent of human life needs to be free of war and government compulsion. Because humans are social animals, not army ants.
But I get that the average person naturally responds to the politicians that says: “I will protect you.” One fine day…
But I understand. When you are the rulers, you think that you are God’s gift to humanity. That without our wise and beneficent rulers the world would go to hell.
When in fact the opposite is true, that ordinary people are pretty pacific, and it is the rulers that are always looking for an enemy to fight and an excuse to go to war.
Obviously, a ruling class regards any change to the status quo as an extremist threat to its rule.
With all due respect, honored rulers, the extremists aren’t the problem. You are the problem.