Society

Below is one one of the nastiest put-downs you will ever see done in public, and a vivid demonstration of how to humiliate a young questioner in front of a huge audience.  Her vulnerability was made obvious by the grammatical mistake she had made when introducing her perfectly reasonable question. This she had concluded with these five words: what if you are wrong? Richard Dawkins chose not to answer it, probably because it has never occurred to him that he might be wrong. This is to some extent true of us all. We believe what we believe. But we are near idiots if we do not allow the possibility of being wrong. Whether or not our belief can be upheld under close, forensic and hostile examination is a test that should be applied over and over again. In fact it should be welcomed, especially when the subject matter has a global impact. No-one, no movement or pressure group or state should ever avoid answering the following question: what if my opinion which I am seeking to impose on others and society at large is false, or flawed or malicious or dangerous? Richard Dawkins is just a prop, an intro. The target I am aiming at is transgender activism. What if this is wrong both in concept and in its realisation? And what are the consequences of state authorities capitulating before its lobbying blitzkrieg?

The following article appeared in the LIFESITE website. I have paraphrased and shortened it a little. The subject is the power and effectiveness of Transgender lobbying. This has been extremely successful, moving seamlessly between oppressed and oppressor, victim and bully. A double act which has effectively ruled out even the right to ask the question: WHAT IF YOU ARE WRONG? Why? because it may cause upset, injuring a person’s dignity, feelings and self-respect. Read on and be amazed.

‘April 8, 2019 (Human Life International) a “human rights tribunal” in Canada has just ruled that a Christian activist must pay $55,000 to a provincial politician because he referred to this politician as a “biological male” in a political pamphlet. The politician in question, Morgane Oger (born Ronan Oger), is a biological male. However, he has since “transitioned,” and is living his life as a “transgender woman.” According to the decision, Bill Whatcott must compensate Oger for injuring the latter’s “dignity, feelings and self-respect.”

The terrifying precedent set by this case can be illustrated by one fact: The judge in the case refused to allow Whatcott’s lawyer to offer testimony showing that, in point of fact, Oger is a biological male. According to the judge, “the ‘truth’ of ( Whatcott’s) statements in the flyer is not a defence.” As such, said the judge, “evidence is simply not relevant to the legal issue…”

Read that again. Let it sink in. Truth is not a defence. Evidence doesn’t matter. What matters — it would seem — is whether someone’s feelings were hurt. And thus, with a stroke of the pen, the rule of law is replaced with the rule of feelings. But as Whatcott has just learned, and I suspect many more are about to learn, feelings can be far more ruthless and unyielding taskmasters than laws.

Back in 2016, University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson was roundly mocked by so-called progressives for warning that gender ideology is “totalitarian.” Peterson, who has studied totalitarian regimes was accused of seeing bogey-men under every rock, and of projecting his paranoia onto a movement that was only seeking basic human rights for a marginalised group.

And yet, with every passing day more and more stories are emerging showing that, if anything, Peterson’s dire warnings weren’t dire enough. In many cases, gender ideologues (who, I should note, are not the same as transgender individuals, many of whom are suffering profoundly and deserve our compassion, even if we do not necessarily agree with the methods they choose to deal with their pain) are no longer bothering to even try to maintain the facade of humanistic reasonableness, showing themselves willing to bulldoze the basic rights of anyone who gets in their way. Disturbingly, this even includes people belonging to categories that until recently were understood to be themselves in need of special protections.

Two Disturbing Stories

You’d think, for instance, that the right of a woman who has been raped to feel completely safe while seeking treatment is about as sacrosanct as a right can possibly be. Recently, however, the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter lost over $30,000 in city funding. The city’s decision to pull the funding came after a fierce campaign against the shelter spearheaded by Morgane Oger – yes, that’s the same politician named above – and other totalitarian transgender ideology activists, who are furious that the centre refuses to offer its services to “transgender women,” i.e. biological men who now claim to be women.

The centre, reasonably enough, believes that the last thing biological women who have been raped need is to be forced into close quarters with strange men. Oger disagrees. By restricting a women-only rape shelter to biological women, says Oger, the centre is engaging in “systematic, consistent misbehaviour.” The women’s shelter shot back, pithily, that Oger and other city officials are effectively perpetrating “discrimination against women in the name of inclusion.”

To understand how grotesque this decision is, it’s necessary to remember that according to gender ideology, all that is needed for a born man to become a woman is for him to claim that he is a woman. In other words, included among “transgender women” can be men who look like men in every way, including possessing male genitalia. Now, imagine being a woman who has been raped, who goes into the bathroom or joins a group therapy session at the rape shelter, expecting to find the security of a women-only environment. Instead she finds that she has to use the facilities or expose the raw wounds of her trauma – trauma inflicted by a man – in the presence of a man. Thanks to gender ideology, such a woman has no right to complain. If she’s truly “woke,” she will swallow her own trauma, subjugating her right to heal in a safe environment to the latest dogmas of progressive equity.

Another story: Recently, it was discovered that a man who was reading to children at Freed-Montrose Public Library in Houston was a convicted paedophile. Thirty-two-year-old Albert Garza was convicted of assaulting an eight-year-old boy in 2008. But when he applied to read stories to children while dressed as a woman as part of “Drag Queen Story-time” – a truly bizarre indoctrination program which libraries across the nation are falling over themselves to host these days — the library didn’t think it necessary to perform even a basic background check. Now, you’d think that if there’s any place in the world where children should expect to feel absolutely safe, it would be during children’s story-time at a public library. At a bare minimum, you’d think that adults who are arranging for a man who spends his waking hours sexually titillating people for a living to have access to children would ensure that such a man is not a convicted paedophile. But then again, in our topsy-turvy world, gender ideologues are falling over themselves to encourage young children to become drag queens, and even (and it’s enough to make one shudder) applaud when those children perform sexually provocative drag shows in a gay bar. (Yes, this actually happened.)

Clearly, Peterson was right. There is an increasingly naked totalitarian aspect to gender ideology. Anyone who will force raped women to share living quarters with biological men, who will seize children from their parents because the parents express concern about treatments that will render their child permanently sterile, who will pump children full of artificial hormones and mutilate their genitals after the barest pretence of a clinical investigation, who will shrug at throwing a mum of five children into jail for the crime of stating biological facts, and who declare that truth is not a defence and evidence is unwelcome in a trial, all in the name of a recently concocted, scientifically unproven (in many cases disproved) set of dogmas, shares certain obvious commonalities with the perpetrators of some of the worst human rights violations of the 20th century. I see every reason to expect that the more power such people accrue, the more brazen and unjust their exercise of that power will become.

Peterson’s warnings were recently repeated and expanded upon by Nancy Pearcey, an academic who has been focusing on the issue of transgenderism. “Anyone who’s read Solzhenitsyn and his Gulag Archipelago or any book like that knows that totalitarian systems often begin by compelling speech, by telling people what they may and may not say,” Pearcey noted in a recent interview. “And if you can tell or coerce people’s speech, you can eventually control their thoughts.”

“If you’ve robbed [people] of the language to express their true belief, and you’ve required them to give voice to convictions that they do not hold, that eventually messes with your mind,” she continued. “It eventually often changes people’s minds.” In other words, totalitarian transgender ideologues are engaging in what is known as “gaslighting,” a kind of psychological manipulation in which the manipulator seeks to cause the victim to question his or her sanity. By demanding that we change the way we speak – and, indeed, think – about one of the core, and most self-evident categories of reality – biological sex – gender ideologues are undermining the very foundations of reason.

In the interview, Pearcey contrasted totalitarianism with authoritarianism. Whereas authoritarian states want power, “they don’t care much what you do in your private life.” A totalitarian state, on the other hand, “is one that wants to control your thoughts. They want to control your inner life.” This totalitarianism is already present in countries like Canada, she warned, and is “right on our doorstep here in the States.” Given the stories related above – and some of the stories I recounted a few weeks ago – I don’t see how we can possibly argue that Pearcey isn’t right.

To be forewarned is to be forearmed. Many people who come face-to-face with transgender extremism are tempted to kowtow, because they know that transgender ideologues will not hesitate to make their lives miserable. However, every act of capitulation emboldens the gender ideologues. Caroline Farrow – the mother of five mentioned above – has said that she is willing to go to prison to protect her free speech rights. So has Jordan Peterson. Are we similarly prepared to stand up for the truth?’

This is a massive issue which touches on many others. Collectively they are, when wrapped together and held in a fist by an angry antagonist capable of being used like a flail to whip dissidents into line. A reminder of the totalitarian Gulags perhaps. Ideologies are incomparably dangerous and the activists pushing transgender and other associated issues are ideologues. A member of this class can be described as an often blindly partisan advocate or adherent of a particular  ideology. Most people alive today have little or no memory of or interest in the malignant forces that ruled much of the world. We know plenty about Nazi Germany. Of China under Chairman Mao, and the old USSR under Marxist Communism we shamefully know next to nothing. We constantly warn against the rise of the far right but fail to see the rise of the extreme left. The reason why is that vicious bigoted racism is obvious; it visibly parades its vile agenda and is too ignorant or careless to hide it. The far left moves under the cover of words like democratic, progressive and liberal. One army manoeuvres loudly and in full colour, the other in stealth and under camouflage. One is so nakedly evil that it must be crushed, the other seems well intentioned, having the interests of the oppressed and the victim at its heart. Read the book Animal Farm and you get an idea of its modus operandi.

We sit comfortably in our homes watching TV and life pass as if modern life were normal; it is not. If we cared enough to study history that is not far distant, we would begin to understand what may be coming and prepare for a future prefigured in George Orwell’s other famous book: 1984. Thought crime is now an existential threat to free speech. It can lead a society into a seemingly endless hell whose only purpose seems to be to demonstrate the power of the State over the individual. The examples in the quoted article are very few in number, but the very fact they exist at all is alarming. They are signs that may be nothing more than oddities and anomalies in the working out of the law, or they could be straws in the wind.  An indication of what might happen in the future. 

Left and right-wing extremism have both been horribly demonstrated over recent decades, every month brings a new selection, the recent mosque attacks in New Zealand being the latest full scale atrocity up to this point. I am on the conservative right of the debate, but that does not mean that I hold to, or in any way approve of Neo-Nazi white supremacist fascist movements. Nor to the blind reactive hatred that underpins the vile ideology of the extreme right, or their cold merciless indifference to the lives or views of others. To disagree with or disapprove of a thing or person does not alter anything when it comes down to the foundational respect due to each individual person, regardless of their colour, creed, ethnicity or view on life. That respect only disappears when a person acts or speaks in a way that breaks the barrier most of us understand. The one that exists between what we call civilised and uncivilised. At the level of malignant savagery, blind hatreds and insane zealotry this fragile balance falls apart and chaos reigns. 

I am a Christian who holds right-wing, conservative views. That viewpoint has at first base this primary and unalterable directive: I am to love my neighbour as myself. And my neighbour must include those who oppose everything I believe in and value: even my enemy. An ISIS zealot, holding a sword above me with the intention of removing my head from my shoulders is included in this God given commandment. I have no mandate to hate anyone. However the command to love does not mean I cannot hate ideologies that oppose everything I understand to be good and holy. The consequence is that I will and do criticise state institutions, religions and popular movements promoting ideas I dislike or loathe. This could mean hating movements and ideas that claim a Christian motive and pose as acting in the name of Christ. The inquisitions of the medieval age would qualify. In my view they are impossible to defend. God’s kingdom is not formed by force of arms or coercion. And Christianity was free of these faults for a few centuries, until it became subsumed into the political realm and the Roman Empire. With the trappings of power came corruption and worldliness.

From ancient history we must turn to the present day and examine our preoccupation with conspiracy theories. It is I believe normative for right-wingers to believe conspiracy stories have validity. To deny the existence of conspiracies is to assume a protest group has no agenda beyond what is written in their prospectus. I think that to accept a political or social prospectus at face value is naive, especially if it has ambitions to convert you to its cause. The Bible could be accused of holding and promoting a conspiracy theory. It accepts there is a ceaseless battle going on between the kingdoms of heaven and hell, light and darkness, good and evil, truth and lies, and that much of this drama is played out upon the earth. So for the sake of argument let’s accept that conspiracies are real and pose a constant threat. 

Jesus had this to say.

“When it is evening you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red’; and in the morning, ‘It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times” (Matthew 16:2-3).

The signs of the times are scarcely hidden, one of the most obvious is that if you hold right wing, conservative or traditional views on society and morality then you are almost by definition falling into the hate crime categories under our newly enlightened state laws. Accused and condemned in one breath; your reputation plastered all over with the ready made stigma of phobic infestation. Open your mouth and prepare to be attacked for attitudes which are assumed in advance by groups putting aside much of our ancient faith and culture. The question is, does it matter? To most probably not; if life is as trivial as a game of cards, then so long as we have not invested too much in the result, winning or losing is not going to be life changing. Jesus however indicates that how we live our life does matter and that the rule of cause and effects kicks in with very painful and life changing results. We reap what we sow!

An example from Deuteronomy. “If you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments, … all these blessings shall come upon you” …. “But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you.”

Reading through the list of curses is an eye opening, heart stopping crash course on reasons why it is important to understand the signs of the times. Does the bible give us a clue? The answer is yes, Jesus said the end will follow a time when humanity was acting as they had in the days of Noah. What was life like then? It is described in the following terms.

“The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.”

It would be untrue to say that is where we are now, but we are I believe heading fast in that direction. Modern life is taking on the appearance of a game, one in which we can self identify as whatever we think we are. It is becoming a hedonistic, violent, dark and self absorbed existence in which we partake either as active competitors or onlookers. A kind of osmosis, soaking it into the core of our being, thinking perhaps this drift towards nihilism absolves us of responsibility and leaves us untouched by its grubbiness. Here is a definition of nihilistic philosophy. It represents a total rejection of moral values and religious beliefs and denies any meaning or purpose in life. In political theory nihilism is carried to an even greater extreme, it argues in favour of  the destruction of all existing political and social institutions. And here we are, busily deconstructing society in ways that have never been seen before. We have become like the proverbial frog in the pot that didn’t notice the increasing temperature until it was too late, the madness and corruption begins to boil and overflow all around us.

Jesus tells us to “take heed to yourselves in case your hearts become weighed down with partying, drunkenness, and cares of this life…” He says: “Watch and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass….”

So we are to watch not only the signs of the times in world events, but the signs of our own spiritual state. We must not be blinded by our daily cares. We need the vision to see ourselves as God sees us, to see the urgent need to repent, change and prepare. Paul when writing to Timothy gives an idea of what to expect.

“But understand this: In the last days terrible times will come. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful,arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, without love of good…”

That is a downward trajectory, a falling away from something better. The following is worth watching because we are travelling and gaining momentum on a road we have never before travelled. If you begin by using hate laws to moderate speech to the extent where we cannot speak freely without fear,  then we may be moving towards totalitarianism, and that has never worked out well, not when done by the Church or the State. Hate laws could at a push be likened to the tanks that moved into Tiananmen Square in Beijing. When a regime like this is faced by up to a million protesters it will take action. The lone figure represents a person who will not be persuaded that the state has the right to remove his freedom to have an opinion contrary to that of the prevailing power structure. This standoff between power and individual freedom concluded with the suppression of freedom of thought and conduct. I do not think we can have any assurance that in our time, through the use of very different methods of control, we are not watching, like dumb beasts staring over a barbed wire fence at the last rites of any true freedom of expression. 

Here is a quietly spoken reasoned defence of free speech from the ADF International. This is a faith-based legal advocacy organisation that protects fundamental freedoms and promotes the inherent dignity of all people. On its website it describes itself as having a full-time presence at all the institutions of strategic international importance. Accredited by the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the European Parliament and Commission, and the Organisation of American States (OAS). Additionally, we enjoy participatory status with the EU’s Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) and engage regularly with the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

Before reading on it is best to check out this video.

Are the best and cleverest of our youth going mad, or are they being indoctrinated through the imposition of an ideology which cannot be challenged? Not so long ago answers like those given on this university campus would have been thought a work of fiction, a set up. But it was not. This is reality for those who have abandoned all connection to the real world. But in some ways it is unfair to expose the students to ridicule. They are young, impressionable and have gone to university to learn from lecturers set in place to mark papers submitted by students. They are then presented by an ideology, which however counter intuitive it might seem, is being constantly affirmed by their own convictions, the majority of their fellow students and all of their professors. All students want to pass their chosen course with good grades, so it takes one of real character to challenge those teaching the class and risk the hostile attention of their peer group. It is almost painful to watch decent students desperately trying to square a circle; scrabbling around for the right words to affirm a belief a part of them knows to be untrue and arguably absurd.

This should not be necessary, but here are a few reasons to believe male and female are different but complimentary; almost as if they were deliberately made for one another.

These are many Genetic Differences Between Male and Female

Examine the chromosome pair 23, XX for female and XY for male, and the many differences between the sexes become apparent. The Y chromosome is considerably shorter than it’s  X chromosome counterpart. Despite its size the “Y chromosome carries two of the most important genes for a male. One of these genes is called SRY that determine the maleness of the human species. It is responsible for the initiation of male sex determination in humans which initiates the process of turning the sexless gonads into testis in the male, otherwise they stay up in the abdomen to become ovaries for the female. It is therefore the chromosome pair 23 from the male that determines what sex the developing embryo will ultimately become after conception. The other gene controls the production of sperm.

Another major genetic difference between the sexes is the inheritance of the mitochondrial DNA in the female. Mitochondria are present in all the cells of both sexes but are passed from one generation to the next only through the mother. The genes they carry are replicated and do not go through any recombination as the rest of genes do during fertilisation. Maternity testing is based on this knowledge of the mitochondrial DNA properties. Paternity testing is generally performed using the nuclear DNA present in all non-reproductive or somatic cells. All of this information clearly shows that the physiological differences in the sexes are biological as well as chemical driven. It is the quantity of the testosterone and oestrogen in the blood of both sexes and the ratio of the two hormones present that affect the physiological activities in both sexes as well as the physical attributes of the male and female human body.

That very brief overview should be sufficient to kill off the absurdities about gender identity being promoted to and through the students being interviewed in the video above. They are the generation about to take up positions in every sphere of educational, academic and political life. If you think this is merely an American phenomena then think again, it has infiltrated through much of Western Society and is spreading through university faculties based on those subject areas covered by the Humanities.

The following words were written around 1600 years ago by a Christian saint: Anthony the Great.

“A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.’”

The question is, has this time arrived? Below three very sensible, articulate, well balanced and qualified women give their views on what is happening to us all.

Every grand scale Utopian idea has involved a militant desire to put an end to individuality, enterprise independent of the state and free will. The idea of Karl Marx, the founder of Communism when put into practice became a prolonged nightmare. It spread like a virus from Russia to China and Cambodia causing a death count of something around a staggering 160,000,000, excluding war deaths. The new version, Neo-Marxism is an ideology present in our time, partly hidden within the themes that determine Post Modern thought. If you have wondered what kind of society you live in then you need to know the following.

An ideology is a set of of beliefs or principles, especially one on which a political system, party, or organisation is based. Neo Marxism is alive and well today and masquerading under some surprisingly modern labels, embedding itself into the political and legal fabric of most modern democracies.  This article is about how visions of the good life can be corrupted. Nazism from the perspective of Hitler and others was a Utopian ideal. To National Socialists it was a great idea! Get rid of all perceived lower forms of human life and fill the world with a fine well bred Aryan super race. In the decades leading up to these great dictatorships there had been great interest taken in the ideas of eugenics: a movement aimed at improving the genetic composition of the human race by sterilising unsuitable human stock, those with disabilities, mental or physical, and any other groups which it was thought threatened the good of society. A very nasty creed. Historically, eugenicists advocated selective breeding to achieve these goals. This was a fertile seedbed for those thinking in terms of a super-race. Thinkers of this period were fully conversant with the sub title of Charles Darwin’s book: On the Origin of Species. It reads: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. How to preserve the favoured races against degradation from the unfavoured races became a major issue in Nazi Germany. A brief glance at history gives an idea as to how solving this problem ended up as an example of one of the worst criminal atrocities ever to have scarred the face of our planet: most notably the extermination of six million Jews. Darwin cannot be altogether exonerated from what came to pass. In his writing he contemplated the extermination of what he called the anthropomorphic apes: by which he meant Negroes and aborigines. This seems incredible to us, but at that time such topics were discussed among intellectuals. Darwin was certainly not a monster, he was strongly opposed to slavery and there is good reason to think his ideas were thoroughly misused. However he undoubtedly made this statement.

“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state as we may hope, than the Caucasian and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”

Quote from The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin.

If this needs any reinforcement then the comments of the world famous evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould (1941 – 2002) should wrap it up. He admitted: “Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1850, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory.”

The German philosopher Nietzsche, commenting on English society over 100 years ago, wrote: “They have got rid of the Christian God, and now feel obliged to cling all the more firmly to Christian morality…When one gives up Christian belief, one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality.”

Nietzsche is right, ridding yourself of the Christian God has consequences for society. This includes the decision to remove creation from God’s realm of creativity. God creates out of love and for a purpose; nature as Darwin perceived it was born out of the ground and without any higher purpose. From the roots up rather than as described in the book of Genesis. By God’s word all things were created mature with the inborn capacity to propagate through seeds according to each kind of plant and creature. Every kind of man came from the original couple. This means equal in value. Race, colour, lifestyle have no bearing on the integral God given dignity of humankind. In Genesis mankind was given the mandate to name, nurture and protect. For Darwin, progress was a simple matter of survival and advantage. The fittest did well, the unfit headed in the direction of extinction. By the time Darwin had published his two great books he no longer believed in God or biblical revelation. In fact he wanted to disconnect the Genesis account of creation from the realm of science altogether. There is a strange unity of thinking when God in Christ and the truth of the Bible are overthrown. The inhumanity which arose from that denial can be traced through the histories of politics and science. Darwinism had its perhaps unintended impact on that stain on the twentieth century known as the Holocaust. To doubt his ideas and writings, whether or not they were misapplied, did not influence the thinking of National Socialists is to deny the obvious. 

Nazism is the most used example of an extreme right wing, fascist manifestation of all that is worst with humanity. Everybody knows this, but what is far less known are those regimes of the far left which have done similar things but on a greater scale and over a much longer period. Why is one evil so well known and hated while the other is given a free pass? The reason maybe is that Nazism is racist to its core, whereas Communism gave the impression of existing to benefit the oppressed poor with the intention of creating a level playing field. One where elites are brought down and the common people, the proletariat are raised up. So on the face of it Communism has the appearance of moral virtue, but ideologies give rise to dictators of the most malevolent kind, and Stalin in Russia, Pol Pot in Cambodia and Mao Tse Tung in China were the worst mankind have seen so far. What is to come in the future? Is something stirring which should give us cause to fear? Because if the Bible is correct, whatever is coming will be worse and give rise to a ruler more evil and powerful than any who have preceded him.

Over the last few decades we have been fed a type of Utopian ideal: a multi faith, multi-cultural society in which the religious and secular worlds are united. In order to be stable a society needs managing, and the easiest way is through some kind of consensus driven vision. Examples from history show that to build a longstanding political and social system you must first establish control, and to do that with the least resistance people must agree to be  led. There is always opposition from those prepared to make a stand and these are usually the first to be eliminated. Those that survive, like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, write histories that move and educate one generation, only to be forgotten by the next, which is why so few learn the lessons of history. These tyrannies develop a vision around which a vast intrusive bureaucracy is founded. Government officialdom in totalitarian regimes will employ large numbers of  informers and make use of the state police, the law and if necessary the military. The society created is one in which its people are trained to follow the lead. I have no doubt we are being led; where is the question which concerns me.

The grand idea unfolding before us at first glance looks innocent enough. It has a manifesto: create equality for all, do away with conflict and giving offence, and encourage diversity. Give idealism a really good try, something that engages not just the solid centre, the old core of society but also the young. Give them a sense of engagement in a non religious mission. Once the idea has been seeded the results will appear, and indeed they have. But not everyone is happy, I along with many others have come to realise that what is being birthed in our day is intrusive; delving deeply into layers of society that no government in this country has attempted to do on this scale, not since the persecutions of the medieval age. Those attempts led to wars of religion and inquisitions. What is going on today appears to be a vision based on a general consensus, but it is not. No one that I am aware of has ever voted for political correctness, it just appeared in our midst. By the 1980’s and 1990’s it was being critiqued. The 1991 book ‘Illiberal Education’ condemned liberal efforts to advance self-victimisation and multiculturalism through language, affirmative action, and changes to the content of school and university curriculum’s. But nothing it seems can halt its progress. It rose to prominence from the liberal left in politics but sits equally well as part of the centre right. It acts as a politically correct bureaucracy which can remain intact through changes of political regime.

I grew up at a time when Germany was divided, East and West. East Germany was a communist regime whose rule was imposed by a vast bureaucracy of informers and secret police. I cannot help wondering whether or not we are heading in the same direction. I look around and see CCTV, the threats of hate legislation, the  constraints imposed on free speech and actions through political correctness and at social media being policed by vicious mobs on keyboards looking to take offence and report the smallest misstep: the informers. Worse is that the CPS ( Crown Prosecution Service ) are involved in this, and avowedly very serious about taking social media offences to court. The College of Policing has said we are committed to embedding equality considerations into everything we do. The Law which was devised to be a menace to criminals and the police force which was created to enforce these laws, is now a menace to the unwary innocent. People who by sheer bad luck, or lack of a politically correct trained response, may say or do something perceived as anti-social. An increasingly politicised police force and associated bureaucracy is a sign which should be carefully monitored by those who favour free speech. This causes me to think something sinister is growing in our midst. In the video below Jordan Peterson speaks of Marxism and the kind of peevish mid levels of officialdom who seem to rule over us today. Political correctness, perhaps due to its pettiness and intrusive nature into everything however mundane has been likened to cultural Marxism. That last word should scare you. It is being presented as a solution to social disorders, it could however be the cause of creating a society few people want to live in, and if that is the case, then you and I and many others need to speak out. You can find your back pressed against a wall before you realise what has happened. Basically you have been outsmarted. I know the feeling; I used to play chess at a modest level, but was good enough to know what happens when faced by a greatly superior opponent. The game proceeds as usual until, with a sudden realisation, you find you have no good moves to make. You are forced into bad moves that will weaken your defensive position. Not moving is not an option, so you make an enforced weak move. When you see all possible options and your freedom of movement closed down, then you know the end is imminent. At that point you resign. That is how things appear to me as regards our society. A superior mind and more powerful force is becoming apparent to me. All over the Western world there are examples of this closure of options, and it is most obviously apparent in the realm of freedom of speech. If you are on the liberal left then this will not be a problem for you; but if you on the right and Christian you will be feeling the pressure to conform to principles you may well abhor.

G.K. Chesterton made this remark.” Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.”

We have for decades being removing the fences, those checks and balances, freedoms and boundaries to those freedoms which ensured our society could deal with political and social tensions, and do so without fracturing or unbalancing the whole of society. Individuality was honoured and opposing opinions could be expressed under well understood terms of reasoned debate. This can no longer be assured. I recall a recent Question Time programme during which a white man expressed his view on a subject, the details of which sadly I cannot recall. His tone was moderate, his comments calm and far from extreme. He was immediately shouted down by a Muslim woman who claimed he had no right to speak on the subject, because he was a white man. Why she was never called out for making a racist comment I cannot imagine. Perhaps because every group in this country is safeguarded from racist accusations other than those of us from the indigenous population who are white. It sometime feels like an alien abduction, the old order simply evaporated, and it happened not through democratic vote but through decrees that passed through parliamentary procedures without the knowledge or vote of the huge silent majority. Multiculturalism being just one of them, hate legislation being another. There are no obvious boundaries to these concepts and laws, which have been enacted as if they were self evident truths. 

We once had a well established view on our rights and responsibilities, but these have gone and what now exists is a concoction of mixed messages that leaves the political liberal left free to colonise and dictate every area of public and even semi-private conversation. The fences have been torn down and ideologues have been given freedom to occupy the resultant open spaces. We once had a political arena in which each person was guaranteed a safe place to grow in a community. One which did not permit others of a different mindset to trample over your rights and values. Cynicism of our historic faith has caused the Church to lose almost all its influence in the public sphere. We are encouraged to demonstrate shame over our past history rather than appreciate its many benefits to mankind. Good science has been overthrown in one area after another. Just one example: biology and genetics are scarce permitted to raise their voice in the debate about gender identity. That all nature. including human nature, in order to survive has to reproduce via the coming together of male and female in sexual union is a fixed and unalterable law. A law by which everything, from your new born baby to a goldfish exist. The binary nature of sex is the absolute requirement in order to propagate. And yet this truth is howled down as an affront to the extremists on the liberal left. These groups are responsible for influencing government policies, ideologies which reach so deep they are being used to indoctrinate young children. This of course they will accept as readily as a baby accepts breast milk. The reason being because they are hard wired to receive whatever doctrinal drivel is fed to them by those in authority. Truth itself is now just a matter of opinion; another supposed social construct imposed by a privileged white elite patriarchy in order to oppress every victimised minority. These comprise those of colour, all women,  the disabled, Muslims, and on to gays and transgenders of every variety. To have a voice that will not be ridiculed and abused you must by anything other than the following: white, male, heterosexual, conservative to any degree, middle class, and finally to add a cream topping to the list, add the further taint of being an evangelical Christian.  The fences that once gave position and protection to any of that last list have been uprooted and scattered to the wind.

In my opinion the new wired fences being erected will one day be recognised as being like those erected around the gulags and concentration camps. Way over the top you may think? Perhaps, but history has demonstrated time and again how fast a totalitarian idea can impose itself on a society and continent.  Clearing the decks of the old order so as to create a society equal, diverse and free of oppression and criticism of every minority group is a bad idea. The reason being it is a Utopian idea, and as shown above these create vicious totalitarian states, and given the necessary conditions can impose themselves very quickly. In Iran a religious revolution did happen virtually overnight on Feb 1st 1979. A pro-Western country became a hater of Western values under Ayatollah Khomeini. 

In Europe there were just fifteen years between the happy birth and tragic death of Anne Frank. She wrote her famous diary while in hiding from the Nazi occupiers. When caught she suffered the terrible consequences of being a Jew. Anne was sentenced to death in the concentration camp at Auschwitz. She was born in 1929, just 11 years after the end of the World War One. The war to end all Wars. Fifteen years measured out her life.

As for Communism under Stalin: he contrived the so called Ukrainian Genocide. This deliberate policy caused the death, largely by starvation, of 10 million people. From Stalin taking power to the completion of this terrifying enterprise took only ten years. His genocidal policies were enacted between 1932 and 1933. We sit safely in our homes thinking all is well while a Neo-Marxist world is forming like a web around us. Truth has gone, freedom of speech is going, language is being perverted for a perverted agenda, good well established science is being eroded and a pseudo science taking its place, our administrators are folding before lobbying groups which in former times would have been ridiculed and dismissed. Our youth are being turned inside out before choices which are sickening and perverse corruptions of commonsense and are to the detriment of their mental and physical welfare. We uphold and cherish a religion within our borders that is constitutionally opposed to everything we say we honour and aim to protect, while undermining the only stable religious foundation known to Western civilisation. Millennia old beliefs about ethics and morality have been largely discarded. We are mad and our governments whether to the right or the left now attempt to shut every mouth opened in protest.

” So justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey.”

Isaiah 59 v 14

Marxism is about power. Without power an ideology cannot be enforced. That power may be exercised with subtlety should not fool anyone. George Orwell made these comments.

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”

“The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.”

Freedoms can be snuffed out one by one as they were in the famous book Animal Farm. The oppressed farm animals got rid of one cruel human master and replaced him with another far worse: the leader of the pigs. He was called Napoleon and was cleverer than all the rest. He had a plan which was to slowly turn up the heat. The rhetoric changed, as did the propaganda notices around the farm. It was all done with a subtlety unnoticed by the animals. Their leader rose to supreme power gradually by diminishing the freedoms of the lower, more easily conned animals. He did this while taking all the reins of power to himself and to his loyal group: the pigs. What follows is a quote from the book, my point in using it is that something very similar may well be happening to us. Napoleon is Orwell’s caricature of Stalin. Orwell grew up with all the instincts of a socialist but gradually turned away from socialism; the reason being, he began to see that the avowed socialist care for the poor was secondary to their hatred of the rich. 

If you want to see the Post Modern Marxist agenda being spoken against by Peterson, while simultaneously being protested against by students complaining about Peterson’s speech, then please watch the following video. You might also ask yourself this question? If the people protesting against hate speech are from the same protest groups who are having their agendas implemented by the state and the law all over the globe, then God help us. Because these people are tyrannical. They do not engage in conversation or reasoned debate with opponents, instead they shout and scream and threaten and are imposing their agendas at every level. Peterson having had a brief and  unpleasant close encounter with these students, described them as narcissists. You might like a definition of the word. A narcissist has  a grandiose sense of self-importance, and exaggerates achievements and talents. They believe themselves special and unique and can only be understood by other special or high-status people or institutions. They think they deserve excessive admiration. They unreasonably expects special, favourable treatment or compliance. They exploit and take advantage of others to achieve personal ends. They lack empathy for the feelings and needs of others, they are envious and have arrogant behaviour and attitudes. All the attributes of a thoroughly spoilt child. If this is true then what are the great silent, largely cowered majority to do? Exactly what a good parent would do to such a child. Remove all privileges from them, ignore the screaming, do nothing for them until they calm down, apologise and accept the rules governing good behaviour. The sign of hope are the students who attended the lecture and Q&A session. Their questions were really good and their politeness a joy to behold. The contrast between students of the right and centre and those of the left was perhaps the biggest lesson I learned, good though Peterson was. There is hope, but those that can must speak out while free speech is still an option.

Following the end of the Second World War and until the advent of the Swinging Sixties the world seemed set on a trend that understood concepts like normal and natural, and we lived in a world where the ordinary and stable was the accepted reality. Truth had a place that seemed secure, the world had been shaken to its core but it had settled into a relatively mundane order. And then came Mary Quant and mini skirts, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, Teenagers, violent demos against the American Embassy, flower power and so on. I was a teenager when the decade began. Looking back I now think it was the beginning of the end. Depending on opinion we have evolved to a higher place or hit rock bottom. In retrospect I wonder why no rock group came up with the name Rock Bottom. (Having just checked it out on the internet I see that one such band was formed in 2012). The Sixties opened Pandora’s Box, and the evils let loose rather than being expunged from society are being welcomed and applauded as social advances.

But we are where we are, and that is either newly enlightened or entering a new dark age, depending on your worldview.

I scan the media for news and note changes that would have once been thought inconceivable, even to works of fiction. A society in which genders can be made up at will. One in which schools, hospitals, offices and many other areas are having to make different arrangements for toilets, changing rooms etc. Gender blurring is altering everything, including how we act, think and speak. What was once comparatively easy, like communication between sexes, has become a minefield. Say or do the wrong thing, and who can be sure what that is, can lead to a reputation being forever lost. The redefinition of male and female will have consequences beyond those anticipated, because people must by threat of law adapt to the new reality; and some will and others will not. Sometimes not because of intent but just because they do not understand or cannot keep up with the relentless changes. From the sixties to now is roughly sixty years and in that time the world has, from my perspective, gone mad. I remember days when to be in debt was a shame; now it is way of life. The duty to live within your means and to respect your elders and betters was drilled into you as a child, but no more. The old has gone and the new has come. Was the old good? No, not always, far from it, there were many faults and failings. The sixties did address some of those, but then it moved on to become a permissive crusade which tugged at all the old certainties.

In retrospect we are beginning to see exactly what has been laid waste, what it has led to and perhaps getting an idea about where it is leading. Regret is an emotion left for the elderly to dwell on, a world once loved gone beyond recall. How did it happen? We scratch our heads and wonder. Here, in the video below is what at first glance seems innocent enough. I entered this world at the age of sixteen as an art student. There is just one hint in the commentary which links this era to our own. A comment about the young seeking their identity. You do not have to look far to see where that impulse has led us.

National papers were recently reporting an astonishing 17 pupils at a single British school who were in the process of changing gender.  Most of those undergoing the transformation are autistic, according to a whistle-blower. The teacher said vulnerable children with mental health problems were being ‘tricked’ into believing they are the wrong sex, claiming few of the transgender children are suffering from gender dysphoria: the medical term for a person who feels they were born in the wrong body. The accusation is that these vulnerable children are easily influenced because they are coping with problems caused by autism. This makes it all sound very manipulative and ideologically driven. Maybe, the first stirrings of these identity problems began in the Swinging Sixties. My belief is that this decade opened the way to love of excess in every area of human activity and thinking. When you read about a six year old being repeatedly raped at school by two other pupils during playtime, then surely it is time to take a look at the world that is forming around us. What began with the appearance of freeing up a psychedelic, drug fuelled world of innocent fun in the sixties has degenerated into something that has the appearance of being out of control. It could legitimately be described as evil.  We do not have to do the so called ‘progressive’ thing, and just keep on going. We could take a breath and consider rewinding the clock, teach moral standards, stamp down hard on anti-social behaviour of every type, and perhaps reintroduce this generation to its Christian God.

When I was young this was the call a bus conductor would make when we reached the bus terminus. If you hung around long enough you might see the bus number and destination being scrolled round to designate it would be taking a new route. We as a society have changed route, from a people who knew who and what we were to one that creates whatever we want be. The following saying is attributed to the philosopher Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil. I agree with it wholeheartedly.

“Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.” 

In my view those who have chosen the modern consensus have fallen into exactly that certifiable condition. If you can open your eyes to all that is going on around us by way of change you cannot help but see the trail of devastation Post Modernism has set in motion. It is as if a wild boar has been let loose in a well established smooth running household. It represents a paradigm shift in our society. What is happening can easily be missed; we are the recipient generation of a philosophical idea, the intention of which is to change us, cause us to think about everything in another way. Its promotion involved the invention a new hyphenated word: Post-Truth. This word was thought so significant it became the Oxford University Dictionary word of the year in 2016. The expression suggests Truth has had its day and as the title of this web/blog-site suggests, been laid in a casket and unceremoniously buried.

Basically it means you can throw out everything you once knew to be true and good and replace it with something called cognitive confinement. If you want to know what that means then do not ask me. I looked it up on the worldwide web and found no explanation. That perhaps is the explanation, its meaning is open only to those who dabble in the worlds of psychology and psychiatry. It could mean freeing the mind to receive almost anything, or a mental straight-jacket. Either explanation would make sense in a post-truth world. Whatever else it may mean, this much is certain; the old idea of an overarching truth that holds and explains all reality, including human nature and our relationship with our Creator is gone. Any claim to truth is reduced to that of yours and mine and his and hers and nowadays any other approved personal pronoun. Truth is fragmented and personalised and one truth is only superior to another if it is the one which conforms to the views of the State. You see the State has taken on the garb and role of God. There is an overarching truth and if you disobey its commandments ( British Values ) then your freedoms are likely to be much reduced. There are some today suffering confinement in the UK for their faith or their views. If they have avoided a prison cell they will quite likely have lost their jobs or their reputations or a large part of their wealth due to legal fees and court costs.

Welcome to the Post-Modern world! A strange one insofar that the claims made on behalf of Post Truth are of the exact variety of the one it eradicated. An overarching new truth replacing an overarching old truth. By defining all former capital T Truths as naïve or repressive, the modern state has become as doctrinaire as any former religious monopoly. But this thing that has arisen in our midst, despite its well-established creeds, is not religious. On the contrary it is root and branch secular. If you doubt, it’s domineering nature then examine the reach and influence of Politic Correctness.

Here is just a mild taste of the gathering madness. Modern Feminism has more than a hint of colonialism about it: the movement keeps looking for new areas to suck the life out of, and to spread its condemnation of male privilege into every inflection of speech and expression through touch and gesture. These, which are often signs of consideration: kindness, sympathy and the desire to protect, are rejected and sometimes categorised as assaults. It may never occur to a rabid feminist that not every expression like this is loaded with sexual intent or a desire to exploit women. Not to be able to see or discern this is a sign of a fanatic.

Heaven and society as seen through the eyes of two opposites: Margaret Thatcher and John Lennon.

Imagine hearing your prime minister stating, as if it were a matter of established fact, that there is no such thing as society.

“I think we have been through a period when too many people have been given to understand that when they have a problem it is government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant. I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They are casting their problems on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no governments can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours. People have got their entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There is no such thing as an entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.”

This famous quote was made in 1996 by Margaret Thatcher, a person I admired but never really liked and a remark I never understood. However I had never before writing this read the comment in context. They are tough words that sound even more so to the modern mindset. Obligation is not a word we hear bandied about on the media, let alone in the context of meeting obligations before an entitlement is even considered. That’s like asking a builder to work on your house, and only paying after the work has been satisfactorily completed. Which is of course exactly what is expected. He has an obligation to do the work he has agreed to do and having done it is entitled to be paid whatever was agreed. We have developed a society in which many people feel free to demand their rights or entitlements without feeling any sense of obligation to anyone. For this reason I think it true to say that it is considered a mess from whatever view you take. Take a view from the bottom of the pile and it seems nothing like enough is being done. From the top, the view may be that whatever is done will never be enough. Don’t get me wrong, the poor should always be helped. But if the sense of entitlement was removed, maybe gratitude rather than resentment would become the predominant response.

What would happen if instead of thinking of ourselves first, we considered what we could do to help others? If we developed a sense of obligation to others. Not a coerced arm twisting form of action but one freely offered. If this sounds like the golden rule taken from the words of Jesus, that is exactly what it is.

“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.”

That is a life changing thought. The impulse to care for others based on what we know we need for ourselves. It begins with you and me, and if it works as it should then you and I will both benefit. Society if set up on that principle would probably thrive and each one of us would be happier. We all know that in the real world this does not happen very often. We seem to be set up on the principle of screw you mate, if you are stupid enough to give me a handout don’t expect to get anything back. And if you hassle me I will either disappear or come back with some mates and teach you a lesson.

But if the Jesus way was followed then as John Lennon wrote: Imagine! The opening line of the lyric is ‘Imagine there is no heaven’. I think that is intended as a denunciation of religion, even of heaven in the religious sense of the word. The strange thing is he has entirely missed the point. God offers everything Lennon’s song expresses. His longing for justice and goodness and open hearted charity to be seen and experienced. What Lennon desires is the heaven promised by Jesus Christ. People living in an eternal present, no countries, nothing to kill or die for, no religion, living in peace, the world as one. There will be no sense of my possessions and yours, no greed or hunger and a brotherhood of man shared by all. He described it so well. It is a description of heaven and he could have added another verse. No death, or suffering or tears or regrets and a love which never ceases or grows dull or fades away. Freedom and fulfilment and joy beyond imagining which can never be lost. He got so much right while missing the central point. He saw the vision but failed to see the only one who could make it real, make it happen. If Lennon had imagined just a little further he may have recognised an obligation to God. Thankfulness, gratitude for his life, his talent and the opportunity to use it and rise to the top of his profession.

Here is a quote from John Lennon.

“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”

From that remark you can make your own opinion up about John Lennon. As to his prophecy about Christianity; in the West he is probably accurate, but worldwide he was way off. According to Pew Research, there were 600 million Christians in the world in 1910. In 2015, the number was 2.3 billion and growing. Sometime around 2050, the number will edge 3 billion. As for the disciples, they were not thick. Why should Lennon sneer at those  ordinary blokes who helped the academic St Paul spread a gospel message which converted the entire Roman Empire.