We Don’t Do Politics

The Devils Kitchen picked up a theme from my NO2ID comment the other day. In it he despairs of those who “don’t do politics”.

The constant assault on my faith in the principle of libertarianism is the stupity and ignorance of the majority of the people amongst whom we are forced to live. This is why anyone who says, “I don’t do politics” earns my unalloyed contempt and opprobrium.

Yes, I know. Isolated in my own little world; divorced from the rest of society (one of the disbenefits of self employment) I rarely discuss politics with others. On the few occasions that I do, I am starkly reminded that so many understand so little of what is going on. Oh, sure, they see the headlines, so know that Israel is “evil”, or that country folk are all “sadists” (actually, I don’t like hunting with hounds, but confine my disapproval to not taking part) and that “guns make people into killers” but never look behind the banal headlines at the real story beneath and never stop to challenge the assumptions placed before them for easy consumption. These people simply soak up the dumbed down diet of trivia fed to them by Aunty Beeb and believe, for example, that a child really can buy a car on eBay – and don’t even start to ask themselves the obvious questions.

That’s the rub, though, isn’t it? People don’t ask questions, they don’t challenge what is presented to them. Propaganda is something that happened in the USSR and its satellites, propaganda is something Goebbels did – the good old Beeb doesn’t seek to influence us like that, does it?

So, force fed a diet of pap; obese with trivia and anorexic of inquisitorial mind, they are aware of the spat between Tony Blair and his chancellor, but not the undercurrent of illiberal laws. Such laws are passed unnoticed – and “it could never happen here” remains stuck fast in the concrete of the public mindset. Ninety days detention for suspects is okay; after all, it won’t be them deprived of freedom; “it could never happen here”. On the spot fines are okay – after all, it’s only hooligans and hoodies that will be affected, so “I’m alright Jack” prevails. And prevail it does until some nice middle class white person falls foul of one of the new laws and then it’s “political correctness gone mad”. I’m sorry, ducks, it was consigned to the asylum years back.

I realise, to my ongoing chagrin, that the British public really doesn’t “do” politics. They vote for the nicest looking leader come election time, and that’s it; duty done; back to the soaps and the silly news stories.

All of which reminds me of that Plato quote Mat has put up on voting taktix

“The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves.”

Well, if it hasn’t already happened, then God help us. No one else will.

Oh, I don’t believe in him. That’s me stuffed, then.

Update: The Remittance Man, commenting over at DK’s makes an interesting point:

How many English people under 40 could tell you about the significance of Magna Carta? The Peasants’ Revolt? The Glorious Revolution? The Civil War? de Montfort’s rebellion? Or any of the other momentous events in English history that secured our rights and privileges? Maybe one in a thousand. If we’re lucky.

Thanks to the left’s assault on history teaching the vast bulk of the population are simply unaware of the things that shaped our nation and gave us what we have today. And in that condition they are simply unable to put up any sort of fight against any illiberal measure proposed by the state.

Quite.