Zimbabwe Opposition Gives Up

Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has said that his party will not participate in the runoff presidential elections this week because of President Mugabe's reign of terror.

And so it is that Zimbabwe, once a democracy, albeit an unjustly limited one, and the breadbasket of Africa has descended into a nakedly racist dictatorship ruling over a terrified, hungry and impoverished people. If ever there was an object lesson in how moral posturing leads to disaster, this is it. The old Ian Smith regime was nothing to applaud. Its whites-only government and open rebellion against Britain left a permanent bad taste in the mouth, but it was at least a fundamentally civilised society that, given time, could have been reformed. Instead, a load of we-know-better types at Lancaster House demanded instant solutions that boiled down to handing power over to a Marxist tyrant whose literally only qualification was that he wasn't white. But that didn't matter to successive British governments who just wanted to wash their hands of the whole mess. The result has been a slow motion Grand Guignol while Britain, who forced this situation and bears the largest responsibility for its outcome, sits back and does nothing for fear of being seen as "colonialist."

I'm sure that's a great comfort to the Zimbabweans.

The Emperor's New Overclass

A lot of people (okay, my wife) ask me how I can be such a staunch feudalist and believer in a hierarchical society, yet rant about how much I despise the elitists who dominate modern culture. I think that the best way to explain this seeming paradox is that it is not elites that I object to, but the false elites of government, media, entertainment and education that are self-appointed and claim their right to tell the rest of us what to do without any justification beyond their own sense of entitlement and superiority. This sort of Gattacan attitude was best summed by Fr. Richard John Neuhaus this way:

The fact is that we now find ourselves with two alienated classes. It is alienation that distinguishes today’s overclass from the ruling classes of the past. A ruling class that discreetly disguised its role in deference to democratic sensibilities was by most Americans thought to be bearable and even admirable, especially as its privileges were thought to be derived from breeding and achievement. The overclass is something else. As the word suggests, it is marked by an overbearing quality; it presents itself as being over and against the American people but is quite unable to give any good reasons for its pretensions to superiority.

In Britain the phenomenon is much further gone with the rise of what Peter Osborne called the New Political Class, which replaced the old Establishment with something far more self-serving and destructive:

Though the eclipse of the Establishment is well-documented, the Political Class which replaced it is so far poorly understood. This is regrettable because the Political Class has come to occupy the same public space that the Establishment was supposed to until the end of the 20th century. This new class now stands at the pinnacle of the British social and economic structure. It sets social conventions, and demarcates the boundaries against which both public and private behaviour are defined. Unlike the old Establishment, the Political Class depends directly or indirectly on the state for its special privileges, career structure and increasingly for its financial support. This visceral connection distinguishes it from all previous British governing elites, which were connected much more closely to civil society and were frequently hostile or indifferent to central government. Until recent times members of British ruling elites owed their status to the position they occupied outside Westminster. Today, in an important reversal, it is the position they occupy in Westminster that grants them their status in civil society.

The Political Class is distinguished from earlier governing elites by a lack of experience of and connection with other ways of life. Its members make government their exclusive study. This means they tend not to have significant knowledge of industry, commerce, or civil society, meaning their outlook is often metropolitan and London-based. This converts them into a separate, privileged elite, isolated from the aspirations and the problems of provincial, rural and suburban Britain.

I think it was G K Chesterton who said that the old aristocrats had a solid function in society and only became unbearable when they started acting like aristocrats, but at least the old Establishment had a real stake in the country and the well-being of the people, and however soft the current members of the House of Lords were, at least the twigs of the older families could say that their grandfathers stood with Marlborough and Wellington. The new lot haven't anything much to fall back on except that they had some really good arguments in the student union back in Poly about how people couldn't be trusted to live their own lives.

But the new lot, of course, could for them.

Sark Chasm

After over 400 years, the island of Sark is altering its feudal system to make it more democratic. This would be a bit of a footnote, albeit an appalling one, if it weren't for the fact that this is not due to any decision by Parliament, but because of diktats from Brussels.

No wonder Mr. Gordon Brown tries to control people's lives. He hasn't control of anything else.

Be Seeing You

From Jonah Goldberg's new book Liberal Fascism:

Many progressives seem to think we can transform America into a vast college campus where food, shelter, and recreation are all provided for us and the only crime is to be mean to somebody else, particularly a minority.

A good point. Given my experiences on modern campuses, I would say that they give the phrase, "It takes a village" a whole new slant.

Mao Mystery

French car maker Citroen has apologised for an advert featuring Mao Tse Tung after complaints that it was an "insult."

Would someone please explain to me why insulting the memory of a vicious tyrant who was the greatest mass murderer in history is anything for any sane person to apologise for.

Isms

When cartoons give a clearer argument than most politicians.

Tip o' the hat to the Captain's Quarters.

The Mask Slips

A quote from Mayer Hillman, senior fellow emeritus at the Policy Studies Institute regarding global warming:

When the chips are down I think democracy is a less important goal than is the protection of the planet from the death of life, the end of life on it. This has got to be imposed on people whether they like it or not.

It isn't often that the true face of these jumped-up little eco-Stalins is revealed so nakedly.

Referendum? What Referendum

Gordon Brown signs the new EU constitution treaty. Joins fellow "leaders" in simultaneously giving away the shop and the people two fingers.

Road to Nowhere

The stupidity of tyranny: An abandoned railway in Siberia that goes from nowhere to nowhere; built for no other reason than a bizarre whim of Stalin's that no one dared question.