How long must this go on?
You may have heard of the recent discovery the long lost Bulldog spirit has been found finally as it was manifested in Mr Cameron when he said "No!" to Merkozy. It was not national interests David Cameron was defending, it was the
interests of banks who don't want to be taxed or be regulated that he
was defending. The revolting servility this filthy Tory has shown has nothing to do with patriotism, though it is
symptomatic of the whorish relationship between the Conservative Party
and the financial colossus in the City of London. The fact that this can even be considered patriotic is the sign of the crass state of the political discourse in this country. The nationalist Right are experiencing something of a resurgence amidst this economic turmoil, so there's nothing to lose in a bit of flag-waving especially after a round of shit-flinging on the Continent. The choice we face is between Brussels and Washington, but European integration cannot be anti-democratic as it is right now. Cameron is no democrat for standing in opposition to the treaty, the politics of Cameron have a great deal of commonality with Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy.
David Cameron seems to embody the Progressivism of Victorian liberalism, at once a creature of the market forces as well as a cultural puritan and a proponent of history as progress. The crisis is just a cyclical phenomenon to him, in the long-term it is a blockage to the path of the march towards a utopia of the free-market. The theoretical doctrines of monetarism have been replaced by a pragmatism which cuts through theory to the reality, where the old state system of health-care and education has to be discarded. The debt has to be managed through a deficit reduction which will thereby enable us to circumvent this obstacle. The key elements here feed into one another: the market is perfect so the crisis is cyclical not structural and will pass in time, therefore there are no grounds to justify state intervention to create jobs and the deficit is the real issue. The regulation and taxation of financial institutions has to be stopped then, as the problem will pass as the structures of finance are adjusted through the reforms being implemented already.
In the light of Mr Cameron's transformation from Etonian Toff to British Bulldog, the talk of Christian values is quite interesting. David Cameron has listed the following as Christian values: responsibility, hard-work, charity, compassion, humility, self-sacrifice, pride in working for the Common Good and honouring the social obligations to family and community. This is where Mr Cameron's edge in public relations (which used to be called 'propaganda' in more honest days) comes across in his presentation. The man knows how to dress an agenda and not just the monkey he keeps for a deputy. Cameron can spin the line on it's head and roll out commonsensical rhetoric at just the right moment. No one opposes the basic concepts Cameron endorsed and for this reason they do not require endorsement. What matters most about the endorsement relates to the standards he has set in office already. For instance, the banks clearly are not about "self-sacrifice" as made evident by their refusal to tolerate even modest levels of progressive taxation and regulation.
It shouldn't be a surprise that Cameron is looking after the principle constituents of the Conservative Party. This cultural conservatism is superstructural to the economic base which it has the potential to undermine and may be threatened by itself simultaneously. In other words, the endorsement of Christian values amounts to an outgrowth of market liberalism. The particular appreciation of charity in Cameron comes out of the harsh Victorian hatred of the undeserving poor as it posits a deserving poor, which should be helped and has been shafted by the welfare state. Compassion should be rationed then. Humility too, only applies to the poor who should know their place. Of course, the banksters have no time for responsibility and any hard work which actually produces things has largely declined in this country. And yet the masses are meant to be committed to sacrifice themselves for the super-rich. These supposedly Christian pronouncements by Cameron reveal a profound hatred for the working-class in this country.
The liberal philosopher John Locke provided a theoretical justification for private property, market relations and bourgeois conceptions of freedom. But it was the Whig circles in which Locke moved that would eventually bring down the King and in turn provide the incentive for Locke to provide such a justification in the first place. Locke was a close friend of Lord Shaftesbury who founded the Whig Party, though Locke did not share the Paganism of Shaftesbury and a number of the aristocrats of the day. The ruling-class feared that the Catholic King was loyal to the Vatican, so there would be a forced rival of Catholicism in the country which would mean violent upheaval. The violence that it would take to the reverse the process which established the Church of England and Protestantism would inevitably undermine the power structure. So the Pagan ruling-class conspired to overthrow a Catholic King in order to install a Protestant King and maintain the status quo.
Shaftesbury's friend John Locke was eager to provide a philosophical justification for the replacement of King James II with William of Orange. The foundations of liberalism were laid with a Christian gloss in the defence of the interests that the English ruling-class had vested in property. Christianity was for the poor and the ruling-class remained Pagan in Britain until the 19th Century. The liberal pronouncements of John Locke gave the coming market system a language of natural rights and freedoms. After feudalism had crumbled it ceased to be the 'natural order' and from then on capitalism would be considered in accordance with human nature. The irony is that the nationalism behind Cameron's veto comes from the old Pagan logic and not any kind of Christian value. Here we find a return to the Paganism of the British ruling-class as opposed to the Christian poor. In Christian love there is no hint of the Pagan logic that we must privilege our own clan above the rest.
An even greater irony is that the decision to veto the treaty may have actually maintained the limited democracy we endure in this country. The move was made to secure the interests of banking and finance, not out of any Bulldog patriotism. So the enemies of social democracy may have saved the possibility of a return to Keynesianism in Britain. As the treaty enshrines balanced budgets, near zero-deficits and has effectively abolished expansionary public spending in doing so. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone as the European Union was a right-wing project from the very beginning. This was just the latest attack on social democracy and a testament to the appalling state of affairs in Europe. We have only to turn to the unconscionable vandalism of Greece - a country which should have been allowed to default - to find an even more telling instance. The European elites are stopping at nothing to use this crisis to tear apart the welfare states created after WW2.
Not only would it seem that this is a time of creative destruction, but the social democratic model of yesteryear cannot save itself. We are caught between a giant douche and a turd sandwich, to borrow from South Park, in that we face a choice between Washington and Brussels. The reason that European integration should be pursued along lines which are democratic and offer an alternative model to that of predatory American capitalism. Meanwhile the Right will continue to shout as though the choice is between Whitehall and Brussels. There can be no referendum on the capitalist system and so we have to take a stand together as Europeans. There is a long way to go in this area, as we have yet to establish trade unions which can represent the European workers as a whole of entire industries. The kind of national discourse available in the United States is not available in the European Union yet. Complete withdrawal is just a nationalist delusion that has already been ruled out by globalisation. The more fundamental struggle is a fight against capitalism.
Solutions for whomDavid Cameron seems to embody the Progressivism of Victorian liberalism, at once a creature of the market forces as well as a cultural puritan and a proponent of history as progress. The crisis is just a cyclical phenomenon to him, in the long-term it is a blockage to the path of the march towards a utopia of the free-market. The theoretical doctrines of monetarism have been replaced by a pragmatism which cuts through theory to the reality, where the old state system of health-care and education has to be discarded. The debt has to be managed through a deficit reduction which will thereby enable us to circumvent this obstacle. The key elements here feed into one another: the market is perfect so the crisis is cyclical not structural and will pass in time, therefore there are no grounds to justify state intervention to create jobs and the deficit is the real issue. The regulation and taxation of financial institutions has to be stopped then, as the problem will pass as the structures of finance are adjusted through the reforms being implemented already.
In the light of Mr Cameron's transformation from Etonian Toff to British Bulldog, the talk of Christian values is quite interesting. David Cameron has listed the following as Christian values: responsibility, hard-work, charity, compassion, humility, self-sacrifice, pride in working for the Common Good and honouring the social obligations to family and community. This is where Mr Cameron's edge in public relations (which used to be called 'propaganda' in more honest days) comes across in his presentation. The man knows how to dress an agenda and not just the monkey he keeps for a deputy. Cameron can spin the line on it's head and roll out commonsensical rhetoric at just the right moment. No one opposes the basic concepts Cameron endorsed and for this reason they do not require endorsement. What matters most about the endorsement relates to the standards he has set in office already. For instance, the banks clearly are not about "self-sacrifice" as made evident by their refusal to tolerate even modest levels of progressive taxation and regulation.
It shouldn't be a surprise that Cameron is looking after the principle constituents of the Conservative Party. This cultural conservatism is superstructural to the economic base which it has the potential to undermine and may be threatened by itself simultaneously. In other words, the endorsement of Christian values amounts to an outgrowth of market liberalism. The particular appreciation of charity in Cameron comes out of the harsh Victorian hatred of the undeserving poor as it posits a deserving poor, which should be helped and has been shafted by the welfare state. Compassion should be rationed then. Humility too, only applies to the poor who should know their place. Of course, the banksters have no time for responsibility and any hard work which actually produces things has largely declined in this country. And yet the masses are meant to be committed to sacrifice themselves for the super-rich. These supposedly Christian pronouncements by Cameron reveal a profound hatred for the working-class in this country.
Can you taste the Irony?
The liberal philosopher John Locke provided a theoretical justification for private property, market relations and bourgeois conceptions of freedom. But it was the Whig circles in which Locke moved that would eventually bring down the King and in turn provide the incentive for Locke to provide such a justification in the first place. Locke was a close friend of Lord Shaftesbury who founded the Whig Party, though Locke did not share the Paganism of Shaftesbury and a number of the aristocrats of the day. The ruling-class feared that the Catholic King was loyal to the Vatican, so there would be a forced rival of Catholicism in the country which would mean violent upheaval. The violence that it would take to the reverse the process which established the Church of England and Protestantism would inevitably undermine the power structure. So the Pagan ruling-class conspired to overthrow a Catholic King in order to install a Protestant King and maintain the status quo.
Shaftesbury's friend John Locke was eager to provide a philosophical justification for the replacement of King James II with William of Orange. The foundations of liberalism were laid with a Christian gloss in the defence of the interests that the English ruling-class had vested in property. Christianity was for the poor and the ruling-class remained Pagan in Britain until the 19th Century. The liberal pronouncements of John Locke gave the coming market system a language of natural rights and freedoms. After feudalism had crumbled it ceased to be the 'natural order' and from then on capitalism would be considered in accordance with human nature. The irony is that the nationalism behind Cameron's veto comes from the old Pagan logic and not any kind of Christian value. Here we find a return to the Paganism of the British ruling-class as opposed to the Christian poor. In Christian love there is no hint of the Pagan logic that we must privilege our own clan above the rest.
An even greater irony is that the decision to veto the treaty may have actually maintained the limited democracy we endure in this country. The move was made to secure the interests of banking and finance, not out of any Bulldog patriotism. So the enemies of social democracy may have saved the possibility of a return to Keynesianism in Britain. As the treaty enshrines balanced budgets, near zero-deficits and has effectively abolished expansionary public spending in doing so. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone as the European Union was a right-wing project from the very beginning. This was just the latest attack on social democracy and a testament to the appalling state of affairs in Europe. We have only to turn to the unconscionable vandalism of Greece - a country which should have been allowed to default - to find an even more telling instance. The European elites are stopping at nothing to use this crisis to tear apart the welfare states created after WW2.
Not only would it seem that this is a time of creative destruction, but the social democratic model of yesteryear cannot save itself. We are caught between a giant douche and a turd sandwich, to borrow from South Park, in that we face a choice between Washington and Brussels. The reason that European integration should be pursued along lines which are democratic and offer an alternative model to that of predatory American capitalism. Meanwhile the Right will continue to shout as though the choice is between Whitehall and Brussels. There can be no referendum on the capitalist system and so we have to take a stand together as Europeans. There is a long way to go in this area, as we have yet to establish trade unions which can represent the European workers as a whole of entire industries. The kind of national discourse available in the United States is not available in the European Union yet. Complete withdrawal is just a nationalist delusion that has already been ruled out by globalisation. The more fundamental struggle is a fight against capitalism.
We cannot abandon Euroscepticism to the Right
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