Ezra Levant's mindless drivel. . . . .

Today Mr. Ezra Levant wrote another in a long line of rather sad and pathetic articles for the Sun Newspaper chain. Like most of Mr. Levant's articles it was a combination of misunderstanding rooted in his ideological blindness and intentional misrepresentations rooted in his ridiculous politics. I don't usually comment on Mr. Levant's work because it is largely beneath contempt but today's article is a good example of the general misrepresentations that are being bandied about in the media and on the internet.

In this particular article Mr. Levant is talking about the so-called Tea Party movement and certain signs that he believes are indicative of the same kind of movement in Canada. Chef among these is the popularity of Robert Ford in the Mayoral race in Toronto. Most outrageously Mr. Levant claims that the so-called Tea Party movement is a "democratic backlash" against what he uncharacteristically calls a "ruling class." The problem, of course, is that it is neither of these. The fact is that despite the apparent 'grassroots' nature of the Tea Party movement, it is, like many populist movements, being led and bankrolled by significant parts of the very "ruling class" that it claims to oppose. Thousands of average people may show up at Tea Party rallies in the US but these rallies are largely organized and financed by rich and powerful people like Glen Beck and Sarah Palin (both of whom are millionaires). This is not unlike John Baird complaining about "Toronto Elites" at a stump-speech and then getting back into this chauffer driven limo and taking the news back to his rich leader who was born in Toronto, has a Masters degree, and hasn't been in a supermarket for decades. In the US there are quite a few Republican Senators who consider themselves part of the Tea Party movement and since it takes more than 50 million dollars to run for the US Senate, I would hardly call any members of this most elite of clubs, an average Joe. Furthermore, the so-called Tea Party movement (whether the official one in the US or the supposed offshoots of it in Canada), is nothing like a "democratic backlash." People like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, as well as their allies in Congress, are fully committed no legal limits on corporate donations for those running for office. Their agenda is really about the massive increases in Corporate power in society and influence at the political level. If this were really a "democratic backlash" it would be a movement to reduce the role that money plays in the political process. Furthermore, if we look at Ezra Levant's political masters in Canada we can see clearly that there is no democratic backlash. Just today our government (the one that Mr. Levant almost blindly supports) is making it clear that it will once again ignore the democratic will of the House and fail to reinstate the Long-form Census. It doesn't really matter where you come down on the issue of the Census, but if you support a government that continually ignores the will of the House, or prorogues Parliament in order to stay in power, it is clear that you are not interested in any kind of "democratic" anything.

Like most populist movements, the Tea Party movement is largely a sham. Far from being a "democratic backlash," it is simply another right-wing movement that is wrapping itself in the flag and using the jargon of democracy in order to further a corporatist political agenda and a Puritan ideology. It always amazes me that right-wingers like Ezra Levant call people on the left-wing naive and yet they fail in almost every case to apply the 'real-politik' standards that they claim motivate their analysis.

And as for the question of Robert Ford in the mayoral race in Toronto, calling his popularity part of a democratic backlash is laughable. That is the same as claiming that when Jim Watson wins the mayoral race in Ottawa against the right-wing O'brian, it is a sign that people's faith in political elites is growing. The Robert Ford phenomenon is multi-faceted but the population waking up to the power of a ruling-class or people's desire for real democracy are not part of this process. If Robert Ford does actually win the mayoral race I believe it will largely be a result of the fact that there is NO democratic backlash and a huge number of people have lost faith in the political process so a racist Neanderthal like Ford can win with that portion of the population that would like to take us back to the 'good old days' when children worked in factories.

I for one would love to see an actual 'democratic backlash' because I believe that if we did, the political agenda of men like Ezra Levant would sink back into the primordial ooze from whence it came. If we took the money out of the political process, if we truly democratized the media and the workplace, if we had some form of PR, the right-wing agenda would whither and die in no time. At least seventy percent of registered voters oppose Harper and his government, and I bet that number is much higher in the whole population. If society took a radically democratic twist Harper (and Mr. Levant) would be pushed so far into the political wilderness that they would hardly qualify as part of the fringe.

The New Age of Ignorance. . . . . .

  Few things seems more bizarre to me, more strangely twisted and disturbing, than a group of people that prides itself on its ignorance. And yet there is, in human society a strong tradition of 'Know-nothingism' which still emerges in these days of complex knowledge. Perhaps this strange ideology is partly sustained by the very fact that we live in such a complex age and people find comfort and solace in the idea of eschewing knowledge, as though by maintaining their ignorance they will somehow recapture a more simple (albeit completely imaginary) time in which there existed greater social, political, and philosophic clarity.

Of course, whatever the present state of the ideology of 'know-nothingism,' its roots are to be found in those who promoted it (and sometime still do) with the aim of maintaining control. Dictators and their ilk have long known that an ignorant population is an easily controlled and mailable one. And this promotion of ignorance was for centuries enshrined in the power and control maintained by the Roman Catholic church which prohibited on the threat of execution, for example, the translation of the Bible into common vernaculars comprehensible by the people. Besides undermining and threatening all those who would promote new forms of knowledge, for centuries the Church promoted ignorance as more or less a good thing, often couching this idea of know-nothingism in notions of attractive simplicity, an escape from all the trials and tribulation of worldly pains and knowledge. Later, more modern advocates of Conservative ideologies have promoted know-nothingism as the bulwark against ominous changes that lead, according to these advocates, to threatening chaos and radical, if often nondescript, social changes. The Tory-reactionaries of the late 18th century used this kind of argument in an attempt to hold back the looming changes in England which promised more universalized suffrage and education while threatening to undermine the absolute power of the British aristocracy. The aristocrats and their supporter knew what such changes meant to the maintenance of their authority and thus they actively and blatantly railed against education for the working and poor class, suggesting that any knowledge acquired by the masses would simply lead to dissatisfaction and rebellion.

Today, in most Western countries, we see varying degrees of resurgence in this ideology of know-nothingism. But nowhere is it more pronounced than in North America where openly fundamentalist politicians promote ignorance as a way of life. But our current government in Canada has taken this ideology to new, and unexpected, heights. As many commentators have begun to notice, this government is making every effort possible at closing down the knowledge based aspects of government. From killing the long-form census to firing ombudspersons whose job it is to monitor government with their expertise, this government has raised the bar on know-nothingism. For a generation now, neo-conservatism has been actively attempting to undermine knowledge in an effort to promote its agenda of near absolute and usually blind corporate power. From the Trilateral commission's condemnation of 'too much democracy' to the privatization of education, conservatives have attempted to shut down debate and knowledge based politics in order to maintain and ignorant and compliant population.

Conservatives in general, and Harper's Conservatives in particular, promote this agenda because they know that that cannot prevail in the face of an educated and informed population. They know that their cause would be profoundly weakened in the face of genuine and open discourse and thus the promotion of ignorance is their greatest weapon in the fight for dominance. Even their most hallowed argument of 'market efficiency' is largely a fabricated myth which is undermined time and again by actual discourse and investigation. Privatization of everything from transportation  to Third World social services has ended in disaster because the presence of middlemen that make huge profits consistently undermines rather than contributes to efficiency.

Conservatives everywhere are eager to keep people in the dark about almost everything because they know that knowledge will put an end to their efforts of control. And unfortunately a certain group of people lap this know-nothingism up because it eases their anxiety and feeds into a myth of simplicity and pastoralism. One needn't be a blind advocate of scienctism or technocracy to understand the benefits that knowledge, even specialized knowledge, can contribute to our social effort at constructing a better life. And in many cases it is actually simple knowledge that requires no specialization to understand which can contribute the most to these efforts. But this is a difficult struggle in an age in which our government can, for example, condemn an opposition leader for essentially being to smart.

Just the other day we witnessed a terrible example of know-nothingsm in action as the Manila police contributed to the deaths of eight people. Typical of a corrupt and brutal organization the Manila police lacked the expertise to handle the situation and were far too steeped in their own ignorance to understand what they lacked. After the fact, the police had to admit that they had "inadequate skills" to handle such a situation, but only a disaster brought them to this public conclusion. Luckily we averted a similar disaster when our government fired the nuclear watchdog, Linda Keen, for simply doing her job in attempting to avoid a literal meltdown.

Know-nothingism has threatened our civilization for centuries and our own government is keeping up the pressure. Will Canadians resist this ideology of ignorance? I am not sure.

Corporatism and the attack on Democracy

There is an inherent conflict at the heart of modern conservative theory between its social and fiscal elements. On the one hand conservatives want to hold on to certain supposedly traditional aspects of our social system, particularly those surrounding the 'family,' sexual preferences, child rearing, gender mores, ages of sexual consent etc. As a result many conservatives publicly lament the divorce rates, the abundance of single-parent or blended families, same-sex marriage, the sexualization of teen-agers, the absence of the traditional stay at home parent, etc. The problem is, of course,  that these social factors are being pushed forward by gradual changes in the market, changes promoted for the most part by. . . . conservatives. The most obvious element in this process and one which many sociologists and social commentators have talked about has been the growing necessity for both parents to go out to work in order to maintain an average family. Huge increases in housing costs (which has grown in large part by government's resistance to rent controls or the production and maintenance of decent social housing) has been a major element in this. In the Western countries, deregulation in trade has also put increasing pressure on households by making it easy for manufacturing jobs to disappear to third-world nations. Traditionally, if one parent went out to work it was the father because his earning potential was greater and this lead to an exacerbation of the power inequities between men and women at home and in the economy in general. As it has become increasingly difficult for one parent to stay at home during the early childhood years, women have ironically gained more economic and social power despite the negative pressure put upon them by conservative ideology which has fostered guilt for mothers who feel that putting their children in the hands of day-care workers is a sign of poor parenting. But the increasing financial power of women has also had the natural effect of increasing divorce rates as women who were once trapped in the bonds of marriage by their financial incapacity to act independently are now able to make more choices. Conservatives have begun to adapt to this reality at least in terms of their rhetoric, because you seldom hear mainstream conservatives condemning 'working women.' This shift in ideology has allowed conservative parties not to actually address these issues which could be done by giving significant tax breaks for families (particularly so-called income splitting), or by protecting the kinds of jobs that would make it easier for a live at home parent, or to institute living wage legislation. The conservatives essential pursue policies that push countries like Canada toward third-world economies while lamenting the disappearance of the traditional family (something which ironically existed for a very small group of middle and upper-class people for a very short historical period). This is why a conservative like Mike Harris, former Ontario Premier, makes more sense than a traditional conservative. Mike Harris essentially jettisoned the social aspect of the conservative agenda because at some level he knew that the forces of the Market that he was choosing to pursue were a major factor in the breakdown in traditional mores and it therefore made little sense to, say, attack parents for not staying at home to raise children. 

But the increasing power of the market, particularly as exercised through new technologies has also been a major factor in other aspects of social change. Marketing to children has been an important factor in the sexualization of teenagers, particularly teenage girls. The globalization of the entertainment industry, made so powerful through new technology, has given rise to a whole industry of sexualized teenagers that is evident in everything from Disney Television to music videos. Huge multinational corporations like Fox, Disney, Viacom, etc, have been instrumental to the globalization process and have also been major marketers to children. This has led not only to younger people exploring their sexuality but to the increasing profile of so-called alternative life-styles which traditional social conservative so abhor. Conservative parties, being largely allied to these very same forces of globalization are not about to put restrictions on such things as children in advertising or to the significant sexual content of music videos. Conservatism is more economically tied to multinational corporations than it is to a decreasing number of social traditionalists. As a result the ideology of conservatism is increasingly jettisoning its social aspect in favor of the rhetoric of the market and globalization in the full knowledge that its real power lies in the increasing strength of multinational corporations which will exploit any market to feed the insatiable greed of the casino economy. 

This is particularly evident in the agenda of the Conservative movement in Canada which has a decreasing interest in social traditionalism. While they attack recent increases in NGO strength to struggle for the rights of women, for example, they do so not because they are promoting a traditional family agenda but because their market model increasingly seeks to undermine the ability of people, particularly the most vulnerable, to fight back against the amazing increases in the market and the centralization corporate power. Meanwhile they make conscious, if entirely fabricated, efforts to hold on to their traditional base by paying lip-service to such issues as crime, which they know full-well has been on a steady decrease despite supposedly lax crime legislation which the aging population imagines 'coddles' criminals. 

Ironically this situation has lead to an increasing strength for Conservatives at the very time when the population in general is increasingly liberal in many ways. While multinational corporations have more and more power over the political agenda, people who are frighteningly ignorant of the economic processes at the heart of the very system they live in, become convinced of the inevitability of the corporate agenda at home and abroad. In fact, people become convinced that it is not an 'agenda' at all but a 'natural' and organic process of economy. This is an amazing display of Marx's concept of reification playing out at the heart of  modern capitalism. Meanwhile the traditional conservatives will not shift their vote to another party because their is very little space for the emergence of an actual conservative (in the broadest sense) party. These factors, coupled with the vagaries of our first past the post system and the splits in the Center and center-left means that conservatives can exercise an inordinate degree of power despite the growing liberalism of our age. 

The most problematic part of this process is that the majority of people remain woefully unaware of the actual corporatist agenda at the heart of the shifting conservative ideology. The neo-liberal movement has been remarkably effective at convincing people that the changes in the global economy are not the result of a conscious and concerted effort on the part of corporations and their political allies, but that they are an organic growth of an economy which they want us to believe that we have no power to influence. In this circumstance it becomes relatively easy to make attacks on democratic processes because the political system increasingly appears to be a simple administrative body which "administers" the economy rather than actively guiding society according to a general will. 

The good old days. . . . when children worked in factories. . .

People who long for some abstract golden age of society are always a frightening amusement to me. In recent years there has been a very clear 'dumbing down' of society; a tendency that Conservatism has long promoted, in part because of their own antiquated and philistine opinions, and in part because they know that an ignorant population is much easier to exploit. Undermining real education, particularly at the secondary and post-secondary level has been a key element in the dumbing down of the population. Ironically they have often hidden that processes behind a so-called 'back to basics' education campaign, but even this is largely about ignorance. They don't actually want people to be educated, they want people to be 'trainable,' particularly for playing the role of obedient employee in a third-world style economy. The so-called 'tough on crime' agenda of Conservatives is another prime example of this dumbing down. Even ignoring the fact that crime has gone down over the past few generations (at the same time as there has been a strategy which the Conservatives say is a coddling approach to criminals), the fact is that the only real way to deal with crime is to undercut its social causes as treat criminals with efforts at reforming their behavior rather than throwing thousands in brutal jails where they train to be even more hard-bitten criminals. Anyone who knows anything about sociology and criminology understands this. But once again the Conservative effort is to push all reason aside and exploit the crime issue to prey on people's ignorance and primitive chest-thumping tendencies to create a more subjugated, uneducated, controlled, and ignorant population in order to design an economy in which people are afraid to assert their rights and can be more effectively exploited. 

The fact that such a strategy is working can be seen in the apparent growth in support of the death penalty in recent years at the very same time when violent crimes are going down. But what I don't understand about this attitude is why people are so prepared to tout their support for the dark-side of our history. I suppose it is just another aspect of the general tendency toward ignorance. If you go back to England of the late 18th century there were over 200 crimes for which you could receive the death penalty. Yet crime was significantly more rampant than it is today. Why? Because of huge inequalities in wealth, total lack of universal education, the absence of the most basic rights in terms of employment standards and democracy, etc. The huge number of crimes and criminals did not go down because of harsher penalties, they went down because of universal education, increases in equality of wealth, and the institution of basic human rights. 

Yet many people are not only ready to call for a return to the past they brag about their philistine opinions and their desire to create a system of revenge rather than justice. But I will say it again, it has always been, and always will be, radicals who have pushed society forward into a better future. People who have struggled for written constitutions, basic employment rights, the elimination of slavery, the right to universal education and health care, have all been radicals. Meanwhile Conservatives have consistently fought against these things since time immemorial. 

If you believe in the death penalty, at least have the courage to argue for all those things which accompanied it; no right to Habeas Corpus, the return to slavery, the elimination of universal education, the elimination of basic democratic rights, etc.  If you want to return to the good old days when children worked in factories at least be honest about your ignorance. 

Who is Right and who is wrong. . . .

The waters of politics have become seemingly very muddy in recent years. The traditional terms that people used to rely on like ‘progressive,’ ‘radical,’ and ‘conservative,’ seem less clear than they once did. I started thinking about this because of Sarah Palin’s statement that Canada should dismantle its public health-care system. You see, people who would traditionally be considered ‘conservative’ have tried to portray themselves as somehow ‘radical’ or ‘progressive’ by claiming that they are the ones with new ideas  and they don’t want to rely on the old political notions. This is, of course, a ridiculous claim if your so-called ‘new’ ideas are just a return to the past. It is not, in other words, progressive to want to eliminate the gains that radicals brought us through generations of struggle. This would be like the Bourbons in France claiming that they were ‘radicals’ because they wanted to bring back the divine right of kings after the fall of Napoleon. Radicals, you see, seek to preserve the rights and privileges that we have gained and push forward to new and better ones. This is why the political term ‘conservative’ was never very meaningful; most conservatives want to dismantle the gains that we have made in workers’ rights, healthcare, human-rights, social welfare, etc. This is particularly true of the present government in Canada which came to power with what was essentially a ‘secret agenda’ to dismantle every element of responsible government that they possibly could. That is why that haven’t minded running up the country’s largest deficit in history; because they know that it will give them, or future governments, the excuse they need to eliminate social spending, including health-care. And to top that they even want to dismantle other areas of responsible government like freedom of information, the rule of law, ministerial accountability, etc.  And since they really want to destroy government and society as we know it, calling them conservative is certainly something of a misnomer. Those who we commonly call conservatives are really just  people who want to bring back a time when money and power were what really mattered; when those who were most vulnerable had little or no chance to live decent lives. In other words, they want to return to the law of the jungle or the idea that might makes right. We should, therefore, properly refer to ‘conservatives’ as ‘regressives’ because they want the human species to regress to a more primitive form. As ‘progressives’ we want to see a society in which everyone lives a decent life and everyone has a chance to excel. We don’t think that just because you are born with a ‘disability’ or born a woman or a person of color, or born in the wrong part of town, it should be difficult for you to do well in life. In other words, we want the human species to evolve beyond the law of the jungle to a higher state where compassion, cooperation, and care are the laws to which our society adheres. This is what our political struggle is all about and the reason why we will continue to be the true torchbearers of ‘radicalism.’ 

Harper and the egoism of politics. . .

As we all know, one of the primary problems with social and political reform is that those who resist it are driven by powerful egos and are convinced in almost all matters of life that they are correct in their judgments and that anyone who opposes them must be naive and/or stupid. Those who resist reform, who oppose the extension of democracy and the increase in generalized social interests, live in a constant state of irony because they accept major parts of society that were once considered radical and foolish by their political predecessors who would have rejected them as foolish and naïve.  Yet they accept these ideas while being convinced that while reforms toward greater social education and health, more worker’s rights and reduction of power for the  wealthiest class were fine in the past we have now reached the de facto ‘end of history’ and further reforms will end in total disaster. The conservatives told us that any system of minimum wage would make capitalism explode in total destruction. They told us that women voting would end society. Etc. Etc. Thus conservatives are people who accept radical ideas a hundred years after the rest of us understood them.

But the present class of ‘neo-liberal’ conservatives are much worse than traditional conservatives. A conservative like Edmund Burke, who is often considered the intellectual founder of Toryism, argued that social changes happen slowly through the gradual change in society. He understood at some level the powerful in society had an important social responsibility to society as a whole. Noblesse oblige, if you will. Modern Conservatives like Harper have a whole different M.O. They actually want to turn society backwards to a time when health and education was not universal but was the pleasure of those who could afford it. They want to take away the rights to collective bargaining and legislated safer workplaces. Harper and his ilk would like to take us back to a time when money and class made the decisions about whether some got a decent education or had decent housing. And they believe these things because they are driven by an extreme ego illness that convinces them that they are naturally part of the privileged class by dint of their A-Type personalities and that in a society of extreme inequality they will be somewhere near the top of the heap. This is why Harper never actually talks to average Canadians; he imagines himself as some kind of king who is complete beyond association with such commoners. And when people disagree with Harper or his ministers they get belligerent because they can’t believe that someone has the gall to disagree with them, their opinions must a priori be correct because they are the privileged ones. Thus the Conservatives never actually have a political discourse. They just deride and marginalize everyone else because no one deserve respect except those who agree with them.

This is the poison that has infected the Canadian political system, and democracy itself will be in danger until it has been purged. 

Conservative march to the past . . .

I am growing weary, as I suspect many people are, of the disgusting cold-war style rhetoric that this government constantly employs. It is as though Harper and his closest cronies are stuck in the 1950s and they think the world is being run by a bunch of ‘pinko, commie, left-wing, pornographers,’ and it is their mission to redeem the world from sliding into a great socialist abyss. John Baird has a cat named Thatcher, and Rona Ambrose is in love with Ayn Rand, a right-wing nut case who said that selfishness is a virtue and attracts college sophomores with her irrational, arbitrary thoughts on the beauties of self-interest dressed up as philosophy. You see, the reason that the Harper government seems as though it is stuck in the 1950 is that . . . well . . . it is! These blinkered, philistines are profoundly upset that the world has moved on from the days when homosexuality was illegal, people had no rights of habeas corpus, workers had no right to join trade unions, and universal primary education was considered a right rather than a privilege. As Harper’s secret speech demonstrated to anyone with ears and a brain, these people are chomping at the bit to march us back into the past when healthcare and education were only for those who could afford it, when workers had no rights and were chained to their machines, and corporations had no regulations to ensure that they act in a socially responsible manner.

Who opposed the abolition of slavery: Conservatives. Who opposed equal rights for all religions: Conservatives. Who opposed the legalization of trade unions and workplace safety regulations: Conservatives. Who opposed the vote for women: Conservatives. Who opposed universal education and healthcare: Conservatives. Who opposed non-discrimination laws for people of color and homosexuals: Conservatives.

While radicals have continually struggled to bring the human race to a state of justice and equality, Conservatives have continually strived to drag us back into the primordial ooze from whence we came. And the struggle continues. 

Bullies by Proxy

In the darker moments of the soul, and I know many like me have felt the same, I am overcome with pessimism motivated by the apparent tolerance, advocacy even, of the worst form of oppressive power. People seem drawn to power hungry leaders who, if one is at all observant, clearly have no interest in the people over whom they rule, but are simply anxious, grasping, selfish souls who strive to overcome their own desperate feelings of inadequacy by controlling others and everything in their possible purview. Our own Prime Minister, for example. One need not be particularly astute in political terms to understand that he would do anything to gain and hold on to power for the sole purpose of aggrandizing his warped and childlike ego which is profoundly weak because the man has no soul and no humanity. And thus he surrounds himself with spiritually small and intellectually miniscule men who, like himself, have not the empathy to reach out to others. They cannot fight for the vulnerable or console the down-trodden because they are themselves so desperately weak and wounded that they rail against the defenseless or those at risk as though they might raise themselves up to the level of powerful ‘MEN,’ when it really just demonstrates their pathetic limitations. Real human, and humane, strength is demonstrated not by our ability for bluster and bullying, but by our ability to put our own egos aside and take ourselves down to the level of the weak and vulnerable and raise them up.  

And yet angry and aggressive people, who feel that they are superior to others, or secretly suspect that they aren’t even equal to the rest, seem to like to have bullies for their representatives because they are ersatz images of themselves. Thus average conservative voters can be bullies by proxy. This political fact troubles and depresses me more than any other.

Oh, that the free would stamp the impious name

Of KING into the dust! or write it there,

So that this blot upon the page of fame

Were as a serpent’s path, which the light air

Erases, and the flat sands close behind!

 

               - Shelley

Conservatism and history

I have trouble understanding the conservative mindset. Almost every good idea since the dawn of time has been opposed by conservatives. In the modern era conservatives opposed the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, legislation protecting people in the workplace (even children), the vote for women, almost every social welfare program, universal education, universal healthcare, environmental restrictions etc. Face it, if we had listened to conservatives since, say, 1750, slavery would still be legal, only rich white male property owners would have the vote, women would still have more or less the status of property, and children would still be working in factories. Anyone who denies this is simply denying some simple facts of history. Most of the positive social legislative ideas we enjoy today, from education to the five day work week, exists today because radical people on the left conceived the idea and then struggled for it. Conservatives only accept these ideas fifty or a hundred years after they are instituted by liberal or left-leaning governments. The tragedy now is that, through massive propaganda efforts, help from the religious right, and great influxes of money from large corporations, conservatives are actually now slowly trying to dismantle many of the ideas that we have taken for granted. They are dismantling health-care, education, and they are even slowly attempting to dismantle the fundamental elements of democracy. If the conservatives have their way workers will lose all their legislative protections, only the rich will get an education, and democratic accountable government will slowly disappear.

History continued

It is history that people have trouble with; they have trouble learning lessons from the past and placing those lessons in their own time. If they could see history more effectively they would know what the forces of conservatism have meant in the past, and they would know the dangers that they represent for the future. Even Edmund Burke, the conceptual founder of modern Toryism, as brilliant as he was, was unable to place himself in historical context. He had spoken so eloquently in defense of the established powers of society, and had helped to define the modern notion of conservatism and yet when it came time for him to retire, Lords Bedford and Lauderdale had opposed the granting of his pension on the grounds that it was contrary to his own principles of conservatism. Many of the people who today vote conservative will eventually suffer its wrath when their children or grand-children can no longer afford health-care or get an education, or eventually they will lose their most basic and fundamental rights. There was a time, not that long ago, when people were chained to their machines in factories. The only thing that saved us from these worst excesses of capitalism were people who sacrificed their lives in the trade-union struggle against the forces of conservatism. Read history and don’t be fooled by conservatives who have us march headlong into the past.