I’m going to make some proposals for what I believe to be a better, purer form of democracy, which strikes me as the only realistic alternative to the theoretical ideal of an all-wise, all-knowing ‘benign dictator’ who couldn’t possible hope to please everyone (not that even the highest forms of democracy can, of course). Even if such a noble-minded individual existed, the doctrine ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’ could still see them one day turning into another Mao or Pol Pot. You may not agree with my suggested solutions, but you surely cannot disagree with my observations on what’s wrong with things as they currently stand in virtually all Western democracies (with the possible exception of Switzerland). The idea here is not so much to come up with a fully-fledged alternative, but rather to remind us all that there are other ways of doing things and that we must never accept that the current model of democracy is so perfect and mature as to be immutable and somehow beyond fundamental reform. We need much ‘out-of-the-box-thinking’ and what follows below is just one, small example of it. The most important thing is to get the debate started. Good luck in doing so, everyone!
Assuming one day sanity once again prevails – and I believe it will – we shall need to sit down and construct a new system of governance that learns and adapts from the mistakes of the past and ensures that cast iron protections are put in place to stop another cabal of psychopathic megalomaniacs from ever arising again. We need to incorporate the wisdom of the world’s most outstanding thinkers, historians, economists, political scientists and philosophers if we are to formulate a system inviolable to the machinations of parasites who would seek, yet again as they have throughout the whole of recorded history, to enslave us all. This is the typical end result when we place total trust in complete strangers: slavery. We expect others we entrust with power to be good natured and honest in their dealings with us, as we would be with them if the roles were reversed. This is the basic, fundamental mistake we make when trying to assess others’ fitness for public office. I shall return to this vital matter later in this essay as it is of the utmost importance and far too significant to simply brush aside.
The most important thing by far, as I see it, is that the concept of a permanent or semi-permanent ruling class be consigned to the dustbin of history. In the future, it will be preposterous to even contemplate the notion of politics as a career choice. We cannot have a situation where anyone, no matter how gifted or altruistic they may be, is permitted to sit for year upon year in a position in which they enjoy decision making power over others. All too frequently, a “few years in public service” (as it’s euphemistically termed) becomes a lifetime and if that were not bad enough, the offspring of such self-entitled individuals often seek to follow in the parent’s footsteps. The dire prospect of a political dynasty arising then raises its ugly head and if you want to know where that eventually leads, you have only to look at repressive, backward hell-holes like North Korea and Saudi Arabia. And every time another Bush or Clinton gets into the White House, the further we are headed down that ruinously dangerous road.
We need to completely re-examine our current model of democracy from the ground up. As things stand at present, whenever fresh elections are called, anyone can stand and claim to be in support of whatever fashionable, prevailing view they care to associate themselves with. There is thus very little to distinguish the genuine believer from the opportunist rogue. In fact the candidate who is most likely to prevail is the one that can most convincingly lie; the superficial charmer who can do underhand deals with the so-called ‘opinion formers’ (the media) to get himself portrayed in a favourable light. Under such circumstances, decent, honest, well-intentioned people who stand for election hoping to bring about positive change stand next to no chance. In fact the person by far best qualified to excel in politics under the present model is the specious, seemingly-agreeable scheming psychopath who will do whatever it takes to climb the greasy pole at any expense – and they don’t care who they have to betray and crush to get to the top.
As recently as 50 years ago, we typically only thought of psychopaths as violent, unhinged serial killers of the scary kind popularised in horror films. But this view is something of a myth. Only a very small proportion of psychopaths are violent killers. Let’s consider the clinical character traits of psychopaths as we now, much more clearly, understand them today:
Glibness/superficial charm
Grandiose sense of self-worth
Pathological lying
Cunning/manipulative
Lack of remorse or guilt
Emotionally shallow
Callous/lack of empathy
Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
Parasitic lifestyle
Now you can’t help but notice that many of the above ‘qualities’ are commonly found in the highly successful and ruthless politician! In fact not just politicians. You can find these people rising to the top in many walks of life: banks and large corporations chief among them. Their ability to calculate coldly and ruthlessly gets the job done! Okay, so they cause devastation to the people whose lives they ruin in the the wake of the heartless decisions they take, but to a psychopath, that’s no barrier at all to a sound night’s sleep. If you seriously think you can elect a person like this to work on your behalf, to fight your corner and do their best in your interests, you must be seriously deluded. It’s simply not going to happen. You are going to end up getting betrayed with a 100% certainty. The only question is how badly. And it’s not just individuals with this personality disorder that treat others as sub-humans. The same can equally be said for the devotees of many world religions. They likewise believe that if you’re not ‘one of them,’ then your life is at best dispensable and you deserve no more consideration than a farmyard animal. These kind of people urgently require removal from public affairs, too.
Our major weakness here is what the psychologists term the phenomenon of projection – and it’s application is invariably fatal when it comes to judging and selecting politicians to represent us. Projection occurs when we’re foolish enough to believe we can put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and see life through their eyes. We then imagine our world-view being theirs, as if everyone felt and thought the same as we do. This is a catastrophic error when the person whose eyes we’re trying to see through is a psychopath. The normal person simply cannot get inside the heads of these people. Your decent, human values; how you personally perceive the world around you, how you believe in treating others as you would like to be treated, empathy for those in suffering etc., all that makes you human has absolutely zero resonance in the mind of a psychopath whose sole aim is exploiting others for his or her own self-advancement. Yet millions of ordinary people fall into this trap every time there’s another election. They make this same basic, fatal mistake over and over and over again. And then we grumble about broken election promises and how all politicians are glib liars and manipulators and how we won’t get fooled by them again. We switch from Labour to Tory to Labour to Tory to Labour to Tory in the insane expectation that it’ll be different next time. Well, it never will be without fundamental, ground-up reform.
One of the truest political axioms of all time is that those who seek power should never be allowed anywhere near it. The prospect of power over others attracts the wrong sort of people. Most of us healthy individuals have no interest whatsoever in exercising power over others, but sadly there are plenty of others that do – and politics is a powerful magnet for them. Consequently we must take all steps necessary to exclude such individuals from all avenues to public office. In future, a completely new and fresh approach to democracy must be adopted to ensure this criterion is satisfied. Let me make a proposal at this point. Instead of having a joker of little or no provenance popping up from nowhere promising us the world, how about we nominate well-known, long-established, decent individuals from our own communities to stand? People who have, over their lives, become regarded as sensible, level-headed, caring individuals who already devote time to helping others? How about ‘we the people’ pre-screen the quality individuals we know to be good people and only their names go forward onto the ballot? Of course, these people we would like to see represent us might simply be unable to do so. In such instances, we can perhaps apply the current rules for jury service exemption to see if they have legitimate reasons for being excused duty and in valid cases where, for instance, undue hardship might result, then it would not be right to press them.
In any case, their sacrifice should be a small one. We will not expect good people to have to sign up for terms of four or five years any more. That’s another unsatisfactory aspect of the existing system. The aim should be to keep this period of public service to 1 year or less. Rotating representatives regularly prevents them from becoming too comfortable and from forming unhealthy relationships with the corporate and banking worlds. Short periods of service also help maintain the vital ‘alignment of interests’ between the governors and the governed. A person who who is certain to be rejoining the real world in 12 months will be primarily motivated to make that world better for himself and as a result, everyone else. On the other hand a career politician who may well be in the job for life doesn’t give a hoot about conditions in the world outside their own little bubble because he or she is isolated from its harsh realities and will one day retire to a castle with a fat, inflation-proof pension they and their fellow parasites voted themselves as a perk of the job. This disparity in the diverse aims of rulers and ruled must be closed.
Another essential step in this quest for higher standards in public life will be the introduction of screening of all candidates for psychopathy. We already have a well proven methodology which involves the observation of how a test subject’s pupil diameter changes when presented with a rapid succession of visual stimuli and it’s high time we used it to weed out the self-servers attracted to power for all the wrong reasons. The single psychopath is bad enough, but these people have a knack for sniffing out others with the same sort of mindset and when they form networks to aid their mutual advancement up the chain of command they become especially dangerous to the rest of us and the peace of the world in particular, because they absolutely do not have the slightest care for all the lives they ruin in their obsessive quest for money and power. There is no one, no matter how evil, these people would not do a deal with if it benefits them. At the highest level, organised rings of psychopaths (far more than crazed individuals like Stalin or Hitler) start major wars and conflicts world-wide and have done for untold centuries. So everyone must be screened, even the philanthropic types we pre-approve for election, because you can never be too careful. A ‘belt and braces’ approach here is essential.
A couple of final suggestions:
1. External influences. Refuse to accept interference from any supranational authorities such as we do at present. That would mean no outsiders would be in a position to overrule the people we choose to govern us. So any international treaties would need to assert the principle that our parliament is the supreme law-making body in this country. If we continue to be subordinate to outside bodies like the UN, the WTO or the EU, then no amount of reform to the domestic democratic process is going to bring the slightest improvement.
2. He who blunders pays. As things currently stand, whenever a public authority or someone acting on behalf of same does something gravely wrong and actionable which subsequently results in a damages award against said authority, it’s the taxpayers who’re forced to pick up the bill for it. How can it be right that when someone in a position of authority abuses or misuses his/her power, some innocent third party (us, in other words) has to stump up for their incompetence and/or gross negligence? In future we must insist that public authorities carry insurance against such risks, so the cost of these blunders (which happen all too frequently and for which no one ever seems to accept any meaningful responsibility) will no longer be borne by the public. In this way, officials who screw up once too often will become uninsurable and consequently unemployable in a similar role – as is only right and proper; a self-correcting mechanism if you like.
3. Free speech reigns! We have seen the terrible damage done to Western society by the poisonous doctrine of Political Correctness (which is basically Cultural Marxism – a foreign ideology that doesn’t belong here). This must end. The people we elect to make our laws must be free to discuss issues that confront the country without being shouted down by extremist bigots and bullies who seem to think only their particular views should be heard. ALL views must be heard; honest debate alone will decide the merits of each. The suppression of open, unfettered debate is the enemy of Truth and it leads to poor, ill-informed decision-making, the flourishing of falsehoods, corruption of the public good and ultimately – as we are now seeing – tyranny.
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The True Conservatives 