The negation of the self

David Cameron wants you to negate yourself, according to Richard Reeves, director of the neo-Marxist think tank Demos. That Britain’s next ‘conservative’ Prime Minister has been fraternising with this far-left Fabianist fifth-column, has been common knowledge amongst those in the know for some time. But that the Telegraph would echo such strong collectivist propaganda as this, and promote it as Editor’s Choice, is perhaps a little shocking.

“At the heart of Cameron’s political philosophy are the conjoined ideas of
social responsibility and commitment. But the “big society” which he
optimistically hopes can replace the “big state” is one which has to be composed
of big people – people who are willing both to discipline themselves and to
sacrifice some of their own interests for those of others. In other words,
people of character.”

So after “decades of neglect” of the state’s cultivation of the personality of the people (I beg to differ), Reeves and Cameron have decided to lay out the attributes which are most desirable to their “new agenda for character education” – summed up by the “ability to put the needs of others before your own”.

Such blatant calls for self-sacrifice cannot be sanctioned, and so I defer to Ayn Rand, who remains the world heavy-weight champion debunker of altruism.

There are two moral questions which altruism lumps together into one
“package-deal”: (1) What are values? (2) Who should be the beneficiary of
values? Altruism substitutes the second for the first; it evades the task of
defining a code of moral values, thus leaving man, in fact, without moral
guidance.

Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of
others is good, and any action taken for one’s own benefit is evil. Thus the
beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value—and so long as
that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes.

So the “test of character” posed to the British people is “how selfless can you be for the public good”? This is an indictment of moral vacuity, and as clear a sign as any that it is dangerous to underestimate quite how evil the next government will be – regardless of who wins, since even Reeves admits “both the main parties…promote social responsibility”.

‘Evil?’ I hear you ask.

‘What could be more evil?’ I retort.

You are being prescribed sacrifice of your livelihood and your moral code, and then told such an action is the height of morality. The two parties who are vying to form government are now clearly trying to outdo one another in the altruism stakes. Gone is any believable rhetoric about freedom, prosperity, or even the cliché of ‘change’, from British politics. This election will be fought between rival cabals of corporatist interest as to whom can construct the most effective socialist technocracy.

As for the grit crisis I wrote about in my last piece- well that has nothing to do with salt, but everything to do with character, according to Reeves – the implicit suggestion being of course, that any sector of the economy, be it rock salt distribution or the socialised health system, can be improved if only us individuals are willing to sacrifice ourselves.

I hope for my sake that you’re not.