When I talk about “the Pendulum of society” – the forces that have been meticulously moving western society back and forth between two extremes for the past 3,000 years – people in the U.S. always want to continue the discussion as though this is happening only in the United States.
So I asked Google to tell me about politics in England. It sent me to the following question-and-answer at Quora.com – RHW
Q: What are the key differences between the British Conservative and Labour parties?
A: Essentially the base difference is philosophical.
Conservatives believe in individual liberty and responsibility. Effectively that a great deal of how well we do in life is decided by our own actions and effort, and that we own our outcomes: effort produces results. Success is seen as the product of our effort.
Labour tends toward collective action and responsibility. It’s a belief that together we form a society, and that much of how we get on in life is determined by our circumstances rather than our own actions.
Both ways of thinking have strengths and a core of truth to them. But any strength pushed to an extreme becomes a weakness.
Belief in individual responsibility and freedom becomes a disregard of those less fortunate and a blindness to the misfortunes of others, which can manifest as considering wealth to be righteous and the poor to be the authors of their own fate.
Collectivism pushed too far chokes freedom, and removes or limits individual freedom to the point of tyranny: rules to govern every behaviour, every action, every thought. Leftist moral absolutism crushes free speech. Collectivism can also drive victim psychology, where individuals are persuaded that the system is rigged against them, and so to give up on trying to better themselves.
This is why extremes of the Left and Right only really get elected in crises. Because it takes quite a lot to persuade the electorate that we should abandon the less fortunate, or that we should choke individual freedom and cut off the very human desire to succeed and the satisfaction of taking pride in personal achievement and growth.
I think Labour and Conservative perfectly balance our humanity. I’ve voted both ways and I dislike the zealots of both sides: no time for the moral absolutism of either direction of the Corbyns or the Rhees-Moggs of this world.
