Is progressive liberalism sleepwalking us backwards into an age of tyranny?

How often do you find yourself in a situation when you hear that inner voice questioning whether you can do, say or act in a particular way, just in case it directly ‘offends’ someone, or perhaps ever more likely could inadvertently be seen to offend that someone – but only in the eyes of someone else?

Chances are that you will have this experience a whole lot more than you realise and if you are aware of the influence that ‘rights’ and the instances when something you say or do could offend someone else, you may just begin to understand how even our thoughts are beginning to be affected by political correctness to such a degree that it is influencing the way that we function as a society.

No right-minded person can question the validity of the principles of balance and fairness which accompany the right to be treated equally – irrespective of any difference which can be seen or perceived by others. But where does the just protection of that right for an individual or group end, and what has become the very real reflective prejudice against all others actually begin?

This past week has seen some worrying developments relating to the way that political correctness is changing and indeed threatening the fabric of our society in just the one area relating to religious and cultural background with Ofsted denying a School an ‘outstanding’ rating because it lacks diversity, and the latest news of radicalisation risk at 6 Muslim Schools in London.

On one hand, we are hearing the message that it is no longer right or correct to be as we are and as we have always been as the indigenous or historical population. On the other, we are seeing evidence that supports the view that not only are new cultures within our own most welcome to comprehensively retain their own identities and remain separate from a system which we are ourselves told must continue to be opened. We witness all of this taking place at potentially great cost to the very culture that opened its arms and warmly welcomed so many others to join us here.

The nature of the way we now ‘think’ as a society suggests that to even acknowledge the reality that many Governments have failed to encourage and maintain fully integrated communities, is to be prejudiced or indeed to have a right-wing outlook.

But the reality is that such statements are neither prejudiced nor judgemental in any way. A statement like this is observational.

As well as reflecting what is actually happening, it also demonstrates the cause of much fear and yes – misunderstanding, which could have been avoided if politicians had actually been thinking about the implications and consequences of everything they were doing all along.

Instead, the situation we face together, whatever the structure of our communities may be is very real; it threatens us all – no matter our background; and it is risking our future in ways that the liberalist elite will never have even considered as they philosophise and grandstand over what they think is right and should be seeking to inflict upon everyone else next.

What seems to have been missed by the idealists is the fact that freedom and liberation for one soon becomes the oppression of others if respect for that freedom is not then reciprocated.

It doesn’t matter whether the question concerns colour, race, religion, age, sexual orientation, gender, disability, education, background, wealth or other status. The dangers of focusing benefits for the few at the cost of the many should be only too apparent and we are together experiencing neither a fair nor balanced society at large.

Yet even given all of the other problems that the UK is currently facing, the self-righteous belief of the liberal elite to push for what is itself a system of legitimised privilege, created through the inappropriately named course of positive discrimination, seems to also leave them strangely unable or equipped to speak out and say enough is enough – or indeed, accept that we have reached a place called stop.

It might not be so bad if the very same people were not so quick to ridicule and encourage the isolation of those who do speak out. It is as if the principles behind what is in fact driving a tyranny which oppresses people from within by enslaving the way they actually think can still end in some place which will be happy for us all.

The growing acknowledgement of people that something is fundamentally wrong with the way the system works is well illustrated by the rise of UKIP, which now appears to be on a roll, despite every chance taken by the establishment to write them off as bigots, racists and loonies.

In time, they may well be proven to be little more than the focus of the protest vote of the Coalition era. But their popularity today says much about the fact that people want change and no longer want to feel like they have reason to be afraid of their own shadows.

It is political idealism which has been propagated by the established political parties which has led to this very situation, and irrespective of what philosophies we may be told exist as the backdrop of the Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat machines, it is the lack of real principle within them all which is allowing the real threats from the monster they have together created to manifest in forms such as the radicalisation of the young, and the risk that they now pose to the communities in which they have previously been encouraged and nurtured.

Through the personal prisons of the mind that progressive liberalism and the age of rights has created, a tyranny is manifesting of a kind that all of the worst characters of history could have only dreamed about for its power and ability to control; one which could soon make Orwell’s 1984 look like a standard entry in a daily diary.

Worst of all of it is the fact that those who have responsibility for it have now bought into it themselves and whilst nobody leads us who is prepared to take the risk of standing up and saying ‘no more’, the situation is only going to get a whole lot worse and may lead to tyranny of a fully totalitarian kind.

Whether they accept it or not, the liberalist project has long since passed its point of good and as we are led further and further into living an idealist and impractical nightmare, we must surely now ask, is progressive liberalism sleepwalking us backwards into an age of tyranny?

image top – source unknown