Living White Males

A complete economic and social free-for-all is being spread throughout the world by a force of arms to which none of the traditional constraints applies. That New Order is also secured at home by means of limitlessly draconian measures against “terrorism,” “antisocial behaviour”, “Russian collusion”, “online abuse,” and so forth. The Left is assumed to begin and end with Marxism, which is itself reduced to Antonio Gramsci and Max Shachtman, marginalising the great issues of economic inequality, class consciousness, international exploitation, and war. That New Left underwrites a liberalism that is reduced to Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman. And that neoliberalism is upheld by a conservatism that is reduced to Carl Schmitt, “the crown jurist of the Third Reich”, and to his friend and correspondent, Leo Strauss, who passed straight from Plato, Thucydides and Xenophon to Machiavelli and Nietzsche, bypassing Christianity altogether in order to create an elite that was morally obliged to lie to the rest of us. Welcome to neoconservatism, which was begotten by neoliberalism, which was begotten by the New Left.

People sometimes suggest that I am somehow standing against the present MP for North West Durham, rather than simply standing for the seat where I have lived since before she was born, against whoever might be any of the other candidates. When they make that suggestion, then I say that, yes, I obviously wrote the above paragraph with her as its intended reader.

Anyway, I see that it is that time of year again, when Plato, Thucydides, Xenophon, Machiavelli and Nietzsche are said to be facing banishment from the groves of academe, along with all the others who are deemed to be too pale (if, say, Saint Augustine was any such thing), too male, and too stale.

This one has been doing the rounds for as long as I can remember, but it has never happened yet. Indeed, there is currently something of a rediscovery of things like Classics as important to the formation of great radical movements in the past and in the future. But if the Liberal Establishment that has no desire for such movements is indeed trying to sideline the Great Books, then enough of its intended victims already seem to know enough to protest.

Even if it were true, which it is not, that "nowhere teaches Shakespeare anymore", then there has always been more than enough time to teach yourself anything you liked in the gaps in the BA, or during the schools' inviolable weekends, their three-month holidays, and their evenings that began at three o'clock. Never mind once they have moved to a four-day week. And now, there is the Internet.

In that time, and by those means, the culture and politics of the future are taking shape. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.