When we begin to realise that our three most celebrated ideologies are all driven by various fears, and that all these fears should be taken into account, then we can move on to examine the respective weaknesses and failures of the beliefs.
The preservationists
Let’s start with conservatism. If fear of change is the driving force, then it has not succeeded. The world looks very different today than it did 100, 200 or 300 years ago.
The locomotive of progressivism roars across the plains, never seeming to reach its destination, on its eternal journey to the promised land. And our noble conservative warriors with their Corinthian helmets have failed to stop it. Possibly they have slowed it down on the curves so that it does not run off into the countryside.
This is the greatest success of conservatism – to act as a brake, to exert friction. They may be seen as a rather poor art form, constantly standing in the way and impeding the progress of development, but I am quite sure that if we did not have this friction, humanity would have degenerated on several occasions. Our conservative friends should not be mocked for their failed attempts to stop the train, but instead celebrated for having succeeded in slowing it down to reasonable speeds.
At the same time, there is an important question about what should be preserved. In the choice between protecting Catholic paedophile priests, hereditary tyrannies – or the right of citizens to preserve their regional cultural distinctiveness, conservatives have too often sided with the perverts. Inexcusable behaviour that fuels the engine of progressives. Not everything is worth preserving, just as not everything is worth perverting.
The lovers of freedom
Then there are the liberals, who are afraid that the state will grow too big. Have they succeeded in their mission to halt the advance of state power? Here too, things look bleak. Many Westerners are all too familiar with the concepts of the nanny state and the deep state, various names for the proliferation of the monstrous state in various fields.
The deep state prevents enterprising politicians from changing the system, because the system lives its own life, regardless of who gets elected every 4 years. The system consists of the nobility and hundreds of thousands of clients who work for the state. They are of course afraid of loosing their jobs and their future in the service of the state. Maybe that’s why we haven’t had a comprehensive tax cut in over 50 years? The state always needs more, and its cell division and growth apparently cannot be stopped.
And the Nannystate is there to make sure the plebeians don’t smoke too much, drive too fast, or call each other names on the internet. We are little children to be monitored for life, capable and productive taxpayers who involuntarily contribute to the system.
So even liberals have failed, for too often their ideology of criticism of the state has mutated into the force that indirectly builds on the state machinery. In addition, they have also contributed to the creation of the global corporations, which act as states within the state, and are the driving force behind many political decisions. Corporativism is what we call this murky soup, when states and corporations compete in politics. Perhaps this is not what our founding fathers meant by freedom and government by the people?
The warriors of justice
Finally, the socialists, who fear big business and global capitalism, what are their failures? We could, of course, give a long list of their morbid blunders, but the important question is: have they succeeded in stopping big business? Have they somehow shrunk the dinosaurs and reduced their power over the little man in the street?
The quick and somewhat ill-considered answer would be, no. Today, we have a lot of companies whose finances and strength exceed those of small countries. And through donations, lobbying and other pressure, they can influence politicians and officials. As a bourgeois-minded person, you often miss this problem, you dismiss it. And believe that big business does not act in evil, that market forces ultimately (in some mysterious way) work in the service of good. A blind spot, just as socialists fail to recognise the potential malevolence of the big welfare state.
While socialists may have succeeded on a few occasions in stopping the expansion of global corporations, at the cost of enormous suffering and chaos, we don’t really see any tangible result of this fruitless struggle. Instead, many large corporations have hijacked socialism for their own ends, demanding regulations, subsidies and state intervention – when it suits them. Socialism, for all its original honourable intentions, is perhaps the most failed ideology of them all, now that their arch-enemy is using it for their own ends.
What remains is the unbridled activism, and the constantly repeated demands for even more justice, as if this game of demands could go on forever? Instead of supporting the unfortunate, the successful are condemned, so that both groups end up on the same level. They indulge in the most perverse form of levelling and social surgery. Perhaps this game is all that is left for politicians in a world where technology, research and development are solving more and more of humanity’s problems? Recently, even liberals and sometimes even conservatives have been seen playing the game.
The cathedral builders
All these shortcomings and compromises have brought the three ideologies closer together. Perhaps the difference between socialists, liberals and conservatives is no longer so great? They are all in a fragile state of ideological compromise. Our politicians and their clients are all addicted to the state, big business and growth (change). They are all failed ideological architects, and out of the rubble and debris they have built a vast cathedral, its spires and towers reaching into the blue.
It’s really an impossible sham, held together by compromise, lies, deceit and lust for power. And now that cracks are appearing in the walls, and boulders are occasionally falling in front of our eyes, they continue to praise their monument. And accuse those around them of secretly undermining and demolishing it, even though it is obviously falling down of its own accord.
Well, they may have had some help with the demolition. More and more people dislike the blue church; ghosts and ghouls complain from its depths at night. It is said that the structure was built on top of an ancient burial ground, where forgotten heroes and the blood-red ruby of truth lie buried, and that our ancestors never forgave us for this insult and disrespect.
