Say I asked you a question. 'On what grounds should the State be prohibited from taking a close interest in every aspect of your life?' How would you respond to that? If you thought the best answer was something like 'bring it on, I think the State should exercise a close interest in everything I do', then kindly leave the room. My little thought experiment is, without rancour towards those that think the State doesn't get involved half as much as they would like it to, firmly directed at those who disagree; that is to say, the question is strictly for those who think that the State oughtn't to have a say.
You know, the ones among us who bristle at the thought that some privileged city inhabiting slicker educated up to PPE level, then a short career as SpAD followed by parachuted descent into safe seat as Parliamentary candidate and then a welcome into power, gets to tell us with the State's mighty backing how we should live our lives. That that sort should have a right to tell us what to do in our daily lives, we mean. People in other words who are yet to live a life in most cases, nevertheless imagine that they know best.
I'm talking about the UK State in this context, by the way. Not just any old State, but definitely that one. States do tend to have their own styles I'm sure, but I figure that I'm probably not referring to somewhere like the Swedish State, or even more starkly the Iranian State. I would definitely not be referring to the Russian State, or any of a host of others I could name.
Individual styles of government and their underpinning ideologies, and histories matter. Equally I single out “that sort” here for opprobrium, since they appear to me to be just the sort signed up wholly to the State's ideals. But lest I end up playing the idealised Woke Man too heavily instead of the argument itself, let me get back to the point. After all, you don't have to fit that particular profile in order to toe the line. My question itself arose from something that Dr David Grogan wrote on his Substack: News from Uncibal.
It got me thinking that many don’t understand how easily the State is getting its way. Oh yes, the government is getting its way, but you might think that that's because they have some sort of super-majority in Parliament. Nothing could be further from the truth. It turns out that there's more to the State than government, so super-majorities aren't everything in life. There's the civil service, for example and millions of others from quango to the BBC itself engaged in the corporate body as a whole, if I can be permitted to stretch an analogy.
The point is that the State collectively has an ideology of its own. It embodies the very warp and weft of everyday existence, weaving for itself a fabric of consistent design. Given that we're all entangled within said fabric it's possible too that you hadn't even noticed the presence of the State. You simply thought the question irrelevant, so here are a few pointers to twig your memory.
Should State employees, that is to say teachers in this instance be carrying out the brushing of pupils' teeth every day at school? Maybe you think not, but that just educating them in how to do so is on the other hand fine. Ought the State to be instructing you as to when it is permissible, or not, to describe someone as having a particular gender in everyday public speech? Actually, added to that would it be OK for it to define what is or what isn't a “gender” contrary to any scientific evidence and then to enforce your use of the appropriate form of greeting as a result? We're talking pronouns here obviously. Should it direct you as to how many children you can have?
Perhaps it ought to have the right to decide precisely what food you put on your plate every day? Maybe it should be able to restrict your personal alcohol intake to the Chief Medical Officer's recommended levels and only then following a medical prescription tailored to your personal needs as the State itself sees fit?
I'm not really bothered as to what anyone thinks of these questions as policies likely to really come into law. Neither am I interested in hearing anyone’s view as to how best to socialise us into accepting them if we are going to have to take them anyway. I might be interested elsewhere, but it isn’t the point in this context. As ridiculous as they might sound they're all things that minorities, lobbyists and even politicians have argued ought to come to pass in some way or other and I've only picked out a few among the plethora that I might have chosen. I could too, hazard a guess that very few if any of these left field interventions into our daily lives emanated from the great unwashed demos as original ideas. I'm concerned mostly about how you'd go about arguing that the State has no right to legislate on any of these matters.
You might try the argument that brushing pupils’ teeth first thing on coming to school is impractical given that teachers have got some education to be getting on with. You might think you’re being pragmatic about this, but I’m sure that the State would point out that the health of the nation is a red line and that it trumps education any day. Besides, only better organisation is required to overcome any practical hurdles.
Maybe a policy would affect your “type”, or demographic adversely, so shouldn’t be allowed. I’m not too bothered by the particular type, since we all get classified in some Venn diagram of societal types in Britain: women, gays, carers, mentally challenged, fathers, old, young, minority by skin colour, minority by religion.
The list is potentially unending. But to argue that way is to dump yourself into a silo along with everyone else in their own silos and depending upon the flavour of the month you might actually qualify as a member of several silos all at once. Make yourself into an even smaller minority, why don’t you. Go ahead. The perfect response to that argument by the State is, so what. We all have to share some pain and, in any case, the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many today. Sorry.
Next you might try arguing that the costs are too great for the taxpayer to bear. Fine, says the State. The wealthier taxpayer can pay more or we’ll just have to save more as a nation overall and cut services to the bone. The policy goes ahead, anyway. The State gets bigger in your daily existence, come what may with the added bonus of teaching you thrift along the way.
One argument being tried currently that appears to have legs goes, it is simply unfair because you’re not treating everyone equally. I should say that sort of policy might risk creation of a two tier society at a guess, but I’m not a political theorist. What’s so special about fairness, the State will retort. There are hard choices to be made in order to get the country back on its feet. Sacrifices will just have to be made and after all, we’re all in this together.
You will be reduced to raising the arguments to the moral equivalent of Defcon 1 if all of these fail. The policy is simply immoral. You’re committing old people to a winter of penury, starvation and finally, death by hypothermia if you take their money away from them. Allowing assisted dying too, which often is used as a cover for outright euthanasia by some supporting it is but a “slippery slope” on the road to eugenics by the back door.
And that’s where the true problem emerges. What is it about this particular State in the UK that absolves it from taking the blindest bit of notice of any such appeals? All of these arguments are actually a facet of the same problem. It’s to do with what the State really is and how we’ve accommodated it.
Despite many claiming contrary interpretations by appealing to what goes on in the wide outdoors beyond Westminster and Whitehall, the real world in other words, the State sees itself as a modern Secular Liberal Democracy and acts accordingly. By and large its actors are signed up to that position too, so they cannot see these arguments as having relevance, either.
Yes, the State recognises that Christianity is built into the fabric by tradition, but in its view either Christianity conforms to the dominant paradigm or it gets sidelined as a separate matter altogether. Same with any other overtly morals-driven ideologies, e.g. Islam, vegetarianism, ecology as preeminent, I don’t know… Christadelphianism. Fear not though, since it happens that the good Archbishop of Canterbury has laid down his weapons before the secular ideal already and so there’s unlikely to ensue any unpleasantness.
The people have been their own worst enemies over this. They have clamoured to get acceptance into one or more of the sexier silos. Being a transgender attracts inversely proportional pounds per square inch of clout, as does being an oppressed minority person of colour in the UK than if you’re a traveller, say. If you’re an “irregular migrant”, then you’re not just a future economic resource to the country, you are also a victim fleeing persecution; to be lauded and worthy of our admiration, and so on. People have played the game, I’m afraid to say.
So why does the moral argument not trump all? It is because Secular Liberalism has no boundaries or principles upon which it rests. It merely requires the sort of acceptance that people have already heaped upon the State in order to gain permission to do something and that it would be in a State approved “someone's” authoritative opinion to be of general benefit to all. The State, both in its ideology and framework, not forgetting to add in its very actors themselves, lacks a moral compass. Nothing acts as an external guide to its undoubted excesses or even its more routine decisions. Two-Tier society is inevitable and there exists no argument to counter it that will get listened to.
We make a big mistake if we ask for the Secular Liberal State to act out of sound moral imperatives rather than pragmatism. Appeals to a top down definition of fairness, equality and now more recently equity in order to decide policy by the State are what count. And even those will shift back and forth as time goes by.
The way things are heading, we can look forward to Rule by “dikastocracy”, a secular form of Kritarchy, (look up the reference in Wikipedia under 'Kritarchy' to see the distinction). The State’s current strategy is to embed Modern Secular Liberalism into the fabric of law, so that it can rest upon surer foundations in future. Law isn’t being outsourced so much as having itself redefined. The EU was going that way, in any case and so now the UK is doing its own version having left.
Gone in effect are blind Justice, Common Law and morality as foundations for State action, or the basis for legislation. They’re to be replaced by a more arbitrary, pragmatic approach, by a State that sees itself as a much bigger force in our private lives. A secular Solomon, if you will, dealing out justice on a case by case basis while regulating our daily existences before it ever comes to that. But as I reiterate, the State only got this permission because the Sovereign people allowed it. Doing otherwise might possibly be the only route back.
James Gatehouse