Imprisoned by Our Freedoms

Political correctness, rampant consumerism and the slow death of spiritual values have crippled our society and produced a degree of lawlessness that is frightening. Our rules, our customs and our very society are all floundering under a barrage of commercial and political influences that, far from bringing the promised freedoms, are actually bringing a confusing nightmare on our people. The modern British mantra to, "be positive" is wearing thin under a relentless barrage of negative influences. The question is, why?

Life in the UK in the years after the war had become austere and bleak. If you were young in those days you did what you were told, when you were told and never questioned your elders. Society was being run by generations that had been forced into the army during endless wars and had brought army discipline to bare on all they did in civilian life. Everything was regulated to the point of being ridiculous.

At home, you listened to the programs on the radio you were told to listen to and went to bed when you were told to. You ate what you were given and you ate it all. The same discipline applied in the schools, where little boys and girls were made to sit in rows in silence and learn by rote. Break the rules and you risked strokes with the cane on the backside, legs, or hand.

The tension for the repressed young people in those days became unbearable and built up behind the dam of self control, until the strain of holding back the spiraling tide of resentment became too great . When that dam broke it manifested itself in running street battles between teenage gangs, before evolving into a movement and the ultra-liberal hippy generation was born. A whole generation in Europe and America put two fingers up to the establishment and simply refused to play the game anymore. Social revolution was born in a dramatic and blisteringly rapid way.

The young generation had their own icons of rebellion. James Dean, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, The Who, Bob Dylan and others, began to articulate publicly what the young were feeling privately. The pill had become available to all women during the sixties and it underpinned the idea of 'free love.' For the first time in generations it became socially acceptable for the working classes to live with someone they were not married to.

Fearing social meltdown, the establishment adopted an, "if you can't beat them, join them" attitude and began, gradually, to lead this new revolution and to legislate against its greatest excesses. Political leaders began making friends with pop stars and inviting them over for chats, sandwiches and photo opportunities. At the same time, industrial leaders saw the potential for profit in the upheaval and began making rebellious clothing and fashion items for the young. Little by little, the establishment regained control, but it had cost them very dearly. However, the problems really began when that rebellious generation began taking the reigns of power themselves.

By the early nineteen seventies, the majority of the hippy generation had put their 'Loons pants' and Afghan coats away and put on suits. The revolution, for ordinary people, seemed over and they simply went back to doing what they had done before. The politicians however, continued the revolution through the apparatus of the state. They began to attack anything and everything they thought of as even vaguely repressive. The problem was, that they threw the baby out with the bath water. They simply removed too many of societies natural brakes.

As ever in the nineteen hundreds, the communists had long been waiting for signs of unrest in western societies. Where ever they found it they moved in quickly to exploit the situation and stoke up the anger. They soon had strong footholds in the unions, universities, and in politics on both sides of the Atlantic. The Vietnam war, the anti nuclear lobby and women's rights issues giving them platforms to preach from. It should be remembered that this was a time of great tension in the cold war. It should also be noted that the communist revival in the west was not without its long term effects.

Social conventions and customs formed over millennia came under pressure. Marriage, for example, became a dirty word and the disintegration of the nuclear family began. Discipline in schools and the family were done away with in favor of reasoning with the children. The Church came under sustained and hostile pressure. Social Services became a department to fear instead of respect, because they could remove your children on a whim and often did.

The women's liberation movement became deeply political and stridently anti male. Women were encouraged to view marriage as a prison run for the benefit of men and no dissent, or examination of the claims being made by this group, were tolerated then, or now. Violence and intimidation were used to silence those who questioned it and every one of their principle leaders were members of the communist party, both here and in America.

Unions became deeply restive and disruptive. Militant communist left wing politicians began a move to take over the Labour Party as they had in the unions. Abortion on demand was legalized in a wave of emotive arguments and the clever use of statistics. (By 2004 forty two million abortions had been carried out in America alone, since it was made legal. That is the population of a small country!) Almost all of these social effects can be traced back to communist thinking in the eastern bloc and indeed, were already being practiced in Russia until Gorbachev put a stop to much of it.

Our society began to feel unsafe, insecure, confusing and lost. Nothing was permanent anymore and the sands of daily life constantly shifted.

Children lost the stability of family life as relationships became disposable and they were expected to grow up too quickly and too soon. Thinking and imaginative play in our children were replaced by celebrities, video games, movies, fashion, and so on. Robbing children of vitally important intelligence building social skills and teaching them to become greedy and demanding. Educational standards began to fall as the pupils realized they had the power and not the teachers and could not be forced to work, or behave in class. Parents were forbidden to discipline their children because the state decided that it could manage family discipline better than parents and would legislate our kids into line. The result is, that now we have to teach parents how to do what they used know what to do before the state interfered!

Our jobs became insecure as industry gave way to a service based economy. Borders opened and the country was suddenly flooded with people bringing strange languages and customs to our streets. The European Union became an unelected legislature whose power seems to grow without democratic checks and balances. Strange wars were foisted upon the people without their consent. Giving the people a real sense that their input into our democracy was no longer required. Little by little, the national psychology was damaged as old certainties were gone astray and people began to lose hope in the political process, media and big business that had driven or taken advantage of this cascade of rapid change.

The people began to feel powerless in every aspect of their lives. In Britain in the nineteen eighties, the right wing tried to clamp down on the left, but moved too harshly and too quickly and then shot themselves in the foot by becoming as corrupt as those they railed against. Politicians on both sides of the political divide began to lie in blatant ways to the electorate, who saw them as power hungry, corrupt parasites, feathering their own nests and abandoning all pretense at morality and genuine leadership. Worst still, they began to try and control our private thoughts. Political correctness replaced honesty. Leading people to become afraid of speaking out what they really thought, because it could cost them their jobs or, even their liberty. Whole aspects of social life have become undiscussed taboos. Political correctness began to alter literature and classic TV programs, movies, and toys or, ban them altogether, if they contained references deemed to be 'unsuitable' by the new censors.

The press itself began to be distrusted over fears that it sought to control and manipulate, rather than inform. Thus we had the Sun newspaper claiming it, and not the voters, was choosing the winner in a national election with the headline, "It Was The Sun Who Won It!"

Increasingly seen as populated by lying bullies, the newspaper is losing favor with the people. As a result, people have begun to reject the printed press in favor of the relatively free, Internet.

Minority groups began to dominate the majority and national witch hunts began in the press. Soon it began to feel as if there were rapists, paedophiles, flashers, wife beaters, rabid homophobes, racists and other despots, hiding on every street corner. Grossly exaggerated and sometimes false, statistics drove this wave of social engineering. Most of this demonization was aimed squarely at men, the Church and the family unit.

By the nineteen nineties, men were becoming terrified to talk to children in the streets and parks for fear of being labeled a paedophile or pervert and were subjected to a massive barrage of sexist hate, that is astounding in its intensity and scope and which continues today. They are slowly being forced out of their own children's lives and made to feel useless as parents and people. When women make false accusations of rape or other sexual assaults, they are allowed to remain anonymous and are almost never prosecuted. In fact, almost no challenging of female attitudes or behavior is tolerated. Those who dare to ask awkward questions are immediately subjected to a barrage of personal insults in the press and electronic media, or branded as misogynists. Others have had their careers and personal lives destroyed.

A whole generation of dangerously dis-empowered, angry young men, almost devoid of self respect and self esteem, are showing signs of failing in education and work related activities in America and Britain. Growing up devoid of male role models and with no idea how to handle their own natural aggression, they are often diagnosed as having attention deficit disorders. They are drugged with powerful and addictive amphetamine narcotics as a form of chemical cosh, designed to control their behavior. Those who escape this diagnosis are labeled with the newly derogative term, "macho" and are being pushed out to the fringes of society to become 'hoodies' and gangsters, steeped in the culture of the gun and knife. All around them negative images, words and attitudes are fired at them from the press and TV. They are referred to as poor fathers and stupid unthinking morons. Who, if they have no wish to wear make up and become metrosexuals, are pushed out of the social order. Soap operas, comedies, movies, advertisements on TV and in magazines, daytime discussion shows, song lyrics and on and on, portray them as virtual idiots, with vicious intensity.

Worse still, girls are being taught to view males in this way and are themselves becoming ever more violent. In a recent Glasgow university poll, 60% of young women admitted that they thought it acceptable to use violence on their partners and 35% admitted being violent to their partner. In the international study which questioned 6,500 women, 4,800 approved of assaulting their partner. Among European students, only English women were more likely to have carried out assaults. With 41% admitting that they had punched or kicked their partners. T-Shirts on sale to pre teen girls come complete with a cartoon and logo that states, "Boys are stupid… throw rocks at them." Yet the label "sexist" and the normal social penalties do not seem to apply to these females.

There are almost no public discussion forums for men and boys to share their feelings and learn from one another. Yet women have countless resources to do the same. All attempts to get a radio program called "Men's Hour" onto the BBC in order to provide such a forum were met with a firm, no. Yet we are all encouraged to believe this is a tolerant, inclusive society!

Trust in our politicians is evaporating because they no longer lead the people, but are instead, led by the people. The focus group, the poll, the minority interest groups and the newspaper headlines determine policy. Neither is there any discernible difference between parties any more.

The current obsession with 'radical policies' and 'target' driven politics is driving non stop 'initiatives' that further the confusion and instability in our public institutions. Even our very survival on the planet is under threat from global warming and this is creating even more anxiety in the old and the young alike and could lead to the very dangerous trend, that if everything is falling apart, we may as well give up on social rules altogether. Terrorism adds more fear to this volatile mix. Little by little, chaos, uncertainty and fear has become the underlying zeitgeist, forcing people to take refuge in the fantasy worlds of television soap operas, computer games, alcohol abuse, sex, drugs, celebrity worship, over eating, the Internet and movies to escape the depression that threatens to overwhelm.

The worrying increases in mental health problems, drug use, crime, suicide and family violence are a direct reflection of the social cancer that grew in the west during the nineteen sixties and has been exported around the world.

Perhaps the time has come to put the brakes on this madness and retreat, at least a little way, back into the self regulated and secure world we used to have. A world where mutual respect, manners, spiritual values, personal and family discipline were normal and taught to children who had clear boundaries and secure, two parent, family foundations. Yes, there were problems in those days too, but not as many as we have all been led to believe.

Why is this idea often claimed to be impossible to bring about? It was done in the 18th and 19th century and it can be done again today. All we need is the political and social vision, wisdom and will.