Discussion > Three elephants and the left’s agenda
Robin
I don’t think I’ve changed my spots. I still think of myself as left-liberal or whatever (though maybe it’s simply that I don’t know where I am any more).
Minogue’s is definitely a voice from another century - possibly the 17th or 18th. He seems to be arguing that, having got rid of despotism, liberals should have left slavery and the plight of the poor alone.
Which is what happened in part, and why the struggle was taken up by Methodists, Chartists, Socialists, and eventually the Labour Party.
The fluidity of political movements is a natural process - and turbulent and unpredictable, like all movements of fluids. What disturbs me is the rigid monolithic nature of the left’s reaction to environmentalism. The information revolution has left people stupider and less-well informed than they were in the days of the town hall meeting and the weekly arrival of the stage coach. This is a process which social scientists should be explaining, instead of which they’re compounding the problem by leaping on any government -sponsored bandwagon that will further their careers.
geoffchambers
This morning, the Telegraph has an obituary of Professor Kenneth Minogue - "a leading figure in Britain’s conservative intellectual life". It's worth reading in full, but the following extracts illustrate well why erstwhile liberal-lefties such as myself (and I think Geoff) have changed our spots:
And that's why I think a key weapon in the war against the warmists is to demonstrate how their policies are likely to damage especially the poor and underprivileged and how their attitudes to underdeveloped economies are a form of neo-colonialism.