I don’t know what to think of David Cameron. Peter Hitchens, whom I use as a barometer of conservative attitude in England, doesn’t seem to think much of the leader of Britain’s conservatives, and if memory serves Cameron has made more than a few major gaffes that have seen him tarred as a social liberal.
Still, here he is saying what needs to be said, and perhaps repeated very often indeed.
‘We as a society have been far too sensitive. In order to avoid injury to people’s feelings, in order to avoid appearing judgemental, we have failed to say what needs to be said. We have seen a decades-long erosion of responsibility, of social virtue, of self-discipline, respect for others, deferring gratification instead of instant gratification.
“‘Instead we prefer moral neutrality, a refusal to make judgments about what is good and bad behaviour, right and wrong behaviour. Bad. Good. Right. Wrong. These are words that our political system and our public sector scarcely dare use any more.’”
…
“We talk about people being ‘at risk of obesity’ instead of talking about people who eat too much and take too little exercise. We talk about people being at risk of poverty, or social exclusion: it’s as if these things - obesity, alcohol abuse, drug addiction - are purely external events like a plague or bad weather.
“Of course, circumstances - where you are born, your neighbourhood, your school, and the choices your parents make - have a huge impact. But social problems are often the consequence of the choices that people make.”
He added: “There is a danger of becoming quite literally a de-moralised society, where nobody will tell the truth anymore about what is good and bad, right and wrong. That is why children are growing up without boundaries, thinking they can do as they please, and why no adult will intervene to stop them - including, often, their parents. If we are going to get any where near solving some of these problems, that has to stop.”
One word: responsibility. Our society seems paralzyed with fear of it. Fewer and fewer people want to admit that they are responsible for e.g. their own weight, for their own sexuality, for their own health, and for the consequences of activities that transgress against the normal ordered function of one or more of those things. Fewer and fewer people want to admit that they are responsible for educating their offspring in areas such as manners and morality. Fewer and fewer people want to do anything other than find some faceless “other” to blame for all that afflicts them, without ever once pausing to consider all that they have done to affect themselves.
It’s nice, then, that at least a few people in power still have the guts to call us out on such matters.
Update: Perhaps predictably, Peter Hitchens looks askance at Mr. Cameron’s statement:
You must have seen the gloopy sighs of praise and wonder from gullible ‘commentators’ who have learned nothing from the 11-year Blair-Brown fraud (remember ‘tough on crime’?). There wasn’t a single specific pledge.
He pretended to attack moral neutrality, saying: ‘Bad. Good. Right. Wrong. These are words that our political system and our public sector scarcely dare use any more.’
I decided to see if he would dare use them himself.
So I asked his Press office if he would care to say if the following were right or wrong, bad or good: taking illegal drugs; owning up to taking illegal drugs and saying it was wrong; living together while not being married; punishing criminals.
And do you know? There was no answer.
With benefit of hindsight, this was probably predictable. Rare indeed is the politician who can be taken at his word.
