Time Immortal

This shift to international regulation of various kinds was also rooted in a new social class, namely, the international extension of the New Class — international lawyers, officials in supra-national agencies, NGO organizers, senior managers in multi-national corporations, and those officials in domestic agencies whose career path included transfers to the international level. Though there are divisions of opinion between some of these groups, they tend to share a common outlook of global humanitarianism. John Fonte of the Hudson Institute, who has analyzed their ideology, describes them as transnational progressives, and the London lawyer David Carr has shortened this term to the catchier “Tranzis.” [�]

Insofar as the United States, Britain, and Western Europe now have rulers shaped by this outlook, they can be described as the first nations in history to have a dissident ruling class. Dissidence has consequences. A dissident ruling class, whether consciously or not, will tend to be suspicious of the nation it rules. [�]

[This] can be clearly seen in three highly important developments: the shift of power from legislatures to bureaucratic agencies and the courts in domestic politics; the shift of power from democratic nation states to largely unaccountable supra-national bodies from the UN to the European Union, etc; and the development of ideologies that, lagging behind events, serve to justify these relatively new political practices and institutions as legitimate. [�]

To sum up, Tranzi-ism is an ideology that extends regulation over the full range of human activity while exempting the regulators from democratic control by transferring governance from national democratic parliaments to unaccountable bureaucracies in independent agencies, the courts, and supra-national bodies. [�]

The first task for a serious conservatism is to de-mystify the unaccountable bureaucracies that are not only our enemies but also the enemies of the nation-state, religion, small independent businesses, aspiring entrepreneurs, families and married people, and patriotic and self-reliant citizens. [�] Our second task is to defend democracy at home and the nation-state abroad. [�] Our third general response should be to restrain and obstruct bureaucracies directly. [�]

[W]e should not be afraid of controversy. Persuading the nation, including the media, that such values as patriotism, self-reliance, and enterprise are admirable, and that such policies as choice, competition, and diversity in public services are practicable, is the first step to expressing and implementing them in office. Success is not guaranteed by the controversy; failure is ensured by shrinking from it.

O’Sullivan is a master not only of the English language and its use to the most devastating effect, but he’s also a spot-on researcher with a hunger for truth. If you haven’t checked out his book The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister, you have done yourself a grave disservice, O Reader.

And he makes an important point above: if, O Reader, we are conservatives, we should not be afraid to be controversial, even though we risk being shouted down by our progressive opposites as a result (”Let them shout us down,” I say…it will not be us who tramples on the rights of others). The truth is sometimes very controversial to speak, especially in a world which has wedded its thinking to a multitude of falsehoods.

The above takes courage to admit and to live.

Chesterton once noted that the soldier who desires life like water must be willing to drink death like wine; the soldier who cowers and waits for the battle to depart from him will almost certainly die (and then be not much more than a convoluted suicide). It is the soldier who is willing to cut his way out of the fracas that may yet live to see another day. That’s the mentality that conservatives, especially conservative bloggers, need to have when speaking about different issues ranging from Islam to abortion, from taxes to social programs, from the Military to the environment.

Because if we are to be defeated, it is better to be defeated having spoken what we hold to be the truth, rather than be defeated for having meekly held our tongue and let only our opponent’s voice be heard.

This is especially true in regard to conservative protestation against the emergence of the immense bureaucracies that plague Western society today. It has been jokingly said that bureaucracy has “no mass, only inertia”, and that certainly seems true enough. That bureaucracy and the mentality that drives it is a threat to Western society is also a fairly obvious thing — one need look no further than the human rights commissions to see that much.

Or, as Kathy notes:

Too many of my fellow “conservative” Canadian bloggers, being ambitious (would-be) careerist hacks, are obsessed with Party politics, with ridings and leaders and constituencies and so forth.

None. Of. This. Matters.

No matter who is in power, the Bureaucracy remains intact. The Bureaucracy is the “new boss, same as the old boss” we joke about, not this or that Prime Minister.

The Bureaucracy must be destroyed.

Just so. And to do so will take the courage to not only actually have the convictions one professes to hold, but to act on them and speak them without fear of what reprisals may result. After all, if it means someone is going to post a snitty note to my Facebook profile just because I cross-posted my most recent article on abortion there, that’s…well, that’s just that, isn’t it? What’s important is that what had to be said was said…the fallout is just a part of having spoken up that I necessarily accept.