It's a question I have asked often, and maybe I am beginning to get the answer. How come if I like people why do I despise the cult of socialism which professes to like all people?
Let me explain my thoughts on this as best I can. I doubt whether any of this is breaks new ground or is even illuminating but I have to try and say it.
Essentially, I find most people okay. Some of them are great, some of them waste of space but the majority are decent people trying to do their best in frequently trying circumstances –– and make no mistake about this, everyone has some circumstance in their lives which makes them feel isolated or hurt or even in varying degrees feeling anxious or downright fearful.
There are many people who have had shattering events in their past or worry about a future they can see isn't going to be great. They may have to face both the past and the future alone and may not, between those worries, have a great life right now. It happens and there are no easy answers, no platitudes or cosy chats that will make it easier for them. We all have to make our journey.
The more you look this huge majority of people and talk to them the more you realise that they are trying to balance a number of factors in their lives. Many are pulled by responsibilities and affections and most of them by and large silently get on with what they must do. Sometimes they screw up, sometimes they make someone else very happy, but they do what they can.
There are people who exhibit a small and quiet bravery in their lives, putting up with some hardship that when you discover what it is you wonder how they keep going. But they do. Sure, they may complain from time to time but then we all do. It's inevitable to try and let it all out; if we didn't moan about our lot it is possible the internal pressure would blow us apart.
Sometimes though we all come across the story or example of someone's difficulty and simply say, wow, I'm not sure I could do that. Oh, and if I had to do it I would complain to the heavens.
Years ago I read an article by the late Chris Brasher who as a journalist (post-athletics career) had gone to meet a sheep farmer who lived miles from anywhere. It was a late spring and the snows descended which in some remote parts of Britain can still be very dangerous indeed. Being a sheep farmer and miles from anywhere the man had a responsibility to the animals in his care; he was making a living from this so everything he did was to help him and his family as well as help the sheep. He wasn't looking after sheep because he thought they were fluffy friends. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement.
The snow fell deep and the wind howled and the sheep farmer set off to get one of his sheep who was having trouble giving birth. Brasher went with the farmer and together they waded through the drifts some two or three miles into the hills. If you have ever walked in deep snow you soon realise it is not only cold and wet but very tiring as well as slow going. Add to this the uncertainty of the land with its many dips and rocks all hidden under snow then it becomes incredibly tough. Well, they located the pregnant ewe and the farmer hoisted the sheep on to his shoulders in a sort of fireman's lift and carried the sheep back to the farmhouse to tend to it. The farmer had done it before, alone, and would probably do it again. No trade union, no support group, no forum for his angst, no counselling, no fine words from a politician miles away. He did this because he had to do it, and chances are he would be astonished if you called him a hero. He wasn't: he was just a man who was willing to carry a sheep in weather conditions that could well kill him if he fell badly or collapsed. It would be unlikely the sheep would turn out to be like Lassie and go and fetch help.
The sheep was brought home, the lamb born and the job done. Done until next time a sheep out on the moors needed help again and the farmer would set off, just like perhaps thousands of shepherds and sheep farmers do all over the world every year, unpublicised and unpraised.
I remember reading this and then the last thing Brasher said at the end of the article has stayed with me. He wrote that after doing this and experiencing it all, he would never complain about a bus being late again.
Well, we all complain about the bus being late as it were, because eventually we tend to forget the hardships of others or even to a degree the hardships we ourselves have faced. The bus being late is probably neither here nor there in the great scheme of things but we forget that, even if we know deep down inside we are glad it came eventually.
I try to remember this story because it reminds me to tone down the complaints I feel I am entitled to make. It helps me stay in the right frame of mind.
So this brings me to socialism. This brings me to thing that I dislike more than I can tell you.
Oh, I can easily paint a picture of the hypocrisy and the deceits and the shallow intentions and the smug, endless grins of left-wing people who have made -- and are making -- a very comfortable living for themselves by 'being on the side of the people' and not giving a damn.
When Gordon Brown (a man whose ineptitude was to help plunge this country into crisis after crisis because he knew all about the economy he said) was prime minister he was confronted by a woman who complained, with some justification many would say, about immigration. When she made her view known this great man ran away, calling her a bigot. This was accidentally recorded so we knew what he said. But you see, Brown was an ardent socialist; he 'cared' about people the way all socialists do and yet here was someone with a care who he had no time for. Busy schedule for a man being busy being busy, I am sure, but then how convenient he had to be hustled off. How inconvenient he revealed, as all socialists eventually do, how much they despise the ordinary people they profess to love.
You as an ordinary person are there to be used, and socialism uses you better than anything. You are classified and labelled and reduced to the level of a drone. You are meant to watch in awe as those who 'care' manage to care for themselves far more than you will ever do. But get this: they do not want you to join them at the top. You are a mere worker, someone who merely toils so they don't have to toil. You are required to do what they don't want to do, what they can't do. Your job is to fetch the sheep in through the snow while they attend conferences and form committees and drink liberally to the health of their friends who share the warmth.
Oh, of course their impassioned words sound fine and noble and uplifting and they even have a song about a red flag that makes them all weep as one. But the red flag that has flown over so many people's heads has been a disaster for humanity yet socialism can never see, or rather will not admit, that all the tyrants and thieves who have waved that flag do it because they don't really care.
The left has heroes who aren't heroes. People like Che Guevara who was a murderer. People like Mao and Pol Pot who 'led' their people to starvation in fields. Men like Stalin who gave orders that his soldiers who had been captured by the Germans would, on their release when the war was over, be shot for having been caught. A hero's welcome home, indeed.
These are the socialist ideals you are meant to worship. You are meant to say as the left does: we love gay people and we fully support a religion that hangs gays. You are meant to echo the lefty feminists who say: we hate the privileged male but we will not raise our voice against small girls having their genitals mutilated.
You are meant to say: I will shout in anger against Thatcher who closed some twenty-odd coal mines but will not raise my voice against Labour PMs like Wilson who closed far, far more.
You see, you are meant to be a puppet, responding to tear-jerking and knee-jerking and all the jerks who assemble under the red flag, and do it without question.
Socialists for me are those who find ways of saying heartfelt things they never mean. This does not make me a Tory or some right-winger but it does mean I have seen what socialism does. It is a cult that says one thing and very much does the other. It stands remote and aloof and makes statements but never backs them up. Socialists become the self-glorifying elite, scurrying over each other to get to the top, preening themselves on hubris and untruths and all the while making statements of intent but never producing the goods.
If you care for people you do more than talk; you have to listen and that means you have to listen to their fears. You have to listen to their real voice, not some imagined hack of a dead man by the name of Marx.
Socialism repeatedly criticises people who do something to help others by blaming them for not doing even more.
Socialism is about complaining, not at the side of the road about the next bus, but from the comfort of a public-funded luxurious car, sweeping past and sneering at the people who stand waiting.
Socialism has shown time and gain it is not about helping people who are trying to help themselves, but about making political capital from them. It is about power. It is about saying these people need the help of the state but we want to be the Big State and then not do very much at all to help.
Socialism will not carry that sheep through the snow for you, but they have a committee who can talk about ludicrous theories of global warming causing more snow. I am sure that would really help the ewe give birth and make you feel better that they are safe and warm but have some very concerned words for you.
This Big State that socialism wants has all the words but can't even begin to look at the desperate state of many people's lives, not unless it allows them to offer platitudes and gives them votes in order to put them in the comfort for which they yearn at your expense.
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