New Party Leader Addresses Brit Broken Society - Road to the Middle Class

TEN YEARS AGO British Prime Minister Tony Blair turned the Labour Party away from its economic socialism. But the real problem in its left-wing recipe was left to fester, the destruction of civil society by the all-powerful social-services state. Conservatives in Britain and the United States know what that looks like, and we know what to do about it. Writer Theodore Dalrymple has witnessed to it in numerous articles and in Life at the Bottom: the utter degradation of underclass life under the tutelage of the welfare state. Numerous writers and politicians have shown what to do about it, from Charles Murray and his Losing Ground to Rudolph Giuliani and his �broken window� policing. Now the spotlight shifts to Britain.

It is significant that the first speech of new Tory leader David Cameron, elected by Conservative Party members to be leader of the Conservatives in the British Parliament, should address the �broken society� of the welfare state.

I want to set free the voluntary sector and social enterprises to deal with the linked problems that blight so many of our communities, of drug abuse, family breakdown, poor public space, chaotic home environments, high crime.

We can deal with these issues, we can mend our broken society.

In opening this flank attack on the welfare state he is opening a new era in British politics. As always, the thinkers and the scribblers have got there first: There is Civitas, the British think tank that has opened a low-cost independent school to serve parents of modest means that want to escape from the �bog standard� government schools. And there is James Bartholomew and his book The Welfare State We�re In, a devastating history of the welfare state in Britain over the last century.

It�s a radical notion, that the social space for helping the helpless should be filled by a voluntary sector, rather than by government experts and functionaries. For most people in Britain and in the United States the idea is over the top, so used are we to the educated class�s insistence that only they, furnished with our money, have the standing to help the poor and the unfortunate.

We will see whether David Cameron can move the British people away from the government model of social welfare towards another model: ordinary people helping ordinary people, face to face, heart to heart.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

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The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

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Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
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[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

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James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

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The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
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