Soft totalitarianism

The news this morning that a couple in Rotherham had their foster children removed from them because they were UKIP members almost defies belief.

It seems to me to be symptomatic of a much wider problem with soft totalitarianism. There are now an enormous number of views the holding of which will lead to immediate retribution from left-leaning bureaucrats, not the least of which is global warming scepticism.

In his book The Real Global Warming Disaster, Christopher Booker quotes Richard Lindzen on Carl Wunsch as follows:

[He] professionally calls into question virtually all alarmist claims concerning sea level, ocean temperatures and ocean modelling, but assiduously avoids association with sceptics [because] if nothing else he has several major oceanographic programs to worry about.

Get that? If you even associate with sceptics there will be consequences. You will find yourself defunded. You will be ostracised. Is it any wonder that there are, quite literally, no climatologists in the UK who will profess themselves sceptics? When NERC has activists like Bob Watson and even a representative of the Green Alliance running it?

And quite rightly so, I hear the upholders of the global warming consensus say. Sceptics are at best crazy and at worst in the pay of big oil and we should remove them from respectable scientific circles.

Which is the nub of the problem. Totalitarianism, both in its soft and its hard incarnations, is born of the very best of intentions. I read somewhere that Stalin died thinking that sending dissenters to the gulag had been an unpleasant but necessary step on the road to socialist heaven. He was doing the right thing.

So I'm sure the council workers in Rotherham did what they did for the very best reasons. That doesn't stop their actions being part of a vile and dangerous trend in public life in the UK.

Comments

[J Bowers]

"The news this morning that a couple in Rotherham had their foster children removed from them because they were UKIP members almost defies belief."

Not if the birth parents requested they be removed. Good timing for UKIP to make much noise during a by-election, though.

[The Leopard In The Basement]

Nov 27, 2012 at 1:14 AM | J Bowers

"The news this morning that a couple in Rotherham had their foster children removed from them because they were UKIP members almost defies belief."

Not if the birth parents requested they be removed.

Fantastic!. Brilliant! Why that must be it surely? Although why Thacker didn't just say this is beyond my flat simple mind. I mean, there would be no breach of confidentiality to just make that simple point I can see. Is Thacker holding back this gem of information do you think?

Good timing for UKIP to make much noise during a by-election, though.

OMG! You are so right again! Why couldn't we all just see the timing!

Of course somehow UKIP have engineered it so the foster couple took on the children months ago and only decided to report themselves as being latent fascists the Friday before the story broke !

You are so clever.

Have you ever thought of contacting Dr Stephan Lewandowsky to demonstrate your ability to ideate so freely and creatively when you need to ease your cognitive dissonance headaches? ;)

[Orson]

This report reminds me of a friend who refuses to consider moving to Great Britain (or Canada or Australia), post Obama II. Because there is no constitutional First Amendment protection for freedom of thought and expression there - as in the USA.

He also holds a Master's degree in political journalism. He has a good point.

[Radical Rodent]

Been out of the country and out of touch for a few weeks, so have only recently heard of this case.

Having seen Joyce Thacker’s various interviews, the question that kept arising in my tiny mind was: “What cultural and ethnic needs?” Must children in this country be raised in the mindset of their parents’ (or perhaps grandparents’) country of origin? What if such a mindset insisted upon the eating of the first-born? (I do not know any that do, but use it as an extreme possible example.) What of those immigrant parents who insist that their children are bought up as “British”, fully absorbing all aspects of British culture? Perhaps the likes of Joyce Thacker would insist on removing these children from their natural parents into council care – her implication being that only the council can truly know how a child should be cared for and raised.

What it really amounts to is that this is apartheid under a different mask: different background, different treatment – keep every community separate, do not let them co-mingle.