National Conservatives: New Wine or Nouveau Plonk?

[Stavros]

Yesterday in the thread on Israel, I posted a video by Melanie Phillips. At the National Conservative conference in Brussels last month, among other things she attacked what she called the Individualism which she believes is undermining the integrity of the family and the Nation. It was a curious remark similar to the remarks made to Tucker Carlson by the Russian he calls 'Putin's Brain', when Aleksandr Dugin argued that the decline of the 'Anglo-Saxon West' was caused in part by a wave of liberations, including the liberation of the individual from any set identity (the Carlson video is in the Russia thread).

The link below offers a manifesto of the National Conservatives. And while they claim to support Free Enterprise and Free Markets, note that they are not Libertarians. Far from advocating the dismantling of Government and the freedom of the individual from the State, the 'Nation' is now revived as the key structure that holds the state together: a Nation Strong and Independent, not subsumed into a 'trans-National' body, one that negotiates trade and alliances on the basis solely of its 'National Interest', and is opposed to social changes that undermine the family, and is insistent on the role played that must be played by Almighty God. This suggests to me the abolition of the UN and the EU, and that's just for starters.

Sounds to me not like a new wine in a new bottle, but the acidic plonk we had in the early 20th century, called Fascism. So why don't they just say so?

Judge for yourself. Here are some extracts-

"We support a system of free cooperation and competition among nation-states, working together through trade treaties, defensive alliances, and other common projects that respect the independence of their members. But we oppose transferring the authority of elected governments to transnational or supranational bodies—a trend that pretends to high moral legitimacy even as it weakens representative government, sows public alienation and distrust, and strengthens the influence of autocratic regimes."

"No nation can long endure without humility and gratitude before God and fear of his judgment that are found in authentic religious tradition."

"...the free market cannot be absolute. Economic policy must serve the general welfare of the nation. "

"The traditional family, built around a lifelong bond between a man and a woman, and on a lifelong bond between parents and children, is the foundation of all other achievements of our civilization. The disintegration of the family, including a marked decline in marriage and childbirth, gravely threatens the wellbeing and sustainability of democratic nations. Among the causes are an unconstrained individualism that regards children as a burden, while encouraging ever more radical forms of sexual license and experimentation as an alternative to the responsibilities of family and congregational life."

Lots more here:

National Conservatism: A Statement of Principles - National Conservatism

[Stavros]

Who are the National Conservatives? | Sebastian Milbank | The Critic Magazine

[Stavros]

Paul Marshall is the man who owns GB News, and now wants to buy the Telegraph. Last night on the hour I flipped the new channels to see what is their main story -but on GB News it was three people sounding off about hate speech or something similar, just as most of the time it is outraged politicians, tv people and journalists giving vent to their grievances. The article linked below does however contain some of the things close to National Conservatives, namely the importance of the Christian Faith, or in their parlance, what they call 'Judeo-Christian Civilization'.

When it was first used, by George Orwell in an essay in 1939, he intended to contrast the religious history of Europe with the anti religious policies of the Nazis, it merged the two religions merely on the basis that the Old Testament is Jewish, and the New Testament Christian, and that many Christians often then, and since use both to justify their beliefs. It was, however, also the means whereby some Christians in America insisted on a separation of the two, to justify their own anti-Semitism as can be seen here, and elsewhere in the link-

"On December 8, the day after Pearl Harbor, the National Legion of Mothers of America demanded an early peace on the grounds that the war meant that “Christians will spill their blood for the Jews.” "
The Forgotten History Of “Christian” Political Activism | Philip Jenkins (patheos.com)

An additional problem with the term Judeo-Christian concerns its differences, rather than the similarities -thus, looking at Paul Marshall's influences, he is no interested in the Libertarian thinkers like Ayn Rand, rather he

"praises the Victorian philanthropist Joseph Rowntree, and has said that traditional British liberalism “rests on the Judaeo-Christian understanding that we are all, in moral terms, fallen creatures”."
How faith drives bidder for Telegraph who wields growing influence on Tories | Conservatives | The Guardian

But Judaism does not believe in 'fallen creatures' or 'original sin' as Christians do, so the link there does not exist. Also, when Roger Scruton started using the term National Conservatism, it was explicitly designed to reject any impact on 'western Civilisation' that Islam might have, or actually had, just as National Conservatism used the term 'Judeo-Christian' to replace 'Greco-Roman' in order to reject the mostly secular, and rationalist roots of Western Civilization as derived from the Greeks and the Romans, to whom Hannah Arendt paid tribute as the sources of our ideas about Democracy and the Rule of Law. That Islam played a key role in the revival of science and philosophy cannot be doubted, other than by fabulists like Douglas Murray and Jordan Petersen (all of these guys are in the loop with Marshall by the way), but in order to both exclude Muslims from Our history, just as they want to exclude them from Europe, this Judeo-Christian concept is fundamental to the National Conservative agenda.

As for speaking in tongues, well really was there ever anything so transparently silly? There is no such thing it is just someone making unintelligible noises and calling it 'tongues'.

And who reads the Telegraph these days anyway?