The Servile Mind

The transplanted Aussie philosopher Kenneth Minogue has published a book as above titled, with the sub-title "How democracy erodes the moral life". Standpoint review by the excellent Noel Malcom here.

Hillaire Belloc wrote the Servile State back in 1912, a book whose author was more than a bit weird and whose prescriptions weirder still, but whose diagnostic Minogue consciously recalls with his title.

The democracy Minogue objects to is not the mechanism for changing rulers, but "a set of values or ideals, a substantive programme that is to be gradually realised as our society becomes more and more 'democratic'. The watchwords of a truly democratic society, according to this notion, are 'equality' and 'inclusiveness'. Inequalities and distinctions are signs of injustice and oppression, and it is the role of the state to liberate the people from oppressions of all kinds. But in taking this transcendent moral role upon itself, the state drains away from ordinary life many of those moral responsibilities that used to characterise us as individuals".

Too true, blue. I'll be buying the book, but that horse bolted the stable long ago. The question is not how it all went to shit - it's how the hell do we get out of it now that we're in it up to our nostrils.