'Dame' Helen Ghosh has been stymied in her attempt to punish National Trust volunteers who refuse to wear pro-Gay rainbow lanyards by forbidding them contact with the public. This is very good news. The former civil servant's tenure as director-general of the organisation is due to end soon in any case: she's due to take over as Master of Balliol College next March, where she will no doubt busy herself rooting out anything tainted by custom, tradition or common sense. After all, this is the woman who attempted to ban the word "Easter" from the the annual Cadbury's/National Trust Easter egg race. She can now tinker and busybody away to her heart's content overseeing a vital section of Britain's educational assembly-line, whose main purpose these days appears to be churning out yet more self-righteous fools to further swell the ranks of left-liberal elite social engineers determined to rewire our brains and our instincts...
While we celebrate 'Dame' Helen's humiliation, we must resist any sense of triumph. Overturning this sort of silly, virtue-signalling progressivist diktat requires an awful lot of work by any number of people - the volunteers themselves, the conservative press, the blogosphere, as well, no doubt, as quite a few sensible adults behind the scenes trying to persuade the silly woman that's she's bringing the organisation into disrepute, and that there is no earthly reason why (mainly elderly) people who give up their time in order to help preserve the historical architectural and artistic fabric of the country they love should be expected to "celebrate" Gay Pride, any more than they should be expected to bedeck themselves with symbols expressing enthusiasm for mass immigration, Islam, transgenderism, the EU, free school lunches, Cornish independence, mass euthanasia for the over-70s, or lowering the age of sexual consent to 10.
In order to resist the tide of "Progress", the effort required to overturn the rainbow lanyard silliness would have to be repeated thousands of times a day by millions of people across the country - because progressivists never rest, and, unlike conservatives, they are never, ever, satisfied. That's because their sense of meaning, of self-worth, depends on changing how things are. Changing things, "making a difference", makes them feel tremendously good about themselves. In fact, it makes them feel so good about themselves, they become addicted to messing us around in the name of social justice. When conservatives lose a battle, they tend to quit the field, shrug, and say "Oh, well - can't win 'em all!" When progressivists lose a battle, they turn into crack addicts denied a fix: they instantly regroup, choose a new or related issue or pet victim group to champion, and try to implement some other incredibly daft left-field scheme. While conservatives are barely half-way through their second celebratory gin-and-tonic following the last battle, and looking forward to returning to their normal lives, the progressivist army is already attacking on yet another front. As often as not, it's a front of whose existence conservatives were formerly unaware.
For all I know, Dame Helen is already planning to make all Trust volunteers wear pink tutus or T-shirts bearing the image of Jean-Claude Juncker - or niqabs. Maybe she'll insist that all volunteers must be black, or under 25, or homeless, or disabled. With any luck her "work" at the Trust is done, and she's already dreaming up ways to make Balliol more vibrant, more inclusive, less cisgender, less academically judgmental, and more relevant to a socially just, compassionate, multicultural 21st Century Britain. Whatever she comes up with, it'll catch conservatives entirely by surprise, and resisting it will require a whole heap of effort. Progressivism doesn't advance by persuasion or consent - it wins by relentlessly wearing down its opponents, who, on the whole, would much rather be doing something else.
No comments:
Post a Comment