Just talking is not enough. When the men with long black leather overcoats and fedora hats call at our door with a sledgehammer at two in the morning, rationality has ceased, and listening has gone. Dialog no longer exists.
For argument to work we, all of us, have to be able to admit that we could be wrong and that we might be wrong, even our most fiercely held and our most cherished ideas could be mistaken. We are human and there is always that possibility. If I listen to my fellows then I may, if I am willing, learn something. On the other hand, my fellows must be prepared to listen to me. Of course the dialogue could go on for ever and nothing ever get done at all.
Plato had this problem. He wanted to define "righteousness", or "justice". He ended up suggesting that an educated elite should run the ship of state and keep it on an even course. The elite, through the educational system, were led to have a "vision of the good", a bit like getting out of a dark cave and being able to look up and to see the sun. This was all he could manage to do as far as being able to define the absolutes by which we define our thinking. Sadly Plato's "vision of the good," did not give any real absolutes. For those who tend to be bamboozled by Plato's arguments, there is the warning, "Who is to guard the Guardians?"
Though Plato failed, we do have to recognize that he had a point. There does have to be a shared set of values in order for there to be civilized behavior and government that can exist with a truly Open Society. We are also in danger of making for ourselves values that do have to be qualified. Toleration sounds very good. On the other hand, how much yobbish behaviour does civilised society have to tolerate before it breaks down? How many terrorists and evil intentioned agents of misrule and of selfish anarchy, disguised as "asylum seekers", does free society have to tolerate before it falls to the forces of disorder and of terror?
Where fear, suspicion and hatreds exist then there also exists the opportunity for the would-be dictator to con the uneducated masses. In this also Plato was right for the basis for "justice" is education, not necessarily schooling, but education of the mind and of the heart. The tyrant succeeds because he is an articulator. He understands what it is the people fear. He sees where, while they are milling about leaderless and idea-less, the people really want to go. He puts himself at their head and, in effect says, "there are you enemies, they are, (the Jews, the Blacks, the Asians, the Moslems, anyone that is, onto whom the people may project their fears) and you must follow me, I will show you how to deal with them.
People do not think it could not happen here. But it could and, all things being equal it will. Do we have fear? Yes we have many fears, and we fear the future most of all. We also fear one another, we are suspicious and there are few friendly greetings. There are jealousies and envies seething below the surface and there are serious cracks appearing in the surface of society. We do not know what we may do about these fears. We have "race relations" concerns and we have legislation to encourage racial tolerance but racial intolerance also seethes below the surface, fermenting and bubbling and giving a handle for the extremists to seize and to crank up the hatred and the bitterness.
We have tried "flower power" with "peace and love". We have less peace and less love now than we ever did and those precious but fragile virtues are being dissolved in a sea of discontent while the flowers have long since wilted, turned brown and died with not a trace they ever existed.
We have "tuned in, turned on and dropped out," but nothing much has changed except the climate is colder and the scene bleaker than it was those summers long ago. We have "made love and not war," and though the freezing rain has not dampened our sexual ardour, that is all it has turned out to be, sex and lust, with a bit of power thrown in.
Now the hippies have grown old, but they still sing the same songs while some of them have made their fortunes and most are ready for the old folks home and ignominious oblivion.
Along came Thatcher and the era of the entrepreneur. Darwinism was shuttled into the market place and competition was good for everyone. So we were told. So we have got poorer and not richer and we need a war or two to boost our sagging national morale. Well at least the sagging morale of our leaders, the rest of us do not matter. Share prices too are sagging, seriously sagging, and we need a solution, we need one urgently and we need it now.
This is a climate ripe for Fascism. Because the need for a public philosophy and a solution for the national ills, is desperate. We have a situation where any solution will do. Anyone half articulate is now able to convince the punters that race and immigration are the problems and that their blend of nationalism and racialism will give a solution to the many ills of society and will bring about a national regeneration.
"It will never happen here." We ought to weep every time someone says words like this. We ought to scream out the obvious. See not the faults in ourselves but rather blame the Asylum seekers, the Asians, those who do not want to work and those who work too hard. Blame the homeless for being without work when there is no work for them to be had and no homes to give them an address. Blmae the old and the sick for being a burden on the state, and blame the young for being ignorant and irresponsible. Blame the Gulf War veterans for having Gulf War Syndrome, then tell them to pull themselves together. Shrug it off and refuse to pay the price for freedom, security and for peace. Say,"I can't do nothin'". Change the channel, there might be a quiz program, a gameshow or some girls, "you gotter have a laugh,".
