From bike lanes to concentration camps

Activism has permeated everything because we let it.

Our world increasingly looks like one the media love. Enthusiasts of technocratic managerialism want renewable energy, no cars and eco-friendly lifestyles.

Open borders and inviting the world’s poor is another favourite as the immediate consequences can be displaced while they pretend to be multicultural and international in outlook.

Support for novel ideas about gender or sexual relations are embraced too. Progress is progress. Who wants to go back to intact families and decent wages after all?

Liberalism has become a state religion, and it is visibly, enthusiastically and aggressively endorsed by anyone who wants to get on in life.

This is a rainbow unicorn, claphappy, all-singing, all-dancing, picnic fantasyland that can never exist but is promoted by the layer of society that runs almost everything.

None of us ever vote for this but we are subjected to it nonetheless because some have become entranced with technocratic ideas which they view as progress.

Like all aspirational schemes they can sound fine at first. They may even enjoy a modicum of public support. But that just means the vultures are circling.

A predictable sequence of decline

The adoption of cultural novelties follows a predictable path. Some bright idea is proposed and there is nominal support or at least not widespread opposition.

Soon after implementation begins its opposite is condemned. This is the first warning the lunatics have taken over the asylum. We move from a positive, optimistic drive to condemning a perceived negative. By then the intolerant are amassing, attracted to a secular pulpit with which to lecture the rest of us.

More time passes and condemnation of the opposite is not enough. We are commanded to behave in ways more pleasing to our public servants. We learn a key aspect of our future has been decided by a shadowy committee we have never heard of. A well-meaning experiment has become an imperative used to control us.

This absurd sequence is more common than it should be.

A common example in Britain is the creation of bike lanes.

The idea sounds benign. Let’s build cycle lanes to encourage exercise. It is broadly popular, a kind of inoffensive fad to encourage better health despite the weather being an impediment for most.

Few people actively object which is taken to mean they endorse these projects.

It is not long before support for helping cyclists degenerates into discouraging cars since people should be cycling more anyway. The initiative lends moral weight to an otherwise fringe view. The construction of the bike lanes accelerates these ideas as roads are narrowed and traffic slows, frustrating many. There are too many vehicles on the road we are told, all the more reason to get on your bike.

Soon suggestions are made to ban cars completely. The new idea proposed is to shut down the congested roads and replace them with even more bike lanes and pedestrian zones.

Some even openly discuss intentionally making driving awkward and expensive as an explicit goal. The technocratic mind often forgets its charges are people not slaves.

Before long everything shifts, then we wonder how we got to the point our own paid employees can openly gloat we will soon be banned from travelling in ways they dislike as if they are our controllers.

An idea appealing to a minority is imposed on all. Acquiescence to novelties becomes weaponized and subsumed into the ambitions of others. No one ever votes for these things. They seem to just appear.

The end result is often the destruction of goodwill as popular initiatives are rammed down our throats and used to berate us for failing to live up to the standards our public servants impose upon us.

We then tire of the lectures. We wonder where these lunatics come from.

A moment of complacency means unwanted bike lanes but before long it is banned cars, government-controlled IDs and digital currencies. Those who pay attention to the activist world often sense they’d build concentration camps if they could get away with it and all thanks to some benign-sounding scheme we didn’t object to.

We are losing our countries to activists

Our complacency provides a place for spectators to assist in schemes they themselves would not enforce. The cheerleading layer who lack the drive to do it themselves but crave social approval for righthink. This is the attraction of virtue signalling, they get some of the applause with minimal effort.

They endorse 15-minute cities, alternative energy supplies and dangerous changes to the food supply because someone told them they were good. It seems to be this that lends credibility to otherwise unscrutinized schemes no one wants.

This is the impact of non-playing characters in our midst. They cheer on nonsense and an energetic minority gain the appearance of more popularity than is the case which is then amplified further through traditional media channels.

This matters as it convinces those not paying attention destructive schemes have more support than they really do. From mass immigration to climate initiatives to criminal justice reform, a great deal is being changed in society. Lots of sound and fury that convinces the distracted. Someone must have voted for the bike lanes just as someone decided quantitive easing would help the economy or immigration was needed to save our health service.

This is why activists instinctively mistrust referendums or related plebiscites. These would expose many ideas as minority fads lacking widespread support, especially when ordinary people are confronted with the cost.

The unexpected Brexit vote in Britain was one such example that demonstrated enthusiasm for the European Union was restricted to a minority of the populace. Trump’s election victories reflected a similar principle, a vocal minority spoke for few people despite attempts by the media to drown out opposition voices.

That is why stealth is preferred. It raises fewer suspicions, especially if a once-popular scheme is being exploited for different ends.

This is all too common and is disrupting every aspect of our societies. It is a lot more than just unwanted bike lanes.

So how do we stop it?

Magna Carta thinking

The only solution I can think of is the Magna Carta solution. Draw up a list of things the state cannot do under any circumstances.

The state is not a special entity that ought to be exempt from rules just because it has manufactured the appearance of popularity. Gaining power is not an opportunity to impose minority obsessions on the rest of us.

We need a list of clear constraints on government power at every level to prevent this.

A Magna Carta mentality at work, where something exists to halt the corrosive effect of a well-funded minority using the mock legitimacy of elections to shoehorn in expensive initiatives almost no one wants or asks for simply because they won a popularity contest that comes with some temporary power attached.

As noted, the process often starts with something moderately popular but ends with mysteriously-funded fanatics who have time on their hands taking over projects that morph into something more destructive.

Documents like bills of rights and constitutions have proven their worth at times. America’s First and Second amendments are holding strong and have an effect despite concerted efforts to destroy them.

But the most important place a Bill of Rights must exist is in the minds of men so their first instinct is not to evaluate the usefulness of schemes but their legality. The government cannot do this because no one can.

Without very severe restrictions in place we are forever at the mercy of determined agitators who seem to be everywhere. Their presence in every major institution now characterizes the west. We are being dismantled as our enemies look on, laughing at our impotence while they exploit well-meaning processes designed for a more civilized time.

Our options are to actively police all government and public sector initiatives, an exhausting prospect, or to put hard stops in place so none of them become established. Hard rules banning significant changes to society without explicit buy in from the electorate.

Which way will we go? We certainly cannot go on like this.

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