I was reminded of the quote that is the title of this post as I read the UN Report that denounces Britain's treatment of the disabled as a human catastrophe. Those are really strong words and we should take very serious heed of them as they are an accurate condemnation of Britain's claim to be a civilised society. Adam Smith wrote the above quote in 1759 and one of the modern trends amongst academics is to denounce Smith and his friend David Hume's contentions that human nature was fixed and unchanging. Now I disagree that they actually meant what they are accused of, because what they were trying to say is that certain fundamental aspects of human nature are common throughout all of humanity throughout all ages, not that every person's nature is the same or that our nature does not fluctuate according to circumstances. Certain aspects of a person's nature are a reflection of their environment, such as the class attitudes we see embedded within British national culture. In that light he also reflects on the subservience of the poor towards those they are socialised into regarding as their betters and how we, if we did not know better, would assume that the rich and powerful feel pain more agonising than the poor and the convulsions of death more terrible. What our modern academic is doing is trying to discredit what Smith and Hume were saying by discrediting what they regard as their fundamental hypothesis.
I could fill this post with quotes from Smith that could paint what you would have to admit was a very accurate picture of 21st century Britain that would dismay you and make you conclude that we have not progressed as a civilised nation one jot since the 18th century. What is certain is that with respect to the attitudes of the rich and powerful towards their inferiors we most certainly have not. There is an underlying barbarism in the UK lurking within the halls of Westminster and Whitehall that is an accurate reflection of the schooling such people receive in the so-called great institutions of the private and exclusive British education system such as Harrow, Eton, Oxford and Cambridge. Britain is, in effect, two nations and one of them despises the other with a passion. As a result, Smith was quite correct in his observations that certain fundamentals of human nature remain basically the same. Such attitudes towards their inferiors are no different today than they were in 1759. The British elite, as reflected in the public policy of pigsty governments, loath working people and the disadvantaged and. although you are by now fed up hearing me saying it, are determined to reduced them to a condition of modern slavery. I have talked before about the Nazis description of the untermenschen, the lesser humans, and how the Tories and their allies share exactly the same opinion of the working people and disadvantaged in Britain. We are the subhumans and that is how the Tories and their allies are determined that we will remain. If you are less than a human being then you have no human rights and real human beings owe you no duties or responsibilities, you are dispensable and are in fact a nuisance that society would be better without. People have frequently taken me to task over the years for arguing that the British elite share the Nazis views on many things as we arrogantly pride ourselves on having risen above such things, but now the United Nations are officially confirming the Kommirat diagnosis, the British aristocratic and bourgeois elite are vile, venal and barbaric. That underlying barbarism had been suppressed by the civilising tendencies encouraged by people like Adam Smith, David Hume, Thomas Paine and other great writers and thinkers, but was unleashed and made respectable by the Blessed Margaret, that is why she is so revered by the great and good. She made greed and selfishness respectable but also provided the intellectual climate that unleashed the underlying barbarism that encouraged the demonization of the poor and working people and the philosophic justification for impoverishing and enslaving them.
As the political and social life of a society reflect the economic base of that society then only by transforming the dominant economic model can we effect any meaningful change. The free market neoliberal poison must be challenged and utterly defeated. In addition, those personnel who advocate it must be driven from public office. Civilisation and decency demands it, indeed, increasingly in British public life, the life of many people demands it as the free marketeers are literally killing them. Don't take my word for it, ask the United Nations. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
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