The Rise of Unrespectable Politicians

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Mark Steyn had some cogent words to say in today’s edition of Mark’s Monday Notebook:

In 2002 [Jean-Marie] Le Pen was “unthinkable” and an “aberration”. Then it happened and became thinkable, and now his daughter is a routine presence. What was striking about her victory in the Euro-elections a couple of weeks back was not the narrow margin of her win over Macron in vote totals, but the fact that she prevailed in twice as many départements as he did. Geographically speaking, Marine Le Pen won the country while Macron held a few cities.

Another old line of mine: If respectable politicians are forbidden to raise certain subjects, the voters will turn to unrespectable ones. The people are telling their rulers something important here. The longer the ruling class — in Washington, London, Paris and elsewhere — refuse to listen, the worse it is going to be.

9 thoughts on “The Rise of Unrespectable Politicians”

  1. The elites have ignored the people for too long. They care nothing for their nations, cultures, or heritage. They care about power and enriching themselves. They import the people that will knee before them for a free loaf of bread and a free apartment. If it means increased violence, violent crime, the loss of a civil society what do the elites care?

    Democracy does not work. Its time for the world to recognize that democracy can only work in unified nations with a respect for the law and a strong civil society. It does not exist in America any longer. In Western Europe it is long gone. Only a few nations in Europe like Hungary, Poland, Italy, Slovakia appear willing to defend civilization. In Asia, Japan, Taiwan, and Korea know who they are and have not decided to commit cultural suicide.

    What is wrong with the West? Especially Canada, UK, France, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Spain, NZ, and Australia?

    • I know Churchill said it many years ago, but it’s still true; democracy is a very bad form of government, but all the others are so much worse.

      Jordan Peterson has pointed out that the rise of the “far right” is due to the catastrophic failure of the radical left. I’d add that betrayal by supposedly “conservative” leaders, such as Merkel, or RINOs in the US, has left many people feeling disenfranchised; I don’t believe that many voters have suddenly become more “racist” or hateful, they’ve just had enough of their concerns being ignored.

      • It is worth noting that the Churchill line (‘[I]t has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time[.]’) is from a 1947 debate where he was speaking in opposition to what became the 1949 Parliament Act, which was the Commons arrogating yet more power to itself.

        We need to seriously reconsider the Whig principles underpinning Western society—to ask ourselves: Did we choose the wrong path? Highly recommended reading is Patrick J. Deneen’s recent Why Liberalism Failed, a critique of both modern (l/w) liberalism and of ‘classical’ (r/w) liberalism and thus drawing qualified praise from both Left and Right, l/w reviewers relishing his criticisms of ‘classical’ liberalism but taking issue with his criticisms of modern liberalism, and r/w reviewers vice-versa.

        Liberalism has failed—not because it fell short, but because it was true to itself. It has failed because it has succeeded. As liberalism has “become more fully itself,” as its inner logic has become more evident and its self-contradictions manifest, it has generated pathologies that are at once deformations of its claims yet realizations of liberal ideology. A political philosophy that was launched to foster greater equity, defend a pluralist tapestry of different cultures and beliefs, protect human dignity, and, of course, expand liberty, in practice generates titanic inequality, enforces uniformity and homogeneity, fosters material and spiritual degradation, and undermines freedom. Its success can be measured by its achievement of the opposite of what we have believed it would achieve. Rather than seeing the accumulating catastrophe as evidence of our failure to live up to liberalism’s ideals, we need rather to see clearly that the ruins it has produced are the signs of its very success.

        (Why Liberalism Failed. Yale University Press, 2018. 3–4.)

  2. The rise of unrespectable politicians foreshadows a more troubling development; the rise of dictators or voting via the cartridge box.

    • The left is going to be the ones who stomp on us with their shiny leather Gestapo boots. The right on the whole is too nice.

  3. As soon as Marine dumped her fascist father I put her in the non elitist respectable camp.

    Mike from Brooklyn

  4. The Left hijacks language. Words like “respectable” become synonymous with “the Leftwing establishment.” Leftwing publishers and broadcasters call themselves “mainstream.” The Left in the USA refers constantly to its nation as a “democracy.” Even Rush Limbaugh, the arch-conservative and Trump-supporter, likes to invoke “our democracy.” The word “democracy” occurs precisely nowhere in the Constitution, which establishes a republic of laws, not men.

  5. Of course, their plan is to simply import more votes / soldiers, until we matter no more.

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