Latest / Thinking Class / #018 - Lionel Shriver: Why I Left Britain (And Feel Guilty About It)

Transcript

#018 - Lionel Shriver: Why I Left Britain (And Feel Guilty About It) · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello everybody, welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm John Gillam and today I'm speaking with Lionel Shriver.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Lionel is an author of eight books, including We Need to Talk About Kevin, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2005, and she is also a journalist with a fortnightly column in The Spectator, and she is also a contributor to The Times.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, Lionel and I talk about mass immigration to Britain and its subsequent demographic transformation, why populism is thriving even without political representation, the role complacency can play in a country's future, the nature of cultural decline and the prospect of renewal, and the fragility of order.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Classmates, you will find Lionel's honesty to be heartfelt.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: You will notice that the episode is no nonsense, and this may be refreshing, or the opposite, depending on your disposition towards its content.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Before we dive in, you would be really helping me out if you press subscribe on the device you are listening or watching the show on.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: The more subscribers we have, the more guests we can attract, and the faster Thinking Class grows.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the show, classmates.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Thinking Class, Lionel.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's my pleasure.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Excellent.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, it's great to have you on the show, having read so much of your um direct, unflinching, and humorous columns over the years.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um I first came across you in The Spectator when I started reading it many years ago.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And uh an aphology since.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and I know you tend to write your columns now from the sunny climb of Portugal, um, now that you have absconded from Britain after 36 years here, which is much to our detriment.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Lionel, why why did you leave us?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: What changed?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Big sigh.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um before we get into that, I have to clarify that it was difficult for me.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I think I've got over it, but there's still a little residue of shame that is it makes me feel weirdly guilty, as if it's a a betrayal of some sort.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I'm not saying that that there's this whole crowd of people who is clamoring for my head because they wanted so badly for me to stay in the UK.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: I realize most people don't give a toss.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: But um I had I have formed an emotional attachment to the UK.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard not to live in that long.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um and therefore I care what happens to it.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm not sure that given the kind of future I see for the country, I want to be a part of that and I don't have to.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: There's a point at which I can take advantage of the fact that I am still an American, and however um emotionally involved I may be in the fate of the UK, I am not I am not attached in the same way as you are, for example.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: And um, but I just wanted to clarify that it still hurt.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: I miss my friends and my colleagues.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there have been considerable opportunity costs to not being present, especially in London, uh, when events come along or parties or various invitations to appear that aren't quite worth, you know, the plane journey and all the faff.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm coming over a little less often than I expected, just because you know, flying is annoying and very time consuming, even if it's not a long flight.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it has this has entailed some sacrifice.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: But there are, you know, as for why why leave, there are a host of reasons and and they kind of glom together into one big dark feeling.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um the crime situation is not good.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the crime situation was certainly not good in my immediate neighborhood.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: I was living in the butt end of Bermansey.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh, you know, I uh the only social media I subscribe to is this uh next door thing, which is about what's happening in my immediate neighborhood.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I still get their emails, and virtually every single one of them is about theft.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Theft or occasional violence.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that is a strain to put to put on yourself, even when you don't happen to be robbed.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know you always could be, and you've got to be very careful.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: We all, you know, one of the main reasons we had to have house sitters over the summer when we were away in New York was because it was too dangerous to have the property unoccupied.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, that's under thrilling, and then what's happened to the Met is under thrilling because they've become so woked out that the only thing they seem to be especially exercised about is misgendering.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and therefore their clearance rate on real crime is appalling.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's around 5% on most significant crimes.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's just one element.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very distressed about the net zero situation, which which uh connects up with a larger problem of incompetent amateur governance, so that you have people passing these stupid laws that are completely impractical.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: And the people who have passed them don't know what they're doing, don't have any idea what the implications are, and all they care is how it looks.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's it's legislation as posturing.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what this net net zero thing is.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Even if it were completely successful, it would make no difference to the temperature of the planet.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, even if you buy the whole climate change narrative, which increasingly I sort of don't, um it wouldn't, you know, 1% of the CO2 emissions of the planet, meaningless.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: So it's all it is is showing off to no effect.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: And uh meanwhile, and this is a problem of 25 years in the making, uh, there are no plans for the provision of enough energy for the country.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that we're already at, I can't help but still say we.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna keep saying we.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um we're already at the point where energy companies are paying customers to not use appliances during peak hours.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: That was even the case this last winter, and it was a really mild winter.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: So and meanwhile, we're letting all those power plants go offline and not building any new ones and expecting to uh make up the difference with windmills and solar panels.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's absurd.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, maybe the government, when it becomes real enough, uh will pull back on all this nonsense.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: But in the meantime, it's costing a lot of money, and there's going to be a significant shortfall of energy provision.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the absurdity of it just blows your mind.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: They want everyone to heat their homes with it with electricity and to drive an electric car, and it at the same time, they don't have any electricity.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I you'd have to be younger than three to not figure out there's a problem here.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, and and uh gosh, where what else?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: The immigration situation.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Before we jump into immigration, on the energy point, um, so I've been having a bit of an ongoing conversation with a friend of mine who is a head of sustainability at a financial services firm, and um generally just jousting with each other on the good, the bad, and the ugly of all of this.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that he shared with me um presented as a win, um, which in some ways it is, but it also had a big drawback was this graph produced by an organization, Pro-Renewable within the EU, to show the changing energy mix that was used by homes um or countries within the EU.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it shows that there's been this big replacement of uh uh what I suppose the traditional sources of fuel that are uh reputationally unpopular, at least uh within the chattering classes, but actually are very popular for usage.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and so you can see that change, it's quite clear, but basically it's presented in such a way that shows the amount of terawatts per hour that um the fuel sources use on either side.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And what you can see really is that now, over the course of that time, that changing energy mix, that there's a 25% decrease in energy output, kind of roughly, but if you can see it.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so there seems to be a basic supply and demand here, which is you know, if you do have less energy, and obviously, in this the case of the UK, whilst I've just talked about EU data, but let's just say it's there's a similar situation going on there, but then we're actually a country, and I know you're about to get into immigration, that's gonna go through rapid population growth.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, everyone's already suffering from high energy bills, feasibly that's only going to get go higher.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: So just uh besides the fact it's gonna cost an awful lot of money to change the energy grid and all of those things, yeah.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think you are right.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's uh um there's a an operationalizing of it um that is just a huge undertaking, and I'm not too sure any of that's really been um taken into account properly.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: It has just become a let's get things down on paper and enshrined in law, and we'll kind of hope for the best.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I've been unfair there, but but that's how it seems.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: No, you're not being unfair.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: That is what's going on.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh, technology will will solve everything.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's like belief in fairies.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you do not you do not pass legislation requiring people to use something that doesn't exist yet.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know that's the point that John Gray, the political philosopher, for makes.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he says that net zero is the politics of narcissism because we've got to make all of these time-stamped goals without having the means in which to deliver them yet, um, and hoping that some of those things gets get developed over time.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: And uh there are many people who disagree with that and say, well, we can't just expect um other other countries to uh sorry, we can't expect ourselves to not partake in it because we might not make much of a difference.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: But I I think I I think the the the the argument I suppose I try and make with with folks who take that line, which is we can't base our ethical framework on oh, we'll do it if you do it.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I think we do need to take into account that there are many more populous regions and heavily polluting regions now that just dwarfs anything that Europe and the UK will do.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so if we are feeling like we're on a path to impoverishing ourselves and the vast majority of people, and I think an unheard report's just come out this week, which uh relies on some research from some of the universities saying that 40% of UK households are on the verge of energy poverty because of the rising prices, which are only forecast to go up.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we have to ask ourselves why have we ratcheted ourselves into this when we could go at a pace if we're gonna if we are committed to it, that doesn't bankrupt the nation's finances and and people at the same time.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I will say that even if you just throw the climate change thing out the window, um it is necessary to eventually uh get off fossil fuels in majority because uh we have already used up the easily accessible sources of fossil fuels, and it's getting much more expensive to to get it out of the ground.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: And um that's the case, whatever.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: But that doesn't mean that you there's certainly enough leeway to to make that transition in a considered, intelligent, well-researched way that doesn't disrupt your society.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's enough time, there's enough uh uh fossil fuels left that we can make that transition gracefully.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: What we're setting up right now is to do it haphazardly without any consideration for the practicalities.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: And in the UK's case, we're not talking about, oh, you know, 2050, 2060.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking about in the next few years.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean that we're talking about right now.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: And and uh and i i I just I don't want to live in a dysfunctional country.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the you know, the larger issue is that the UK is increasingly a dysfunctional country on many different levels.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, the the NHS is in i is uh a mess, and it's not gonna get any better.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's probably got some serious design flaws, it's too centralized, it's too bureaucratic.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but there seems to be very little appetite anywhere to make the kind of changes that would uh make the service sustainable and really serve the the people it's supposed to help.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: And even the private sector is under strain.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, there it's often a lot the same doctors.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um because now so many more people are using private health insurance.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that means I mean, I I ended up getting private health insurance uh eventually because it seemed to me it was a necessity, uh, which I found disheartening because I like the idea of a national health server.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: I I agree on that point actually, because I've I've used it when I was given it uh as a as a benefit within my job in the past.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, oh, I'm not gonna use it, I'll just use the NHS.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: But then I needed some specialist treatment and used it, and I was surprised how quick it uh enabled me to access services.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: But that was seven years ago.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going through something similar now, and you just gotta wait three months for an appointment.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's almost um oh yeah, no, no, the situation, there's a huge knock-on effect with the private with private health insurance.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it used to be that because even people who had private health insurance mostly they use the NHS and then only went to to use their private providers for particular instances, that's no longer the case.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that means that uh private uh health insurance is increasingly functioning like the NHS.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it just means that this overall the standard of health care available in the UK is poor, and that's for everybody.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I guess that would make some more socialists happy.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because everyone gets shit health insurance.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: You can't buy your way out of it.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, we we are we are moving at a canter through the uh the big problems of of Britain.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think before we went off on um uh a bit of a tangent on net zero and um and climate change policies, you're about to start talking about immigration.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Immigration.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I know this is a touchy subject, but it's also one of my favorite subjects.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, London is geographically in England, but that's about the end of it.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think the white British population is now down to something like thirty-seven percent.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably lower now.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I was basically living in little Nigeria, and that's I mean, nothing against Nigeria in Nigeria, um, but I wasn't functionally living in England, and it my neighborhood was a heavily council-owned uh area, and it had hugely transformed before I got there, but even while I was living there, I lived there for 13 years, it transformed even more.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was just all immigrants, and it used to be a white working class area which was very um mutually supportive.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I heard stories about how people used to leave their doors open, and you know, everyone knew everyone else.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: It did that was already way gone by the time I arrived.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: But the complete takeover of social housing by people who weren't born in Britain and had not contributed anything to the system was annoying.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: I have to say it was actively annoying.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm I'm also an immigrant, yes, uh, but I've never been a burden on the state.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: I've never used social housing.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I, you know, I'm I'm paying for these people.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm paying taxes, I'm paying council tax.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: And and they're not.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't like that atmosphere of being in a place that's being taken advantage of.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: That was it was a a very strong feeling in my where where I was living, that these people are takers.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the reasons they were here is to take.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: And you feel like the authorities are mugs, and and the people who are paying the price are regular taxpayers who have very poor services and you know, apropos of the NHS, etc.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just it's a creepy feeling.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's a bad, it's a it's a bad emotional and political environment to live in, to feel that uh they're that you're surrounded by people who are um who are taking advantage of other people's goodwill.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think the issue you just highlighted is definitely that hot-button topic that is not going to go away in British politics for decades.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: And one thing that makes me question the idea that Gen Z, for example, are certainly heading towards an inexorable uh liberal worldview.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm starting to buy less and less.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: So when I started this podcast, I had to go on Twitter so I could promote it.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um someone that I came across who has been getting an awful lot of traction um in such a short period of time is a chap in his early 20s.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think, judging by his accent, he could be from the potteries or what have you.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um but he has been creating micro content, which is 60 seconds to 90 seconds, and it's just full of data.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: And all of it is around the unfairness he feels uh as a university graduate, heavily indebted, having moved to London.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: He spent£2,000 a month to live in a flat, uh, and that's to be in a shared flat.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: And He has noticed that his neighbours are in social housing in the same block of flats and they are foreign nationals.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: And he's pulling out data saying forty-seven percent of social housing in London is uh taken by foreign nationals, people who've come here and thus not paid into the system.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the crux of all of his messages it's unfair.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because the people who the the people hanging on to their housing, if they ever let's be candid, the white people who have social housing.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: If they die, it'll go to an immigrant.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: That it that's just the way the system works right now.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, if you look at the the figures from the Office and for National Statistics, which I think Matt Goodwin, also political commentator, has been popularizing of late.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, he's someone who uh, like you says that people don't like to talk about immigration, but it's one of his favourite topics too.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: But not because he particularly enjoys it, it's because of all of those uh issues that come with it if not managed correctly.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: He has shared um some data that says that during the period between mid-2021 and mid-2036, the ONS projections suggest that um 13.7 million people will immigrate long term to the UK.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um the population right now is 67 million.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: The population by then will be 74 million, and obviously that's an increase of seven, but we're getting 14 million more, which means 7 million are leaving.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's quite interesting.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think we talk a lot about immigration and pace of change, but there are always net migration figures, and we've got people going out the other way.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: There's a reason they quote net there's a reason because it makes it sm smaller, you know.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what is was it twenty twenty-two that the net was seven hundred and forty-five thousand?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um but the fact is that they received one point two million visas.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: So and the a a large proportion of the people who leave are Brit are native-born Brit.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: So the demographic transformation, the ethnic transformation is much more drastic than even the appalling net figures uh suggest.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: And uh you know, I I follow this issue quite closely.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um I sense an enormous pent-up rage in the UK population and they feel completely helpless, and that this is being imposed on them, and they don't know whom to vote for.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's reform, which isn't really right now electorally practical.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you're not gonna get anybody into parliament, so what's the point?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: I and I'm very sympathetic with that that sense of of outrage because it is really straining public services.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: The Tories have uh lied as as to what they were gonna do.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: And they rather than uh tighten up immigration, Boris Johnson loosened it, made it a lot easier to come into the country.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: The home offices woked out of its mind and um obviously motivated to let as many people into the country as possible.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: I I and and you know, the UK doesn't have the resources, the the services, public services are already under enormous strain.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: The housing situation is out of control.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost wholly because of immigration.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I actually don't I've I've I've puzzled on this.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why it's not a hundred percent over it's yeah, why population growth is not a hundred percent uh immigration, because the UK has had a below replacement rate, birth rate, uh for 50 years.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: So where's the growth coming from if it's not coming from outside the country?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, those figures that we ran through before apparently is um is suggesting that the population growth to be felt between now and 2036, 92% of it will be made up purely of um of immigrants.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm just saying I have no idea what the other 8% is doing.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: I just don't fit.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm interested in demography, so I've puzzled on this for quite some time.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um but this is not anything that anyone asked for, and uh it it it is a net economic uh deficit.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's just uh because because the UK is letting in low-skilled, poorly educated people uh who also bring in their often non-working relatives.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh if they do get any money, they send it all home.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: So it it you know, there have been there's been research recently, trying to remember whether it was Denmark or the Netherlands, I think it was the Netherlands, that that broke down what the net uh lifetime fiscal effect on the country was of different groups, because we tend to put all the immigrants together and they're not all the same.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um so if I may defend my own peripatetics.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um if you let in Americans or Canadians, or even you know, just white British Australians, um they are an enormous net benefit over their lifetime, and I mean something like up to six hundred thousand euros.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's a lot.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: But the trouble is that if you look at other groups like Sub-Saharan Africa, it's the same amount of money in the negative.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: And um, since there we are looking at increasing population pressure from sub-Saharan Africa, because that's where all the population growth is, uh that matters.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: That matters a lot.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: So uh what but but there is no effort in the UK where, despite all the rhetoric, to become truly picky about whom you let in and making sure that you you bring in people who are uh who are a net economic benefit, not to mention a net cultural benefit to your country.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, this is a hu this isn't just a UK problem, obviously.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it's even worse than the United States right now.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's appalling in the United States.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh if you just look at these pictures of thousands and thousands of people coming in every day through little holes in the border.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: And they're just, you know, rubber stamped into the country.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: So don't get me started on that one.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually mean that.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Let's not get started.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we'll put a pin on that one and we'll stick around in the UK.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I think I think the nervousness that we've seen of of late, uh certainly there's been a lot more of it um post-October 7th.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think people generally, regardless of where you sit uh on the on the on that divide, I think people see it as a civilizational moment in some way because it tells you what's going on.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, you know what?
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: This it's it reminds me, there was um, it was a few years ago, there was a huge march.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it was probably over this dreamer's issue in the US, you know, whether if you've been brought in as a kid and therefore it wasn't your fault, if you were, you're you should be given legal, legal status.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: And there was this massive march.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: It was millions of people, and it completely backfired politically because it was like, oh my god, look how many of them are there.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: That is shocking.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because it was most of the people who came out were illegal immigrants, and it visualized what was happening in a way that damaged the cause.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say there's a perfect parallel with this because all these marches in London, and it's not just in London, they're a show of power.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: It is a demonstration of how many people, how many, how many Muslims you have let in with, you know, and here we have, we we have very strong feelings, we hate Jews.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: We we want Israel to be wiped from the face of the map, and uh we will be listened to, and you're not even going to police us especially, and we get to say whatever hateful things uh we want because the police are afraid of us.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: There are too many of us, and you're all afraid of being accused of being Islamophobic.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: So we can do whatever we want, and we can bring Tower Bridge to a standstill, and you better be, you know, there's an undercurrent of bullying and threat.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you better watch it, right?
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: We're very powerful now, and there's a degree to which we own this country.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: We certainly own a lot of London, and uh and they want you to be afraid of them.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I realize this kind of rhetoric is not fashionable.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I think that's one reason that the conversation about immigration has loosened up a little bit recently because these shows of power, these shows of force, are making people feel what have we done?
• 32:54
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• 32:56
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• 32:59
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• 33:07
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• 33:11
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• 33:25
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• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening, thanks for sharing your support, and enjoy the rest of the show, passmate.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: That straight line you were talking about, um connections in people's minds uh being made.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there are some who say that in the Netherlands, when the most recent elections took place, which saw Het Wilders and his V VD party pick up 36 seats or something, which is the most any party had picked up for a long time.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: There are always coalitional governments, you can never they've got a different electoral system.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: But he was polling pre-October 7th to come in still with a majority, but with about 12 seats left.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: And there are some saying that owing to the demonstrations on the streets that took place in that lead up to the election, that so many more swung his way.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: And since they've been having similar demonstrations on the streets between obviously those that there are Islamists in there, there are obviously going to be hard leftists in there, there are also just going to be, you know, generally uh well-meaning, decent people in there too that are being swept along in it.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: Is um the they've been happening every week in in the Netherlands, and uh and he's failed to form a government yet.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: People don't want to go near him, as you will well know, as I'm sure many people will know.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: As if you ever see Hurt Builders referenced in the media, he's like kryptonite, and so there are people even on the right saying, Oh, we better not form a government with him, that won't look good.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: But then you go to the polls and go, well, how many would he get if he called an election now?
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it's something like 50 seats.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's even higher.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's uh it's even it's even more.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so there is a nervous what percent what percentage?
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't seen that figure.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: What percentages?
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember what the percentage is, but uh he so he got 36 seats in the last election, and he'd be on for 50 seats if it was to be run again.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um so so I I I think really the civilizational moment that I think people have seen come out to the fore is because we have seen a rise in sectarian politics and a huge, a huge divide open up um across society, and I'll say not just with you know Muslims, but generally across left and right, and just generally amongst people to go, what's what's happening here?
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and that these images do embed in people's minds, as you say.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I suppose this immigration question, which you talked about, the mass immigration, which was um part of the reason why you thought, where's where's Britain going here?
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Is back to those stats that Matt Goodwin was uh has been popularizing recently.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um a bit of analysis shows that those stats that we're headed for is the equivalent to the 50 years of demographic change that the UK had been through between 1970 and 2020, and it will be in effectively 12 years.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: So all of these images, all of that nervousness, um, I can see why you might have pressed the ejector seat, wondering where British politics and that kind of um uh debate might be going and how ugly it might get, because um uh yeah, sitting here right now, uh it doesn't it doesn't feel so good.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I have to say, there is a there's a there's a pensiveness and um and it's not being helped by any of the big parties, and as I as you said, there's not really a an outlet, an electoral voice for it to go to.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean if you want to get into reason number four or something for leaving the UK, it's a pending Labour government government.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: And uh Labor is not going to do anything about immigration, but you know perfectly well they will only increase it.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: And and and um, you know, it's I understand why everyone is uh disillusioned with the the Tories, I am too.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: And they have not governed like small c conservatives remotely on this and many other issues.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: So there's nowhere to go.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I I I understand that kind of fatalism that with the traditional conservative base, it's like this sucks, this is not working, this is not what we asked for, it's not what we voted for.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: These people are actually acting like they're members of the Labor Party.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: The trouble is that meanwhile, the labor has snuck left, and it is going to be worse.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be worse on every front.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it'll be worse in terms of environmental unrealistic, stupid environmental regulation over regulation in general.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: The taxes will only get worse, you know, they'll only go in one direction.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um and the immigration's only get going to get worse.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I yeah, you you end up bringing in the other side because there's nobody else to bring in, but it's not gonna be for the better.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think uh Roger Scruton had uh a term for um people uh who often find themselves in policy policy-making positions.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you said that there are too many unscrupulous optimists, people who believe I love that expression.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, people who believe in in a best case scenario, or there's a utopian scenario, or um they have this idea of there are a few different good things over here, and if we just aggregate them all together, that just equals even more goods.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: So he outlines a whole bunch of fallacies, and effectively he argues in a book which is called The Uses of Pessimism and the Dangers of False Hope, that it needs to be counterbalanced with people who can see the trade-offs and the risks, and we can't just go on thinking that we can have this huge vision of this perfect future connected to abstract ideals without recognizing the messiness of local life living together.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that connects with another idea of another eminent intellectual, like Thomas Sowell, who talked about that where we see a lot of conflict in politics and just in daily life is because there's a conflict of visions.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: You've got those people who are part of the thinking class, they're they have the vision of the anointed, they self-anoint themselves, they believe in solutions, the moral perfectibility of man, and that they're just a bit further along that curve.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if you just give them the um the reins, they'll be able to deliver this perfect plan.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that's another fallacy that that Scruton talks about, the planning fallacy that just follow this plan and things will work out for the best.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that conflicts with the vision most people, ordinary folk, hold, which is the tragic vision is like we're not morally perfectible, it's the old story of the fall, you know, we're probably better off relying on cultural and traditional knowledge and norms to help self-govern both as individuals and communities and not to outsource all of our responsibility.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose this monologue has made me uh question whether this is just a bit of the end point of liberal governance with regards to if you just say that all of those constraints and self-governing things and cultures and traditions are kind of oppressive and not to be trusted.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: And we will, as a government, you can entrust us to enable you to meet your desires in whatever way, just keep on giving us the responsibility to do it.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, you've got this big, big state who looks after every aspect of your lives, and um and that is so insulated from the feelings, the everyday um uh reality of people, and they're sitting in their little uh offices coming up with these huge plans for a whole society.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's kind of no wonder that it goes wrong.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: They're kind of they're blind visionaries that don't even really know how it's going to hit the rest of the nation.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and I and I feel like no matter who you vote for at the moment, whether it's a Tories, whether it's Labour, they're just blind visionaries.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: They might be slightly oriented in a different direction, but they they just believe that they are going to be able to deliver in accordance with this grand plan.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it's failed time and again.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know when we're gonna get an option on the table of people who just have a um a more realistic view of humanity and what we what we are and what we can um endure, I suppose.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I would say that especially on the left, uh the commitment is to ideas and not to reality.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: I d ideas trump reality.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: And therefore, success doesn't occur on the ground in people's lives, success occurs in rhetoric.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's those are the kinds of victories they're interested in.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe abstractly, power, but not making people's real lives better, just a little bit better, not perfect, but you know, making it slightly better, or at least not worse tomorrow, right?
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that's that's where the left has always tended to fall down, is is you know, traditionally they have a an um an overly optimistic, as you were saying, view of human nature and imagine that you know we're all perfectible.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, one of the things that actually changed on the left in the last few years with the new woke cancel culture people, they actually think we're all evil.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh and that's that kind of cynicism about oh, at least all white people are are your irremediable racists, right?
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's not the kind of view that a traditional left wing usually embraced.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: The usual problem is that they're you know they have too cheerful uh a version of people and therefore aren't looking out for how much, for example, people uh will take advantage of the welfare system because they don't want to work.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Just assume that everyone wants to work and are and they're good.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: And if you take advantage, if you use the welfare system, it's because you know you have a good reason.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: You can't you can't work here.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: But now nowadays I think the left is much more is much darker on human nature.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it therefore is much more oriented toward control, toward authoritarianism.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: You have to make people be good.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: You have to bring in laws, and basically the police make people be good.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: And um and that is, you know, that's that is therefore assuming that people won't do what you regard as the right thing naturally.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that was on uh on display during COVID, which was another, by the way, turn off for me about the UK.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: I never felt the same way about the UK after COVID.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and it was a, you know, all the other uh pandemics previous, it was like oh we everyone was trusted to protect themselves.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: And if you were especially uh vulnerable to a disease that most people would survive, it's you you you were trusted to stay home or not do too much socializing because you would act in naturally in your own self-interest.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: But as far as COVID, as when COVID came along, that was out the window.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: And nobody could be trusted to um to be intelligent uh and act on their own behalf.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: And had everyone had to be perfectly controlled, down to the point of absurdity.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and I think that was more cynicism.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, people are stupid is the assumption.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we we've definitely taken the black pill to use internet parlance uh a few times today, uh, and I'll continue with that until potentially offering an avenue of hope, or at least some we can engage in our own uh uh envisioning of a future.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: Andrew Neil posted on Twitter in the last 24 hours the following, which I think um sums up some of the things that we've been talking about.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: It'd be good to get your your take on it and uh see whether you agree with it.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then I've got a question uh for you as well.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: So Andrew Neil says the UK is drifting, unhappy, losing faith in previously respected institutions like the police, buffeted by extremists, often allowed to run amok, dismayed by decline, angry at the inability of the political class to do anything about it, despairing that the Westminster politico media bubble pursues an agenda, issues and priorities.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: Look at the obsession with Lee Anderson, which are not most peoples, and had enough of being lectured to by a disconnected de hote en bus chattering class.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yet we have a Prime Minister and leader of the opposition, incapable of speaking up for the moderate majority, who still have pride in their country and are desperate for strong leadership and guidance through the current morass, plus some hope sign things will get better.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: All within the bounds of traditional British tolerance and fair play.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: This vacuum is dangerous.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm guessing from some of the things we've talked about, you would agree with Andrew.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but Lionel, if the country could ever win you back as a resident, uh what what would it need you to do?
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: What would you what would you need to see?
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to see another party come along.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I gr uh I think both party both major parties are dysfunctional.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_01: I would say the same thing of the United States.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um they are disconnected from what people want.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, both parties are to the left of the majority of the population, which is bizarre.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'd certainly like to see a little more functionality, which would include uh clapping down on immigration and keeping it under 100,000 a year.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: That will never happen.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: That means I'm never going back, I guess.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I'd love to see all the woke stuff just go out the window.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, part of the embarrassment of that movement in the UK is that you guys didn't even make it up.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: This is all imitative of American insanity.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're gonna imitate anything from the United States, the last thing you want to bring in is the is this drecky uh destructive self-hating ideology.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it's it's poison and it has infected all the UK UK major institutions as badly as it as it's infected the US once.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I you know, I think it's it's shameful, and it it does.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: It makes uh makes the UK a more depressing place to live for everyone.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, is this um I'm not usually big on vocal patriotism, but that's because I grew up in a time in my country where there was lots of patriotism, and therefore nobody needed my patriotism, if you know what I mean.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I'm not I'm not really into ceremonies in the UK.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not that big on the royal family.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think it plays an important social role, but I don't show up for all those occasions and wave flags.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's just I don't like pomp.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: It bores me.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um nevertheless, when I was growing up, it was normal to be patriotic as an American, and that freed me to be very critical of the United States because it was a minority viewpoint and it it was trendy, but you know, there was this sense that uh otherwise, in terms of people generally believing in the country as a project, that was not endangered.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I could poke at it and be very outright anti-American if I wanted to, but that didn't endanger anything.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: It was still basically a sense that there was a rock solid self-belief in the country, so that I was indulging in what we what we now call luxury beliefs, right?
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_01: I had luxury uh anti-patriotism as a as as an adolescent.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um we can't afford it anymore.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_01: That that has that's those luxury beliefs are now institutionalized.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: They are now mainstream.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's now mainstream to hate your country, to be ashamed of your country.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it's even becoming mainstream to regard it as in a terminal decline, and I'm I'm afraid I'm feeding that right now.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't feel entirely good about that.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because I I do I do think there's still such a thing as British culture, and I, you know, some of my best friends are British.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I I I feel a little guilty doing the the country down too much, and um I have regard for it.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_01: I have regard for British history, uh for British cultural achievements, uh the British sense of humor.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: I like Britain.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want it to go swirling down the toilet.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I hate seeing it uh go dark, go dark, so dark about itself, and become fatalistic in a really saddening way.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: That I guess that's all over now, and you know, we'd have to resign ourselves.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Native Britons have to resign themselves that they're going to be a minority in what was once their own country in short order, and that's kind of oh well.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: And there's always been a strain of of British culture, especially at the top intellectual level, that that did did the country down.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it's never been especially cool to be patriotic.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: And uh while I've I I just I in my in my decrepitude, I'm starting to see there's a place there's a place for patriotism.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: After all, if you're not a patriot, you don't die for your country.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: You just don't.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: And in both the US and and UK, I think we've got a majority younger generations who would not go to war.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: They just wouldn't and that's that's shocking.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: There are there are polls that back this up.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: And after all, you know, the UK has has to thank many young people, mostly young men, who gave their lives in World War II for the fact that the UK really still exists.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: And you can't just assume that will never happen again.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose that's the shocking thing, right?
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_00: Is you can get so close to a civilizational collapse, however it is, that you want to um to make with regards to the various different angles we could be we could be facing into that now, and yet have it almost uh disappear from collective uh memory um uh to the point where we feel like there's there's there's not so much worth fighting for now.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: Or we just take it for granted, I think, is the other thing is there's a complacency.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's a lot also lots of people that I speak to um you know across the divide, um the political divide, who just think, well things will turn out all right in the end, but there are so few people um willing to play their part in things being alright in the end, on whatever level, on whatever issue that they care about.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a kind of a blind faith, I suppose.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess that gets us it ties in a little bit with that unscrupulous optimist points a bit.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's just this hope that the best case everything will be fine.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I actually gave a whole lecture in 2020 about this issue of complacency because I believe uh the left in general right now is complacent.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: That is, they think that you can hack at a civilization as much as you want, and everything will still be fine.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_01: Most of these people do not imagine that their politics endanger their iPhone updates.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_01: All that's gonna carry on, and they're gonna go to the supermarket and they're gonna get their frozen dimension or whatever.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: And everything's gonna be completely available, and they can get their vegan milk and whatever.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they don't actually expect to make any sacrifices for whatever revolution they're they're rooting for.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of these people are white, and they think that if they bring in radical affirmative action policies, that that of course they're gonna be hired because they're good.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_01: No, if you're gonna bring in radical, overcompensatory uh racial quotas and you're white, and that means you're you're out, then you're probably gonna be one of the people who's out of a job or who doesn't get into university.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the there's no appreciation on the left that even their own personal day-to-day security, the way they go through their lives, uh, that they there's no appreciation for the fact that the kind of policies they're advocating, the kind of disruption that they're coveting would destroy that life.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_01: They think they can be as disruptive as they want and bring in whatever policies they want, and everything will still be fine, and and everything will take over the way it always has been, supermarkets, iPhone updates, etc.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it was especially when I wrote The Mandibles, which came out in 2016, which is about the failure of the dollar in the United States and therefore what happens.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I came to an appreciation for the horrifying fragility of order.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it's order that's a miracle, right?
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_01: The natural state of nature is chaos.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that's true of ours, our species also.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't take much before basically you're running in packs and um ripping each other's throats out.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I it it it's civilization is uh is um it is improbable.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: And we should be grateful for it, and it it therefore requires uh uh protection and shepherding.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that also means not tearing it all apart because it's not perfect in in in your terms.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: It it means it means being careful and it means appreciating what you have inherited.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_01: And education is now so poor that we have raised generations that don't know anything and therefore don't appreciate how far we've come and how much better they've got it than their forebears.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_01: And and they also don't appreciate the the fragility of the future, and it's it's all of our responsibility who are alive at the at this time.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's nobody else to do it.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody we're we belong to a particular set of people who is responsible for carrying the past into the future.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody else can do it.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: The other people are dead now.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I I I try to do my small part, you know, to remind people to be responsible, if only by writing horror stories about what happens when you're not.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think that's our crumb of hope, the exhortation that people ought to pick up the torch, as it were, that we should recognize that what we have is not self-evident, whether it's rights, whether it's the freedoms that we had, whether it's this materially abundant society, and that if we want any of it to continue on into the future, if we want anything that is recognizably home, um that we need to make sacrifices for that personal for the collective, I suppose.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and yeah, that that idea that there's a a democracy of the dead here, that we are linked to people in the past, and uh they've figured stuff out long before we did, and it might not have an answer in a textbook, but um what what we're what we're living through is uh deeply improbable based on human history.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_00: So there's that crumb of hope we're gonna grab on to that uh uh while I can, Lionel, because I think both you and I have the propensity to um to take us.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um thank you so much for for joining me, Lionel.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_00: I know you're not on social media, uh however uh for anyone who's interested in following you and seeing what you're up to, what publications are you writing in regularly these days?
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um well I have had a fortnightly column in The Spectator since 2017, and I'm still plugging along.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the uh the improved view out my window in Portugal doesn't seem to have reduced my bitterness and bile and uh and fortunately also sense of humor.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: So uh you can always keep up with that.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I've got a new novel coming out in April called Mania, which I think is a lot of fun.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's set in the near past and it's uh it suddenly seizes uh the Western world that there is no such thing as variable human intelligence, i.e., there is no such thing as stupid, which becomes, you know, the S-word you can never utter.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_01: And uh this great leveling uh well, let's just say it doesn't have a doesn't have a healthy effect on society.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um and yeah, it's it's a lot of fun.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and I'm working on a new book which we will not talk about.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, to be revealed, I suppose.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh keep an eye out for mania.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'll keep reading you in the spectator.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_00: Hope to be able to speak to you again in the future, and thank you so much for coming on the show.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'd enjoy that.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_00: Great, great.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, enjoy Portugal.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_01: Till next time then.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_00: Take care, man.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining me in Thinking Class today.
• 1:03:04
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• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thinking Class seeks to understand the civilizational issues we face and why what our leaders do in response matters.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_00: Here I seek to explore the ideas, values, and culture that made our civilization, those that are run making it, and how leaders at our public and private institutions should respond.
• 1:03:29
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• 1:03:38
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