The thing that conservatives always miss though, the fact that so often flies straight over their heads, is that we are all part of a community, a society, and it is in everybody’s interests to look after one another. I think of this as a kind of family, but perhaps this is a metaphor that again most conservatives may not understand, so desperate are they to rebel against their own claustrophobic upbringing.

The irony is that most people brought up in a strict conservative atmosphere often have their true individuality trampled, as parents or guardians attempt to ‘discipline’ them and beat out of them any true spontaneity of spirit. As with all things a balance is required, and conservative parents I think get the balance wrong, compelling their children to spend the rest of their lives over compensating for the lack of true consideration they received when young.

The individually that conservatives so crave is, I firmly believe, just one big resentful excuse to ignore all the responsibilities they have to wellbeing of their communities, their country and the world. We have, for instance, a responsibility not to invade other countries simply for economic or strategic gain. That’s a kind of murderous ‘individuality’ the world can do without. Unfortunately what conservatives call individually, normal people think of as self-centeredness, arrogance and greed.

Of course people have a responsibility to themselves and their immediate loved ones, but this is balanced against a general regard for the broader communities of which we are all a part. It has often struck me that conservatives can be such lovely people when it comes to their immediate family and social group, but go beyond that and the well being of anyone else in the world doesn’t seem to even register on their radar. I don’t think they actively want to hurt other people, so much as they simply don’t care. As such conservative values represent to me a type of amorality, a system of circular logic that exists merely to defend their right to do nothing for anyone except themselves.

This philosophy of course leads to constant conflict and all sorts of avoidable difficulties for their fellow citizens and themselves, and yet conservatives will carry on fostering a self-righteous contempt for anyone or anything that doesn’t appear to benefit them directly.

I have been telling friends for years that despite their rhetoric conservatives deeply resent democracy and majority rule, and if they could find any way of getting rid of it, without it looking like they were getting rid of it, then they would.

I believe in ‘unlimited’ democracy as you call it. I believe there is nothing that a true government of the people should not be able to legislate on, assuming it really does reflect the will of a stable majority of the people, and assuming also a genuinely informed electorate. Freedom is a relative concept, and it all boils down to who’s freedoms do you want to promote, the majority, or the usually wealthy minority who feel they have no use for society anymore, having made their money and being in a secure financial position.

You people disgust me. You talk in code for the benefit of the true believers and rarely if ever say what you really mean. When you talk about individual rights what you really mean is you want to be able to let your fellow citizens rot in the gutter and not be compelled to take any responsibility for them whatsoever. What big men you all are, what pillars of your community.

I know very few middle class conservatives who have ever had to pull themselves up by their ‘bootstraps’, and many poor working class people who have to do just that everyday merely to survive. I have met very few, if any, genuinely intelligent conservatives, though not for want of searching, but I have met many perceptive and razor sharp working people. So much for the ‘natural’ order.

I have seen very few children who ever reach their full potential by being physically punished, but many who have flourished with encouragement, respect and support. Why, because children are born very good, not bad, and they have no need at all to be physically slapped into some preordained shape. Lazy parents hit children, parents who don’t know what else to do, parents eager to indulge their own aggressive impulses in a self-righteous air of false benevolence.

Those who would tell you otherwise were usually treated harshly as children themselves and not respected for the true individuals they were. This they interpret as having been for their ‘own good’ and as ‘having done them no harm’ while then going out in the world to ‘punish’ and ‘discipline’ as many of their fellow citizens as they can. What a house of cards, what a sad farce.

Give me true majority rule any day over a conservative vacuum of so called ‘individuality’, and an anti social utopia where those born poor are free to make more money for the wealthy and those born wealthy are free to kick the legs out from under the poor.