Does Monty Die in Gaol?

I can't open the paper nowadays without reading a column by somebody raving about the cruelty and oppressiveness of our society. How we have pandered to mindless conservatism and the "politics of fear". Apparently modern society is frightened, reactionary, unimaginative and well on the road towards becoming the Fourth Reich. Our culture is crushed beneath the stultifying hand of narrow conservatism and right wing extremism. I have a question for these people, "If our society is so reactionary, extremist and unpleasant why hasn't it taken the necessary steps to make you shut up?" As for the politics of fear jibe, all politics are the politics of fear.

Of course there are problems with this society, people still get raped, robbed, beaten up and ripped off by dubious businessmen. Sadly this is part of the baggage of freedom. My favourite American, PJ O'Rourke, pointed out that freedom means freedom to be a butthead. Freedom means that you are free to be David Irving if you think Jew baiting Nazi revisionism will look good on your CV (and when you think of the kind of people who read David Irving's CV it probably does). Our society hasn't fully or completely successfully integrated its immigrants and various social outcasts but let's get some perspective. At the moment we're wondering whether its safe to let in Muslim immigrants, only a few decades ago we were wondering whether Greeks and Italians could really be defined as white. The major question on homosexuality is whether we allow them to marry, a couple of generations ago it was whether we gaoled them or castrated them.

There seem to be no end of commentators lining up to say how horrible and intolerant our society is blissfully unaware of the fact that our society is the only one that would put up with them for a heartbeat. And this is where it gets really strange. A certain number of them (by no means all) have nothing but praise for societies and civilisations that couldn't approach the levels of tolerance present in our own if they tried for a thousand years.

A number of the more thoughtful have, instead, pointed to the glaring flaws in our society and that's perfectly fine. Despite, and sometimes because of, our best efforts things go horribly wrong. East Timor is a perfect example of that. In 1975 Indonesia invaded the then Portuguese colony of East Timor and brought it under their rule. The Labor government in Canberra was delighted at this example of proactive decolonisation. The East Timorese who had just swapped an indolent and incompetent government several thousand miles away for an aggressive and brutal one right on their doorstep were less impressed.

It is not inconceivable that other cultures and societies have things to teach us but I find it very difficult to believe that any place whose main import is aid and whose main export is refugees has very much to teach us. As for those who feel we should respect cultures different to our own simply because they are cultures I might point out that until recent centuries our own culture included, segregation, slavery, wife beating and witch burning. Should we have "respect" for that as well. I don't see why not, its traditional and what's more they're our traditions. Surely we should have study groups and government grants to ensure these things don't die out in this callous, secular modern age.

In judging society I have a very simple rule of thumb. I call it the Viscount Montgomery rule. Bernard Law Montgomery was, as I might have mentioned before, a deeply disturbed individual. His father was largely absent (due to his job) and he and his siblings were raised by what by all accounts seems to have been a very cruel and tyrannical mother. Certainly she warped Montgomery's entire attitude towards women and his loveless upbringing definitely contributed to some of his more unpleasant personality traits. In today's society Montgomery would probably have been taken into care, shunted around foster homes, become a juvenile delinquent and died in gaol before he was thirty. And Hitler might have won World War 2. So my rule for society is; any society where Montgomery dies in gaol after being fostered out isn't good enough for me.