What exactly do they do to them at Conservative Party HQ? I’m referring to the long list of folks in that Party who once had what appeared to be ostensibly conservative leanings but who have, one by one, capitulated to the agenda of the Cultural Marxists. Clearly the party was infiltrated by out-and-out progressives decades ago, but what exactly did they do to the likes of William Hague and Eric Pickles? Were any teeth pulled or rats involved? I think we have a right to know.
One of the strangest cases of Total Capitulation to the Leftist Agenda is that of the Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan. There she was in 2013, voting against the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, and doing so because she apparently believed that marriage should “only be between a man and a woman”. And yet someone also called Nicky Morgan, appearing on Radio 4’s Today programme at the beginning of the week, claimed that “homophobic” views may be a sign that a pupil is at risk of becoming an extremist.
I have checked the records and it does indeed appear to be the same Nicky Morgan. Now I know that people change their minds, and often this can be a good thing – I’ve done it many times myself – but what can have caused Ms Morgan not only to change her mind, but to do so to the extent that having once appeared to understand that men can’t have husbands and women can’t have wives, just two years later she is attacking those who think marriage is “only between one man and one woman” with all the zeal of a famished wolf in a sheepfold.
She really ought to be careful. If the current penchant for pouring resources into tackling crimes committed decades ago rather than ones committed now continues, she might one day find herself on the receiving end of an early morning knock at the door:
“Ms Morgan?”
“Yes, how can I help?”
“I’m arresting you for the crime of homophobia and fostering extremism.”
“Me a homophobe? An extremist? But surely you’ve heard of all the work I’ve done to tackle homophobia and extremism by getting teachers to snitch on pupils who displayed homophobic tendencies?”
“Yes I am aware of it ma’am, but I am referring to your voting record in 2013, when you claimed that marriage should ‘only be between a man and a woman’. Now if that’s not a brazenly homophobic statement, I don’t know what is.”
“But that was 20 years ago.”
“Ah! That’s what they all say. But repressing homophobic tendencies these last 20 years by no means erases the fact that a crime was committed. Will you step this way please?”
I jest of course, but let’s look at the issue of extremism for a moment. The government has defined extremism as: “Vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs”. I won’t go into it now, but there is clearly a very strong case for those who came up with this definition to hand themselves into the nearest police station for falling foul of their own criteria.
I love the way they talk about British values. Where did they get these “British values” from? Did they suck them out of thin air? Certainly, they cannot trace them back to any historical source since it is clearly the case that before the last 10-20 years, the majority of people in Britain for the last millennia or so would not have supported the idea of same-sex “marriage”. Sounds like they made these “values” up on the hoof.
Now Ms Morgan has taken it all a stage further by applying it to children. In her Today interview, she said that schools should look out for pupils making homophobic remarks, and when asked if those making them should be reported to the police, she said that it “depended on the context of the discussion”.
Students of the history of how totalitarian societies operate will recognise this and see what is coming. Issued with the new Government guidelines, the most zealous advocates of all things LGBT among the teaching profession will be on the lookout for instances of “homophobia” and will pounce whenever they catch a whiff. Gotta stamp it out. Not only this, but it will also lead to pupils snitching on classmates who make certain remarks. In short, if you really wanted to create a sort of Soviet Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, where everybody suspects, everyone is wary, and no-one dares speak their mind, this is how you would do it.
Having an opinion about homosexuality is not an extremist position. Nor is believing it to be sinful. Going and committing a crime against someone because they are homosexual is extremist. And herein do we begin to define what actually constitutes extremism.
Extremism, I would argue, is “an ideological position that is prepared to use coercion in order to harm either people or property, or which attempts to force others into changing opinions that don’t accord with that ideology.” So that would include ISIS. It would include the IRA. It would also include the likes of Tony Blair and Dave Cameron, whose ideologies caused them to go and wreck some countries. But it would not include a school pupil who thinks homosexuality is a sin.
Oh and there is another type of person that would fall into this definition. It is the type of person who is clearly bent on forcing those with contrary opinions on marriage and homosexuality to either keep them in their head or abandon them altogether. Now who does that sound like?
