So who or what, exactly, is the cause of our ills?

"Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind-in-the-mass through some pet formula of their own."
Henry Grady Weaver, The Mainspring of Human Progress.

This does not just apply to the methods used by the European Union, but also to the three main political parties in what is still, just, the United Kingdom.

Evidential Item #1:

"The European Union is a state under construction."
Elmar Brok, Chairman of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs

"The time for individual nations [in Europe] having its own tax, employment and social policies if definitely over. We must finally bury the erroneous ideas of nations having sovereignty over foreign and defence policies. National sovereignty will soon prove itself to be a product of the imagination."
Gerhard Schröder, Chancellor of Germany, January 1999.

 Evidential Item #2:

"UKIP is sort of a bunch of ... fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists, mostly."
David Cameron - radio phone-in - April 2006

Evidential Item #3:

"It is no part of Labour politics to try and win elections by saying things that aren't true."
Harriet Harman, speaking about Phil Woolas.

Evidential Item #4:

"Nothing will do more damage to the pro-European movement than giving room to the suspicion that we have something to hide, that we do not have the "cojones" to carry our argument to the people."
Nick Clegg, the Guardian, 15th October 2003

"Today, I will give this cast-iron guarantee: If I become PM a Conservative government will hold a referendum on any EU treaty that emerges from these negotiations."
David Cameron MP, The Sun, 26th September 2007

Evidential Item #5:

"The Prime Minister tells the Commons that he wants to repeal the Human Rights Act, and I agree with him, although I do not think we need a new another one with just a different name. Magna Carta, the Common Law and the Bill of Rights worked perfectly well for centuries before the laws of Europe seeped into our judicial system..... Mr Vince Cable is the Secretary of State responsible for the Government’s policies on that. He says that the policy is good, sensible and fair. He recommends that Conservative (and for that matter Labour, Nationalist and other minor parties too) should vote for it. But he doesn’t know whether to vote for it himself. He is waiting to hear what other LibDem MPs are going to do. He might vote for it, against it, or abstain, but the merit of the matter will have nothing to do with his decision."
Norman Tebbit, Daily Telegraph, 3rd December 2010

Ever since 1972 the British public has been assured that the United Kingdom would suffer no loss of sovereignty, that the parliamentary rule remains supreme. Ever since their formation in the early 90s, Ukip have been dismissed as 'out of touch'. Ever since the formation of New Labour, that party has been guilty, as have both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Parties, of presenting manifestos - come general elections - and promptly breaking their word with the electorate. Harriet Harman, in particular should read her own quote and then read the Labour manifestos of 1997, 2001 and 2005.  To what nadir has politics and democracy sunk if an electorate is unable to rely on a politician's promise (Cameron) or a politician who requests the views of the public, but on finding that those views are not 'liked', abandons the project (Clegg). To restate that politicians are people without principles is unnecessary when one considers the words of Norman Tebbit.

We the public are bombarded by 'social-improvement' groups, for example ASH, who cajole and hector the public to improve their lifestyles - but only in ways dictated by these social-improvement groups. Included in such groups are the 'environmental lobby', who, almost daily, preach about saving the planet, again at the behest of our government - who, in turn, are merely fulfilling their orders received from Brussels. Encapsulated with this 'environmentalism' are local authorities who then introduce stringent fines for failure to comply with their latest environmental edict  - and energy companies who 'tax' consumers as a means of assisting the financing of a 'science' which still has to be proven.

We, the public, are treated like simple fools and told that we must act as politicians order. For example witness David Cameron stating that it is his belief our nation should remain a member of the European Union and that therefore no referendum will be granted - except under certain circumstances decided by him. We were led to believe that constituents would be given the right of recall for errant MPs, only to learn after the election that prior to our being able to recall an MP, Parliament will decide first if there is a case to answer. (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes - who guards the guards?)

As we all know, to promote the nation state, its people, its way of life, is considered to be xenophobic - politicians tell us that that thinking is 'outmoded', that we must become a multi-national society and nation in order to achieve great things in a multi-national world. I am presently reading "Like the Roman", a biography of Enoch Powell, by Simon Heffer. Discussing Powell's disagreement with the decision to seek membership of what was then the European Economic Community  (EEC), Heffer writes (pp584/585):

"Since 1968, when Powell had had time to concentrate on the issue, he had seen the economic emphasis receding and the political ones advancing, with the community viewed 'as an embryonic political unit' and that, as he had said before, seemed to be something he could not bear to see Britain join.

Accused of over-emotionalising his arguments against membership when he should have been more rational, Powell replied that 'a nation is not a rational thing. There is no rational basis for nationhood. What a nation is is what it feels itself to be instinctively and emotionally'. He denied he was an isolationist: One is not isolationist just because one does not want to be amalgamated with another country, or countries.....I am a free trader, I want the maximum intercourse between this nation and other nations; but I don't want to see this nation drowned by other nations."

Politicians preach democracy, yet impose on us a form of government that is most certainly not  democratic as it does not contain that which true democracy is supposed to enshrine: freedom - the freedoms granted being only those the ruling elite have decided to allow. It is, unfortunately, true that by the time the public awake to what is being done to them it will be too late to protest or vote out these 'well-meaning' politicians.

Returning to the opening quotation, one must therefore ask how those well-meaning people are able to impose their ideas on a nation - because do not a nation's peoples have minds of their own? There is a problem in appointing any government, one that is best explained by James Madison:

"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."
Federalist Papers (51)

So to lay the blame for totalitarian government - which some say we now have - on those governing is, perhaps, unfair. Unless a nation's peoples do exercise the minds that are theirs - and theirs alone - then:

"The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves."

Dresden James