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Former Tory leader Iain Duncan-Smith’s interview proves that he tends to say the right things, if not necessarily ground-breaking ones.

As I was ticking my imaginary boxes, he said that a Corbyn government would destroy Britain [tick], that the Labour lead in the polls is a temporary blip caused by Tory ineptitude over Brexit [tick, a hopeful one], that under no circumstances should the Tories contest the EU elections [tick], that Theresa May should go [tick, a big fat one], that Tories must deliver Brexit in one form or another [tick, a qualified one], that marginal pro-Leave parties may siphon off enough votes from the Tories to let Corbyn in [tick].

And then, as my mental pen was running out of ink, he used a term that has the same effect on me that the word ‘culture’ reputedly had on Dr Goebbels: social justice, something to which the Tories are devoted, and no one should forget that.

One would hope that a major politician would know how to use words in their real, as opposed to bogus, meaning. Alas, that hope is guaranteed to be forlorn.

Political words are these days never used in their true meaning – unless you think that ‘liberal’ really means increasing the power of the individual vis-à-vis the state; ‘conservative’ has anything to do with the Conservative Party; or Labour are indeed out to protect the rights of the working man.

Political vocabulary resides in the virtual world. In the actual world, justice means getting one’s due, what one deserves – as often distinct from what one desires.

Thus, though I’d like to be half a foot taller, I don’t think it’s unjust that I am not: I’ve done nothing to deserve the extra six inches. Conversely, I’d like to have a billion pounds, but I’m sure it’s just that I haven’t: I’ve never pursued money with sufficient dedication.

Justice is also another word for the law, which too is supposed to ensure that each individual gets what he deserves, conviction or acquittal, punishment or mercy. So far, so clear.

But what does ‘social justice’ mean, especially when uttered by a government official? This is yet another instance when a term is used in the exact opposite of its real meaning. For in this context ‘social justice’ means ‘social injustice’: people getting what they desire but don’t deserve.

This isn’t an argument against the welfare state – not because such an argument wouldn’t be valid, but because in this context it’s irrelevant. It’s language that concerns me now.

Forcible redistribution of wealth by the state (which is what its servants mean by social justice) may be right or wrong, merciful or corrupting, useful or useless, productive or counterproductive.

One thing it can’t be under any circumstances is just: those whose wealth is redistributed do nothing to deserve expropriation; many of those towards whom the wealth is redistributed do nothing to deserve such largesse.

In fact, if true social justice operated in Britain, millions of welfare recipients who now live in decent lodgings, eat three squares a day and have enough left over for a few pints, tattoos and a pair of designer trainers would be starving in the street.

By reaffirming his party’s commitment to social justice, Mr Duncan Smith in fact re-establishes its socialist credentials – as if we needed a reminder. Again, I’m not arguing pro or con. I’m simply upset about the gross lexical solecism.

P.S. So upset do I get about such matters that at times it’s best to forget about them and focus on the beauty of nature instead.

Driving through the gently undulating countryside of rural France the other day, I was happy to see violently lurid yellow patches breaking up the soporific monotony of green fields. As if by itself, drifting in from the crisp, scented air, a question floated into my mind: Is it rape or rape that’s in season?

Peter Oborne has had a Damascene experience. He has changed his view on Brexit from leave to remain, and he explains why in a rambling article.

Now if I were predominantly, as opposed to mildly, cynical, I’d put that about-face down to ulterior, pecuniary motives.

You see, Oborne’s prose has been steadily declining over the past few years. His detractors ascribe this deterioration to an excessive fondness for alcohol, that scourge of Fleet Street.

However, his writing is still good enough for the Mail, and Oborne’s bosses would be happy to tolerate the bibulous hack – provided he toed the line.

But the line changed a few months ago when the Leaver Paul Dacre was replaced as editor by the Remainer Geordie Grieg. For the hack to continue toeing the line, he had to change the direction – or risk taking bread off the table.  

However, since I’m only mildly cynical, I shan’t explain Oborne’s change of heart by such lowly motives. I’ll accept his integrity as a given and take his arguments at face value.

Alas, the face value is close to nil. According to Oborne, “Brexit has paralysed the system.” The political system is indeed paralysed, but not by Brexit.

Brexit has to be exculpated here for the simple reason that it hasn’t happened yet. What has had a paralysing effect is the government’s mendacious, borderline treasonous, efforts to torpedo Brexit – and hit the constitution by ricochet.

This underhand effort has been spearheaded by Mrs May, who, according to Oborne, has “shown immense fortitude and determination which has won her the respect and admiration of decent people.”

Since neither I nor any of my friends obviously qualify for the distinction of being decent, none of us feels much respect and admiration for the woman who has perfidiously conspired with EU chieftains to defy not only the popular vote, but also the parliamentary mandate that turned Article 50, and therefore Brexit, into a law.

But then one can’t argue against admiration in a man’s heart. As Pascal put it, the heart has its reasons that reason knows not of (le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point).

Unfortunately, one gets the impression that reason isn’t Oborne’s strong point. Throughout the piece he uses the locution “we Brexiteers”, as in we Brexiteers realise that “Britain’s departure from the EU will be as great a disaster for our country as the over-mighty unions were in the 1960s and 1970s.” With Brexiteers like this, who needs Remainers?

Oborne’s respect and admiration for Mrs May are based on his respect and admiration for her awful deal, which Oborne regrets has “zero chance” of passing.

My problems here start with the word ‘deal’. This word has drifted into politics from commerce, where it has horse-trading implications.

Two parties, say a car maker and a tyre manufacturer, identify an area of mutual benefit and thrash out a deal. The former undertakes to use nothing but the latter’s tyres on all new cars, while the latter agrees to lower the wholesale price by 10 per cent.

Everybody’s happy, the deal is done. But politics uses a different vocabulary that features words like ‘alliance’, ‘treaty’, ‘agreement’ and so forth. ‘Deal’ legitimately appears only at the intersection of politics and commerce, as in ‘trade deal’.

But a trade deal is only possible between two sovereign, autonomous parties. In my example, if the tyre manufacturer were not a separate company but merely a division of the car maker, the latter would be issuing orders, not seeking deals.

Extrapolating from companies to countries, trade deals by definition are only possible between two sovereign commonwealths, not between, say, a central government and one of its provinces. Thus HMG could sign a trade deal with China, but not with Sussex.

That establishes a normal sequence of events when one country wishes to leave a federation (which is what the EU is in all but name). Politics must precede economics: the country first establishes its independent, which is to say legally equal, status with the federation and only then discusses trade and other economic arrangements.

Yet key words like ‘sovereignty’, ‘independence’ and ‘constitution’ don’t appear even once among the 5,000 words of Oborne’s piece. It’s all about horse-trading, which is indeed putting the horse before the cart.

In the process, Oborne doesn’t just tug but positively yanks at our heart strings: “It’s a decision which will not just viscerally impact the lives of our children. But also our children’s children. And their children too.”

At least our children’s children’s children’s children will be free of the visceral impact, whatever that means. In fact, the impact Oborne talks about exclusively isn’t visceral but economic, but I agree that ‘visceral’ sounds more sophisticated.

“A clumsily executed Brexit,” he writes, “will hit us in terms of lower incomes, lost jobs and industries, worse public services and restricted opportunities.”

What, no wheelbarrows full of hyperinflated banknotes, no children (and their children) dying of malnutrition, no patients writhing and shivering in unheated wards? I’m disappointed that Oborne’s palette is so short of the black pigment.

That’s it, the whole argument. Everything else is just a variation on the same theme, re-ingesting food already digested. Such as: “The economic arguments for Brexit have been destroyed by a series of shattering blows.”

But not at all. The shattering blows have rained not on Brexit but on the whole nation that has had its will denied and its constitution debauched. Once again, for those who suffer from Oborne’s learning difficulties: Brexit hasn’t happened yet. Hence its economic consequences are a matter of pure speculation, which on the Remain side features nothing but scaremongering.

Oborne generously admits that not all foreign companies will up sticks and leave, but he gleefully enumerates those that have already done so, such as Nissan.

Yes, he acknowledges, such companies invariably state that Brexit has nothing to do with their decision, but they do so only “for political reasons”. I can’t for the life of me imagine what those political reasons might be. I see Nissan as an industrial concern, not a political entity, but then Oborne’s vision must be more acute than mine.

If he’s so worried about this, a real, as opposed to our spivocratic, government could create a stampede of foreign companies falling over themselves to move their business to Britain. All it would take is slashing, or better still eliminating, corporate taxes and getting rid of the red tape.

This would be a healthy idea in any case, Brexit or no Brexit. After all, Manny Macron, when he was still France’s finance minister, threatened that Brexit would turn Britain into another Jersey or Guernsey. My answer was then, as it is now, a resounding “yes, please”.

Even Mrs May mooted that sort of thing when she was still pretending that a no-deal Brexit could happen. Winking and nudging in the direction of her EU Parteigenossen, she’d threaten for the cameras to introduce such measures in an extreme situation. Of course, for our socialists, Lite or Full Strength, sound economics can only be a punitive measure.  

But enough about economics. As I’ve written a thousand times if I’ve written it once, first things first.

From its inception, the EU has been a purely political, not economic, project, and leaving it must be a purely political, not economic act. Once that act has been consummated, then economic negotiations should start, ideally delivering a mutually beneficial deal.

However, the political act of secession and re-establishing sovereignty can’t be subject to negotiations or deals even in theory. The American colonies didn’t seek a deal with George III before declaring their independence – they knew that secession is an inherently unilateral act. Too bad Oborne doesn’t know it.

Britain is neither a supplicant nor a mingent pupil asking to be excused. It’s futile asking the EU’s permission to leave because such permission can’t possibly be granted. Hence there’s nothing to negotiate.

But even assuming for the sake of argument that a deal is possible in theory, one ironclad precondition for it in practice is that both sides negotiate in good faith. This is demonstrably not the case.

Neither party wants Brexit to happen, the EU openly, HMG perfidiously. Hence the muddle and seemingly unsolvable problems: neither side wants a deal. They both want Britain to remain, while the EU seeks the extra benefit of discouraging other members from similar audacity.

“I’ve heard the argument that people want to get it over with and ‘just leave’,” writes Oborne. “That’s reckless, stupid and could inflict incalculable damage.”

Now that we resort to that kind of language, it’s stupid and ignorant to believe that any deal is possible in the matter of preserving Britain’s ancient constitution.

The EU isn’t anti-democratic, explains Oborne. It’s merely undemocratic, although all its members are democracies. (He obviously doesn’t appreciate that different types of democracy exist, and they are seldom compatible.)

It’s not exactly like Napoleonic France or Nazi Germany, which is why there’s really no need to resist it the way Britain resisted those regimes. And not a single EU member threatens military aggression against Britain. (No, they just threaten a Napoleonic-style economic blockade if we become truly sovereign.)

A man capable of such statements shouldn’t throw words like ‘stupid’ about – his glass house may shatter. A country may be deprived of its sovereignty by violence or subterfuge – or it may surrender it voluntarily. The result is the same in all cases: sovereignty replaced by vassalage. That’s what “decent people” seem to want.

The word ‘fascism’ has suffered a hyperinflation and consequent loss of meaning. In the eyes of some, for example, it’s an umbrella covering such rather different personages as Adolf Hitler and Margaret Thatcher.

Since Lady Thatcher was really a Whig, and the same word describes her and Hitler, one may infer that Hitler was a Whig too, if not exactly of the Rockingham variety. Meaning that no term can be as broad as that and still denote something concrete.

Hence one has to specify exactly what one means by fascism. So here’s my definition: it’s a systematic attempt by mob or state (typically first by one, then by the other) to make people submit to a pernicious ideological ethos that deliberately perverts morality, culture and common sense in pursuit of power.

The political slogans brandished by a fascist mob, or whether it’s described as right-wing or left-wing, are to me immaterial. It’s the core that matters, not the veneer.

Normally associated with fascism are goose-stepping militarisation, suppression of all liberties, hysterical rallies, concentration camps, genocide – but they only become prevalent after fascism has conquered.

They are, to use the terminology favoured by the Marxist variety of fascism, only the ‘superstructure’. The ‘basis’ is a tectonic shift of ethos, so gradual that each subsequent stage barely registers, appearing as it is to be a logical progression from an already accepted fait accompli.

Before the people are subjugated violently, they are subjugated culturally and often unwittingly. They are not only not taught to think, but are actively indoctrinated not to think.

The mob (otherwise known as ‘public opinion’), supported by government cajolement or diktat, is telling people what to think and not to think; what to feel and not to feel; what to say and not to say. And people obey on pain of ostracism or worse.

By the time the real nastiness arrives in the shape of an unapologetically oppressive regime, everyone has grown too enfeebled and complacent to resist. Only two options remain: to jump on the fascist bandwagon or to be crushed by it.

We are in Britain today going through that priming stage, with the old certitudes roundly mocked, displaced and often criminalised. The process has an accelerator built in; it speeds up as it goes along. Things that a few years ago were unthinkable, are now not just acceptable but solely acceptable; yesterday’s perversion becomes today’s norm; yesterday’s lunacy, today’s normality.

Merely listing the evidence supporting this melancholy observation would take more space than this format allows. Therefore, I can only offer a few starters for a thousand, and an assurance that these examples are typical.

Under mob pressure, Jordan Peterson, a popular social psychologist, has had his offer of Cambridge fellowship rescinded because “his work and views are not representative of the student body”.  

A general remark: professors are there to inform the views of the student body, not to represent them. Specifically, Prof. Peterson is guilty of refusing to accept the fascist ethos of political correctness.

He won’t mangle the English language with mob-dictated grammar, meaning he dares use the masculine personal pronouns. He brands as “cultural Marxism” the notion of a permanent war between the oppressors and the oppressed permeating every aspect of life. He describes the concept of white privilege as “a Marxist lie”. Worst of all, he uses the word ‘Marxism’ pejoratively rather than admiringly.

Prof. Peterson doesn’t just drop such gems and leave it at that. He presents cogent arguments, which in any other than a fascist culture could only be countered with other arguments. But fascists don’t argue: they scream, froth at the mouth, bully, threaten and dictate.

In that spirit, the philosopher Roger Scruton was sacked as housing advisor to the government for saying, among other ‘controversial’ things, that homosexuality isn’t normal. Sir Roger should have been more up on his terminology: normal is what agrees with the neo-fascist ethos; abnormal is anything that contradicts it.

Hence a perversion practised, according to the largest survey I’ve seen, by just over one per cent of the population is normal if the mob says it is – and heterosexuality is morally neutral at best, a survival of the oppressive past at worst.

Interestingly, unlike the brown variety of fascism, the red version always normalises homosexuality (along with abortion, cohabitation and ‘sexual freedom’) as a WMD in its war on tradition.

Thus the first modern country to legalise homosexuality was Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1934, a place and period not otherwise known for a laissez-faire attitude to life. Only when the Soviet red darkened towards brown were the anti-homosexuality laws introduced – and enforced.

Do those who sacked Sir Roger think homosexuality is normal? They don’t. They don’t think, full stop. Thought doesn’t come into this: they simply fear the backlash from the neo-fascist mob and take preemptive action just in case.

Especially since Sir Roger got deeper in hot water by insisting that ‘Islamophobia’ is a political term used by those who wish to stifle serious debate. What do those mandarins and other fruits think it is, a rigorous medical condition? Agreeing with the underlying politics is an act of submission to the neo-fascist mob; denying that the term is political, an abject surrender.

Moving from the academic field to the football pitch, the midfielder Adam Johnson has just been released from prison, having served three years of his six-year term.

Now, six years is a hefty sentence in our punishment-shy jurisprudence. Burglars, car thieves and muggers get nothing like that on first offence, and seldom on the subsequent ones. So what heinous crime did Mr Johnson commit?

He had sex with a star-struck 15-year-old girl, and the age of consent in the UK is 16. Apparently, it wasn’t even what the porn industry calls ‘full-pen’ sex, just some unspecified sexual activity, probably of the oral kind.

Now have you noticed how, when UK laws differ from continental ones, they tend to be harsher? It’s only in that way that Britain insists on upholding her sovereignty.

For example, I’ve just driven across France, where the motorway speed limit is 11 mph higher than in Britain. Add a civilised 10 miles to that limit, and you can actually get where you’re going.

In this matter too, the age of consent in France is 15 and in Germany, where the permissive Weimar spirit evidently lives on, it’s 14. Thus, had Mr Johnson played away from home in those countries, he would have broken no law.

Still, the law is the law and, by getting fellated in Britain, Mr Johnson did break it. However, it’s useful to remember the ancient distinction between malum prohibitum and malum in se.

In secular morality the footballer’s transgression falls into the first category: something wrong only because it’s prohibited, not because it’s inherently wicked.

One way or the other, Mr Johnson was punished and, as the old phrase goes, paid his – in my view exorbitant – debt to society. Case closed?

Not at all, according to the mob. Mr Johnson didn’t just break the law; he aided and abetted the perennial oppression and exploitation of women, which is just the sort of thing Prof. Peterson calls a ‘Marxist lie’.

Once a paedophile, always a paedophile, screamed the mob, as if the groupie was five, not 15. Mr Johnson isn’t a paedophile; he’s a sex offender. It’s that difference between malum prohibitum and malum in se again.

Anyway, I thought prison rehabilitates criminals, doesn’t it? Surely it’s a social service rather than a punitive institution, or at least that’s what the mob insists it is?

Well, that depends on the nature of the crime. When it’s committed against an individual or his property (murder, assault, robbery, burglary, theft), then yes, it’s society’s fault, not the criminal’s. But when it’s committed against the ethos, in this case that of women’s victimisation by men, predominantly by white Christians, then no rehabilitation is possible.

Hence no football team will hire Mr Johnson (who’s still a good player) – for the same reason that Cambridge uninvited Peterson and the UK government sacked Scruton. A braying neo-fascist mob is too powerful to be denied.

I don’t know whether the British public is primed (corrupted) sufficiently to welcome the fascist government of the Marxist variety that may well take over within months. I only hope that some people still know creeping fascism when they see it.

Marriage is the building block of the family; family is the building block of society. And society is by definition at odds with the modern political state, which rightly sees family as its competitor.

The very nature of the modern state demands the transfer of the maximum amount of power from the periphery to the centre – this irrespective of the state’s political system. Each family, however, is its own unit of local power, and the potential for conflict is vast.

That’s why the modern, as opposed to traditional, state would ideally like to abolish marriage and family altogether: it doesn’t suffer challenges to its power lightly. Today’s political state in the West may still not be strong enough to bring about such a final solution, but it certainly tries to do all it can to cause systematic erosion.

This explains the steadily accelerating avalanche of laws that compromise the institution of marriage. One can discern this animus behind laws legalising civil partnerships, both homo- and heterosexual, though – and it’s good to know we still have something to look forward to – not yet interspecies.

Removing all stigma from homosexuality and then actively promoting it is another trick the state uses liberally (I’m using the word ‘liberal’ advisedly). Legalising homomarriage follows ineluctably, which makes a mockery of marriage as a sacramental union between a man and a woman.

Snapping the last remaining links, however tenuous, between marriage and sex is another widespread stratagem, and the state enforces this separation through the educational system it controls and the all-pervasive pornography it encourages.

My yesterday’s subject, endorsing and promoting sex change as a manifestation of free consumer choice, also rebounds on marriage, if in a less direct fashion.

Social benefits for single mothers is another trick, with the provider state squeezing its bulk into the slot previously occupied by the provider father, making him redundant and reducing the incentive for marriage.

Loosening the link between marriage and childbirth as a corollary to that is a parallel development, and it works wonders too. About half of all children are born out of wedlock, with the state typically assuming the paternal responsibility.

Easy divorce on demand is another battering ram of modernity smashing marriage to smithereens, and the easier the divorce, the greater the force with which the battering ram is swung.

That’s why traditional states used to make divorce either impossible or, more usually, at least rather difficult. Couples had to come up with valid reasons for divorce, and it had to be consensual. In the absence of consensus, with one spouse resisting divorce, the dissolution of marriage was harder still, although ultimately not impossible.

Essentially, while the last vestiges of the traditional state and society survived, an understanding existed that marriage was a good thing and hence divorce wasn’t. As tradition faded away, so did the obstacles in the way of divorce.

Such is the context of the new law announced yesterday by the justice secretary. In three months divorce will become so easy that marriage will lose any aspect of commitment – just as it has already lost any aspect of lifelong commitment.

The general intent is to make divorce quick and painless. It’s not that divorce is exceptionally hard already, what with half of all marriages ending in it. Yet the remaining marriages soldier on, and the state clearly finds this situation intolerable.

According to the new law, divorce will no longer be contestable: if one spouse wants it, there’s nothing the other spouse will be able to do – the marriage will be dissolved within six months.

Nor is a valid reason for divorce any longer required: neither party has to be at fault or claim that the other party is. All it will take is a simple statement that the marriage has broken down, and where do I sign, thank you very much.  

Justice Secretary David Gauke said: “While we will always uphold the institution of marriage, it cannot be right that our outdated law creates or increases conflict between divorcing couples.”

This one sentence contains everything one needs to know about the place marriage occupies in modernity, at least in its British manifestation (actually, no country I know personally is dramatically different).

A minister claiming that the government “will always uphold the institution of marriage” is tantamount to a mass murderer claiming that he will always uphold the sanctity of life. And the second half of Mr Gauke’s sentence can be simplified to mean that it’s not right that we should have any obstacles in the way of divorce.

But the key word there is “outdated”. How, when and why were the laws putting dampeners on divorce made outdated? Or, for that matter, by whom?

Oh well, I think I’ve already answered those questions. All I can add is that, for the likes of Mr Gauke, any law that maintains some connection with traditional society is outdated by definition.

Then again, he’s a member of our Conservative government. It’s that adjective that has actually become outdated – worse still, it has become a barefaced lie.

“It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all,” said Dr Johnson, who rivals Shakespeare in the number of entries into quotation dictionaries.

Admittedly, his remark was directed at dogs walking on hind legs. But the quip is so universal that it applies to transgender-therapy clinics, or rather my feelings about them. Replace ‘surprised’ with ‘disgusted’, and there you have it.

Being the reference modern country, the US is way ahead of us in concocting these dystopic institutions. They have 40; we have only one, with two branches. But give us time: transatlantic saplings usually take a few years after transplantation to reach full luxuriance.

Our solitary gender-bender clinic is very much in the news these days because its five employees have quit, citing fears that children are being misdiagnosed.

A boy as young as three (3!!!) may be slightly effeminate, which to modern ideologues can mean only one possible diagnosis: inside him there’s a girl struggling to get out. The boy is then prescribed hormone blockers to prevent the onset of puberty. (The hormones are different, but the general idea is the same for not very girlish girls.)

By the time he reaches 16, the poor lad is ready for huge doses of oestrogen and surgery, expertly designed and deftly performed to turn him into the kind of sideshow that used to entertain punters at county fairs.

Those five employees follow in the footsteps of a dozen others who objected to how the clinic operated. However, as far as I know, none objected to the apocalyptic disaster of such freak hatcheries existing at all.

If gender dysphoria is indeed a widespread clinical condition, one would think that it would have spread as widely eight years ago as it does now. Yet that’s not the case: the number of children referred to the clinic increased from 94 in 2010 to 2,519 in 2018.

Since to the best of my knowledge dysphoria isn’t a disease or, even if it is, it’s not contagious, some extra-medical factors have to be at play here. The issue isn’t medical, but existential.

A distinguishing, possibly the defining, belief of post-Enlightenment modernity is that man-god has ousted god-man, or even killed him according to Nietzsche. That means that man has usurped God’s powers and claimed full sovereignty over his life, body, destiny – everything.

God’s will no longer exists; it’s man’s own will that has dominion over nature and himself, as part of the natural world. This presupposition ineluctably leads to the certainty that human nature in general, and certainly every person’s nature in particular, can be remodelled and irrevocably changed to conform to some ideology.

This notion would never have occurred to any sane person in the period that preceded Jesus Christ’s rise to superstardom and going simply by his initials (“Hey, JC, JC, would you die for me?”).

In those days, people believed that every person was created by God in his own image. Hence barging into a person’s body or soul with a surgical knife (other than for a genuine medical need) or political diktat was seen as not only insane but also grossly blasphemous.

Like most Enlightenment concepts, that empowerment of the individual was bogus: man didn’t acquire real sovereignty. All he got was a chance to transfer sovereignty from God (and therefore himself, as a person carrying a particle of God) to secular opinion formers, who were seldom blessed with moral and intellectual integrity.

Those chaps have indeed proved their knack at forming opinions, by such expedients as executions, torture, concentration camps or – at the milder end – simply by unlimited propaganda, corrupt and unsound education, and diligent work at smashing up every cultural survival of Christendom.

Those operating at the two ends, the violent red and pacific violet, rely on different methods, but their objectives are identical. Both wish to remake human nature in the image of some secular deity, be that communism, fascism or deracinated, lobotomised  multi-culti New Age.

Compared to such a lofty task, reshaping the nature of a single person is child’s play. All it takes is some pharmacological advances, new surgical procedures and – above all – a society ready to accept, legitimise and welcome those freak assembly lines.

Ever since the reference country of modernity enshrined pursuit of happiness in its founding document, unhappiness has become an affront to everything modernity holds dear. It’s ready to cross the line separating eudemonic from demonic to expunge unhappiness from the human condition.

Best of luck with that, but the goal is a desert mirage: the closer one gets the further away it moves. Unhappiness is dialectically linked with happiness: since one is impossible without the other, it’s best not to worry about it.

Effeminate boys or masculine girls may be unhappy about their sexuality (which is what dysphoria actually means – it’s unhappiness medicalised), and they deserve our sympathy.

One way or the other, they are in for a rough ride – but we can all pray that they find solace in things that matter more than genitalia: the life of the mind, spirit and pursuit of truth, for example. All those things, that is, that modernity is busily trying to marginalise, if not criminalise.

Puny aspirations, puny thoughts, puny culture, puny morality – these are the hallmarks of any society pursuing the satanic aim of reshaping man, be it spiritually or surgically. For underlying it all is soulless nihilism and, ultimately, despondent hopelessness.

For the practical ramifications of such lovely things, check the blood-sodden history of the twentieth century, the first one in which Enlightenment values held sway from beginning to end. And we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet, to use the phrase popular in the birthplace of transgender therapy.

Well, yes and no. Most of our politicians are indeed very bad. But not equally.

This is an important distinction because, while the differences between variously good governments may be trivial, those between variously bad ones may be a matter of life or death – and I don’t mean this figuratively.

That’s why I only partly agree with Peter Hitchens who dutifully presents a catalogue of Tory policies that are no better, or actually worse, than those proposed by Labour.

He’s correct when saying that the Tories concentrate their attacks on Corbyn personally, rather than on Labour philosophies and policies, because they “have always been far closer to Jeremy Corbyn than they like to admit… the Tories’ wild, Trotskyist policies on marriage, ‘equality’, ‘diversity’ and education actually aren’t much different from Mr Corbyn’s.”

All true. He could actually go even further by suggesting that this ad hominem focus presents Labour with a ready-made electoral strategy: replace Corbyn as leader a fortnight before the election, declare that all problems have thereby been solved and win by a landslide.

This is all good political journalism – but not particularly nuanced political thinking. For one thing, it’s always misleading to compare the apples of one side’s actions with the oranges of the other side’s promises.

Experience shows that every opposition party everywhere promises things it then doesn’t do in government – and does things it never promised. This is the immutable law of democratic politics to which there have been very few exceptions (Trump comes close to being one).

It’s common for the masses to be sufficiently disillusioned with corrupt or ineffectual governments to believe that any change could only be for the better or, at least, couldn’t possibly be worse.

This is a tragic misapprehension. Things can always get worse, as the democratically elected Messrs Perón, Mugabe, Putin, Chavez and Macîas Nguema (who gratefully murdered a third of the population of Equatorial Guinea that had voted him in) could have testified.

Also, the two most satanic regimes in history, Bolshevism and Nazism, came to power on the crest of popular enthusiasm enhanced by contempt for their predecessors, the Provisional Government in Russia and the Weimar Republic in Germany.

Hitler was actually elected, if not exactly by winning a sweeping mandate. The Bolsheviks came to power by a coup, but Lenin too was widely seen, for a week or two at any rate, as an improvement over Kerensky.

It’s incumbent on political commentators to point out to the masses that they are wrong, and explain why. To do so, it may be useful to go beyond the nitty-gritty of comparative policies and apply the old-fashioned, nay obsolete, standards of good and evil.

The Tories, ineptly not to say catastrophically led by their last three prime ministers, exemplify everything that’s rotten in modernity generally and modern politics particularly.

They are feeble of mind and character, self-serving, spivocratic, dishonest, ignorant of constitutional matters, indifferent to British sovereignty and so on: you can probably extend this list, and Mr Hitchens certainly could.

But one thing the Tories aren’t is evil. Much as I despise, say, Mrs May, much as I’m certain she’s unfit for any elective office other than perhaps PCC membership at a poorly attended Anglican church in the Home Counties, I can’t say that she hates Britain and actively wishes to destroy it.

Her asinine, vacillating policies may well have just such an effect, but I can’t honestly list malice aforethought (mens rea in jurisprudence) among her motives.

Corbyn and his gang of Marxist subversives are a different matter altogether. They hate everything Britain stands for, except possibly her exploitable potential for labour unrest. They love all our enemies not because they necessarily share their ideas, but because they are indeed our enemies.

When in power, they’re likely to abolish the monarchy, drown Britain in a flood of alien immigration, subvert our laws and constitutional liberties, destroy what’s left of private enterprise, drive millions out of the country and push those undeniably awful Tory policies to cataclysmic levels – all because they are driven by visceral hatred, resentment and envy.

In short, they are evil, and history shows that evil rulers do evil things regardless of the method of their ascent to power.

Now, Britain has had numerous rotten governments, such as the last five. But she has no experience, and hence little dread, of evil ones. The British may well be unaware of what happens when a merely bad government is replaced by an evil one – and, unless someone explains the difference very soon, they may learn it the hard way.

Perhaps, by way of prep work, the British ought to be reminded that evil does exist, and the categories of good and evil may serve political analysis better than a mere comparison of electoral planks. But that may be asking too much.

P.S. Yesterday’s two FA Cup semi-finalists, Wolves and Watford, are managed by Espírito Santo and Gracia respectively. This was the first time that the Holy Spirit clashed with Grace, and the latter won. Also, the only goal in the other semi-final was scored by Jesus. Footie is replete with Christian messages, wouldn’t you say?

Pope Francis makes little effort to conceal his distaste for President Trump. One policy especially, that of the border wall, causes pontifical ire that often spins out of control.

Back in 2016, the pope said: “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not the Gospel.”

And a couple of months ago, His Holiness repeated the message in slightly different words: “Builders of walls, be they made of razor wire or bricks, will end up becoming prisoners of the walls they build.”

However, Francis graciously allowed that migration presents a problem: “I realise that with this problem, a government has a hot potato in its hands, but it must be resolved differently, humanely, not with razor wire.”

Allow me to sum up. Since the Gospel says nothing about the porous US-Mexican border, for Trump to be considered a Christian he must abandon the wall and solve the problem in some unspecified humane way, for example by building bridges over the Rio Grande.

This sounds a bit off the wall if you ask me. Yet His Holiness made some nostalgic memories stir in my mind. For back in the mid-70s I wrote an article on this very problem for a local Texas paper, in which I tried to find a solution but failed miserably.

I must admit that the idea of spanning the border river with bridges didn’t occur to me then, or if it did I must have dismissed it out of hand for being ever so slightly counterproductive.

More than 40 years later the problem still hasn’t been solved, humanely or otherwise. And, as it ever did, it still defies simplistic solutions – as does the problem of any mass migration.

Let’s just say that, for as long as a huge disparity in living conditions among countries persists (which means for ever), populations will shift and drift. All Western governments struggle to control illegal migration; none has succeeded in stopping it altogether.

Yet simple arithmetic shows that some control is essential to the survival of the host nation. If, for example, the UK opted for unlimited, rather than merely promiscuous, immigration, the country would be turned into a caliphate within one generation, which few this side of Jeremy Corbyn would see as a welcome development.

The US is a different country from Britain, and the problem of Mexican immigration isn’t the same as what we face here. Still, about a third of the population in the four border states is Mexican already, and some demographers predict that this proportion will reach half by mid-century.

History buffs will point out that the border states were parts of Mexico two centuries ago and were then brutally conquered by the Americans – the Alamo can be remembered in different ways.

That is as true as it’s irrelevant: taking such a broad historical sweep would deny legitimate present ownership of just about every territory in the world. When Texas and California were parts of Mexico, India was in the British empire, Hungary and Austria were the same country, and Alaska belonged to Russia. So what?

How serious is the problem of specifically Mexican migration to the US? Serious enough, especially if you don’t own a construction company there.

Surveys show that only about half of all Mexicans speak English well, and the importance of language as a cultural and social adhesive can’t be overestimated. Realising this, Miriam A. Ferguson, prewar governor of Texas, vetoed a bilingual education bill, saying: “If English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me.”

Things have changed since then: Texans may or may not have figured out what language Jesus actually spoke, but bilingual education has been introduced, which can’t do much good for social cohesion.

The problem isn’t only cultural but also financial since about a third of all Mexicans receive at least some welfare payments. Yet, by the looks of it, almost all bricklayers in Texas are Mexican, which shows that, when migrants do work, they often do the jobs that the indigenous population shuns (just think about working on a building site in 95 degrees and 95 per cent humidity).

This is about as far as my balanced approach can take me. There would be no point going further anyway: if a country’s government feels that immigration presents a problem, it does. Every nation, naturally unless an EU member, has a right to control its borders.

How it’s done is predicated on many specific factors, including those of geography. Since no European country has 2,000 miles of border with any other country, perhaps we don’t appreciate the magnitude of the problem facing Americans.

We may regard it as a hot potato, as the pope does, but some may see it as a delayed action bomb ticking away. So how can it be diffused in a Christian way to the pontiff’s satisfaction?

The short answer is, it can’t – for the simple reason that it’s not the purpose of Christian doctrine to offer nitty-gritty solutions to the quotidian problems of this world.

When Christ specified the exact location of his kingdom, he absolved the church of any day-to-day responsibility to ponder the practical details of government – as Pope Francis has done. It is, however, within the church’s remit to comment on the morality of world politics from the standpoint of Christian morality and eschatology.

However, applying Christian doctrine to politics is a risky endeavour – not because no overlap exists, but because it’s hard to find.

Much as we’d like to see this world run according to the Sermon on the Mount, it never was, never is and never will be. Even Christendom wasn’t exactly Christian in that sense: the Gospel never issued any specific instructions on how, say, to check Islamic expansion or to overcome the fallout of the Black Death.

Yet both warriors like Charles Martel and all those monks and nuns who ministered to the dying were inspired by the general spirit of their faith and of their church, militant one day, self-sacrificially merciful the next.

Thus His Holiness would be justified in delivering a homily along the lines of “neither Jew nor Greek…: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” A reminder wouldn’t go amiss either that, because all men are brothers in Christ, it’s a Christian duty to feed the hungry and take in the homeless.

However, to be sound, such a homily would have to include a disclaimer that it shouldn’t be taken as a how-to guide to government immigration policy, much less as a blessing or anathemising of specific steps.

The moment a prelate descends from the kingdom that is not of this world and starts talking practicalities, he is inviting the question in the title above, possibly accompanied by ridicule. That does no good for either the church or the state – or, for that matter, public morality.

If you think this pun is infantile, consider the source.

For the line indeed comes from an infant, my friend’s 5-year-old son, whom I knew when I first arrived in the US. “You know why they call it Russia?” asked that precocious tot. “Because people are rushing out of it.”

It’s scary to think that little Andrew is in his 50s now, and doesn’t time fly. But his little quip was more in the nature of prognosis than reportage. For very few people were leaving Russia in those days, the odd thousand or two here or there.

Many more would doubtless have liked to leave, but in those days it was difficult. Now emigration is as easy as it’s desirable, and the numbers are staggering.

Just in the past five years, 1.7 million Russians have emigrated. That places Russia third to only India and Mexico in this category, and comfortably ahead of China, Bangladesh, Syria and Pakistan.

Moreover, a recent Gallup poll shows that an impressive 20 per cent of the population would leave if an opportunity presented itself. That proportion grows from impressive to astounding among young people: 44 per cent of those in the 15-29 age group want to emigrate. Almost half.

Most of those who’ve already settled in the US, Britain and Germany cite non-economic reasons for their flight, such as the general political atmosphere, absence of political freedoms, human rights violations and so on, although bleak economic prospects figure prominently as well.

During the same period, the number of emigrants boasting a university diploma or higher has quadrupled, turning this exodus into a veritable brain drain. Such numbers have been seen only twice in Russian history: after the 1917 revolution and following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

Actually, if most of those Russians wanted to leave for strictly economic reasons, I wouldn’t find it in my heart to blame them. For another survey shows that 20 per cent of all Russians have no indoor plumbing and over 80 per cent can’t afford what Dr Johnson called “the necessaries of life” – including emergency medical expenses.

In another poll, Russia comes in at 51 out of 56 countries rated for quality of life, behind Pakistan and Egypt. And according to Russia’s own data, 28 million live under the poverty level of $175 a month.

But then, as the billionaire government officials never tire to assure the world, true Russians disdain soulless materialism (until they come to the West, that is, where they’re seduced into it while still clearing passport control).

It’s in light of such data that Putin’s policies, both foreign and domestic, become explicable. In fact, neither the policies nor the reasons for them can boast much novelty appeal.

For every Russian government, from the tsars to the presidents, with general secretaries in between, has relied on oppression at home and sabre rattling abroad to deflect mass discontent into pandemic xenophobia and pride about Russia’s martial strength.

In its maniacal pursuit of ‘greatness’, defined as aggressive brawn, none of those governments had any energy left to pursue goodness; nor could any of them create an economy in which people could support themselves.

Call me a soulless materialist, but I just can’t see as great a 21^st century country in which 20 per cent of the population have to brave cold, snow or rain to trudge to the outhouse in the middle of the night.

Putin’s kleptofascist junta has been in power for almost 20 years now, during which time it has stamped out inchoate civic liberties, criminalised the economy from top to bottom, turned global money laundering into a growth industry and divided the population into three categories: those who’ve already left, those who’d like to leave, and those duped by Goebbels-style propaganda into foaming at the mouth and screaming “Our Crimea!!!”

Add to this the regime’s criminality that goes beyond mere corruption, entering the area of rabid foreign adventures, international assassinations  (including those with chemical and radioactive weapons), incessant attempts to undermine Western countries and their political systems, constant threats of nuclear holocaust, and only one Russian mystery remains.

How can supposedly clever Westerners, including those who call themselves conservatives, still sing hosannas to Putin, the “strong leader” they wish we had? Oh well, as P.T. Barnum once said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

It says something about the efficacy of the Mother of All Parliaments that its roof developed a leak today, with cold water pouring onto the heads of the people’s representatives.

The nation will therefore be deprived of another instalment in the on-going saga of ineptitude, idiocy and betrayal, which can’t be qualified as treason only due to the possible absence of mens rea.

Although plumbing isn’t one of the MPs’ direct responsibilities, the mishap certainly has plenty of symbolic value. And not only that: the Commons had to be suspended, meaning there won’t be any Brexit debate on Monday.

Whatever entertainment is thereby lost is compensated for by another torrent – that of jokes already flooding the social media. Many of them revolve around the possibility that it wasn’t just burst water pipes that rained on the Commons parade.

The Commons authorities have taken such jokes seriously enough to issue a denial. “We would like to clarify that this was not a sewage leak,” they said.

That brings to mind another story, one that happened in a faraway land almost a century ago.

When Lenin died, his comrades decided to mummify him like an Egyptian pharaoh and then use the sacred relics to attract worshippers from across the world. The mummy is still there in Red Square, although the once mighty stream of pilgrims has diminished to a trickle.

Yet the granite ziggurat housing the neo-pagan idol took a while to build. For the first eight months after Lenin’s death his mausoleum was a temporary wooden structure hastily erected by the architect Alexey Shchusev, who immediately began to design the now-familiar eyesore.

However, while the construction work was underway, the builders accidentally punctured a sewage pipe, flooding the sarcophagus with its malodorous contents. Many observers detected the hand of God in the mishap, and jokes were flying about then, just as they are now.

Patriarch Nikon, who at the time was held under house arrest, led the way. His Holiness commented on the accident with the wit not commonly exhibited by the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church. “The incense,” he quipped, “fits the relics.”

One can’t second-guess God, but perhaps he ought to have made his feelings known as clearly now as he did then.

The Ministry of Defence called it “unacceptable”. Labour said it was “alarming”. A Tory MP called it “disgraceful”. Social media called it “fascist”. I call it a possible taste of things to come.

Such were responses to a video that shows four British paratroopers in Afghanistan using a picture of Corbyn for pistol practice. The clip testifies to the fine standards of marksmanship in the Parachute Regiment, with several rounds hitting Jeremy’s visage smack in the bull’s-eye.

Had it been a live Jeremy, rather than his pictorial representation, he’d be in no position to destroy the country those Paras are ready to die for. But it wasn’t; so he is.

I wouldn’t read too much into this incident, and those indignant chaps should lighten up. When they aren’t in action, the Paras’ existence is dreary, the nightlife in Kabul is understated, and this could have been just their way to get some comic relief.

However, assuming that every joke is at least tangentially based on reality, one could perhaps infer that the soldiers are less than enthusiastic about the prospect of Jeremy doing to Britain what his idol Maduro is doing to Venezuela.

Their chosen mode of political self-expression may be seen as controversial in some quarters, but I for one find it hard to take issue with the underlying sentiment.

Rory Stewart, Conservative minister for prisons, disagrees: “They should not be political – they are there to defend the country and the Queen.” This statement reinforces my heartfelt belief that MPs should take an IQ test before standing for election.

It takes a moron not to spot such a glaring oxymoron in his own statement. Mr Stewart seems to think that defending the country and the Queen has nothing to do with politics.

One struggles to think of anything else it has to do with. Sport? Entertainment? Travel? Or does he believe those men should kill and die as unthinking automata who’ll draw a bead on anyone they’re told to shoot without even understanding why?

Still, the men risking their lives in that godforsaken place must be grateful to Mr Stewart for clarifying their role in life. On second thoughts, they’re probably aware of it already.

And I’m sure they’d describe it in those very terms: defending the country and the Queen. But against what and whom?

It’s a logical solecism to believe that those who present a threat to Queen and country can only ever be found in faraway places like Afghanistan. Some evildoers wishing to destroy Her Majesty’s realm may well be native-born.

Anyone who is even cursorily familiar with Corbyn’s plans for Britain and also with the people he regards as friends will be aware of the cataclysmic havoc his Trotskyist government will wreak.

From Marx and Trotsky to the IRA, Hamas, Hezbollah, Chavez and Maduro, Corbyn has never met an evil energumen he couldn’t love – and emulate. Even before his electoral victory, he’s already talking the language of Mao’s Red Guard, vowing to “re-educate” Treasury officials in Marxist economics.

This intention doesn’t come from a touching concern for those mandarins’ general erudition. They’ll need to learn Marxist economics because it’ll be the guide to Britain’s economy under Corbyn.

His views on immigration are brutally simple: no limit whatsoever. One can understand that because Marxism is impossible to practise without a steady supply of slave labour, and training the indigenous population to act in that capacity may take a while.

Those soldiers sense that whoever it is they’re fighting in Afghanistan can at worst only wound Britain with the odd pinprick. Corbyn, on the other hand, presents a deadly threat to the country and the Queen. They understand it – too bad some ministers of the Crown don’t.

Yesterday Theresa May effectively handed 10 Downing Street keys to Corbyn by making him responsible for Brexit, or rather for killing it stone dead. Suddenly that evil apparition acquired an aura of statesmanlike respectability, something that the Tory party demonstrably lacks.

Those sharpshooting Paras know it, and one can forgive their gesture of frustration and helplessness. They can only vent those emotions by shooting at a picture, not the real thing.

The choir of indignant din brings back the memories of Stalin’s Russia, when loo paper didn’t exist, at least not for hoi-polloi. People had to make do with torn newspaper sheets, but they had to be careful.

Using for lavatorial purposes a page featuring Stalin’s photo was treated as tantamount to an assassination attempt – and dealt with accordingly. But we aren’t in Stalin’s Russia now, and abusing Corbyn’s picture is nothing other than a puerile prank.

But one that raises a serious question. If we agree that democracy isn’t a suicide pact, what recourse do we have to prevent the democratic ascent to government of a Hitler, a Stalin or, for that matter, a Corbyn?

Assassination (of a man, that is, not a piece of paper) isn’t a solution that can be seriously recommended for both moral and practical reasons. The moral reasons are self-explanatory, while the practical ones are almost so.

Corbyn doesn’t personify his ‘philosophy’ as comprehensively as, say, Hitler embodied his. Putting a bullet through Hitler’s head in 1936 could have conceivably prevented a tragedy; shooting Corbyn would have no such prophylactic effect.

But, if the government can no longer govern in ways that protect the country and the Queen, can a case be made for the army to step in? Desperate times calling for desperate measures and all that?

I can’t answer that question – and wouldn’t even if I could. Let’s just say that, by the looks of it, some British soldiers seem to differ from some British ministers in their understanding of what it takes to defend the country and the Queen.