Category: Blog

As an EU fanatic, Manny Macron is bound to despise even representative democracy, never mind the direct kind.

But, to paraphrase ever so slightly, Manny proposes and gilets jaunes dispose. A few months of riots, threatening to become a full-blown revolution, thrust some direct democracy down Manny’s throat, constricted as it was by fear.

You don’t like my way of saving the planet from warm weather? he finally asked the rebellious, yellow-clad populace. Fine, do it yourselves, see if I care.

The mission of saving the planet was thus delegated to a panel of 150 members of the public called the Citizens’ Convention for the Climate. Chosen at random, said Citizens were promised that their proposals would be either implemented or at least put to parliamentary vote.

Predictably, the Citizens came up with ideas that, if put into action, would neatly dovetail with coronavirus to put France’s economy six feet under. The carbon emission limits they demanded would effectively ban most cars; all out-of-town hypermarkets, the mainstay of French shopping outside major cities, would be closed; advertising of products with high carbon emissions would be banned.

Even though Manny doesn’t have to drive to hypermarkets, he knows how deleterious such measures would be. But he has painted himself into a corner. He now has to backtrack on his promises and risk another wave of rioting, or else deliver more blows to an economy already knocked down by coronavirus.

This proves yet again, if any further proof is necessary, that direct democracy doesn’t work. Neither does representative democracy. Neither does monarchy. Neither does any political system – in the abstract.

Any system, no matter how sound it looks on paper, is only as good as the people who operate it. Thus democracy lives or dies by the quality of the electorate. A morally and intellectually corrupt electorate will elect a corrupt government or, if encouraged to govern without mediation, make corrupt policies.

The Greeks, to whom we owe both the theory and first experience of democracy, knew this. That’s why voter education was their main concern as a factor of political virtue.

Much is made of Plato’s yearning for philosopher kings, but both he and Aristotle believed that a democracy could only be virtuous if not just the kings but also the voters were philosophers, after a fashion.

No, they didn’t envisage an electorate made up of philosophers who composed long tracts. Plato and Aristotle only made an unassailable point: to take part in affairs of the state by voting responsibly, an elector has to have a sufficient grounding in the disciplines involved, and there are many.

Thus democracy can’t serve common good in the absence of an educational system that can train most of the electorate in political theory, moral philosophy, epistemology, rhetoric, logic, not to mention the specific disciplines in the forefront of current public debate.

Such a system has never existed anywhere in history – and it’s not even remotely approached in any modern country. That stands to reason: people able to absorb and process recondite knowledge can’t possibly constitute a majority, nor even a significant minority.

Even in Athens there were only 30,000 fully enfranchised citizens (out of the population of about a quarter of a million at its peak), with 5,000-6,000 constituting the quorum. In fact, Plato suggested that this wasn’t only the minimum acceptable but also the maximum desirable number of active participants in a democracy. Going over that cut-off point, he warned, would result in mob rule.

Edmund Burke (d. 1797) was even less generous, but then he had to deal with greater numbers. According to him, there were about 400,000 Britons qualified to vote responsibly, out of the contemporaneous population of about 10 million.

A similar proportion today would produce an electorate of about 2.5 million – not the 48 million it actually is. One can’t help thinking that the requirement for responsible voting has been dropped somewhere along the line.

Public education in France is still better than in Britain, but only marginally so. And the gap is closing.

Hence neither country can be governed by its demos because the demos lacks the requisite intellectual and moral qualifications. Even if we were able to improve our education no end (and nothing suggests we are moving in that direction, quite the opposite), it’s unrealistic to expect that tens of millions of people would reach the necessary plateau.

If true democracy isn’t possible, what is? A sham one. That is, effectively an oligarchy made up of a few thousand demagogues who aren’t particularly well-versed in the art of government either, but who are experts at crowd manipulation and bare-knuckled political infighting.

However, as Manny is finding out, sometimes people rebel at being manipulated. They demand direct, if limited, democracy, believing they could do better. Well, they can’t.

All they can do is create mayhem, chaos and anarchy. And of course, given half the chance, an economic disaster.

That closes the vicious political circle of modernity, a point coronavirus is hammering home with devastating effect – while, in France, direct democracy is trying to add some more power to the falling hammer.

P.S. Two epidemics of Asian flu (both, incidentally, originating in China) in 1957 and 1968 killed about three million people worldwide, at a time when the world’s population was half of today’s. Yet nothing like today’s hysteria materialised, and we’ve only seen some 120,000 coronavirus deaths so far. Tempora mutantur… and all that.

Fundamentalist sectarians are claiming that coronavirus is God’s punishment. Sodom usually comes up in that context, although the Bible offers plenty of other punishable offences as well.

Since my religion is as mainstream as they come, I feel uneasy about biblical literalism, and uneasier still about drawing too many parallels. However, if I weren’t so prejudiced, perhaps I’d see their point.

If you recall, God punished Sodom for the sin that has since borne its name. To be fair, God didn’t mete out his punishment arbitrarily, on Abraham’s say-so.

Following proper forensic procedure, he sent two angels to investigate the patriarch’s accusations. Abraham’s nephew Lot put the detectives up for the night and gave them supper.

However, before the comely angels lay down, the denizens of Sodom besieged Lot’s house and demanded that he deliver the angels into their hands so they might ‘know’ them.

Trying to mollify the libidinous Sodomites without violating the sacred law of hospitality, Lot offered them his two virginal daughters instead. But the men wouldn’t swap the real thing for palliatives.

The daughters must have been bitterly disappointed about that delay in their sexual initiation. Hence, when the family escaped Sodom, leaving behind Lot’s wife in her saline incarnation, the first thing those minxes did was get their father drunk and ‘know’ him on two consecutive nights.

That, however, is a separate story. The real point is that, compared to today’s world, Sodom is an exemplar of sanity and probity. So fine, some chaps wanted to practise an alternative lifestyle with two angels, whom they supposedly mistook for young men.

But were they? After all, angels are heavenly, rather than earthly creatures. Since only the latter were designed to procreate, angels are androgynous. However, depending on their mission, they can appear to be either male or female. It’s possible therefore that Sodomites mistook them for girls, which absolves them of that particular sin, if not of attempted rape.

Here we reach the kernel of our story, which turns the tale of Sodom into a ganglion of prophesies.

For, according to Rory Stewart, Tory ex-minister, women’s prisons are housing 1,500 ‘male-bodied’ inmates who self-identify as women. In other words, their male bits are in working order.

Hence they resemble angels in their ability to switch effortlessly from one sex to the other. Alas, when they do find themselves in women’s prisons, their behaviour isn’t exactly angelic.

Says Mr Stewart: “When I was Prisons Minister, we had situations of male prisoners self-identifying as females, then raping staff in prison.”

That’s where the Biblical parallel ends. Rather than suffering sexual violence, it’s the gender-bender angels who do the raping. And it’s not just the female warders who get that treatment. Other inmates suffer it too.

For example, in 2018 a convicted male rapist self-identifying as a woman found himself as a tomcat among the pigeons in a female prison. There he promptly raped several women, using the traditional male technique.

Government and prison officials swear they’ll do everything humanly possible to protect female warders and inmates from those feral ‘women’. I’m sure they will, but that’s not the point.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that God’s patience sometimes wears thin. When a place becomes too insane for his liking, he expresses his wrath with fire and brimstone or equivalents.

Have you made that assumption? Good. Now compare Sodom with a world where the stories I’ve just told are not merely possible but increasingly commonplace.

A world where the sin of Sodom is no longer a sin, but an alternative, in some ways preferable, ‘lifestyle’. Where demonic freaks can emulate angels by claiming to be women while remaining predatory men. And where the few remaining sane people can’t cry havoc and let slip… well, they have no one to let slip.

You must agree that the comparison isn’t in our favour. So we should get down on our knees and thank God that he only punished us with coronavirus and not, say, bubonic plague.

Then of course we don’t believe in God and his punishment. We believe in… I’m sure you can complete the sentence on your own. There’s got to be something we believe in.

At Easter a few years ago I found myself at an Orthodox church in France. The liturgy was bilingual in Russian and French, but the key words were delivered in every language represented in the congregation, and there were some 20 of them.

Every time those key words sounded, all the priests laughed. It was laughter of joy, not mirth. For Easter Sunday is indeed the most joyous day of the year – even of this year, marked as it is by tragedy.

On this day those who believe celebrate a sinful world saved; those who don’t believe celebrate a great civilisation born. On this day, life defeats death.

Easter gave man a vision of eternity, and it wasn’t a beautiful mirage. It was a reality one could see, hear, touch.

The new reality was so vast it engulfed the world, and the world emerged transfigured for ever. It acquired a new face, a new soul, a new life.

This is the life we celebrate today. And again those rousing words sound all over the world in every language, just as they did in that French church – just as they did two millennia ago. On this one day at least, the world turns into a church.

Christ is risen!

Le Christ est ressuscité!

Christus ist auferstanden!

Cristo ha resucitado!

Cristo è risorto!

Kristus on üles tõusnud!

Kristus er oppstanden!

Xристос воскрес!

Chrystus zmartwychwstał!

Kristus vstal z mrtvých!

Cristo ressuscitou!

Kristus ir augšāmcēlies!

Christus is verrezen!

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη!

Krisztus feltámadt!

Kristus är uppstånden!

Kristus prisikėlė!

Kristus nousi kuolleista!

Hristos a înviat!

INDEED HE IS RISEN! HAPPY EASTER!

Tomorrow we’ll celebrate the heavenly salvation of mankind, all of it. However, while giving thanks to almighty God, we ought to remind ourselves that here in earth none of us are almighty.

Hence we have to prioritise groups most in need of saving, especially since coronavirus stretches our resources to breaking point. The police, for example, are so busy chasing sunbathers and nonessential shoppers, that they run out of officers to stop the surging wave of a most heinous crime: upskirting.

In case you still haven’t moved into the 21^st century, upskirting is made possible by the technological advances of which modernity is so justly proud. Dropping a camera attached to a long stick down to the floor, criminals take shots of women’s knickers, provided they are wearing any (what’s photographed otherwise doesn’t bear thinking about).

Those villains persist with their wicked activities, even though upskirting is punishable by up to two years in prison – a term that only a tiny proportion of, say, burglars ever get to serve, and then only after multiple convictions.

Yet in spite of the law, says Siobhan Blake, who’s in charge of the CPS’s sexual offences prosecutions, “women continue to be violated as they go about their daily lives. This is a serious crime and I am very pleased to see police and prosecutors making regular use of this legislation.”

And I’m pleased to see that the CPS has its priorities right at this trying time. Or does it?

When I told my friend Angus McAngus that it’s only women who are thus singled out for protection under the law, he was aghast: “Get tae,” he said. “Dinnae ken what yer talking about.”

“You mean Scottish men wearing kilts are also in danger?” I asked. “Aye,” said Angus. “I’m fae Edinburgh, and rank laddies always try to stick a Nikon under me kilt each time I go out for a wee dram.”

“But you must be wearing something under your kilt,” I opined. “Aye,” smiled Angus. “Me shoes.”

Thus it’s not only British women but also Scottish men who must be protected against this beastly crime, and I hope you’ll petition the CPS to this effect.

On a different note, this morning we went for a long walk in Wimbledon Common, having first broken the law by nonessentially driving there. The walk turned out to be longer than we had planned because we got lost in the woods and added a couple of nonessential miles to our constitutional.

There weren’t many people in the Common’s 1,140 acres of woodland, and they were vastly outnumbered by notices telling us to protect ‘our’ NHS.

My mind in its ecclesiastical mode, I decided that the obsolete Lord’s Prayer ought to be slightly modified to reflect the priorities of our ethos. Here’s my modest effort:

“Our NHS that art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name, thy will be done in Perth as it is in Devon. Give us this day our daily med and don’t forgive our trespasses as we won’t forgive those who trespass against thee. And lead us not into the street but deliver our daily bread to our home. Yo, man.”

I hope you’ll agree that this prayer makes up in sincerity and relevance what it may lack in poetic sensibility and devotional purity.

Coronavirus and other disasters, said His Holiness, are nature’s way of punishing us for global warming: “I don’t know if these are the revenge of nature, but they are certainly nature’s responses.”

If Greta Thunberg hadn’t spoken through the Pope, she might as well have done. One can only wish that the pontiff stuck to his own remit and relied on some other source of inspiration.

Had he wished to portray the pandemic as a punishment, he could have picked a different transgression and a different judge. Far be it from me to pontificate (as it were) on such matters, but a parallel with God punishing Old Testament Hebrews for reverting to idolatry was begging to be drawn.

How much more apposite it would have been for His Holiness to say that God punishes those who turn away from him, sinking into paganism and godlessness. People might have agreed or disagreed, but no one would have doubted that the message was appropriate, coming as it did from the Vicar of Christ.

Compare Francis’s Gretinism with the dignified, inspiring address the Queen delivered on the pandemic: “Many people of all faiths and of none are discovering that it presents an opportunity to slow down, to pause and reflect in prayer or meditation.”

In the reign of the other Elizabeth, John Donne also had to respond to an epidemic. He did so with profoundly Christian words – without ever mentioning either Christ or God:

“No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”

Did the Pope really think that Christians could have been roused out of their torpor by drivel out of Greta’s copybook? God only knows what he thought.

P.S. Rail union boss Steve Headley: “If BoJo pops his clogs I’ll throw a party”. Brushing aside his friends’ criticism, he enlarged on the thought: “I hope the whole cabinet of Tory bastards get it too.”

It’s good to see how some people get into the spirit of Holy Week. I also wonder if Steve has read John Donne.

To an Englishman, the 5^th of November, with the act averted on that date, is more portentous than the 7^th, and of course it scans better.

But to a Russian 7 November evokes two disasters that did happen. The second one, the Bolshevik takeover on that date in 1917, was more fateful. It also had wider implications.

However, it’s the first one that may perhaps elucidate our current plight. On 7 November, 1824, a raging storm broke out in the Baltic. The dams protecting St Petersburg burst, and the city was flooded.

Several hundred people and thousands of animals died, and it took the authorities many days to clear out the debris. Predictably, epidemics ensued, mainly of cholera, killing thousands more.

That event inspired one of the best-known poems in Russian literature, Pushkin’s The Bronze Horseman. In the original Russian, Pushkin inaccurately described the eponymous statue of Peter I as copper, but then if a poet can’t claim poetic licence, who can?

Yet it’s not Pushkin’s response to the flood that’s relevant to our situation, but that of his close friend, the first Russian philosopher Pyotr Chaadayev.

Over several years on either side of 1830, Chaadayev wrote his famous Philosophical Letters (since he wrote in French, as one did in those days, the actual title was Lettres philosophiques.) There he was scathing about Russian culture, describing it as backward and derivative.

“We did not take anything from the world; we did not give anything to the world,” wrote the intrepid philosopher with little regard for the inevitable consequences.

The government’s response followed a simple logic. Since any normal person knew that Russia was the most cultured, virtuous and spiritual nation on earth, no one at variance with that view could have been normal by definition.

Hence in 1836 Chaadayev was declared “clinically insane” and put under house arrest – the first but far from last time that the Russians used psychiatry for punitive purposes.

Yet the philosopher was not only a sane thinker, but also a prophetic one. His response to the 1824 flood should be chiselled in stone and prominently displayed in all Western capitals:

“We ought to worry not about fighting a calamity, but about not deserving it in the first place.”

Surely something to ponder during this Holy Week.

Great upheavals call for great poets, and great poets inspire great upheavals.

Whenever poetic words capture the spirit of the time, they stop being just words. They become deeds.

Thus Beaumarchais’s Marriage of Figaro sparked off the French Revolution, and Griboyedov’s Woe to Wit inspired the 1825 Decembrist uprising.

I’m overjoyed to observe that the genius of our time has also found a rousing poetic expression. In the great tradition of medieval minstrels and troubadours, these verses are to be sung, not recited.

Yet their genre, rap, merges song and recitation into a synergistic whole. And when practised by the sublime Stormzy, piercing words join upbeat music to appeal to the very heart of modernity.

I shan’t keep you on tenterhooks any longer. Here’s the verse that puts modernity, circa 2020, in a nutshell:

“Rule number two, don’t make the promise// If you can’t keep the deal then just be honest (Just be honest)// I could never die, I’m Chuck Norris (Chuck Norris)// F*** the government and f*** Boris (Yeah).”

Pedants among you may quibble that the couplet is somewhat wanting in formal perfection. I hope you are ashamed of yourself.

Who cares that ‘honest’ doesn’t really rhyme with ‘Boris’? When words don’t rhyme, one can make them rhyme by sheer force of personality.

Then you may question the relevance of the martial arts actor Chuck Norris in this context. Well, if you can’t discern the deep theological connotation of this reference, I’m sorry for you.

In his films Chuck Norris, now octogenarian, routinely defied prohibitive odds by putting away dozens of armed men with his hands and feet. That enciphered message of immortality raises the verse to a whole new plateau where pedants can’t tread.

You may also feel that the second two lines have no discernible link to the first two. That only goes to show how deaf you are to subliminal nuances. Here, by subtly breaking the verse in half, Stormzy stresses the moral dissonance of the ‘honest’ and ‘Boris’ juxtaposition.

This sets up – indeed makes inevitable – the poignant last line, communicating valid political criticism through a metaphorical reference to sexual congress.

But never mind the decortication, feel the resonance. The amazing thing is that Stormzy wrote his masterpiece just before the pandemic, when Mr Johnson still enjoyed rude health. But true art always transcends its historical instant.

Hence these immortal lines struck a chord in our comprehensively educated masses. As Boris Johnson fights for breath in intensive care, some of Stormzy’s disciples have tweeted direct quotations from the master.

One wrote: “Stormzy said f*** Boris and Corona did the rest.” Another skipped the attribution but still unmistakably hinted at the source: “Boris Johnson in the ICU f*** yeah.”

Still others veered outside the form of Stormzy’s poetry, while faithfully adhering to its spirit, including the theological subtext. One fan, doubtless a good Christian, wrote: “Boris Johnson about to die due to the Rona. THANK YOU LORD.”

Another good Christian implicitly affirmed the existence of life everlasting: “if boris johnson dies I will cackle maniacally say hi to Margaret Thatcher in hell.”

Yet another writer drew our attention to the broader context, while rebuking the PM for his sartorial lassitude: “Poor Boris? No. Poor NHS. F*** that scruffy man.” Other messages range from slightly wordy (“Were gonna have a party when boris Johnson dies” and “Hope boris Johnson dies and it’s painful”) to more laconic (“hope boris dies”).

One doesn’t have to be a stickler for grammatical rectitude to notice a certain carelessness of syntax throughout. That testifies to the liberating effect of modernity, what with the staid conventions of grammar, taste and morality being replaced with more democratic, progressively better standards.

Lest you might think that Mr Johnson’s fellow politicians would refrain from expressing such sentiments publicly, here’s a profound message from Councillor Sheila Oakes, Labour mayor of Heanor, Derbyshire.

Miss Oakes displayed not only an impeccable moral and aesthetic taste but also rare political acumen: “Sorry he completely deserves this and he is one of the worst PM’s we’ve ever had.”

Note the implied belief that every person suffering from a disease has somehow deserved it: this clearly has its provenance in some doctrines of fundamentalist Christianity.

As to the depth of political analysis, it has laudably taken Miss Oakes but the few months of Mr Johnson’s tenure to identify the exact place he occupies in the historical hierarchy of British prime ministers.

Alas, the Labour Party has characteristically failed to realise what a gem it possesses in Miss Oakes. To be fair, the party is trying to undo the electoral damage caused by many of its members expressing heartfelt regrets that the Holocaust didn’t quite finish the job.

Trying to launder its sullied image, the Labour Party has removed the whip from Miss Oakes, effectively kicking her out. I do hope she’ll eventually make a comeback. It would be a shame to waste such talent.

‘Communism with a human face’ was a popular buzz phrase back in the 1960s, mostly spread in countries such as Italy, where the communist party was pushing for electoral victories.

Like everything emanating from communists, the slogan was a lie. Communism has no human face, nor can ever develop it. All it has is a lupine scowl, baring its red fangs.

If anyone had any doubts on that score, the news coming out of China ought to dispel them. Benefiting from these insights would be not only assorted lefties, but also libertarians, who see free markets as a guarantor of virtue.

If their theories were true, China would have learned to act in a civilised fashion by now. Its markets were largely freed up after all. And markets aren’t just self-regulating. They also impose public morality, a culture of equity and consent. Is that right, my libertarian friends?

It actually isn’t. For China remains as evil as it was under Mao, except that it displays that quality in different ways. Such is the way it has responded to Covid-19.

Downing Street estimates that the actual number of deaths in China is 15 to 40 times greater than what the communists claim. That is no minor matter, for other countries try to model their actions on China’s experience. Thus the US delayed its response for a month on that basis.

Yet the spirit of commerce, for which the Chinese have been known in Asia for centuries, is very much alive there, manifesting itself with nice touches that are indigenously communist.

Thus, when China was already afflicted with the virus, but hadn’t yet spread it around the world, Italy generously supplied tonnes of PPE (personal protection equipment). That irredeemably ‘capitalist’ country did so out of the goodness of its heart, which means for free.

Then Italy itself was hit – hard, harder than China ever was, if one believes its official figures. And even if one doesn’t, Italy’s relative plight is still greater because its population is 20 times smaller.

Now that Italy itself was in trouble, the Chinese communists offered a helping hand – by selling Italians the very same supplies Italy had generously given China for free.

Or at least one hopes it’s the same PPE, rather than an equivalent of Chinese manufacture. The products of that great trading nation are better known for their low price than high quality. While with most goods this may only be cause for minor irritation, with PPE it becomes a matter of life of death.

Thus Spain, having paid £382 million for China’s largesse, has had to send back 50,000 testing kits that didn’t test. And the Dutch recalled 600,000 protective masks made in China because, well, they didn’t protect.

The interesting question is how civilised countries will handle relations with China in the aftermath of the pandemic, if indeed it ever ends. Now, the signals sent by HMG may be more reliable than those sent by the communists, but only marginally so.

Referring to the Chinese disinformation campaign as “disgusting”, a Downing Street spokesman suggested that China risks becoming a pariah state. Moreover, several Western governments, including ours, are suing China for trillions.

The level of self-deception involved in such actions fully matches that of the ‘60s, when communism was supposed to be acquiring a human face. For, even if such lawsuits do materialise, and the judgement goes against China, the chances of collecting are, in broad numbers, nil.

As to turning China into a pariah state, if you believe that I can get you a good price for a bridge over the Yangtze. Western greed and unquenchable thirst for a cheap production base (even one using effectively slave labour) has turned China into a global powerhouse, both economically and militarily.

Western economies can only go cold turkey on Chinese trade at their peril. And China holds trillions in Western (mainly US) cash and securities, meaning it could crash the global economies even worse than coronavirus will.

If you believe that Western governments can stand on principle regardless of economic consequences, that aforementioned bridge has just got discounted. Let’s just wait for free markets to work their magic and turn China into a benign state, shall we?

P.S. Speaking of disgusting things, our ‘liberal’ papers can barely conceal their joy at Boris Johnson’s dire condition. Should he die, one can see those ‘liberals’ dancing in the streets. Regardless of how you feel about Mr Johnson’s political acumen, I hope you’ll join me in praying for his full recovery. Please don’t give those ghouls (including a Labour mayor) cause for celebration, Boris.

Why governments respond to coronavirus by converting so-called liberal democracies into police states is reasonably clear.

Any political institution of modernity, regardless of its self-description, is mainly concerned with self-empowerment. However, democracies need a credible justification for their powerlust, and in that sense Covid-19 is a godsend. The message of “it’s all for your own good” can’t be gainsaid easily.

That, however, doesn’t mean it can’t be gainsaid at all. One would think that people weaned on the ideals of liberty would have them coded into their DNA. One would think they’d revolt against losing their liberties and livelihoods, some of both doubtless irrevocably.

One would think wrong. HMG’s draconian measures are enjoying overwhelming public support. Even the health secretary’s threat to ban the one permitted exercise outing a day didn’t cause much excitement.

When reality belies assumptions, especially on a massive scale, there must be something wrong with the assumptions. So no, the ideals of liberty aren’t really coded into the people’s DNA.

Yet democracy has had plenty of time to create a new type of man, one prepared to die defending his secular liberties, one ever ready to repeat Patrick Henry’s words: “Give me liberty or give me death!”

A new type of man has indeed been created, but his ringing words are different: “Take all my freedoms, including one from want, arrest me if I venture outside without a valid reason – but please, please protect me from any risk of death for as long as possible.”

People congenitally fear death; such is our nature, and in that sense we’re no different from skunks. But we differ from such creatures in that we’re capable of fearing death for reasons other than purely animal ones.

For the Judaeo-Christian civilisation was built on the belief that life never ends; that, an animal though a man may be, he isn’t just an animal. He is endowed with a high purpose that transcends earthly concerns, and his life everlasting will depend on how his temporal life serves that purpose.

Hence man used to fear not only death, but also the judgement after death. It followed logically that some metaphysical considerations trumped physical ones, including death. That logic was indeed emblazoned into man’s consciousness, and it largely determined his attitude to the state.

A materialist who believes that his life will end at death will always attach a great importance to his physicality, along with its trappings. Someone who knows he is immortal will pay less attention to the stage set within which the eternal drama of his life is played out.

The same applies to the complex interaction between the state and the individual. The Christian believes his life is eternal. He also knows from history books that the life of a state isn’t: even extremely successful ones only ever lasted between 1,000 and 1,500 years.

Compared to eternity, this stretch is minuscule. That individual will therefore perceive himself as more significant than the state and for that reason alone will never accept its tyranny.

Etched into his soul is the conviction that he is transcendent, but the state is transient. Hence in everything that matters he can only regard the state not as his master but as his servant.

If the state assumes the role of master, then the believer may either resist it or pretend to be going along to protect himself from persecution. But inwardly he’ll never acquiesce. 

At the same time the materialist may well accept the tyranny of a powerful state more readily. After all, his lifespan is much shorter than the state’s. The state had existed before his birth and will happily survive his death.

That’s why when it is communicated to him that he must obey the state no matter what, then, however much he may loathe the idea, he’ll find it hard to come up with a strong argument against it while at the same time remaining a staunch materialist.

Modern democracy pilfered its name from Athens, but Johnson or Macron can’t be confused with Pericles or Solon, today’s parliaments with agoras, and today’s voters with Hellenic citizens.

Citizenship in a democracy implies direct participation in government. Hence it presupposes an ability to self-govern on the basis of a well-developed faculty to judge affairs of the state, both in general and in particular.

That faculty can’t be spread too wide, whatever the level of public education. That’s why both Plato and Aristotle believed that, when the franchise exceeded 5,000 or so, it became unworkable – democracy turns into mob rule (“deviant constitution”, as Aristotle described it).

Anybody who believes that our comprehensively educated electorate is qualified to govern itself is deluded.

Most voters are staggeringly ignorant of politics, and especially how it fits into the general picture of life. When asked to substantiate their opinions – and God knows they have them – they’re not only incapable of doing so, but are in fact unaware of what constitutes a valid argument.

If Athenian schools taught rhetoric and philosophy above all, today’s schools teach Homosexuality for Beginners, The Use of Condoms, and Multi-Culti Virtue. A country whose education breeds mass idiocy can’t be a true democracy, especially if it extends suffrage to millions.

It can only be a sham one, a system that indoctrinates people to accept the illusion that they govern themselves. In reality, they are governed by a small, typically self-serving elite. That it ascends to power by a show of hands is an irrelevant technicality.

Such an elite consciously uproots every surviving sprig of higher freedom, along with the memory of what it was. It brainwashes people to believe that uniformity is diversity, egotism is individuality and voting is liberty.

In that undertaking our rulers succeed spectacularly. Give them a few generations of such brainwashing and they’ll produce a mass unable to define freedom, having no taste for it and ready to swap it, however defined, for a longer life.

This brings back the question in the title. Would we accept a popular vote in favour of selling us into slavery? Would we feel that democracy is thereby served?

For make no mistake about it: coronavirus shows that, given sufficient provocation, our public will happily underwrite such a transaction – at a derisory price.

Our hacks insist on drawing parallels between our current plight and the Second World War.

Some point out biliously that coronavirus managed to do what the Luftwaffe couldn’t: shut the country down. During the war, London shops and restaurants didn’t have much to offer, but at least they stayed open.

Anyway, all such comparisons with the war inevitably veer towards food, specifically shortages thereof. That comparison isn’t particularly valid.

For, compared to the wartime shortages (one egg every other week etc.), we are enjoying a veritable cornucopia. That, however, doesn’t mean that our diets and ways we procure food haven’t changed.

They have, and we’ve all had to adapt. Thus supermarkets have stopped being the mainstay of food shopping for many, certainly for me.

However, here in London we’re blessed with many small groceries and ethnic delis, making life easier, if slightly more expensive. Also, my freezer that normally contains nothing but a bottle of vodka and some ice cubes is now bursting at the seams.

When the epidemic was just starting, I displayed a completely uncharacteristic foresight. First, I bought several large fillets of salmon and turned them into gravlax.

All one needs is some white alcohol (vodka, gin or white rum), capers, Maldon salt, sugar and fresh dill. Just rub the fillet with booze, stud it with capers, pat in a two-to-one mixture of salt and sugar, put some freshly ground pepper on and some chopped dill.

Then into the fridge overnight, after which the cured fish can comfortably live in the freezer for a fortnight or even longer. One fillet feeds two or at a stretch even three, especially if accompanied by sweet potato wedges roasted with olive oil and smoked paprika.

The next step towards filling the freezer is ragú sauce, which really is Bolognese – unlike the red muck supermarkets sell and some unscrupulous restaurants serve.

You just brown a fifty-fifty mixture of beef and pork mince in good olive oil, then bung in chopped onions, carrots, celery, garlic and chilli pepper, cook for a while longer, add any herbs you like (a mixture of rosemary, oregano, basil and bay is good), then drown the lot in good tinned tomatoes, an equal volume of water and a lug of red wine.

Simmer the sauce for a couple of hours, let it cool, then freeze in individual bags. If you start with 500g each of beef and pork, you’ll end up with six meals for two. The Bolognese usually put it on tagliatelle, but what do they know? Penne works much better because those little tubes get filled with the sauce when you mix the pasta.

All you need is some Parmesan on top, a salad on the side, a bottle of something red and Roberto è tuo zio, as Italians would say if they tried to translate ‘Bob’s your uncle’.

That’s it, freezer full, and that Absolut bottle is feeling distinctly crowded. However, the rest of the fridge could now step in to help out.

Here you need a large chicken, those vegetables you have left after making the ragú, and some of the same herbs. You use those ingredients to make about two litres of stock. The boiled chicken, minus skin and bones, can then be turned into a chicken salad. All you’ll need is some red onion, mixed olives, capers, some pickles (those in brine work best), balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

But the stock can make a single-dish meal for six – or, in my household, three meals for two. You must still have some onions, carrots and celery left, so soften them up in a little olive oil. Then add a good hunk of pancetta, some 150g, sliced across the piece.

I’ve tried to skimp on the pancetta and make it with our smoked bacon, but that’s like replacing the beef in ragú with lentils – can, but shouldn’t, be done. In France, I’d use poitrine fumée, but I can’t get to France during the lockdown, can I?

Oh yes, here comes the vegetable that gives the dish its name: cabbage soup. You shred a whole head roughly, add it to the pot, then in with your stock. Bring it to a boil, lower the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes. That’s it.

Once you’ve done your shopping in one go, you don’t have to break the social distancing diktat for some 16 days if you don’t want to. And if you’re as lazy as I am (and as quick), it’s about an hour’s cooking for the lot, not counting the time on the stove.

You can use those couple of hours to do a spot of domestic violence, which, according to our powers that be, is rife in our isolated environment. What better thing to do than beat your wife if you’re stuck with her all day long and the cops are too busy chasing sunbathers?

Now that sunbathing came up, I’d like to share with you a discovery I’ve made experimentally in physics, a discipline for which I’ve hitherto displayed no aptitude whatsoever.

When the weather stayed cold, whisky evaporated much faster than gin. Now the weather has turned summery, it’s the other way around. One of those mysteries of life, I suppose.