After François Hollande was elected as president of France in May 2012, a number of online commenters on French fora declared his victory ‘the end of history’.

Others from the Left also celebrated the day as moving nearer to a Sixth Republic which would be about communitarianism, Socialism and a new France.

It was with some bemusement that I read similar sentiments recently in The American Conservative in an article written by British columnist Brendan O’Neill, editor of Spiked, an online magazine (H/T: Frank Davis).

It wasn’t so long ago that the Spiked ‘About’ page said the contributors were former Marxists. Imagine my surprise then to read that Karl Marx would like it but that Joseph Stalin would not. Hmm.

There appears to be some cognitive dissonance in a conservative publication asking someone from a left-wing libertarian mag to contribute an article on cultural reform.

O’Neill decries the notion that cultural Marxists have had a hand in the rapid socio-political reform Britain has witnessed over the past five decades.  He defends this idea by pointing to the current Prime Minister being a Conservative.

However, that seems to be a bit disingenuous on two counts.

One, David Cameron is a product of an education system which has absorbed left-wing honeyed words such as ‘fairness’, ‘justice’ and ‘tolerance’. Cameron’s Eton, despite its exclusivity, also bought into these ideas and has shaped its curriculum around them. So have other public (exclusive private) schools along with their state counterparts.

Two, Cameron is not a Conservative in the Thatcherian sense of the word. He is what Thatcher would have called a ‘wet’, or a Conservative in name only.  Frank Davis is right to point out that Cameron has latched on to fashionable causes: health, environmentalism and the European Union.

However, is that fashion for Cameron or is that what he truly believes, because of conditioning from his schooldays? Many other Britons in his age group and younger share the same perspectives.

Parents place a great deal of faith in their children’s education. Today, the children come home to educate their parents, a number of whom already have university degrees and are articulate people. On many occasions I have heard middle-aged couples say, ‘Jane came home for Christmas and told us all about climate change. Gosh, we really are in a world of trouble’. Or, ‘Britain as a nation must make reparations for its imperialist past. Matt told us about a project he’s been working on. There’s so much our generation didn’t learn at school.’

These are not left-wing parents. Many vote Conservative. Some have served in the Armed Forces.  What accounts for this shift in thinking?

In the United States in the 1930s, it was because of Communist infiltration of the education system.  In 2011, I ran excerpts of Bella Dodd’s School of Darkness (see my Marxism / Communism page). This is how it worked. Dodd knew; she was a Communist Party member for many years:

Chapter 7 – Communists work with teachers unions and the PTA; truth behind Spanish Civil War

Chapter 8 – Comintern-trained teachers in state schools; how Fiorello La Guardia ran New York City

Chapter 9 – using ‘class’ or ‘race’ discrimination to agitate teachers; negative influences on students

Chapter 10 – infiltrating schools via teachers’ unions; lack of moral code in education

Chapter 11 – Communist schools, using American patriots as cover, ‘progressive’ businessmen

So, I do not buy O’Neill’s reasoning, especially when he goes on to conclude (emphases mine):

Of course, there is much in modern Britain that is stuffy and which could do with being — consciously reformed, I mean, not casually done away with. If I had my way, the monarchy would go, the Lords too, and there is even room for asking whether marriage should be denationalized, turned from a state affair into a private matter for individuals and communities (including gay ones). But you need to have public engagement and debate, a battle of ideas, in order to do reform properly, to replace what might be old and archaic with something you think will be better and more enlightened. The problem with the current elite’s elbowing of tradition into the gutter is that it is grounded in nothing except shallow PR concerns. It is cultural vandalism, and real, still vital institutions that mean a great deal to ordinary people are dying off as a result: tabloid newspapers, the traditional ideal of marriage, the Union, the royals—an entire way of life dimly remembered in the words of Orwell.

O’Neill draws a rather fuzzy conclusion. On the one hand, he declares his republican instincts. On the other, he feigns empathy for British traditionalists.

However, more importantly, there are no ‘shallow PR concerns’ on the part of our government ministers. They sincerely believe in what they are doing. They have been educated to do so. They might not be the deepest thinkers, however, that doesn’t mean they don’t believe it.

The death of history is another step closer to becoming reality — and not just for French Socialists.

In closing, I found the comment by Jim Bovard somewhat ironic:

We’re lucky that our politicians would never undermine American moral values.

Really? Explain then what’s been going on there since 2008.