MANY LEFTIST TENTACLES

A reader writes:

It seems to me that the common core of beliefs for ARM Republicans, most Greens, the Big M Multiculturalists is really "democratic centralism". That is why these three views (anti-monarrchy, environmentalism and multiculturalism) , logically independent, usually are batched together, along with 'liberal' views on gay rights, gun control etc.

I think it was Alexis De Toqueville who highlighted the risk to liberty from democracy and argued that there were two rival strands of democratic thought. What we can call a Jeffersonian strand with an emphasis on breaking up power centres ('decentralisation of power') and a Jacobin strand that sees the common will as the ultimate goal to which all must bow.

I think the main streams in the contemporary left certainly have a Jacobin impulse but it is elitist not populist. They only recognise a popular desire as authentic when it goes along with their ideology, otherwise they call for government 'leadership' to overcome the popular demand.

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