Compelling Kindness

I had no idea Will Young was a fascist.

Progressives and statists want the government to force us all to play nicely.

And that’s a problem, because behaving well is something people must choose to do if they are ever to grow to want to – if you force them to do it, they might comply, but they will always resent it.

And when people resent being forced to do things (even good things, that they might have chosen to do if they had been free to do so) they try to avoid doing them. Which means you need more power to manage the avoiding behaviour.

And then yet more power, to manage yet more avoiding behaviour.

Until inevitably you need complete power, because all they do is avoiding behaviour.

You see, without being free to act badly, our good behaviour cannot be a choice – freedom is the highest good, not compelled kindness.

Because without the former, compelled action is always puerile and horrifying, regardless who it appeases – you will have turned your nation into a prison camp full of terrified puppets.

Sometimes I wonder if the well-meaning fools who propose to compel kindness understand this at all?