Problems of socialism affect our psyches

The headlines come and go but the long-term challenges the Western world faces continue to fester.

Governments continue to expand their mandates into previously unthought of domains.

This creeping socialism creates a bloated state and looming debt crises, such as we’ve seen in Greece.

Massive, unfunded pension liabilities bubble below the surface in too many countries.

This trend affects our collective psyche.

Entire generations of young people don’t understand the concept of civil society, in which regular people gather to solve their problems voluntarily, free from the strict edicts of the state. Whereas at one time a government solution was seen as the last resort, for millennials and their younger cohorts it’s often the first and only one.

Big government has made us into small citizens.

We’re besieged by a political correctness and moral relativism so overwhelming that our supposedly liberal societies can’t even bring themselves to confront the intolerant and authoritarian forces of political Islam.

While the ISIS caliphate in Mosul is falling, a more domesticated form of Islamism is taking root in countries such as Turkey, Indonesia and even regions of the Philippines.

When glimmers of this agenda crop up in Europe and North America, politicians and the chattering classes do everything to accommodate its bigotry and little to denounce it.

Closer to home, there is our damaging obsession with identity politics, the idea our differences matter more than our similarities.

This is largely the wheelhouse of progressives, who pigeonhole everyone into little categories of victimhood.

At a time when rigidly defined skin colour will continue to blur because love cares little for such bounds, vocal fringe groups like Black Lives Matter want us to go back decades, believing black is black, white is white, and never the two shall meet.

Alongside this, we’ve watched the undeniable presence of neo-Nazis and white supremacists rear their ugly heads in our midst.

They argue they’re defenders of the West. Nonsense.

Their small-mindedness is anathema to the Western tradition, which is dynamic, expanding and welcoming to people of all backgrounds.

This sad group should have long been relegated to history’s dustbin. Let’s hope we can push them back there soon.

Tackling these problems requires genuine leadership. We can’t be passive in the face of them, but few are rising to the occasion.

Figures on the left, at best, have little interest in solving most of these issues and at their worst, actively revel in the West’s decline.

However, voices on the right do little better these days.

Some are content to prosper in the private sector.

Others can’t be bothered to face the harassment that politicians and public figures now receive.

Then, there are those too timid to speak, lest they be called nasty names by cultural elites and a liberal media blind to these maladies.

This is a problem. Regular people want these issues tackled. They’re desperate for leadership. If they don’t get the real deal, some may end up settling for whatever’s on offer, no matter how shoddy.

History shows any number of dangerous types have stepped up before and will again.

The phonies and fakers. The scam artists and hustlers. The scumbags and racists. If there’s a void, they’ll move to fill it.

Principled and true conservatives can’t sit by and let this happen.