RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

164 | denis beckett
Karl stuffed up half the world for most of a century. How?
By being opaque and learned. You had to read a sentence five
times so you took it seriously. Way to go.
So I re-started. I got opaque and learned, bringing in history
and psychology and sociology and long words like in real
textbooks. fallacy had been criticised for failing to identify an
academic pedigree. This failure was not accidental, there being
no pedigree whether academic or other, but for Book Three the
plan was that if people want a pedigree, a pedigree they shall
have. I’d still say what I wanted but I’d back it up with “ibids”
and “op cits” and classy names from Hannah arendt to emile
Zola. There’d be no asides, no anecdotes, no frivolous bits; solid
theory, grave and earnest. Karl had constructed a palatial theory
on a dud foundation. I had the right foundation so I needed but
a bungalow theory. It just had to sound theoretical.
also, I had to dose up the guarantee against tyranny. To
the Nats – and Progs, Black consciousniks, Inkathas, Pac s,
everyone outside the juggernaut called aNc – my reasoning fell
flat against one single line: but-they’ll-tear-up-the-constitution.
I’d thought I’d allayed that – right from ‘84, in fact; that had
been kick-off point. If power counted at every tier, the social
fabric was thickly stitched. If power-wielders in every tier
answered to their voters, the constitution was untearable – not
optionally untearable, or difficult to tear; granite untearable.
Strictly, the constitution itself would not be very important.
Its written checks and balances would be overtaken by the
organic check-and-balance of thousands of majority wills. The
interaction of wills would be the guarantor of constitutionalism.
One day, that would be as self-evident as belt-buckles or
automatic kettles. Schoolchildren would laugh on learning that
once upon a time order had depended on clauses composed by
bygone dignitaries. a clause to protect minority rights would as
inconceivable as a clause to protect the law of gravity. One day,
natural process would do the job. “Minority rights” would cease
to be an endangered species; it would become an archaic term.
But “one day” was not here yet. People had to see clause LXV (7)