Is there another country in the world in which you would prefer to live, and if so, why don’t you move there?
….
The correct answer to the irritable pensioner’s question as to which country I would prefer to live in is: the high-trust Great Britain you grew up in, not the dystopian Yookay it has become.

I suspect that almost all of our readers here are Baby Boomers, with a smattering of Gen-X thrown in. As such you may not like the 40m video below where a British member of Gen-Z (also called “Zoomers”), one Connor Tomlinson, dealt with questions raised by recent polls showing his generation losing faith in liberal democracy, to the extent that they are actually leaving the country (Dubai seems very popular) and would not fight to defend Britain.

It’s fair to say that almost nobody in the audience, as well as the two questioners up on the stage (former journalists from the BBC and CNN) agreed with any of the points he made and it was clear that it was more than just the old “why don’t you move there?” guy who were very irritated by what he had to say.

Perhaps treat the video as your Easter Sacrifice?

The “strident views” he gave were primarily:

  • This is a death that is of democracy’s own making.
  • By disrespecting majority rule….
  • … via trying to overturn democratic results (Brexit referendum, Romania, France with Le Pen)…
  • …and outsourcing democratic decisions to faceless bureaucracies and ideologically aligned experts (examples being Covid policies and mass immigration).
  • As a result, those seeking to defend what they call democracy have destroyed any and all faith in it 

I don’t usually recommend reading YouTube comments but it’s another insight since most of the comments seem to come from Zoomers:

  • “Literally a room full of old people telling a young person they’re stupid and don’t get it. A tale as old as time.”
  • “Notice how when the interviewer defined democracy, at no point did he mention the rights and freedoms of the individual, his only concern was the rights and freedoms of institutions.“
  • “This right, here, this smug condescending attitude is why Liberalism will be confined to the dustbin of history.“
  • “Astounding. So many people in this room perfectly demonstrate why young people feel disillusioned. Doesn’t strike me as full, unfettered free speech; rather, blind, sneering elitism.“
  • “These people just don’t get it. Conor is the only one that’s trying to talk to them. The rest of Gen Z hates them and is just waiting for their moment to crush the older ways of thinking out of existence.“

If you prefer to skip the video you can read his take on it with a typically provocative headline,

The unbearable denseness of boomers
Self-styled defenders of liberal democracy cannot tolerate disagreement or even discontent

Some key quotes:

It seems to me that telling despondent young professionals “If you don’t like it, then leave,” is not a winning strategy for summoning the sort of patriotism required to invest in their country and enlist in the military.

One might think that those who purport to be “defending democracy” would want to know why its advantages are not so self-evident to their children and grandchildren, who will inherit it. If preserving the social contract matters so much to them, shouldn’t they be the least bit curious as to why under-30s young professionals don’t want to bear the increasing tax burden of their NHS care and pensions?

It seems belief in the permanence of the welfare state has engendered an unprecedented entitlement in older generations.

This inability to draw distinctions between peoples is why Bennett-Jones cited civil disagreements between the English and Welsh in his remote village as the reason why immigration is of no threat to the high-trust cultural homogeneity which enables liberal democracies. When I said that imported Pakistani rape gangs present different and preventable problems, he was swift to move on. 

This is why Bennett-Jones defines democracy not as a system that ensures maximal accountability through elected representatives, but by the unelected institutions which curtail the boundaries of acceptable political debate, and afford journalists like him prestige by working for them. 

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See also:
Kemi Badenoch’s Sisyphean Task
Gen Z problems
God, it’s brutal out here