Please forgive me for  banging on so loudly about our incipient decadence. I have been challenged by kind readers of this blog concerning my representation of the Frankfurt School of cultural Marxists who, by their policy of undermining and destroying western society not by armed revolution but by “infiltrating and corrupting western institutions from within” determined to destroy our civilisation.

I am accused by my readers – at least there are some readers – which is more than the prophet Jeremiah could boast – that I am indulging in cliche and conspiracy theory.

Have I been a philosopher for sixty years for nothing?

The anarchic-nihilistic agenda has penetrated and taken over all our institutions and we are dead in the water. Not just the Christian Church and the national polity, but little companies such as the Girl Guides…

Here, if I can manage to download the bloody thing, I will repeat:

It goes like this: “Free to be me….free to be me….free to be me…” The song is spin off from the new “Free to be me” badge just introduced for Girl Guides. There is in-depth training to be gone through before the award of this prized emblem. Candidates are instructed to “value their bodies” – I do hope this is not with the idea of selling them – and to “celebrate diversity.”

I read on the Guides’ website that the new badge is designed to increase girls’ “self-esteem.” These blind Chief Guides have forgotten that it is oneself that precisely one is not meant to esteem. Another word for self-esteem is phariseeism.

Here are a few more of the recently-introduced Guides’ badges:

Confectioner (“Know how to make three kinds of icing; know how to melt chocolate successfully….”)

Healthy Lifestyle (“Make up a TV or magazine advert that shows why it is important to look after your feet…”)

Discovering Faith (“With your Patrol or other Guides, take part in a ‘Reflections’ or ‘Thought for the Moment’ in your unit. Use songs, drama, mime, music and so on. You should use at least one story from your own faith.”)

World Issues (“Find out about as many peace symbols as you can. Why were things like the olive branch and the dove chosen? Design and make a mobile using peace symbols.”)

Music Zone (” Listen to pieces of music from other countries or cultures. Share them with your Patrol and explain what you like about them.”)

Culture (“Learn ten words and their meanings from your chosen culture’s language or dialect. Teach them to your Patrol.”)

Personal Safety (“Be able to describe three things that might cause you harm or make you feel unsafe, while (…) heating up baked beans on the stove and toasting two pieces of bread in the toaster”)

That noise in your ear  is Lady Baden-Powell spinning in her grave,

The point is that this fight against our destroyers – well-represented in all out debased institutions , especially the church – is a fight to the death. It is not a hobby. I am not in it for the frisson. Of course we (no less than the nihilists and Stalinists) have our useful fools and fellow travellers. There are so many who will nod and pay lip service to what I am saying all the time – but then will be very happy to douse themselves in Downton Abbey and Strictly Come Whatsit; or, worse, the Veronese exhibition at the National Gallery.

Brute beasts with no understanding

Now then, my dears, I seek your advice: should I grow up and become more liberated , more accommodating, more sophisticated, emancipated, diversified… and any of the other sickening adjectives you can conjure; or should I struggle however feebly to preserve what’s let of anything that was ever any good?

I guess what some might say: “But who’s to say what is good?” Easy: Sophocles, Plato, the Lord Jesus Christ. Bach Mozart, Giotto told us.

Why are those who say they are our friends really members of the other side by their acceptance of the values which the other side proclaims? You don’t need to say anything…

I won’t give up. But the certainty is that I shall fail

Cheer up! – there;’s another exhibition of human Renaissance anthropomorphic art coming up at the Nat Gal any minute now.

And may God have mercy on your souls – if you are allowed to have souls

peter