The irony of progressives lecturing the right about echo chambers

There is an old parable about two pilgrims on separate journeys to Rome. The first meets a traveller walking out of the city and says: “Tell me what Rome is like.”

“What do you think Rome is like?” the traveller responds. “I think Rome will be full of ugliness, open sewers, poverty and violence,” the pilgrim says. “That is what Rome is like,” the traveller tells the pilgrim and they part.

Soon the second pilgrim meets the traveller on the path. “Tell me what Rome is like,” the second pilgrim asks. “What do you think it will be?” the traveller replies. “I think Rome will be full of glorious churches, wonders of art and beautiful people,” the pilgrim says. “That is what Rome is like,” the traveller tells the second pilgrim and they go their separate ways

Both pilgrims find the Rome they are looking for and know the traveller spoke the truth.

The story echoed this week as I attended the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London. The aim of this organisation is to rediscover all that is good in Western civilisation and encourage individuals to act to bring “flourishing and prosperity to their families, communities and nations”.

Keen to understand how this clearly reactionary gathering was being interpreted by the ruling regime’s media gate dog, I read The Guardian’s review of day one by its political sketch writer, John Crace.

Crace saw an “alt-right heaven”: “A gathering of some of the biggest names on the circuit. Douglas Murray. Jordan Peterson. Nigel Farage. Niall Ferguson. An echo chamber of self-referential congratulation. A place where people come to have their ideas confirmed, not challenged.”

It was a masterclass in unconscious self-parody. A reporter from the stagnant pond at the heart of “progressive” alt-Eden raging against groupthink.

Recall The Guardian is the paper where 338 journalists rebelled because the editor allowed columnist Suzanne Moore to write that she believed “biological sex to be real and that it’s not transphobic to understand basic science”. For this thought crime Moore was driven from her workplace by colleagues who masqueraded as journalists.

Nigel Farage is interviewed by Jordan Peterson. Picture: Andrew Parsons / Parsons Media

I’m sure Crace witnessed many spirited exchanges in the Guardian’s herbal tea room as courageous reporters challenged the idea that – even though Moore was clearly a trans-exclusionary radical feminist bigot – she was entitled to her warped opinion.

But of course not. It is Crace and his comrades who have deemed free speech a “far-right” value and gaslit those who point to cancel culture as proof that a totalitarian heart beats in the bosom of the new ruling class.

Once the left raged against “The Man” and free speech was their totem. Now that The Guardian is the official gazette of “The They”, tolerance is a travesty.

It is no doubt a reflection of my own biases that saw a different gathering to Crace.

In London I saw more than 4000 people from 100 countries debating ideas. I saw them agree and disagree. There were conservatives, old-school liberals, free marketeers and protectionists. It will confuse the bigots at The Guardian to hear that these are very different people, as anyone not signed up to its orthodoxy is branded “far right”.

Among the revolutionaries was Ian Rowe, co-founder of Vertex Partnership Academies. He didn’t just talk about lifting people from poverty, he lived it.

Rowe built a high school in The Bronx in New York based on the archaic cardinal virtues of courage, justice, temperance and wisdom. The children in his care have thrived by learning to live with discipline and a moral code.

Others spoke of how a return to traditional teaching was redeeming education, after 30 years trapped in the billabong of experiential learning.

A lot of people at ARC put much store in faith, a sure sign that they are a baptismal font of truly dangerous ideas. Among them is the notion that “heterosexual, child-centred monogamy” is an ideal to aim at. There is no colour on a flag for this parade and never will be. But given every other sexual preference is celebrated, surely this one has a place in the rainbow. And the people pushing prams at ARC do not begrudge the life choices of others.

We heard from those who believed the family was the foundation stone of a healthy society. They want to protect children from the assault of the internet and the abuse of ubiquitous porn. They want boys to have role models who define their masculinity as being gentlemen.

We heard from Senegalese entrepreneur Magatte Wade, who said people in the nations of Africa want what the West once had, access to cheap, abundant energy. They crave the prosperity that comes with fossil fuel and do not want to be force-fed solar panels and windmills by self-righteous neocolonialists.

We heard the uncomfortable truth about net zero from US Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who described it as a “sinister goal”. “The aggressive pursuit of it … has not delivered any benefits but it’s delivered tremendous costs,” Wright said. The truth of that is written in the electricity bills of consumers in Australia, California, Britain and Germany.

One of the speakers was David Brooks, a conservative columnist from The New York Times. He described this job as “like being the chief rabbi in Mecca”.

Brooks noted that when what was right and wrong was arbitrated by what each individual felt then “we are outside the bounds of civilisation”. But, in front of an audience that included 1000 Americans, he took aim at Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

“They are not pro-conservative, they are anti-left,” Brooks said. “They don’t have a positive conservative vision for society; they just want to destroy the institutions that the left now dominates. And this means in the first place that they are astoundingly incompetent. I have a lot of sympathy with what drove people to vote for Trump, but I’m telling you, as someone who is on the front row to what is happening, do not hitch your wagon to that star.”

This was met with boos and applause and gave lie to The Guardian’s claim that this was a gathering where ideas were not being challenged.

We heard the pros and cons of artificial intelligence from those who saw it as a boon and a doom. All seemed to agree that there needed to be some human regulation of this new and potentially disturbing sentience.

All speakers realised we were living through epic times and all were reaching to find the words to describe it. Douglas Murray said we had endured modernism and the deconstruction that travelled with postmodernism. He hopes this is the age of reconstruction.

A course correction is well overdue.

In my lifetime the ill-titled “progressives” rose to capture the institutions of state, the academy, the bureaucracy and the media. And what did they build? They took a flawed city on the hill and turned it into Gomorrah. They made a wasteland and called it progress.

If a new Rome is to rise on the horizon it will not be made by politicians or the powerful. It will be built by responsible citizens, one brick at a time.