I am not a psychologist, and do not pretend to be one. But, simply out of empathy and common sense, I can understand how he must be feeling now. After the international fiasco – even though he keeps wearing his cool, smart-aleck mask – deep down he must feel distraught.

“Distraught” not as in Shakespeare’s “as if thou wert distraught and mad with terror”, but in the sense of “agitated with doubt or mental conflict or pain”. Obviously, this must be his state at the moment, and one can fully empathise.

Then again, despite all the empathy, one has to ask: what on earth possessed him to persevere in his quest for an international office when his local shenanigans had been exposed all over the world? This tunnel vision says a lot about his judiciousness. If he couldn’t work out the simple equation that protecting Panama-Papers people equals no chance of attaining high office abroad, how can he then work out the consequences of the policies his administration pursues and will be pursuing at home?

One downside to public office is that when you voluntarily aspire to and attain it, you implicitly give up your “right” to be shielded from criticism that could increase your agitation, mental conflict or pain. The public needs to be aware of the anguish caused by a major career setback because that anguish will necessarily affect your psychology, particularly if you happen to have the power to take decisions that impact the entire nation.

Policies pursued

For instance, the new rules for bank loans: it seems that the Central Bank wants to rein in the buy-to-rent sector. What does this mean in relation to population growth?

Last April, during the Labour Party General Conference, the Prime Minister asked, “Can someone explain how it is a problem that EU [citizens] are coming to work here instead of the other way round? ... I would much rather have an international company to stay in Malta but bring in foreign workers than shut down and leave.”

This was last April, a mere three months ago. So why is the Central Bank now changing the rules for buy-to-rent loans? What’s going on?

Government and bedrooms

Government policy affects bedrooms not only in the sense of accommodation, but also in the other sense. In an article published in 2010 called “The state and the bedroom”, Mario Vella – the current Central Bank Governor and author of one of my favourite books ever, Reflections in a Canvas Bag (1989) – had criticised Nationalist MP Edwin Vassallo for saying that, “What happens in the bedroom is, up to a point, the government’s business because it often had to resolve problems caused there.”

Mr Vassallo had sensibly cited “single parents and teenage pregnancies” as examples of the sort of problems arising from “what happens in the bedroom”. Nine years on, I still cannot understand Dr Vella’s criticism. Wasn’t Mr Vassallo right? Don’t these cases create problems the State then has to solve? Shouldn’t the State open people’s eyes to the consequences of their actions?

Dr Vella had contended that these concerns reflect “bigotry, prejudice, intolerance and sheer ignorance”. Again, I cannot understand how discussing the public consequences of private decisions could ever add up to these accusations. Dr Vella promised to articulate his criticism in his next article (“More next time” he had promised), but I couldn’t find it. Most probably, he changed his mind. Possibly because it was politically expedient to make illogical criticisms without backing them up with... logical clarifications.

During a PL activity in Żurrieq in January of this year, the Prime Minister referred to the same theme. In the civil sector, he said, ten years ago divorce didn’t exist and the Government would go into everyone’s bedroom, while today the country is at the forefront of civil rights.

Civil rights, or so it seems, are equal to sexual “liberation”.

Which must therefore imply that the “bigotry, prejudice, intolerance and sheer ignorance” of Dr Vella’s article referred to what many of us consider as the responsibility inherent in sexual activity. But this sense of “responsibility” is – in the eyes of the liberal-progressives – nothing but a manacle.

Nine years have passed. The supposed “bigotry, prejudice, intolerance and sheer ignorance” have remained unexplained by that part of the political spectrum that issues these fatwas. As the Prime Minister himself admitted, in this decade Malta has become a radically progressive country, despite the pre-2013 electoral pledge that the project was to be progressive with moderation. (The Minister responsible for this project has now been rewarded with higher office.)

What worries me and those who share the same ideas, is that nine years have passed and the State still makes no visible effort to inform the people of the consequences of their private choices. It grants so-called civil rights but imparts no education. There are no pro-family, pro-life, pro-higher values educational campaigns. Instead the dominant ideology seems to be pleasure, the here-and-now, living life like there’s no tomorrow. G.K. Chesterton called it “the carpe diem religion” and warned that it is not the religion of happy people. He was talking of decadence.

Civil rights can make civil hands unclean

Now let us say that for a brief moment of insanity, I and a few like-minded friends of mine decide that nobody should decide for us what we put in our bellies, that we want freedom to choose whether to work or not, and therefore that we want to dispossess other people of their belongings and start living off them. We create a pressure group to campaign for the abolition of private property. We want everything to be commonly owned, each to be given according to his/her needs. We proclaim our freedom to co-own whatever we like, to put in our bellies whatever we want. The Criminal Code – a bourgeois piece of legislation which penalises theft – should be amended for us to enjoy the freedom we proclaim.

What would the authorities do? Would they let us campaign and spread this most subversive of philosophies, or would they take action against us?

Let us say that in a second, equally brief moment of insanity, I and some other, also like-minded, friends of mine proclaim our freedom to marry two or more, even five, spouses at the same time (like some African tribes do – multiculturalism and all that). After all, it’s our bodies, our choice. The Criminal Code – a collection of bigoted Medieval laws which penalise bigamy – should be amended for us to enjoy the freedom we proclaim. Furthermore, a State Agency should be set up to help us with the expenses related to five spouses and their children. Again: what would the authorities do?

Would the State in this case poke its big fat nose in our bedrooms, on the pretext that being married to five spouses goes against public policy?

Would it stop us from campaigning for the legalisation of theft because it goes against public policy?

That the State does not stop those campaigning in favour of abortion, on the simple basis that abortion violates public policy, shows that he thinks that public policy should allow abortion. Only an idiot wouldn’t see this. For the benefit of the “Where’s the proof?” brigade: the Labour-leaning news portal iNews published “subtle” pro-abortion propaganda in the form of a story about a British mum regretting not aborting her Down’s syndrome baby.

The confusion in a few people’s minds stems from reading British authors on morality and studying in British universities – doctors in particular. They fail to see that Britain is going through “managed decadence”. In the brilliant book I mentioned above, Reflections in a Canvas Bag, a young Mario Vella, despite having studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science, claimed that British universities are, essentially, amateurish and over-rated. The youthful Mario Vella might or might not have been right, but some people would do well to ruminate over his observation. Many of the observations in that book are insightful. I wonder whether he heeds Dr Vella’s advice.

Environmental decadence

On the environment, let us say.

Whereas Environment “Minister” José Herrera bumbles about, mumbling things about “false nostalgias” while trees are being felled con mucho gusto, the overall impression one gets of this government’s environmental policy is that... it’s practically non-existent.

“The past was not as rosy as imagined,” claims the “Environment” Minister. (Yes, you can play around with the inverted commas – after all, Dr Herrera is either the “Minister” for the Environment or else the Minister for the “Environment”. Whichever you choose, you’re right. You could also decide he’s the “Minister” for the “Environment”.)

Now, let’s dissect the “Minister”’s logic. To me it seems to be along these lines:

Premise A: There weren’t so many trees in the past (it’s “false nostalgia”).

Premise B: We need progress.

Conclusion: Therefore, it’s ok to fell trees.

The country has the highest rate of air pollution in the Union, and the “Minister” for the “Environment” waxes lyrical about “false nostalgia”. Or waxes indignant. Again, you choose, use inverted commas, and all that. It’s becoming so Orwellian that words fail me. It’s as though “Minister” Herrera were a washing machine mumbling to itself, and the colours of words run in his speech.

What is this madness?!

What have trees got to do with progress?!

Real progress is achieved when more trees are planted, when trees become an integral part of any project, of the Environment.

But – as Anthony Ellul of the Malta Chamber of Planners has stated – “we have now reached a situation where there is no planning at all.”

Thing is, you cannot separate private morality from public behaviour. The way people behave in their private lives will flow over into the public sphere. The etymology of the word itself indicates this. Morality derives from mores which means “custom”, “the way of doing things”. When the dominant ideology promotes a morality of “everybody mindlessly minding their own business”, this permeates the bedroom but also flows outside, into society.

So, in this decade of decadence we see no planning in the bedroom (because the ideology does not promote thinking about the consequences) and no planning in the natural environment (for the very same reason). This intimate psychological relationship between bedroom and natural environment is so deep that commenting on the reigning chaos, architect Richard England condensed his frustration thus: “I remember Malta as a virgin.” He echoed the sentiments of many.

My Personal Library (59)

In December 2016, I visited Marcello Veneziani in his Rome apartment, or loft, actually. I thought that I had a lot of books! I had to recalibrate my self-perception... each and every wall of Veneziani’s residence was covered with shelf upon shelf, and the air was saturated with the sweet smell of lignin.

Veneziani has written a number of middle-brow books on philosophy; I think he can be classified as a populariser of philosophy. The first book of his which I read, and which I still consider to be his best, is called Comunitari o liberal: La Prossima Alternativa (“Communitarians or Liberals: The Next Alternative”, 1999). He uses the English word “liberals” to distinguish these “new” liberals from the classical liberals of the 19^th century.

Veneziani claims that the liberals believe in emancipation, in liberation from ties, in the project of Humanity. They believe in overcoming frontiers and boundaries, and in universalism (or cosmopolitanism).

For the communitarians, on the other hand, importance is to be given to the feeling of community, to rites, to the usages and customs of a people. This is not a sociological or folkloristic importance, but one intimately related to life – these should serve as points of reference for one’s orientation in life.

The communitarians are children of a fatherland; the motherland of the liberals is time.

The communitarians love variety and distrust precarity; the liberals prefer variability and dislike differences. Variety is diversity in the spatial sense, argues Veneziani; variability is diversity in the temporal.