Quote Originally Posted by Pannonian View Post
Actually, I didn't say that. I said far left groups. Not Corbyn himself, but groups that he associates with. You quote Orwell later on in the post. Read his accounts of numerous far left groups who are indeed too obsessed with doing down the establishment to answer Yes to my question. By the time I was reading the literature of these groups as current decades later, the obsessions hadn't changed much from Orwell's time.

I see myself as a socialist in the mould of Orwell; what he would call a patriotic socialist, or someone who sees values in traditional English/British culture that are fundamentally compatible with the ideals of socialism. And I share Orwell's dislike of the far left that's too embedded in its own backside to do anything good (his parable novels are famous, but his accounts and essays are more direct critiques of the English far left). Corbyn's friends are said far left. As I said, read up on his close group.
OK. I don't want to chew over appraisals of what obscure British characters are good, bad, or in between. The point I'm making is that inevitably, if you held a gun to my head, I could dig up some statements from such individuals that would amount to an affirmative answer to your question. If you then protest they're not living up to the rhetoric, that would be exactly the lens I intend for you accept! Everyone will claim to be good for the vulnerable, so a pat answer to such an abstract question can't be probative.

Quote Originally Posted by Pannonian View Post
BTW, you quote "There’s no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.", as if it were a bad thing. That's the Tory argument. And Wellington applied it to the privileged ruling class, whose slacking scions he despised. The corollary Tory argument that I alluded to earlier is that, if you are born into a life of privilege, you are obliged to justify that life by doing your best for the community.
Well, OK, so you agree with Thatcher there. I don't see noblesse oblige as a favorable principle to have to rely on; ni dieu ni maitre sounds better.